A reminder that the universe isn’t always friendly. A spectacular image of impact crater follows.
From NASA JPL today.
HD image here: 1920 x 1200
A dramatic, fresh impact crater dominates this image taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Nov. 19, 2013. Researchers used HiRISE to examine this site because the orbiter’s Context Camera had revealed a change in appearance here between observations in July 2010 and May 2012, bracketing the formation of the crater between those observations.
The crater spans approximately 100 feet (30 meters) in diameter and is surrounded by a large, rayed blast zone. Because the terrain where the crater formed is dusty, the fresh crater appears blue in the enhanced color of the image, due to removal of the reddish dust in that area. Debris tossed outward during the formation of the crater is called ejecta. In examining ejecta’s distribution, scientists can learn more about the impact event. The explosion that excavated this crater threw ejecta as far as 9.3 miles (15 kilometers).
The crater is at 3.7 degrees north latitude, 53.4 degrees east longitude on Mars. Before-and-after imaging that brackets appearance dates of fresh craters on Mars has indicated that impacts producing craters at least 12.8 feet (3.9 meters) in diameter occur at a rate exceeding 200 per year globally. Few of the scars are as dramatic in appearance as this one.
This image is one product from the HiRISE observation catalogued as ESP_034285_1835. Other products from the same observation are available at http://uahirise.org/ESP_034285_1835.
HiRISE is one of six instruments on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Science Laboratory projects for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington.
Source: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA17932
h/t to SciGuy Eric Berger
A meteorite passed me as I was driving south one night on I-35. It put n a great display of trailing sparks and suddenly flamed out as it got a little bit in front of me. It couldn’t have been more than 50 feet off the ground and looked to be heading due South. I didn’t know that they came in from the North, but i guess they could come from anywhere.
MattS says:
February 5, 2014 at 9:15 pm
With nothing in the picture to indicate scale, a bullet hole was my first impression.
_______________________
or fired one of those blue sidewalk chalks through a mechanical baseball pitcher
“It was much bigger than the one that hit last year and it hit in completely unpopulated area. Good thing too, otherwise it would have killed a LOT of people.”
Hitting a heavily-populated area on Earth with an asteroid on a random trajectory is very hard; most of the planet is water, and most of the land surface has low population density. Even in a country as populated as Britain, over 90% of land is not built on.
Now, sure, if you drop an asteroid with a ten gigaton equivalent yield anywhere on the planet, the exact location would make little difference. But the odds of an impact that large that happening in the first place are minute.
William McClenney!
Boy, I sure hope you check back here. I’m typing as fast as I can. (George E. Smith and Kevin Knoebel were both too quick for me — or, maybe…. they just ignored me, oh, well. Their loss.)
Anyhow, ever since I replied to your Q about my being a tarheel with the fact that, around here, they mostly live “up river,” I’ve been hoping to clarify that remark. I hope it didn’t come off as implying that tarheels are not the wonderful people they are. Ninety-percent of them are, I reckon, exceptionally greathearted, clever, fun-loving, God-fearing, patriotic, hard working, people. With a sweet accsaynt and always a warm handshake and a twinkle in the eye, they may not dress fancy and they talk a leetle bit different, they are remarkably wise and are great wits.
I’ve known several and liked them all. It would dyew me proud to be one, it’s jes that ah ain’t.
#(:))
If you see this (I think maybe my posts were posted in “invisible mode” today!), just a friendly wave of the hand as you drive by would be much ah-preesh-ee-ated. Thanks!
Admiringly (you’re one of those intelligent, wise, witty ones, you know),
Janice
“A meteorite passed me as I was driving south one night on I-35… .” (Alan Robertson 9:28pm)
“… aaand, that, Officer, is why I was going 90 miles an hour. If I hadn’t, you wouldn’t be talking to me right now.”
“That’s right, son. License and registration, please.”
#(:))
(or maybe… it was that shoe I threw at you when you said I talked a lot, #(;))
you did duck… .)
@ur momisugly Keith Minto
I would venture to say that Mars, in it close proximity to the asteroid belt, may be the largest contributor to the number and/or size of meteor impacts it has.
Research into the subject suggests that 98% of all meteor impacts come from the asteroid belt.
In astrophysical terms, Earths larger mass and the resulting gravitational pull, should produce more impacts on Earth.
It could be that Earth has already cleared a path of many would-be NEAs, where as Mars and its low gravitational pull puts it in a position to ‘wait’ for the NEAs to cross its path.
There is also the probability that high-inclination orbits of NEAs crosses Mars orbital path, which may cause a higher number of impact than expected
It is far more likely, that as these particular NEAs free themselves of Jupiters pull and begin to spiral towards the Sun, will have an opportunity at a first strike capability. Sorta like a first come first serve kinda deal.
All in all, I think its a good thing for Earth. Jupiter keeps those pesky comets and larger asteroids away from us, and Mars is like our inner defense system for those lesser known meteorites hiding in the Belt.
Now if only we could only find a way to let just a few get by and attract themselves to the future site of the next DNC.
Whoops. Did I just say that outloud.
Hehe
(mumbling to self)… hm… looks like ALL my posts this evening are invisible….. well, I’ll just try getting Alan’s attention the old fashioned way… give him a shout out…
Alan! Alan! (with musical interlude) Alan!
….hm… maybe he can’t hear me… sitting over at that friend’s house yelling about all the Envirostalinists in Congress, I’ll bet…
#(:))
@Janice Moore
I had a friend share that video on my timeline just a few days ago,
Its hilarious.
BTW, I know you your comment wasn’t directed at me, but my name is also Alan.
So you did get Alans attention, even if it wasn’t the Alan you were hoping for. 😀
There is no upper limit to these events – the odds that sooner or later, the Earth shall be struck by a dinosaur killer or worse., resulting in an explosion of thousands or even 10s of thousands of megatons of explosive force..
And we’re frittering away our resources stressing about a half degree bump in global temperature? FFS., what will it take to wake us up, as a species? the loss of a few cities? Or are we simply too stupid to survive?
Alan!
Thank you, SO MUCH, (even if it was the “wrong” Alan) for telling me that (glad you think it’s hilarious, too — I LOVE those animals talking vids… “Nighttime… daytime…. nighttime… daytime…” LOLOLOL). It is such a BUMMER to have zero acknowledgement of what one writes all evening long — esp. shout outs. This week, I’ve already struck out! Knoebel, Smith, and Robertson, — ack — plus an extra strike for good measure! — and McClenney.
You may not have been the Alan I hoped for, but you are the Alan I am VERY GRATEFUL FOR.
Thanks!
Janice
P.S. While I am not Keith Minto (hope HE shows up, headshake), I found your post to him highly informative (and loved the last line, lol,… if only……. except,…. I think, at this point, about 90% of them are on the road to He11, so, I really wouldn’t want that to happen)
Janice,
I always ponder your thoughts. Long ago I was a tarheel. I don’t hold that against myself. Stay skeptical my friend……
William
@ur momisugly Janice Moore
Glad to be of service!
Yeah, that last line was my poor attempt at political satire.
I really do try to refrain from that sort of thing and stick to the science, but
my daily rounds of travelling to closed-minded pro-agw web sites put me in a bit of snit.
I wouldn’t fret the reply time though. Bloggin aint like FB.
There’s no pokin/sharing/taggin to be had.
Now I know WUWT has a FB page, but I might have visited that page once maybe, like 2 years ago, 😀
See ya around Janice 🙂
(I do like how at the end of that video, the rodent ends up yelling for Steve!)
Good Day !
I assume Curiosity isn’t close enough to investigate?
Perhaps a future orbiter could be equipped with a “simple” rover that would stay with the orbiter until something like this that is worth a closer look then landed?
an asteroid is not a meteorite and this was a meteorite- the crater could have been made by a meteorite 2 feet in diameter if it were traveling fast enough. Let’s keep the terminology straight and not confuse asteroids with other things.
“A dramatic, fresh impact crater dominates this image taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Nov. 19, 2013. Researchers used HiRISE to examine this site because the orbiter’s Context Camera had revealed a change in appearance here between observations in July 2010 and May 2012, bracketing the formation of the crater between those observations.”
We have three satellites in orbit around Mars, and two rovers. We have cause to be truly proud of that, and of noticing this fresh impact, but it would have thrown up a lot of dust, and made a tremendous infrasound racket, so I am disappointed that this event was missed until now. There is another expected incomer in late 2014. NASA needs to get the blinkers off and listen, then look in all wavelengths, including x- and gamma rays.
The bullet analogy does not work. Look at the peaks within the crater. Theory says it is like a drop in water, melted and frozen in place with the rebounding water surface. And yet all rocky collisions with the planets or asteroids, which have been witnessed, show disintegration with high energy flashes before the impact.
Jason Calley says:
February 5, 2014 at 2:39 pm
@ur momisugly Eric Worall “There is no upper limit to these events – the odds that sooner or later, the Earth shall be struck by a dinosaur killer or worse, ”
I can very confidently predict that the Earth will NOT be struck by another dinosaur killer.
Not unless we find some more dinosaurs somewhere. 🙂
Jack Horner wants to retroengineer dinosaurs from birds. If he’s successful, ….
That was no asteroid! That was a handful of Seahawks Blue Skittles thrown by Beast Mode himself during the Super Bowl 48 Victory Parade!
ClimateForAll says:
February 5, 2014 at 9:57 pm
“It is far more likely, that as these particular NEAs free themselves of Jupiters pull and begin to spiral towards the Sun, will have an opportunity at a first strike capability. Sorta like a first come first serve kinda deal.
All in all, I think its a good thing for Earth. Jupiter keeps those pesky comets and larger asteroids away from us, and Mars is like our inner defense system for those lesser known meteorites hiding in the Belt.”
If a NEA frees itself from Jupiter, why should it spiral towards the Sun? On being ejected from Jupiter or its environs, it will have a certain amount of potential and kinetic energy, which together will determine its future orbit. This must necessarily be some sort of ellipse. Only on the most unlikely situation will it head for the Sun. Almost by definition, not a spiral.
Check the numbers of the Jovian family of comets. The possibility is that they are either ejected from Jupiter from time to time, or have been captured somehow by Jupiter’s gravity and turned into a Jovian comet. There are quite a lot of Jovian comets, and I have seen comments that there are far too many to have been captured by Jupiter, given the number of comets from outside the Jovian orbit that pass close to Jupiter. Then again, if they spend their time inside the orbit of Jupiter, they are in the area where much of their mass will boil off each time they pass perihelion. Unless in a near circular orbit, this means that their life is limited. Calculations indicate that the numbers of Jovian comets should be decreasing, giving the logical conclusion that some time ago there were a lot more.
Certainly Mars may catch a few comets, but given the size of the planet and its orbit, it would not catch too many.
Most people would never have seen a comet, unless they were told exactly where to look with binoculars, I have only seen the one (apart from a very hazy fuzz, supposed to be Halley’s Comet), although that was truly remarkable with a length about 20 degrees, and brilliant. Only visible for a couple of days, I think, then it moved to the sunny side of the earth and was lost to sight. From my records this could only have been in the period May 62 to July 63, or Jan to Mar 65, but time of day probably 0000 to 0400 for the first period and 0400 to 0500 (both local time) for the second period, when viewed from the western Indian Ocean.. If anyone can identify this comet and the actual date of its best visibility I would be grateful.