Comets from space

What happens if a large comet strikes the Earth in an ocean? Well, for one thing, it's going to be one spectacular event. The comet, made up of rock and ice, would be spewing two tails, one of dust and the other of ionized gas. These often appear to be escaping at opposite directions. The tails are caused by the comet getting close to the sun and heating up to vaporize ice to create gas that gets ionized by the intense pressure and heat.

If a comet were to hit the Earth's atmosphere traveling at 100 kilometers per second it would heat up to around 10,000 degrees C, and when it hits the water, it would vaporized hundreds, and even thousands, of kilometers of ocean into the atmosphere. The collision would also cause a massive tsunami, perhaps several hundred meters high. The tsunami would destroy the shorelines of any land it came upon, acting as a biblical-type flood. Some scientists believe that a comet collision in the ocean is the reason for the flood myths of many cultures, including the one that's in the Old Testament.

There is evidence for this idea in the Holocene epoch 10,800 years ago. Species of that period found in the waters off Madagascar are typically found in the deep oceans. A comet collision in the ocean could have blasted these creatures up out of the deep and deposited them near Madagascar. Scientists believe that this is what happened during this Holocene time, which suggests an extinction event, like a comet collision.

A diatom species endemic in the tropics has been found in Greenland. It would take a humongous explosion to do that. This massive explosion happened 535AD because that was when a serious cooling of the Earth occurred.

What happens when a comet strikes is that it causes dust particles way up in the atmosphere, and this dust would remain there for quite some time, dimming the sun and causing a mini-ice age. There is evidence for comet collision in Australia's Bay of Carpentaria. Since there are two craters, it's believed that the comet broke up before colliding. This theory is controversial.

A comet collision may have caused the extinction 13,000 years ago of the Clovis people, a possible precursor to the American Indians. The fauna of that people died off, and there was another mini-ice age. The comet could have collided with the North American ice sheet, causing missive melting. This is also a controversial theory. The evidence for this is found in impact diamonds, which are formed in violent and very hot collisions. However, no crater has been found, but the comet could have exploded in the air before the collision.

This is the theory for the 1908 event in Tunguska, Siberia. The Clovis comet could have done the same thing.

Emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity could have been the result of a small comet or meteor appearing in the sky and crashing into the ground before a battle, which he won. He interpreted it as a sign from God. This happened in 319 AD and it changed history.

These comet collision theories are often disputed. Scientists like the volcanic eruption theory to explain mini-ice ages instead of relying on comets from space. A comet could strike the Earth with devastating results, and even a comet airburst could destroy an entire city. The bad news is that comets are not as easy to track as asteroids. Earth could suffer a collision event with little warning.

So, put on your crash helmets and keep an eye out for those harbingers of death from the skies because truth is much stranger than fiction.

Thanks for reading.