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The impact was so strong that observers on Earth were able to capture the event;
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The explosion is equivalent to two million tons of TNT;
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The shock triggered the largest explosive flash ever captured on the gas giant since 1994.
A space rock hit the Jupiter’s gas layer and the impact of that collision, which may have been the biggest in 28 years, was so strong that observers on Earth managed to capture the event. The case took place in October last year, but only now a survey with more details has been released.
According to the record of scientists, astronomers and astrophysicists at Kyoto University in Japan, the explosion was equivalent to two million tons of TNT, which, by way of comparison, is 154 times the explosive power of one of the atomic bombs dropped. by the US in the city of Hiroshima in 1945.
The shock triggered the biggest explosive flash ever captured on the gas giant since 1994, when comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 hit the planet with the force of more than 300 million atomic bombs, causing, according to NASA, dark, ringed “traces” that ended up being erased by the winds of Jupiter.
These new images were captured by the Planetary Observation Camera for Optical Transient Research (PONCOTS), a collaborative astronomical observation project dedicated specifically to monitoring these eruptions on Jupiter.
The study, not yet reviewed, also suggests that the rock’s mass is around 4.1 million kg and between 15 to 30 meters in diameter. An impact energy equivalent to that of the Tunguska meteorite that hit Earth in 1908, considered the “biggest cosmic impact observed” by modern humanity.
Still according to the authors of the publication, studying how these events occur on Jupiter is important because it offers an opportunity for science to better understand the consequences of potentially similar impacts here on Earth’s surface.
“As these impacts only occur once every 102 – 103 years on Earth, their emission characteristics are unknown,” he explained.
According to the US space agency, the impact of Tunguska was so strong that earthquake tremors were also recorded in England.
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