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Tunguska....meteoroid, comet, tesla, antimatter or something else?

Major Billy: Not really, I seem to recall a particularly tense period in the Cold War where everyone was talking about being 6 minutes away from a nuclear "exchange". (everything had it's euphemistic term back then..."Throw Weight", Megadeaths, etc.)

"We must not have a mine-shaft gap!"
 
Is it even possible for a black hole to hit the planet? Wouldn’t we be drawn to it? Wouldn’t a black hole just consume the planet, or was this one itsy bitsy?
 
The Painter said:
Is it even possible for a black hole to hit the planet? Wouldn’t we be drawn to it? Wouldn’t a black hole just consume the planet, or was this one itsy bitsy?
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yeah....i think this one's kinda been discredited.....mainly cos it would leave a similar path of destruction as it exited the other side.....and as far as i know black holes don't travel through space as much as just suck in what's around them...but im sure it sold a few books :) :) :)
 
Polaris said:
Ah, that explains it then. It had been a while since I read something like that - made the leap in my mind from "reaction" to "explosion" in my mind.
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Yup, the ore just sort of "cooks" in the ground when there's enough together and it's rich enough. There are some surprisingly long-lived plain old combustion-type underground fires, too; peat and maybe coal, IIRC. But that's another subject altogether. :-)

BTW, I once read a story (by Larry Niven maybe?) involving a small black hole that gets discovered, then mismanaged. Pretty scary short story.
 
There are some surprisingly long-lived plain old combustion-type underground fires, too; peat and maybe coal,
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Underground coal fire. 2000 years old

Longest Burning Fire
The oldest known continuously burning fire is an underground coal fire in New South Wales, Australia. This fire apparently started over 2,000 years ago when lightning struck a large coal seam at a point where it reached the surface of the earth. Today the fire is more than 500 feet (152 meters) underground, and is still slowly eating away at the coal
There are also long-burning coal fires in the eastern USA and in China. These fires were started by lightning or by accidents in coal mines. Some towns have been evacuated because of the danger of collapse as the underground coal seams slowly burn away.
Underground coal fires are almost impossible to put out. They burn very slowly, using up the scant oxygen in the depths, but not going out because they stay very hot. Despite their slow burn rates, underground coal fires are so extensive that they are estimated to produce 2-3% of the world's carbon dioxide output.
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I think the one in China was recently put out.
 
wow.....u learn something new everyday (and on this site several things...)

:)
 
andyandy said:
yeah....i think this one's kinda been discredited.....mainly cos it would leave a similar path of destruction as it exited the other side.....and as far as i know black holes don't travel through space as much as just suck in what's around them...but im sure it sold a few books :) :) :)
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Black holes quite definitely do travel through space, just like every other object in the Universe.
 
I was at an excavation on a palaeontology practical, in the Eiffel (German-French border), in a region of Tertiary calderas that had had a long history of slowly silting up by accumulating millions of years of annual algae die-off. This produces the kind of sedimentary rock known as oil shale, which is actually flammable (and soft enough to cut with a knife - it was weird excavation).
The personnel on-site told us that there were ongoing problems with a decades-old underground fire that had been started by lightning in the 70's. The main issue seemed to be not the fire itself, which wasn't very extensive, and very slow in moving, but with a large sounder of wild pigs that was attracted to the warmth in winter! The fire kept a stretch of brush free of frost and the ground lukewarm even in midwinter, making it very popular with the hogs. Since that was next to a well-travelled path to the excavation, interesting encounters ensued in many a wintry gloom :p
 
Major Billy said:
Do you have insider knowledge of this? I thought the U.S. policy was to absorb the first strike, then retaliate.
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Take a look at "By Dawn's Early Light" for a good movie on how this might have played out. (Or read the book on which it was based: "Trinity's Child".)
 
wollery said:
There are naturally occuring nuclear reactions, but I've never heard of a natural terrestrial nuclear explosion. Any references for this would be appreciated.
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I know you were asking for explosions, but this is one reference to a fossil reactor in the Oklo region of Gambia in west Africa. :)

http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/factsheets/doeymp0010.shtml

Cheers,
Dave

ETA: forgot to include the link. Duh.

Google "Oklo natural reactor" for more info.
 
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CaveDave said:
I know you were asking for explosions, but this is one reference to a fossil reactor in the Oklo region of Gambia in west Africa. :)

http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/factsheets/doeymp0010.shtml

Cheers,
Dave

ETA: forgot to include the link. Duh.

Google "Oklo natural reactor" for more info.
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Thanks CaveDave, I knew about that, but didn't have a link.

I was about to relate an anecdote about the time I was in The Gambia, until I looked at your link and discovered that it's in Gabon. :rolleyes:
 
Bikewer said:
Major Billy: Not really, I seem to recall a particularly tense period in the Cold War where everyone was talking about being 6 minutes away from a nuclear "exchange". (everything had it's euphemistic term back then..."Throw Weight", Megadeaths, etc.)

"We must not have a mine-shaft gap!"
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Yep. During the Cold War the US pursued a nuclear policy of MAD (Mutally Assured Destruction). Basically the idea was that we would deter a Soviets nuclear strike by the assurance that if they struck we'd strike as soon as they struck and bomb them to kingdom-come. MAD was a really brain-twisty concept and led to the arms race and all sorts of crazy scenarios of shuffling portable missles all over the place with decoys. Sort of like a shell game so that the Soviets would have to keep guess where our missles were. Unfortunately they followed the same policy so we had to keep guessing.
 
Unnamed said:
"The Hole Man", Larry Niven. Hugo winner in 1975.
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That was a good story. Basically a scientist uses a mini (quantum) black hole as a murder weapon. I think I'll have to pull out my Niven books and re-read some of his short stories.
 
Meffy said:
BTW, I once read a story (by Larry Niven maybe?) involving a small black hole that gets discovered, then mismanaged. Pretty scary short story.
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Earth, by David Brin.

edited: didn't see the previous post. Earth was a novel, so I guess it couldn't be the short story you're thinking of.
 
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