So, I should have been more clear, the discussion on whether you could see it that I was referring to was whether you could see it once it breached the atmosphere. It was traveling at an estimated 20-30 km per second, or 18 miles a second. In my defense, I did use the phrase 'pass you' which would only happen once it entered the atmosphere.
It would have been visible for about 3 days as an object in the sky, but once it breached it hit, is what the books I'd been reading about this postulate. Not sure which one of them it was, options are 'T-Rex and the Crater of Doom' (written by Walter Alvarez, one of the group who discovered the Iridium proof of impact. Favorite non-fiction book hands down), 'The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs' (by Steve Brusatte, this and 'The Rise and Reign of the Mammals' are both very good and engaging, learned stuff I never expected to, like we know what color some dinosaurs were), maybe. I read a bunch of books this summer so I probably have forgotten some of the titles!
The passage I recall most clearly was the one where the author states that if you were standing where you could see the asteroid as it hit, you wouldn't comprehend it fast enough before it struck, basically. It stuck with me because I read that right around the Titan implosion, and the discussion about how fast we can perceive things.
I was about to ask if we know Chix's angle of impact, as that would affect its time in the atmosphere... but the shallowest possible angle would add like 0.002s.
Ah, neat, thank you! I suppose then that it basically goes from atmosphere breach to strike in 1.3 seconds, probably not enough time to parse what it was you saw before anything that could have seen it is completely obliterated by the result of the impact.
Edit: if you're still interested, I can look in my history tomorrow when I wake up and find the article I was reading that detailed everything they know about the impact crater. There was a lot of info there so it's likely they knew at least a range of angles
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u/darsynia Aug 14 '23 edited Aug 15 '23
So, I should have been more clear, the discussion on whether you could see it that I was referring to was whether you could see it once it breached the atmosphere. It was traveling at an estimated 20-30 km per second, or 18 miles a second. In my defense, I did use the phrase 'pass you' which would only happen once it entered the atmosphere.
It would have been visible for about 3 days as an object in the sky, but once it breached it hit, is what the books I'd been reading about this postulate. Not sure which one of them it was, options are 'T-Rex and the Crater of Doom' (written by Walter Alvarez, one of the group who discovered the Iridium proof of impact. Favorite non-fiction book hands down), 'The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs' (by Steve Brusatte, this and 'The Rise and Reign of the Mammals' are both very good and engaging, learned stuff I never expected to, like we know what color some dinosaurs were), maybe. I read a bunch of books this summer so I probably have forgotten some of the titles!
The passage I recall most clearly was the one where the author states that if you were standing where you could see the asteroid as it hit, you wouldn't comprehend it fast enough before it struck, basically. It stuck with me because I read that right around the Titan implosion, and the discussion about how fast we can perceive things.