Which is more likely to happen: the events from Armageddon (film), or the events from The Day After Tomorrow?

Answer 1

That depends on what degrees and what time frames you are looking at. Both will happen eventually. A sizable asteroid hitting the earth is almost 100% likely to happen. The question is simply how long will it take.
The earth is getting warmer too. That is partly because the sun is getting hotter as all stars do as they age. It is partly because the sun is also going through an active period which occurs every 22 years. Although much ado has been made about man's contribution to global warming, short of a nuclear winter, man really doesn't have the power to change the earth's climate faster than the earth's own system of checks and balances can compensate.
Excess carbon dioxide is pulled out of the atmosphere by the oceans and formed into limestone just as fast as we can pump it into the atmosphere.
The trans-global current (the mid atlantic conveyor) as depicted in the movie (the day after) can be affected by changes in global temperature. As the planet heats up, the ice caps melt and dump fresh water into the oceans which will slow the current down. As the current slows down, the polar areas get cold again and the ice caps expand and the oceans become more salty and the current resumes its normal flow. So even though global warming may eventually lead to global cooling, that is a normal cycle for the earth. I can guarantee you won't have anything like what the movie depicted. That was sheer garbage.
On the other hand, if a good sized asteroid does hit the earth, all bets are off.

Answer 2

Neither film contains anything that is remotely realistic in a physical sense. In TDAT, there is a great scene where a descending stratospheric air mass instantly freezes a huge area. That is fantasy. Descending air gets warmer due to adiabatic compression so that by the time the air gets to the surface it is no longer cold. The idea of the N. Atlantic freezing solid in a timescale of a few hours is equally silly. There is no way to get that much heat out of the ocean (you have to remove heat to get water to freeze) and if you did, someplace else would get extremely warm.

Armageddon is space fantasy. The asteroid is the size of Texas (to quote the film promo), yet is split apart by a single nuclear warhead. If you sit down and do the math in terms of the momentum you would need and the size of the warhead etc. etc., you need orders and orders of magnitude more explosive force than could be delivered by a single warhead. Plus, even if you could split an asteroid like that, you would create so much more radioactive debris that would enter the atmosphere there wouldn't be much left anyway in terms of higher life.

Modern science fiction cinema does a horrible job at getting the science plausible. Even movies like "Twister" are laughable in terms of the scientific accuracy. Technically correct cinema turns out to be boring.


That depends on what degrees and what time frames you are looking at. Both will happen eventually. A sizable asteroid hitting the earth is almost 100% likely to happen. The question is simply how long will it take.
The earth is getting warmer too. That is partly because the sun is getting hotter as all stars do as they age. It is partly because the sun is also going through an active period which occurs every 22 years. Although much ado has been made about man's contribution to global warming, short of a nuclear winter, man really doesn't have the power to change the earth's climate faster than the earth's own system of checks and balances can compensate.
Excess carbon dioxide is pulled out of the atmosphere by the oceans and formed into limestone just as fast as we can pump it into the atmosphere.
The trans-global current (the mid atlantic conveyor) as depicted in the movie (the day after) can be affected by changes in global temperature. As the planet heats up, the ice caps melt and dump fresh water into the oceans which will slow the current down. As the current slows down, the polar areas get cold again and the ice caps expand and the oceans become more salty and the current resumes its normal flow. So even though global warming may eventually lead to global cooling, that is a normal cycle for the earth. I can guarantee you won't have anything like what the movie depicted. That was sheer garbage.
On the other hand, if a good sized asteroid does hit the earth, all bets are off.

Answer 3

Neither film contains anything that is remotely realistic in a physical sense. In TDAT, there is a great scene where a descending stratospheric air mass instantly freezes a huge area. That is fantasy. Descending air gets warmer due to adiabatic compression so that by the time the air gets to the surface it is no longer cold. The idea of the N. Atlantic freezing solid in a timescale of a few hours is equally silly. There is no way to get that much heat out of the ocean (you have to remove heat to get water to freeze) and if you did, someplace else would get extremely warm.

Armageddon is space fantasy. The asteroid is the size of Texas (to quote the film promo), yet is split apart by a single nuclear warhead. If you sit down and do the math in terms of the momentum you would need and the size of the warhead etc. etc., you need orders and orders of magnitude more explosive force than could be delivered by a single warhead. Plus, even if you could split an asteroid like that, you would create so much more radioactive debris that would enter the atmosphere there wouldn't be much left anyway in terms of higher life.

Modern science fiction cinema does a horrible job at getting the science plausible. Even movies like "Twister" are laughable in terms of the scientific accuracy. Technically correct cinema turns out to be boring.

Answer 4

The Day After Tomorrow. Global warming is happening. We would never be able to land on an asteroid like they do in Armageddon.

Answer 5

The Day After Tomorrow's events are more likely to happen.

The whole thing about the North Atlantic currents is true, but they juiced the entire thing up a whole ton to make it a blockbuster. If that indeed did happen, there probably wouldn't be a thing about "freezing instantly in the eye of the storm" and all of that, but it could be serious.

Answer 6

They are both movies developed to be sensational and sell tickets.

Events in real life are not likely to resemble either film.