Howdy, Anthony,
When it is moving at, say, 30 km per SECOND, and collides with
anything -- say, Earth -- it is a really bad day for the planet,
whether the bullet is ice or rock.
We saw the damage left in Jupiter's atmosphere when Comet Shoemaker-
Levy 9 impacted Jupiter in 1995, or so. I could see the black
"scars" in Jupiter's clouds for weeks, with a homemade backyard
telescope.
Even if it explodes entirely in our atmosphere and nothing solid
were to reach the ground, the shock wave would drill a huge hole
in the ground, or even the sea-bed below the ocean, and throw
cubic MILES of mineral stuff into the stratosphere, where it will
shroud the earth for a decade, cutting out the sun. Most animals
will die, and most plants, for lack of sun, warmth, and food. Life
in the oceans might fare better.
Probably all the earth's forests would burn, when the many solid
particles from the earth minerals re-enter the atmosphere all
around the world, even hundreds and thousands of miles from the
impact site. It will be billions of meteors burning up across the
entire sky, so that the sky would have a radiation-temperature of
about 1000 deg for several hours or about a day. Feeling that,
everything would burst into flame, or be flash-cooked first, and then
burn. This was the fate of T. Rex and kin, we are pretty sure.
This scenario is probably not suitable reading-material for children
under ten, so be careful who reads this over your shoulder! We're
trying to prevent this horror from ever happening to Earth again,
rest assured.
--Joe / the night-watchman / "We doze, but never close." ;-)
> Anthony Wu <wuasg@...> wrote:
>
> I heard a comet consists of a large group of small ice particles, so it is
> not as hazardous as an asteroid?
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