The effects of the largest asteroid.?

Question

What would be the effects if ceres the largest asteroid was to hit earth at 160,000MPH and how big would the crater be and how hot would the explosion fireball be,i know it would pretty much vaporize everthing.

Answer 1

It is not going to happen so why give the ignorant (who don't know how the Solar System works) and the gullible (who will believe everything they mishear and manage to garble) another needless worry?

Ceres is 2.76 AU on average from the Sun in a stable orbit between Mars and Jupiter where Jupiter's gravity keeps it under control. There have been no indications that it was straying from that orbit in the 206 years that we have studied its behaviour.

Its perihelion is 2.54 AU. That is the closest it ever gets. Why should that suddenly change? Its orbital speed is currently 17.8 kms/sec (= 11.125 miles/sec = 40,050 mph) Why should that suddenly quadruple?

And why would it suddenly lurch off and head for Earth when it would encounrer Mars' gravitational influence first?

It would have to cross several Kirkwood Gaps if it were to suddenly get the wanderlust to want to head in our general direction, and Jupiter tends to expel objects in the direction of the Oort Cloud that enter a Kirkwood Gap, not towards the Inner Solar System.

Any asteroid larger than a kilometre in diameter is capable of causing an extinction event on Earth. You don't need to postulate the biggest asteroid there is impacting on Earth to study the possible effects of an impact.

Answer 2

Ok, first of all, Ceres CANNOT hit the Earth. it orbits roughly between Mars and Jupiter and is currently very stable, secondly, it would not take an asteroid hundreds of miles in diameter like Ceres to destroy all life on Earth, that could be accomplished with a "small" asteroid of about 20-30 miles in diameter. However, if Ceres did hit us, it would do more than wipe out life on Earth. This is what would probably happen:
1)Much of Earth's atmosphere would be blown into space
2)At least some of the oceans would boil away due to the extreme heat
3)The Earth would experience severe tectonic activity at the sight of the impact, with a definite tearing of the crust.
4) The planet would superheat from the impact and release many tons of dust and debris into the sky, and when the planet cooled off, the dust would cut off the sun, and plunge us into an ice age.
5)The most interesting effect of such a huge impact would be this: Earth would obtain another natural satellite like the moon, but about 1/6th the moons diameter. It would orbit the Earth closer than the moon also, therefore we would have too satellites in our sky
6)Earth would eventually recover most of it's atmosphere, though it would be considerably thinner, and if any humans survived in space stations(given we detected the collision), it would be possible in a few hundred years to return to our planet.

We don't want this however, and if it happened we should go to Mars.

Answer 3

Whoa!.....The earth is sure to change its orbit.....end of mankind for sure!!

Ceres is the smallest dwarf planet in the Solar System and the only one located in the main asteroid belt.
With a mass of 9.5 ×10^20 kg, Ceres weighs about 4% of the mass of the Moon.

Dimensions: 975×909 km

That kind of impact IF AT ALL IT HAPPENS (although probablity is negligible), it will create an impact crater 5 times the diameter of the Chixulub crater in yucatan peninsula which destroyed the dinosaurs.

Another massive extinction would follow and the cockroaches will rule the world!

Answer 4

Well...-It would probably be pretty much the end of the Earth as we know it...-and the final answer to ALL our questions...

Answer 5

the crater would be about 25900 km in diameter......... and 6.31 km deep ceres is about 1000km in diameter

Answer 6

you wouldnt know the effects because you would be dead...lol