[meteorite-list] Chicxulub Asteroid

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:58:22 -0500
Message-ID: <6173A0A9CBAD473F926769FCAA141DB0_at_ATARIENGINE2>

Hi, Chris, List,

    Like all physicists, by minimum or nomimal,
I mean whatever size is needed to make things
turn out just the way I said they would. Same
applies to the encounter velocity and all the other
parameters. I would choose exactly the right size
and velocity, according to the time-honored
"Goldilocks" Principle !

    Theoretically, there are still people arguing
that a singularity is only mathematically possible
but not possible in reality and while there are
hyperdense objects there are no black holes (and
using the same math to prove that as those who
think they DO exist in reality). And in practicality,
no pictures of a black hole I know of. (Just the
idea of a picture of a black hole makes me laugh.)

    So, going with Hawking's Primordial Black Holes
(not created by some later event), The PBH would
have to be at least 10^12 kg in mass when it was
created to survive this long. 10^12 kg is actually
quite small - the Earth has a mass of 6x10^24 kg -
so we are talking about a mass about equal to a
small mountain, like the Chicxulub impactor,
oddly enough.

    Of course, it's a black hole so it isn't the SIZE
of a small mountain; it's more like the size of a proton.
It will zip through the Earth without disturbing it.
But it will leave a microscopic "tube" of radiatively
disturbed matter along its path, almost impossible
(and highly unlikely) to be detected. We would never
know that the event had happened.

    This has all been worked out in detail by I. B.
Khriplovich, A. A. Pomeransky, N. Produit and C. Yu.
Ruban, in their paper: "Can one detect passage of
a small black hole through the Earth?"
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0710/0710.3438v1.pdf

    There is no reason to expect such a reasonable
result from a black hole with the mass of the Earth
itself. Such a monster would be HUGE, about as
big as a GOLF BALL! The gravitational consequences
would be catastrophic. Absurdly one tends to imagine
that if it were fast enough... (Equation 13; energy loss
is inversely proportional to velocity of the black hole
passing through the Earth, and who am I to doubt the
word of these fine gentlemen of Novosibirsk?.)

    Just to show there are no new ideas, it has been
suggested that Tunguska was a black hole penetrator:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event#Black_hole
as well as it has been suggested it was antimatter.
Take your pick.

    And, mercifully, I did not discuss the next best
alternatives for Whole Earth Penetrators. First, the
small chunk of degenerate matter or neutronium,
and second, the Antimatter Bullet. I think that it
would be harder to shoot right through the Earth
with them (although possibly just as easy to totally
destroy it).

    The question was: what would go right through
the Earth? I still think the Black Hole Bullet is the
best choice for the job of going right through the Earth.

    Of course, if all you want to do is mine the Earth
after reducing it to small chunks, I suggest injecting
a Neutronium Bullet and a Positronium Bullet to
spiral around until they meet each other at the
center of the Earth's core, combine, and distrupt
the entire planet for the easiest collection of the
raw materials by the waiting Alien Fleet.



Sterling K. Webb
---------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Peterson" <clp at alumni.caltech.edu>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 5:07 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Chicxulub Asteroid


> 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...?
>
> ______________________________________________
> http://www.meteoritecentral.com
> Meteorite-list mailing list
> Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
Received on Tue 15 Sep 2009 08:58:22 PM PDT