Thank you very much, this was a very interesting reply. Yup, I sell rocks, rocks that have been throw even. I also sell rocks at the local gun show a number of times a year. Quite fascinating to sell rocks at a gun show. Maybe some day I sell guns at a "personal protection lazer-phazer" show.
Thank you for the wisdom,
Dave Freeman
Sterling K. Webb wrote:
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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