Happy Monday – let’s answer a question from Mike.Sierra.Echo – how dangerous is the asteroid 2008 EV5? In case you have no idea what I’m talking about, 2008 EV5 is an Aten-class Asteroid about the size of the U.S. Capitol building. Naturally, it would make a dandy counterweight for a space elevator!
But what if the asteroid hit Earth? That’s why everyone would ask ‘how dangerous is the asteroid?’ We’d need to have some clear understanding of the impact and fortunately, MetaBall Studios has us covered. Watch this video and then let’s discuss what it would mean for Earth:
So yeah, yikes. You don’t want this rock hitting the ground. For comparison – 2008 EV5 is *slightly* larger than 99942 Apophis and would result in similar damage to this impact – not world-ending but certainly not something you want to see happen. The impact is reported to have a similar amount of energy to 51 Tsar Bombas. The blast would re-arrange your Florida patio furniture from the shores of Africa so … do the math.
Other fun facts about 2008 EV5: 2008 EV5 can be reached with a journey of 362 days. This trajectory would require a delta-v of 6.291 km/s. To put this into perspective, the delta-v to launch a rocket to Low-Earth Orbit is 9.7 km/s. There are 320,844 potential trajectories and launch windows to this asteroid.
How Bad Would It Be?
But back to asteroid impact events – we’ve seen them before. The Chelyabinsk meteor had a “blast yield of 400–500 kilotons of TNT (about 1.4–1.8 PJ) … 26 to 33 times as much energy as that released from the atomic bomb detonated at Hiroshima … 1,491 people were injured seriously enough to seek medical treatment. All of the injuries were due to indirect effects rather than the meteor itself, mainly from broken glass from windows that were blown in when the shock wave arrived, minutes after the superbolide’s flash.”
You can watch a supercut of those Chelyabinsk videos here. Long story long, impact events do damage and Chelyabinsk was 4.5% the size of 2008 EV5. People would naturally be nervous about parking a rock that big anywhere near Earth. How will we handle 2008 EV5 in Mike.Sierra.Echo while honoring both young readers AND discerning scifi fans? I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the answer.
Back to work – can’t wait to share some exciting news about Mike.Sierra.Echo. Keep watching!
