JimothyJuice

Thanks for doing this AMA guys, I have a couple of questions on this. Firstly, is it known how large this comet actually is? and secondly, a hypothetical one, what would the effects be on Mars if this comet were to score a direct hit instead?

I've just tried putting some numbers through wolfram alpha, and I assumed a diameter of 5km for averages sake, and I googled the density of a typical comet, which is apparently 0.6g/cm^3, because the comet is travelling much faster than the chicxulub meteor was too, I got that it would be dealing 8.442×10⁸ megatons of TNT worth of energy at impact, ~7 times the size of the chicxulub impact, If i havent messed up the maths then yeah, it'd be a pretty bad day for Mars!

So basically no more robots up there I guess, I might have a go at working out some of the numbers involved in this but i'm by no means a physicist, cheers for the replies!