[meteorite-list] Chicxulub Asteroid

From: Chris Peterson <clp_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:07:19 -0600
Message-ID: <76EF38B7FD4F43568010D50635694155_at_bellatrix>

The tricky bit is how you define a "minimum size black hole". If you mean
minimum in terms of the fundamental physics, such a black hole could have
been orbiting inside the Earth since the Solar System formed, and it still
would not have consumed enough material to make its presence known. If you
mean minimum in terms of fundamental physics, but make the thing big enough
to be stable (to consume material faster than it can evaporate)... I don't
now how long that would take to consume Earth. And if you mean minimum in
terms of how most theory (and all observation) mean it- on the order of a
stellar mass- well, clearly things will get real bad, real fast if one
intersects the Earth, no matter how fast or slow it's going.

Chris

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


----- Original Message -----
From: "Sterling K. Webb" <sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net>
To: "Carl 's" <carloselguapo1 at hotmail.com>;
<meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 3:52 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Chicxulub Asteroid


> Hi, Carl, List,
>
> Two impactors of identical mass (not size,
> because density varies, but mass), hitting with
> identical speeds and at identical angles produce
> virtually identical craters.
>
> All that matters (if the object is bigger than
> 20-50 meters is kinetic energy. It could be iron,
> it could be rock, it could be ice, it could be highly
> compressed chicken feathers or a ball of fossilized
> fast food --- all would have the same result.
>
> A porous carboneaous chondrite of 10 km diameter
> and an iron ball of 5.85 km, weigh the same, and at
> 20 km/s and a 60-degree angle, both will produce a
> 65 mile crater 3/4 of a mile deep.
>
> There are high-iridium iron meteorites as well as
> stony ones, but an iron impact will leave other traces
> not found around Chicxulub.
>
> Now... the fun part! What WOULD go right through
> the Earth?! It would have to be very dense so that its
> area was very small for its huge mass. Number one
> best candidate is a small fast black hole. I specify "fast"
> because if it was slow-moving, it might slow enough to
> stop inside the Earth or start orbiting around inside
> the planet, madly eating up mantle and core material
> as it went until...
>
> Wow! makes me want to drag that heavy John
> Wheeler book off the top shelf and start scribbling.
> Given a black-hole of minimum mass and size
> m-sub-bh <<<< m-sub-earth, how long would it take
> to eat the entire Earth? Well, even without numbers,
> one can see that initially the mass consumption of
> the small black hole would be very modest, but as it
> grew and grew, the rate would increase by a power
> curve following the exponent of the ratio of black hole
> surface to black hole mass until the black hole reached
> a certain fraction of the Earth's mass and then a
> destructive deformation would occur in a catastrophic
> fashion... It could take thousands of years. There could
> be one there now. (Not true; we would hear it.)
>
> But if it was a FAST black hole, it would go straight
> through the Earth with only the equivalent of a black
> hole burp and perhaps produce a massive episode of
> basalt flood vulcanism as it exited. Silly notion. We don't
> have massive basalt flood vulcanism... What's that?
> We do? Every how often? Hmm. You don't suppose...?
Received on Tue 15 Sep 2009 06:07:19 PM PDT