| Energy, Effects & Average Rates of Impact | |||||
| stony meteor of given diameter, impact speed = 20 km/s | |||||
| Diameter (km) | Event | Energy (TNT) | Quake (M) | Crater (km) | Est. Avg. Rate: 1 per |
| 0.001 | fire ball | 6 days | |||
| 0.003 | fire ball | 2.8 months | |||
| 0.01 | air burst | 59.5 kilotons | 4.1 years | ||
| 0.03 | air burst | 1.61 megatons | 58 years | ||
| 0.1 | impact | 59.5 megatons | 6.8 | 1.3 x 0.2 | 1,000 years |
| 0.3 | impact | 1,610 megatons | 7.7 | 3.8 x 0.4 | 14,000 years |
| 1 | impact | 59,500 megatons | 8.8 | 12.5 x 0.6 | 260,000 years |
| 3 | impact | 1.61 million megatons | 9.8 | 37.1 x 0.9 | 3.6 million yrs |
| 10 | impact | 59.5 million megatons | 10.8 | 122 x 1.2 | 66 million yrs |
| 30 | impact | 1.61 billion megatons | 11.8 | 327 x 1.7 | 920 million yrs |
| 100 | impact | 59.5 billion megatons | 12.8 | 847 x 2.2 | few billion yrs |
| Color code scale of destruction: | |||||
| blue | pretty sight, no destruction | ||||
| green | localized destruction, death | ||||
| orange | local to regional destruction, death | ||||
| red | hemispheric destruction, death | ||||
| black | global destruction, death | ||||
| Energy released in past events: | |||||
| Hiroshima atomic bomb (1945) | 13 kilotons TNT | ||||
| Bikini Atoll H-bomb "Bravo" (1954) | 15 megatons TNT | ||||
| Tunguska air burst (1908) | 15 megatons TNT | ||||
| Barringer Crater, AZ (49,000 BP) | 49 megatons TNT | ||||
| large fragment of SL-9 Jupiter (1994) | 5 million megatons TNT | ||||
| Chicxulub (65 million BP) | 100 million megatons TNT | ||||
| Numbers and destructive effects presented here are approximate, and depend upon details such as impact speed, composition of impactor, impact site (land, ice sheet,or ocean), and other factors. Not all of the kinetic energy is available upon impact (or even released all at once), but the fraction that is grows initially with the mass of the impactor. Threshold for significant global climate effects probably lies near the 1-3 km impactors. Of the information presented in the table, the impact rates, especially for the larger objects, have the largest uncertainties. Some of the information presented here has its origins in Doug Hamilton's Solar System Collisions web page. This web site takes the user's choice of parameters governing the impact, computes all of the effects in great detail, and presents these in a table. A "neat" plot is shown here. Finally, links to more information may be found here. | |||||
