- The Atlantic Ocean is hit by a mountain-size
rock from space, kicking up a fireball that pulverizes Long Island and
incinerates much of New England.
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- It's a scene straight out of Hollywood
via Sandia National Laboratories.
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- Hollywood soon will release two movies
about killer asteroids headed for Earth, but Sandia scientists already
have taken a shot at a scientific simulation of what might happen.
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- Experts say the chances of an asteroid
slamming into Earth anytime soon are slim -- but that the odds are it will
happen sometime over the next few hundred thousand years.
-
- In the film "Deep Impact,"
opening Friday, a rock a mile in diameter hits the Atlantic, lifting up
a tidal wave that wipes out cities along the Eastern seaboard.
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- Sandia's computer simulations suggest
the movie's vision of rising oceans and falling cities is dead-on.
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- The lab simulation has not yet been published
in a scientific journal but details were made public this week in a Sandia
news release timed to coincide with the movie's opening.
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- The Sandia version -- based on 18 hours
of calculations last fall on the world's fastest supercomputer -- postulates
a rock almost a mile wide colliding with the Atlantic 25 miles south of
Brooklyn.
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- Frame by deadly frame, the simulation
created by Sandia scientist Dave Crawford and his colleagues shows a fireball
of superheated steam erupting over Long Island. Within 3 seconds, the fireball
blows across Long Island, generating winds so hot and fast Long Island's
6 million-plus residents wouldn't have known what hit them.
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- "It is essentially instantaneous
to the people on the ground," Crawford says.
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- His simulation shows the blast eventually
extending across much of New England.
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- Sandia scientists say the special effects
in "Deep Impact" -- the great rising steam cloud and the tidal
wave -- offer a relatively realistic depiction of the lab's predictions.
-
- That could be because members of the
movie's production company contacted Crawford about previous simulations
he did of asteroid impacts.
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- The simulation also shows long trenches
gouged into the ground by the fireball. Peter Schultz, a Brown University
geologist who has worked with Crawford, says those trenches are similar
to ones found at a place in Argentina blasted by a smaller asteroid 4,000
years ago.
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- The fireball also would bring the prospect
of dramatic global climate change due to dust blown into the air, which
would block sunlight and cool the planet, killing the plants humans need
for food.
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- David Morrison, a National Aeronautics
and Space Administration asteroid expert, has tried for years to draw public
attention to the risks of asteroids. He sees a benefit from movies like
"Deep Impact" and "Armangeddon," to be released this
summer.
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- "These films may do more to publicize
the impact hazard than all previous media coverage taken together,"
he says.
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