Saturday, March 2, 2013

Comet skirting Mars could also hit Mars - that could cause one BILLION megaton blast


Just like the Asteroid 2012 DA 14 which skirted past earth at a distance of 17,500 next day of Valentine Day, a comet code named C/2013 A1 is to make a pass within 23,000 miles of Mars in October 2014.

A computer generated image shows how a comet might look from the surface of Mars - can have . A recently discovered comet could be on course for a cataclysmic impact with the surface of the Red Planet

While all is likely to go well and the comet would skirt pass Mars, but scientists and astronomers are worried by the unpredictable behavious of the comet and fear that it might hit Mars if it veers more closer.

In cae of a hit, the comet would leave a crater hundreds of kilometeres across Mars and generating a blast equivalent to ONE BILLION megaton of energy - 25million times larger than the largest nuclear weapon ever tested on earth, destroyng all probes on and around th4e Red Planet.



At the moment, C/2013 A1 is over a billion kilometres from the Sun, somewhere past Jupiter, which means it is still very cold.

However, as it draws closer it will began to vent more gas, changing its path and surrounding the nucleus with a large fuzzy cloud known as a coma - which can be up to several hundred thousand kilometres across.

That means that the comet's coma - which is also filled with grit-like rubble from the comet itself - could be bigger than the distance the nucleus is predicted to miss Mars.

Read more about it at: Mail Online

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