In article <slrnf5i1n6.914.dbd@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
dbd@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(David DeLaney) wrote:
> Don Bruder <dakidd@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> > goldfarb@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(David Goldfarb) wrote:
> >> >Drop 'em in the oceans, and coastal lowlands get washed away by
massive
> >> >tsunamis, but inland/higher elevation areas areas see little (if
> >> >anything) more than a short-term increase in precipitation.
> >>
> >> Nope. Dropping them in the oceans is worse, climate-wise, than
dropping
> >> them on land. A lot worse. See, for instance, the article "Giant
> >> Meteor Impact" in the March 1966 issue of _Analog_.
> >>
> >> (You get water va**** instead of dust, yes...but you get *a lot more*
> >> water va**** than you would dust.)
> >
> >Well, yeah, lotsa water va****...
> >
> >Seems pretty counterintuitive that a significant amount of it could
> >remain aloft (and therefore, a problem) for more than a short time,
> >though. I'd expect that, local to the drop point, the air would go
> >pretty close to supersaturated, and the vast majority of the water
would
> >almost immediately rain out without carrying very far (comparatively
> >speaking) from the point of impact. Especially if local sun-blocking
> >effects from the cloud created were to cause a temperature drop in the
> >area - Even quicker condensation and rain-out would be my expectation
then.
>
> The va**** itself isn't so much the immediate problem, as the -heat-
content.
> Dropping them in the oceans spreads the heat of impact fairly
effectively
> over the whole world ... which canna take the strain, cap'm.
Just hold 'er together for a few minutes more, Scotty...
Hmmm...
Yeah, I guess that COULD be a major malfunction, couldn't it? Hadn't
really considered the concept of the energy going all over the place in
the form of heat, versus being relatively localized.
Either way, there's at least the potential for the end of life as we
know it...
However, I'm left pondering -
Just how hot is "hot"? For grins-and-giggles, let's assume that these
quarter-mile steel balls the OP tossed out here for us are coming in at
"fell out of orbit" speeds (as opposed to "launched at some god-awful
acceleration by unknown hostiles") Just how hot would they likely be by
the time they plunged into the drink? Atmospheric heating sure isn't
going to bring THE WHOLE MASS up to "glowing red" temps - there simply
isn't going to be enough time in transit to do that. There's going to be
a red-hot "skin", sure, but most of the mass is probably going to remain
"outer space cold", I would expect. (Which, as a side-note, leads to a
completely separate problem - does each of these quarter-mile chunks of
steel actually drop as a single piece, or does it explode into gigatons
of shrapnel in mid flight due to the thermal stresses? But let's not go
*THERE* just yet - we've got enough complications already!) So the
question (for somebody with more science/physics knowledge than me) is
"how much" of a skin? A couple feet ? A couple yards? More? Less? I
don't know...
So, for the moment, lets ignore THAT source of heat, and go with *ONLY*
the kinetic energy - Yes - we've got a many-many-many-times-multi-ton
(How much does a quarter-mile steel sphere weigh? A LOT!) chunk of metal
coming in. Yes, it's coming in at high speed. Yes, it's going to hit Mr.
Ocean REAL HARD in just a little while. And when it does, it's going to
dump a heapin' helpin' of energy in a real short time. A lot of that
energy is going to remain kinetic in nature - something moving. Namely,
displaced water (and the denizens of the deep that might be inhabiting
that particular volume...) there's going to be one helluva mighty
splash... The tsunamis it spawns are probably going to be right off any
scale of measurement humanity has invented so far. And then, of course,
there will be the upwelling spray as the sides of the new "tunnel" in
the water slam back together after the mass p***** through - More moving
water... But so far, all of it "cold".
Another fraction of the energy is going to be converted into heat.
Again, how much? I don't have a clue, but I'll bet somebody here on the
group reading this does...
So, what I'm left to wonder is "how much of the water that ends up in
the air is in the form of steam (hot) and how much is in the form of
"splash" (cold)?"
I'm inclined to think that the pro****tions are going to have a fairly
im****tant effect on whether or not this little bit of fun turns out to
be an "end of life as we know it" scenario, or if it's just a major
inconvenience to ****pping, and a much-overdue cleansing of the garbage
that's built up on the ocean shores thanks to humans who can't control
their urge to breed.
Anybody got any "napkin numbers" to plug into this equation? As
mentioned, I'm not a physicist, so I don't have any clue what the actual
values might be. I have no doubt that there's a formula that says "A
mass of X tons moving at Y miles per hour heats up at a rate of Z
degrees per second", but what that formula is... <shrug> Color me
clueless...
> Dropping them on land melts a spot or two, and a couple hundred miles
> away a little while later you just see a glow on the horizon. If I
> understand the problem correctly of course.
>
> Later on the condensed va**** makes clouds. Lots of clouds.
--
Don Bruder - dakidd@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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