Hi, Dave,
The gas can't explode unless mixed thoroughly and in the
proper proportion with oxygen: two O2 for every CH4. Of course, if
you wreck the piping, the gas could escape and mix with the
atmosphere and if it were ignited you'd a gas well fire of
tremendous size, I guess.
But the energy released by the complete combustion of 100
billion ft3 of gas is a pop in the bucket compared with the
kinetic energy released when an impactor arrives unexpectedly. In
all the hullabaloo, you would never notice the 100 billion ft3 of
gas exploding. Of course, if you're close enought to notice, your
noticing days are probably over.
The key term is the velocity. You could throw a baseball (I
imagine) about 30 m/sec. But kinetic energy goes up as the square
of the velocity. A space rock arrives at 30,000 m/sec, 1000 times
faster, which means 1,000,000 times more energy.
The average 100 meter stone impactor coming in at 20,000 m/sec
has enought kinetic energy to:
a) crush 10,000 times its own mass of rock, or
b) melt 100 times its own mass of rock, or
c) vaporize 10 times its own mass of rock, or
d) accelerate 100 times its own mass to 2,000 m/sec. (In real
life, it does some of all these things.)
But let's say you had a nice space based rail gun that could
accelerate a rock up to a lousy 1% of lightspeed (3,000,000
m/sec). It would easy to do if the railgun was long enough.
That object would have 100,000,000 times more energy than the
"normal" space rock and could cause the same damage even though it
only weighed 1/100,000,000 of what the "normal" space rock did.
Or, to put it another way, at that speed, you could make a
full-size model of the Barringer Crater with a lump of iron that
weighed one kilo (2.2 pounds).
The significance of the squaring of the velocity term is so
great that you could easily have a moving object whose kinetic
energy per unit weight exceeds the energy per unit weight released
from the reaction of the core material of a thermonuclear bomb. A
suficiently fast moving rock would make "the bomb" seem like a
fire cracker.
Kind of interesting for a species whose first weapon was
thrown rock that the ultimate weapon could well be a rock thrown a
lot faster!
Sterling
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
David Freeman wrote:
Dear Listees;
I came across an interesting bit of reading material
that noted an area
here in SW Wyoming is used as a natural gas underground
storage unit.
The formation has natural gas pumped into it under high
pressure and
the rock formation acts as a natural "tank" if you will.
This tank holds
over 110 Billion cubic feet of natural gas (picture an
arasol can 10
miles big a mile down). We have another field not far
to the east,
just as big, and major coal and coal bed methane
occurrences in between
and all over the place, many being developed at a fever
pace.
Now to the good stuff that prompted the boom, poof and
fizzle......
If the surface injection wells, and the piping down to
the depth of the
gas reservoirs were blasted by a meteorite like the
Barringer Crater
incident, what would be the odds of an explosion of the
gas being held
there? I am sure the gas would escape the "tank"
formation. A shock of
this nature could unleash the coal bed methane in
explosive levels as
well. There are over 8 major (meaning full capacity
and 30" diameter)
natural gas transfer lines through this area supplying
natural gas to
all of our friends in other states, we have 25% of the
US proven
reserves (out side of Alaska that is).
Sudden impact barbecue possible?
inquiring mind wants to know.
Dave Freeman
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