Shoemaker Levy comet explosion

[Elite Engineer]

So I've been on a astrophysics bender the last week. Found out about Shoemaker levy, the asteroid that collided into Jupiter's atmosphere and exploded.

My question/thought is: Can asteroids also explode on impact with our atmopshere, if they're going fast enough. SML was traveling at 35mi/sec, so when it hit,

it was completely obliterated. Is there a flatline of where an asteroid travels too fast that simply disintergrates on impact with our atmopshere?

 

~ee

[Mordred]

Depends on the asteroid composition, asteroids of largely ice and conglomerate stones tend to explode more readily in the upper atmosphere compared to the solid metals asteroids.

 

[Elite Engineer]

I mean, the general average composition. If I recall, the Meteor crater in Arizona was mined because scientists believed it was made of iron. I would imagine an asteroid composed mostly of ice wouldn't hold up against the atmosphere. We're talking more hardy asteroids..i.e. Iron, Magnesium, etc. All of this in a physics perspective.

[J.C.MacSwell]

Velocity and composition are factors but so is mass and shape. If it is big enough, it will have more mass for it's drag. It will have more mass to burn up and more mass to absorb the heat.

[Outrider]

I remember the Shoemaker-Levy event well. It was very exciting. The predictions started coming in months before the event and as the date approached it was discovered that the impact zone would be turning away from us as the comet collided. Many worried we would miss it but instead we all got a fine show. I never will forget seeing it live on tv.

But to answer your question we already know of a asteroid or comet that did explode. 

The impact happened in 1908 and Russia sent an expedition to the very remote area in 1921.

 

Quote

 

The Tunguska event is the largest impact event on Earth in recorded history. Studies have yielded different estimates of the meteoroid's size, on the order of 60 to 190 metres (200 to 620 feet), depending on whether the body was a comet or a denser asteroid.^[4]

The 15 megaton (Mt) estimate represents an energy about 1,000 times greater than that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan — roughly equal to that of the United States' Castle Bravo (15.2 Mt) ground-based thermonuclear detonation on 1 March 1954, and about one-third that of the Soviet Union's Tsar Bomba explosion on October 30, 1961 (which, at 50 Mt, was the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated).^[9]

It is estimated that the Tunguska explosion knocked down some 80 million trees over an area of 2,150 square kilometres (830 sq mi), and that the shock wave from the blast would have measured 5.0 on the Richter magnitude scale. 

 

 

Edited September 20, 2017 by Outrider

[Elite Engineer]

I was reading about the meteor that exploded over Russia in 2013. It's composition was only 10% iron..so it seems that meteors composed of mostly dust and ice will either burn up in the atmosphere or explode. Higher compositions of iron (guess...> 50%) may make it to the surface. 

[Mordred]

the Chrondite asteroids has a higher potential for atmospheric explosions. The differences in material density and composition causes different rates of heat gain. These internal variations creates stress points within the asteroid.

The more consistent the asteroid makeup is ie solid iron as an example heats up more uniformly