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The fragmentation of small asteroids in the atmosphere
Abstract
The effect of the atmosphere on impacting asteroids and comets is investigated. It is found that the atmosphere is inefficient in preventing impact damage to the ground when the radius of a stony asteroid exceeds 100 m and that of a comet exceeds 500 m. For iron meteorites that impact at greater than 20 km/s, the critical radius is about 20-30 m. For low-velocity iron meteorites that hit at 11.2-15 km/s, the critical radius is only 2 m. While the dissipation of energy in the atmosphere protects the ground from impact damage, it can enhance the damage done by the airburst. The area of destruction produced by the airburst during the impact of small asteroids can be up to twice as large as would have been the case had the same energy been released at sea level. The plumes of stony meteorites with radii over about 60 km break out of the atmosphere and float around the earth, carrying entrapped dust whose deposition may provide a counter for large meteorite impacts.
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Citations
Cited by
Models of giant planet formation with migration and disc evolution
Alibert, Y., Mordasini, C., Benz, W., & Winisdoerffer, C. (2005) · Astronomy & Astrophysics · doi:10.1051/0004-6361:20042032 · Cited by 685
A 500-kiloton airburst over Chelyabinsk and an enhanced hazard from small impactors
Brown, P. G., Assink, J. D., Astiz, L., Blaauw, R., Boslough, M. B., Borovička, J., Brachet, N., Brown, D., Campbell-Brown, M., Ceranna, L., et al. (2013) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature12741 · Cited by 466
The global resurfacing of Venus
Strom, R. G., Schaber, G. G., & Dawson, D. D. (1994) · Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets · doi:10.1029/94je00388 · Cited by 400
Origin of the RNA world: The fate of nucleobases in warm little ponds
Pearce, B. K. D., Pudritz, R. E., Semenov, D. A., & Henning, T. K. (2017) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1710339114 · Cited by 210
“Iron and rocky bodies impact the solid surface at speeds high enough to form small craters (32), contributing to the WLP population.”
BackgroundHydrogen Cyanide Production Due to Mid-Size Impacts in a Redox-Neutral N2-Rich Atmosphere
Kurosawa, K., Sugita, S., Ishibashi, K., Hasegawa, S., Sekine, Y., Ogawa, N. O., Kadono, T., Ohno, S., Ohkouchi, N., Nagaoka, Y., et al. (2013) · Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres · doi:10.1007/s11084-013-9339-0 · Cited by 41
Metadata
- Authors
- Hills, J. G., & Goda, M. P.
- Venue
- The Astronomical Journal
- Publisher
- American Astronomical Society
- Published
- 1993-03
- Volume
- 105
- Pages
- 1114
- ISSN
- 0004-6256 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2047757483
- Cited by
- 325
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 20.37
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The fragmentation of small asteroids in the atmosphere. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1086/116499
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- Hills, J. G., & Goda, M. P. (1993). The fragmentation of small asteroids in the atmosphere. The Astronomical Journal. https://doi.org/10.1086/116499
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
