Asteroid Destruction Analysis

[McAvoy]

The analysis I made about two years ago on Alkanphel's destruction of the moon sized asteroid that the Creators sent is incorrect. I originally used 1 Ceres as a basis which is the largest asteroid or the smallest dwarf planet in the system. It has a diameter of 950 kilometers which would have taken about 80 to 100 teratons to destroy. Using Alkanphel's flashback scene in Book 15 where what happened if the asteroid hit Earth, the asteroid is much larger than previously thought.

Using Earth as a rule, Earth is 12,745 kilometers in diameter, I measured Earth as being 278 pixels give or take a pixel or two. This gives us 45.87 kilometers for each pixel. The asteroid is 158 pixels in diameter give or take a pixel or two. This gives us a diameter of 7,242.7 kilometers in a diameter. That is well over twice the diameter of the Moon.

Fragementing an asteroid 100 meters in diameter is 1 kiloton, 1 kilometers: 1 megaton, 10 kilometers: 1 gigaton, 100 kilometers: 1 teraton. Using these figures as a basis, we can produce an approximation Y = (d/100)³, where d is diameter in meters and Y is yield in kilotons.

So fragmenting a 7,242.7 kilometer asteroid would take a 72,427,200,000 teratons.

But this does not take into account of the fact that huge pieces of the asteroid go past Alkanphel and that he rammed the asteroid using a huge energy wave about the same size as the asteroid itself or the fact that he was accelerating towards the target.

Interestingly enough, that asteroid would have severely disrupted Earth's gravitational field was close at it was.

[*zeo]

Yes that thing is bigger than our moon.

Excellent Analysis McAvoy, most people never realize just how much power it takes to destroy something that size.

Course we have to make assumptions on what that Asteroid was composed of but never the less the amount of energy required is truly immense.

Over on theGuyver.net board I often got in arguments over this scene because the translation only says it's a gigantic meteor or asteroid and never called it a moon, though it is clearly the size of one if not, as your analysis indicates, bigger.

I think my suggestion on theGuyver.net board fits best that Alkanphel probably redirected some of the asteroid's own kinentic energy back at it with his mega shield ram as there is no way he could have that much power himself.

Otherwise he'd be way more powerful than the other 12 Zoalord's combined and the Guyver might as well be an insect to him if he had that kind of power.

His shield only had to last during the first instant of the impact to accomplish that and the Asteroid was already moving fast enough so it's mass would shatter the Earth so redirecting its kinetic energy back on itself would have provided more than enough energy to destroy it.

[guyverfanatic]

How much energy did Alkanphel need to deflect it?

[*zeo]

Oh, I'd say enough energy to vaporize half a continent give or take. Which itself sounds like a lot and compared to our own nuclear arsenal it is but compared to the power of the Asteroid itself counts only as a tiny fraction of its power.

Though he only needed to maintain his shields for about a second, they still had to be able to withstand the impact for that period of time to deflect the force back into the asteroid and cause it to shatter.

Course it also depends how Alkanphel's shield works, if gravity based for example it could have absorbed some of the energy of impact and used it to increase it's own kinetic power.

The main advantage is that since he was using raw energy, unlike a normal object on object impact, he could use 100% of it for the desired effect compared to material impacts which only store and exchange kinetic energy. Leaving the energy of total mass behind no matter the exchange of kinetic energy.

Basically this means Alkanphel could do with his shield what would normally have taken an equal amount of mass/momentum to accomplish. Since he only had to really deal with the kinetic energy, which itself could then destroy the asteroid.

Essentially you can think of kinetic energy like a wave and waves can be redirected, like a bat hitting a baseball can redirect the kinetic energy of the ball and send it in the opposite direction. This is why a pitched ball will always get hit farther than if the batter just hit the ball with the bat.

While the problem with Alkanphel himself providing the total energy is with e=mc^2 means he simply doesn't have the mass to store that much energy, even if his Zoacrystal provided him with the energy equivalent of thousands of tons, and even accelerating to some fraction of the speed of light would not have provided him with enough momentum so the only explaination I believe is he redirected the energy of impact back into the asteroid and seems to fit since a mere impact scenario would have left the mass of the asteroid to still hit the Earth, since the momentum would still effect the individual pieces and so would still all be headed towards the Earth.

As it is only tiny fragments of the Asteroid, which were still pretty big by our standards, made it through to hit the Earth with enough force to cause another ice age. If they had been any bigger then there would still be no life on Earth. Remember the impact would have shattered the whole planet, any sizeable chunk would still have done the job so only relative small fragments could have made it through and left a chance for life to survive.

An example of how powerful a meteor impact can be is the great Siberian explosion that occurred over central Asia on June 30, 1908

Though it was only 50-60 meters in diameter it still had an explosive energy roughly on order of 60 A-bombs, or 500 KT of TNT. It takes an H-Bomb to rival that level of power, and the explosion flattened an entire forest even though it exploded 5-6 kilometers above and it's effects could be seen for hundreds of miles. The shockwave even managed to circle the planet twice.

So I believe less than 1% of the Asteroid in the manga made it through to hit the Earth.

[McAvoy]

Over on theGuyver.net board I often got in arguments over this scene because the translation only says it's a gigantic meteor or asteroid and never called it a moon, though it is clearly the size of one if not, as your analysis indicates, bigger.

It's actually bigger than Mars, by some 800 kilometers in diameter. Because of this, this so called Asteroid should have a core and a massive gravitational field along with it's own gravity. I would guess it has a 1/4 of the gravity of Earth, but that's doing it without math or the composition of it. Also keep in mind that if the asteroid is made of a softer material, the energy required would increase dramatically.

I think my suggestion on theGuyver.net board fits best that Alkanphel probably redirected some of the asteroid's own kinentic energy back at it with his mega shield ram as there is no way he could have that much power himself.

While this makes sense there is two problems with this. First of all, we're not taking into account of the massive gravitational field this asteroid has, which would dampen alot of impacts. For instance, an asteroid this large would surely shatter Earth, but within a million years, Earth would reform into a single molten blob far larger than before (with no air, water or life since that would have been burned/riped away) because of the grravity field. Second, even if his shield acted like this, and his shield only vaporized 10% of the asteroid the other 90% would riddle Earth creating massive damage. While not enough to shatter it like before, it would make the surface practically inhabitable. So the shield has to be far stronger than that to destroy a huge part of it and have only a few smaller asteroids, one being as big as a country to get past Alkanphel.

Yes, this is definitely not an asteroid but a rogue planet it I were to guess, since ripping a planet from the gravity of it's star would destroy it and then accelerating it alittle. Of course accelerating it even my 1 MPH would require immense energy. Gravity of Earth alone would not make this asteroid go as fast as it was going. In fact more than likely, it would get vaught by Earth's gravity field orbiting it several times before hitting Earth. So in effect, the acceleration would have to overcome Earth's gravity pull.

Though interestingly enough, Alkanphel can create a huge shield that can protect the entire North American Continent for numerous nuclear attacks, all by himself.

[Aranor]

I have to confess I have not read the Manga yet.

I have a question though, does it show where the point of Alkanphels force was excerted? Let us say it was fully excerted on the surface if this asteroid or whatever you choose to call it. The outcome may just be a hold in the front slowing it down blowing chunks off the surface. Now, if Alkanphel was able to burrow into the surface and excert his forcce somewhere around halfway between the surface and the core he might have been able to split the asteroid in a different manner causing most of the debree to continue outward away from Earth almost in a cone like fashion. Possibly slowing down a large enough mass to reform and make the moon. Granted is would still take a boat load or two of force to acomplish this.

[*zeo]

The Asteroid was completely shattered, Aranor, and the moon was already around when this happened.

No large chunks made it to the Earth, only a shower of a couple small bits just large enough to cause nuclear scale explosions on impact and like I pointed out before something a mere 50-60 meters in diameter can produce explosions equivalent to an H-Bomb.

This compared to the thousand of meters diameter of the original asteroid shows no more than 1%, probably less, of the mass made it through.

It's actually bigger than Mars, by some 800 kilometers in diameter. Because of this, this so called Asteroid should have a core and a massive gravitational field along with it's own gravity.

Gravity is relative, you can't go by size alone as we have no idea how dense that asteroid was.

The asteroid clearly had no atmosphere for example and the crater marks indicate it may never have had one, which suggests it didn't have the gravity needed to contain one. The large crack it had also indicates it was as cold as a moon since a molten interior would have eroded that crack, which also suggests it's gravity isn't great enough to cause internal pressure needed to keep a molten interior, though a lot of Earth's internal heat comes from fission material.

Your size estimate may also be off a bit since the asteroid impact is mostly facing us at an angle in the point of view shown so the asteroid is slightly closer to that point of view than the Earth, which would offset it's size by the depth perception. Not by much of course but at least 2/3rd's of the asteroid was still above the Earth and would offset the size perception by that distance and so it could be a couple hundred kilometers smaller in diameter than you are presently estimating since you are using a flat 2D interpretation to determine the size right now and aren't correcting for depth distortion.

And of course we are assuming that image is accurate since it is just a mental interpretation of what if the asteroid had hit since Alkanphel had prevented that no one actually saw the impact since it never happened. So is left to the mental impression Imakarum was getting from Alkanphel's memories.

While this makes sense there is two problems with this. First of all, we're not taking into account of the massive gravitational field this asteroid has, which would dampen alot of impacts.

No, the gravity would have increased the impact not dampen it. The gravity would only dampen the fallout. Anything that causes an acceleration of the impact speeds will increase the force of impact.

For instance, an asteroid this large would surely shatter Earth, but within a million years, Earth would reform into a single molten blob far larger than before (with no air, water or life since that would have been burned/riped away) because of the gravity field.

Again that is the after effects, not the impact. The gravity just dampens the fallout so everything doesn't fly completely apart and eventually brings most of it back together.

But you are assuming that the excess mass isn't lost to space as some if not a lot of that impact would have caused matter to reach escape velocity. So when the planet eventually reformed its mass could vary depending on how much mass was lost to deep space.

The moon for example, according the prevailing theory it was formed when an asteroid slammed into the Earth and knocked a large piece into space that formed the moon. That mass has never been recovered and the moon is slowly moving away from the Earth and will eventually be lost to space.

Second, even if his shield acted like this, and his shield only vaporized 10% of the asteroid the other 90% would riddle Earth creating massive damage. While not enough to shatter it like before, it would make the surface practically inhabitable. So the shield has to be far stronger than that to destroy a huge part of it and have only a few smaller asteroids, one being as big as a country to get past Alkanphel.

You misunderstand my theory, I said it only has to use the asteroid's own momentum to destroy it. The mass doesn't even have to be vaporized to accomplish this.

By redirecting the kinetic energy inward it not only shatters the asteroid but sends it away from the Earth, which is why I used the baseball analogy with the bat hitting a pitched ball example.

The asteroid doesn't have to be sent back with equal velocity since it already had enough to shatter the much larger earth means it had more than enough energy to destroy itself and send the mass away from the Earth. They just needed to move away fast enough to reach escape velocity and if near or further than the orbit of the moon then it would require far less energy to reach escape velocity compared to doing it near or on the Earth where gravity is stronger.

In fact if the point of impact was facing towards the outer planets for example the mass of the asteroid could have become part of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter for example.

The whole point of my theory was that the mass of the asteroid gets deflected, while a straight on collision would only have shattered the asteroid and left most if not all of it to go on to hit the Earth.

Yes, this is definitely not an asteroid but a rogue planet it I were to guess, since ripping a planet from the gravity of it's star would destroy it and then accelerating it alittle. Of course accelerating it even my 1 MPH would require immense energy. Gravity of Earth alone would not make this asteroid go as fast as it was going. In fact more than likely, it would get vaught by Earth's gravity field orbiting it several times before hitting Earth. So in effect, the acceleration would have to overcome Earth's gravity pull.

They wouldn't have to accelerate it, they sent it through hyper space and so could just redirect it. The Earth for example has an orbital velocity just under 30 km/s, which means the asteroid could easily have been going 65,000 MPH if not faster.

Mercury for example has an orbital velocity of about 108,000 MPH.

So all they needed was to release it pointed towards the Earth and its own momentum would do the rest.

Also it would only orbit the Earth if it missed, a head on collision would indeed accelerate it as both the gravity of the earth and the asteroid pulled them together.

Fortunately it was destroyed far enough away that it's gravity didn't effect the Earth, at least any more than our own moon does since it wasn't there long enough (gravity weakens quickly over distance which is why it is weaker than the other forces like the electromagnetic field), and not more than tiny fragments made it to the Earth.

For example it was viewable from Earth as the human population was looking at it but though it is much bigger than our moon it didn't appear much bigger so had to be as far if not further away than the moon. So wasn't yet close enough to cause its gravity to effect the Earth.

[Thunder Demon1472669266]

And to do that though, would require an excessive amount of work to achieve too.

[McAvoy]

Regardless of how you look at it, the whole so called asteroid thing required alot of energy on both sides (Alkanphel and the Creators) to pull off.

As far as the exact size goes, while we are looking at a 2D picture of it, whereas looking at from tens of thousands of miles away in real life would distort the size. This would only make the asteroid moon/planet actually bigger than the above picture.

However, since it is a common practice for many people to draw an almost exact size ratio when they're close to together, it's safe to assume that the moon hitting the planet is 99.99% correct.

Though I have been able to to look over the scene again a few times, and the one frame where it shows a few peieces getting through and actually hitting Earth, are in fact very large. One of them is the size of a mid-sized country like Spain or France. The others are about the size of Mount Everest.

[*zeo]

Regardless of how you look at it, the whole so called asteroid thing required alot of energy on both sides (Alkanphel and the Creators) to pull off.

I wouldn't be so quick to conclude that since it entirely depends on how much energy it took to create the hyper gate the asteroid was sent through.

As I pointed out the Creators did not have to accelerate or do anything else to the asteroid except point the exit point of the hyper gate at the Earth.

Objects in space are already moving tens of thousands of miles per hour, so all they had to do was point it in the right direction and a jump through hyper space could do that without directly effecting the asteroid at all. It would have been the same if they had used a worm hole for example, as far as the asteroid was concerned it was just moving as all objects in space are moving.

Also since everything from Guyvers to Relic ships have been shown to readily travel to and from hyper space then it is conceivable that it did not take the Creators much power at all to send the Asteroid at the Earth. Besides the gate itself could have provided the power, leaving the Creators just the task of opening and closing it, since we know that the Guyvers use the same system to draw power and thus means the energy needed to create the portal could have come from the portal itself.

The only thing we know for sure is it took a lot of energy on Alkanphel's part to destroy the Asteroid and unlike the Hyper Gate Alkanphel had to provide all that power himself, which to me is far more impressive.

As far as the exact size goes, while we are looking at a 2D picture of it, whereas looking at from tens of thousands of miles away in real life would distort the size. This would only make the asteroid moon/planet actually bigger than the above picture.

No, because the view in question of the asteroid smashing into the Earth is not a side by side view. Though at an angle the asteroid is still located above the planet and thus is closer to our point of view than the Earth.

And closer means it will appear larger than it would have if it was side by side with the Earth.

Remember the Asteroid is not only closer but the Earth is further away, which makes it appear smaller even as it makes the Asteroid appear larger.

This is what you get when you place one sphere shaped object over another sphere shaped object. You have to add the radius of both to the depth size distortion factor.

The asteroid was probably bigger than our moon but I think there is enough distortion in its size that it is not the size of Mars.

As it is your size estimate puts the Asteroid at about the size of Mars but at that position the depth perception would distort the size by about 30-50% then, which would make it larger than your estimate. So the asteroid has to be smaller than Mars to appear Mars size in that image.

However, since it is a common practice for many people to draw an almost exact size ratio when they're close to together, it's safe to assume that the moon hitting the planet is 99.99% correct.

But people aren't thousand of miles in diameter! Neither are people shaped like spheres.

So I would say your original estimate is only between 70% to 80% accurate, still bigger than our moon but smaller than Mars.

Maybe about the size of Mercury.

Though I have been able to to look over the scene again a few times, and the one frame where it shows a few peieces getting through and actually hitting Earth, are in fact very large. One of them is the size of a mid-sized country like Spain or France. The others are about the size of Mount Everest.

I think you're confusing the impact explosion with the size of the asteroid pieces.

Of which I think only 3-4 (think one was just barely visible on the far side of the planet) pieces are shown hitting the Earth and none of them were the size of Spain or France.

As I mentioned before relatively tiny objects can create nuclear scale impacts. Something just 50-60 meters, basically the size of a large skyscraper, in diameter can create a 500 kiloton impact explosion.

The A-Bombs dropped on Japan during WWII were only 10-15 kilotons each for comparison.

In fact if anything close to a mile in size hit then there would have been no survivors, let alone anything the size of even a small country which would pretty much still wipe out all life on the planet.

Spain alone is about 208000 square miles, multiply that by how much energy produced by even the 50-60 meters asteroids, which can produce around 500 kiloton impacts, and you'll see that an impact from a country size asteroid could easily obliterate an entire continent and devastation of that kind would wipe out even bacteria.

So none of those fragments could have been more than a few hundred meters in diameter, which is a very tiny fraction of the size of a moon or small planetoid.

Which means Alkanphel destroyed and deflected 99.9999% of the Asteroid.

We also know from the Manga that the impacts also triggered volcanic eruption so the impacts alone did not create the ice age, which further shows very little of the Asteroid made it to Earth as otherwise there would have been far more damage.