Are you sure about that? There is some question about the dynamics of the water displacement- that is, most of it goes up, not out. And that total volume of water is somewhere between a few tens and few hundreds of cubic kilometers. Contrast that with the recent Indian Ocean event. The shift in the ocean floor resulted in the displacement of over 1000 cubic kilometers of water, and produced waves in most locations of 3-5 meters.

While an asteroid impact seems like a dramatic thing, it is far from obvious to me that tsunamis larger than 10s of meters would be a natural result. Since simulations seem to show everything from a few meters to 100 meters or so, I think I'll just reserve judgment until those simulations settle down.

Chris

*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com


----- Original Message ----- From: "Sterling K. Webb" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Meteorite Mailing List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "Ron Baalke" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, January 10, 2005 8:11 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] LANL: Meteor Could Cause Big Tsunami



Hi,

Newspaper science strikes again! Or is it reporter science?
The impact of an 800 meter asteroid "near" Florida (300 kilometers?) would
produce a wave more 10 feet tall? Duh!
This is an impact with more than 35,000,000,000 tons of TNT equivalent and
would displace the ocean to a depth of 3500 meters in a "wet" crater 15 kilometers
across.
The tidal wave at the Florida cost would be hundreds of meters high (if not
thousands)! It would kill every human inhabitant of Florida and most all the
gators! You could stand on the highest point in Florida (near Micanopi) and watch
it roll right over you (if you were anchored in concrete) hundreds of feet above.
Can we persuade Sue to go there and report on it if it happens?


Sterling K. Webb

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