On July 17, 1994, humanity was just one step away from extinction?

From a certain point of view, the Earth is equivalent to a giant "spaceship", which carries countless lives running through the universe at a super high speed.

The road ahead is exceptionally rough, from the universe of the disaster is always threatening the safety of countless lives on Earth, a little bad luck, ushered in is the end of the disaster.

In many threats from the universe, asteroid impact is definitely the most impressive, because more than 60 million years ago is an asteroid ultimate dinosaurs hundreds of millions of years of "rule".

Perhaps mention the asteroid impact, we will feel very far away from us, but many people may not know that in 1994 the solar system had an epic impact event.

On July 17, 1994, a comet named "Sumek-Levi 9" hit Jupiter hard, presenting a rare planet-level event for humans.

The main character of the impact event "Sumyk-Levy 9" comet, is a giant comet of about 2000 meters in diameter, it hit Jupiter instantly released energy equivalent to 40 trillion tons of TNT energy, about 2 billion times the Hiroshima atomic bomb, and the "impact crater" left The diameter of the "impact crater" is even larger than the diameter of the Earth.

After the impact, many people based on the energy generated by the impact speculation, if the "Sumec-Levy 9" impact on Earth, humans are likely to follow in the footsteps of the dinosaurs, become the history of the past, but is the reality really so?

How big was the asteroid that exterminated the dinosaurs? How much energy was released?

Now, with more and more geological, atmospheric and fossil traces being discovered, there is almost no longer any controversy in the scientific community about the cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Sixty-five million years ago, an asteroid about 10,000 meters in diameter slammed into the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. Models based on the crater and nearby strata show that the energy produced at the moment of impact was equivalent to that produced by the explosion of 10 billion atomic bombs.

The shock wave from the impact hit the surface and underground at supersonic speeds, reducing the surrounding area to a sea of fire for thousands of kilometers and slowly sinking. The shock wave was wrapped in seawater to form a huge tsunami, and most of the world's volcanoes were completely "ignited" by this amazing collision.

The dust generated by the impact mixed with the volcanic ash spewed into the atmosphere, countless forests with dazzling fire, the Earth completely into the hot "barbecue mode".

In this amazing environmental change, 75% of the species, 50% of the genus, 17 of the family completely out of history, while the old ancestors of mammals took the opportunity to completely turn over, the lizard big reptiles completely trampled underfoot, to lay a solid foundation for future domination of the Earth.

Can Comet Sumec-Levy 9 destroy the Earth?

First, the answer: no. On the one hand, because compared with the 10,000-meter diameter asteroid 65 million years ago, Comet Sumyk-Levi 9 is less than half of its diameter, and it has not been able to destroy all living things on Earth, let alone Comet Sumyk-Levi 9.

On the other hand, Comet Sumyk-Levi 9 has been torn into 21 pieces by Jupiter's strong gravity before it hit Jupiter, and these 21 pieces did not crash into Jupiter at the same time, but hit the southern hemisphere of Jupiter accordingly, and the impact time lasted for about 130 hours. Such a long time of sequential impact made the overall killing power of Comet Sumyk-Levi 9 significantly reduced.

Many people may say: Comet Sumyk-Levy 9's largest piece of debris hit Jupiter, the resulting scar is even longer than the diameter of the Earth, how can this not destroy the Earth?

In fact, we can't judge the impact damage just by the size of the "splash", because the physical properties of Earth and Jupiter are very different from each other by nature. The Earth is a very strong iron-core earth ball, and a rocky crust outside, while Jupiter is a gas giant, it is not even a water ball, if you have to describe it, then it is a giant pressure cooker in a cloud of water vapor mixture.

To give a very graphic example, Jupiter is like a vat of water and a scale compared to Earth. A shot into the water is sure to make a splash, while a shot into the scale will at most make a little spark and leave a crater.

Of course, if Comet Sumyk-Levi 9 really hit the Earth, although it will not completely destroy the Earth or completely destroy the ecological environment, but the impact on human beings is certainly huge, there will certainly be many areas will disappear in the impact.

Many rumors point out that if Comet Sumyk-Levi 9 is not due to hit Jupiter, then it is very likely to collide with the Earth. Is this rumor correct? The answer is no.

When astronomy enthusiast David H. Levy and astronomers Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker discovered the comet on March 24, 1993, it had already become a moon of Jupiter, and retracing its orbit revealed that it had been captured by Jupiter around 1970.

On July 8, 1992, Sumyk-Levi 9 flew past Jupiter at a distance of 40,000 km, and because this is Jupiter's Losch limit, it was ripped into 21 pieces by Jupiter's powerful gravity.

Based on this trajectory, scientists calculate that it will next fly by 45,000 km from the center of Jupiter, a distance even smaller than Jupiter's radius, so its collision into Jupiter is actually a foregone conclusion.

Even if it is not captured by Jupiter to become its satellite, there is no need to worry about its impact on Earth, on the one hand, because its original orbit is in the asteroid belt, and there is no overlap with the Earth's orbit.

On the other hand, the universe is so empty that even if Sumyk-Levi 9 had not crashed into Jupiter in 1993, it would have skimmed along its elliptical orbit from a distance of 75 million kilometers from Earth, which is much farther than the distance from Venus to Earth, so it would not have crashed into Earth at all.

With this celestial impact, scientists have gained a deeper understanding of Jupiter and its atmosphere, as well as its role as a "scavenger" in our solar system.

Although the collision of Sumyk-Levy 9 into Jupiter was inevitable, it is undeniable that the existence of Jupiter did create a relatively safe environment for the Earth to nurture life, saving the Earth's organisms from frequent celestial impacts for billions of years, and it is no wonder that some people suspect that Jupiter's existence is by design.