Chapter 274: Giants falling from the sky, meteorites
As we all know, the earth has gone through a long 4.6 billion years since its birth. During these long years, the earth's growth has not been smooth sailing, but it has always faced various threats, large and small.
Such as earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, celestial body impacts and other natural disasters.
When it comes to which of these natural disasters has caused great harm to the earth, the first one is definitely the impact of celestial bodies.
As we all know, there are many celestial bodies, large and small, in the vast and deep space environment.
The diameters of these celestial bodies are billions of kilometers, millions of times larger than the sun, the nearest star to humans, and the diameters of these celestial bodies are tens of meters, several meters, or even tens of centimeters.
They float in the zero-gravity space environment all year round, and their positions change every moment.
Some celestial bodies move so fast that they can fly hundreds of thousands of miles in the blink of an eye and are impossible to track with the naked eye. Some celestial bodies move so slowly that they only move a few centimeters over the course of billions of years.
As the only planet with life in the solar system, countless meteorites fly to the earth every year.
Most of these stones from space will be burned to ashes by the Earth's atmosphere as they pass through the Earth's atmosphere. There are also a small number of meteorites that will break through numerous obstacles and reach the Earth with difficulty.
These extraterrestrial meteorites that break through the earth's atmospheric defenses are extremely powerful. At least they will destroy the surface environment and leave a huge impact crater on the earth. At worst, they will trigger a series of collateral disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and even global climate cooling.
, causing widespread species extinction on the earth.
People firmly believe that 65 million years ago, the prosperous age of dinosaurs declined and became extinct due to the impact of an extraterrestrial meteorite.
The reason why Lin Shuhang and Crazy General saw the sky behind was as gray as ashes was because they saw a huge "fireball" flying quickly towards the surface at an altitude of tens of thousands of meters.
It was nothing else, but a meteorite, a giant space meteorite with a diameter of 500 meters.
"Hey, what is that? Why is there a big fireball in the sky?" The vision in the sky also attracted the attention of the spectators outside the venue.
"It's a meteorite!" Someone exclaimed: "That's a meteorite! The meteorite hit the earth!"
"Damn it, I never imagined that we could encounter such a celestial phenomenon in prehistory!"
Meteorites, also known as "meteorites", are cosmic meteors or dust fragments and other solid materials that have deviated from their original orbit outside the earth.
Most meteorites come from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and a small number come from the moon and Mars.
The extraterrestrial meteorite that Lin Shuhang and Crazy General encountered came from near the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It is known as the "hometown of meteorites" and has tens of billions of meteorite bodies floating there.
For billions of years, asteroids with speedless speeds have been orbiting each other in the orbit between Mars and Jupiter. Although they each go their own way, they sometimes encounter congestion and collisions just like human traffic.
There are constant collisions in the planetary belt, and some meteorites with lighter mass will be knocked out of orbit by heavier meteorites and fly in all directions.
Some of these asteroids that have been squeezed out of their original orbits due to collisions will be captured by the gravity of other celestial bodies and crash into the planet with strong gravity. However, more asteroids will become lonely wandering meteorites.
Wandering in the dark and cold sky all year round.
The earth's powerful gravitational field attracts and captures thousands of meteorites every day. When those meteorites enter the earth's atmosphere, they will cause violent friction with the earth's atmosphere. The temperature generated by the friction can reach up to tens of thousands of degrees Celsius.
Some meteorites with smaller mass will be reduced to ashes and look like a beautiful firefly at night, quickly passing through the sky and disappearing in the blink of an eye, which is very spectacular.
Due to their own structure, some meteorites will have a violent explosion effect when entering the earth's atmosphere, thus forming a spectacular meteorite rain. If these fragmented meteorite rain are burned by the earth's atmosphere before landing, it will be a feast of pleasing fireworks, and vice versa.
It is a horrific disaster. Countless fragmented meteor showers will hit the earth like heavy rain, causing great damage to buildings and life on the surface.
"What a fool! Is this a meteorite?"
The huge meteorite in the sky stunned Lin Shuhang.
"Isn't the size of this meteorite too big?" Lin Shuhang raised his head, looked at the meteorite flying across the sky quickly, and stammered: "This, how the hell is this a meteorite? This is totally fucking
It’s just an asteroid!”
The meteorite that Lin Shuhang and Crazy General encountered was very large, with a diameter of about 800 meters and a weight of more than one million tons.
The visual images brought about by such a huge meteorite during its fall can only be described in four words: shocking.
This huge meteorite created a huge fireball with an astonishing diameter due to severe friction with the Earth's atmosphere.
Where the fireball passed, it left a huge tail mark hundreds of kilometers long.
This kind of trace can usually remain for a few minutes or even ten minutes, just like God's paintbrush.
During the falling process of the meteorite, due to the violent friction with the atmosphere, the huge fireball continuously exploded, fragmented and made deafening sound explosions.
These sounds propagate very far away and can be clearly heard thousands of kilometers away, rumbling like thunder.
"Holy shit, this sound! This picture! This feeling! It's totally beyond what science fiction movies can match!" people in the live broadcast room exclaimed again and again.
"Yeah, it's really shocking! Being able to see such a shocking scene in my lifetime is considered a blessing!"
There was an earth-shattering "boom" sound, and part of the meteorite exploded into pieces in the air.
"Look, part of that meteorite exploded in the air!"
The mass and structure of this meteorite are not fixed. During the fall, part of the structure fragmented due to high temperature and high speed, forming a spectacular meteorite rain in mid-air.
"Look, there's a meteor shower in the sky!"
The live broadcast room was abuzz again.
"It really looks like it's raining!" The audience outside the live broadcast room talked a lot and seemed very excited.
There are tens of thousands of these small meteorites. Because they are too small, they are completely burned by the atmosphere in the air before they hit the ground, and disappear without any trace.
"Disaster! This is a disaster!" Looking at the huge meteorite in the live broadcast, Lin Shuhang showed a horrified expression.
"Yes, if such a huge meteorite hits the Titan continent, it will definitely cause a big disaster!"
"Hey, our anchor has just started to grow, why did he encounter this kind of thing!"
Those outside the audience were right. If a meteorite of this magnitude hit the Titan continent, it would definitely be a disaster and catastrophe that would destroy the world.
It is foreseeable that the landing of this meteorite will have incalculable terrible consequences for the billions of lives on the Titan continent! Many species will become extinct as a result.
Coupled with the occurrence of a series of secondary disasters such as earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, and climate cooling, the catastrophic impact of this meteorite will last for at least a century.
The "great collision between heaven and earth" tens of millions of years ago is too far away, so I won't talk about it here for now, but let's talk about the meteorite event that happened more recently.
For example, the meteorite rain incident occurred in Qingyang, Shaanxi Province during the Ming Dynasty.
According to "Ming Tongjian" records: In February of the fourth year of Tianshun, Yingzong of the Ming Dynasty, that is, 1460 AD, "meteorites rained down from the sky in Qingyang, Shaanxi Province. The big ones were four to five kilograms, and the small ones were two to three kilograms. They killed tens of thousands of people.
Everyone in the city fled to other places, and there was a legend that the stone could speak horribly."
In other words, the meteorite rain incident that occurred during the Ming Dynasty killed tens of thousands of Ming Dynasty residents. You must know that the largest meteorite in that incident was only four or five kilograms, which was the size of a brick.
Another example is the famous Tunguska explosion.
On June 30, 1908, an earth-shattering explosion occurred over the Evenki Autonomous Region in Siberia, Russia.
The explosion occurred near the Tunguska River, 800 kilometers northwest of Lake Baikal. A huge meteorite broke into the earth's atmosphere.
After the meteorite crashed into the Earth's atmosphere, it had intense friction with the Earth's atmosphere. The high temperature turned the meteorite into a huge fireball with an astonishing diameter. The fireball dragged a trail of flames for hundreds of kilometers across the sky from south to north, and its brightness was comparable to that of the sun.
.
A few minutes later, a bright light illuminated the entire sky, and a huge flame rose on the horizon.
Later, people heard another earth-shaking huge explosion, and the earth began to tremble at a distance. After that, people felt three more powerful explosions one after another.
In the days after the explosion, the sky over a 9,000-mile radius in the Tunguska region was shrouded in an eerie orange color. White nights continued to appear in large areas.
After the explosion, Russian investigation organizations discovered three huge impact craters at the explosion site that were similar to lunar craters and had a diameter of 90 to 200 meters.
This mysterious explosion flattened a virgin forest in Siberia with an area equivalent to Tokyo (2,188 square kilometers) and an area equivalent to Tokyo (2,188 square kilometers). At least 300,000 trees died in a radial pattern. In some places,
The frozen soil was melted by high temperatures and turned into muddy swamps.
During subsequent expeditions, investigators also discovered that the soil in the explosion area was magnetized, radioactive anomalies appeared in tree rings, and genetic mutations occurred in some animals.
According to Russian investigators, the energy generated by this explosion was equivalent to 10 to 15 million tons of TNT explosives, which was 1,000 times the energy of the Hiroshima atomic bomb exploded more than 30 years later!
After analysis, researchers believe that the meteorite that caused the mysterious explosion was at least about 30 meters in diameter and weighed about 560,000 metric tons, about the weight of 10 Titanic ships.
There was also the cow death incident in Venezuela in October 1972.
This is certainly not an ordinary livestock death incident, because the dead cow was killed by a meteorite flying from the sky.
Afterwards, after investigation and research by relevant departments, people learned that the meteorite that smashed the cow alive into parts was a micro meteorite with a mass of only more than 700 grams.
Another example is the celestial body crash that occurred in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia on February 15, 2013.
What fell in Russia at that time was a small meteorite. It burned with friction as it passed through the atmosphere, exploded, and produced a large number of fragments, forming the so-called "meteorite rain."
In the fall area, the window glass of many buildings was broken, causing more than 1,200 casualties.
The meteorite that flew towards the Titan continent today is about 800 meters in diameter and has a mass of more than one million tons!
Excluding the consumption in the atmosphere, the diameter of the meteorite will be between 300 meters and 500 meters when it finally hits the ground. After hitting the ground, it will generate no less than the energy released by 30 billion tons of TNT explosive!
30 billion tons of TNT explosive energy? What is this concept? Let’s compare it with the well-known atomic bomb.
A meteorite with a diameter of 500 meters will produce a destructive force equivalent to the energy of 2.5 million Hiroshima atomic bombs when it hits the ground! It will cause a 10.1-magnitude earthquake to an entire continent.
In other words, if this meteorite fell into the ocean, it would push away hundreds of billions of tons of seawater in an instant, and the resulting tsunami would be enough to submerge half of the European continent!
"It's over, it's over, it's over now!" Looking at the huge meteorite with an astonishing diameter in the sky, Lin Shuhang hugged his head and shouted in horror: "If this meteorite falls, I'm afraid the entire Titan Continent will be destroyed!"