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Q&A Would a huge amount of asteroids hitting Earth change its rotation speed or destroy the planet?

The Earth would be broken into pieces if the total energy delivered by the impacts was comparable to the gravitational binding energy of the planet. Earth is a sphere, so its binding energy is $$U=...

posted 4y ago by HDE 226868‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by HDE 226868‭

Answer
#5: Post undeleted by user avatar HDE 226868‭ · 2020-07-07T18:06:01Z (over 4 years ago)
#4: Post deleted by user avatar HDE 226868‭ · 2020-07-07T04:08:52Z (over 4 years ago)
#3: Post undeleted by user avatar HDE 226868‭ · 2020-07-07T04:08:29Z (over 4 years ago)
#2: Post deleted by user avatar HDE 226868‭ · 2020-07-06T21:33:23Z (over 4 years ago)
#1: Initial revision by user avatar HDE 226868‭ · 2020-07-06T21:20:37Z (over 4 years ago)
The Earth would be broken into pieces if the total energy delivered by the impacts was *comparable* to the [gravitational binding energy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_binding_energy) of the planet. Earth is a sphere, so its binding energy is
$$U=\frac{3GM_{\oplus}^2}{5R_{\oplus}}=2.24\times10^{32}\text{ Joules}$$
[Randall says](https://what-if.xkcd.com/26/) that to properly slow down the planet's rotation, we'd need to bombard it with a dinosaur-killing-sized asteroid "every couple days" for ten years. [Schulte et al. 2013](https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010Sci...327.1214S/abstract) place the energy of such an event at around $4\times10^{23}\text{ Joules}$; the asteroids would then deliver a total energy of
$$4\times10^{23}\text{ Joules}\times\frac{10\text{ years}}{2\text{ days}}=7.3\times10^{26}\text{ Joules}$$
which is about 300,000 times too low.

It's quite possible that the asteroids would ablate away much of the surface, and I imagine that the majority of species wouldn't make it through the first couple of months, but the planet itself would survive.