Let’s count the mistakes, starting with:

The continents being pealed back with the wave as if they were paper thin. I thought CGI was supposed to do accurate modeling.

Oh, wait! I forgot about An Inconvenient Truth! Yes, I see it now.

This was produced by the who-cares-if-it’s-stupid-if-it-looks-good crowd.

Yep.

The Discovery Channel Network really whored any integrity it had when it merged with the New York Times.

Personally, I block the Discovery Times Channel.

Those Parental Controls come in handy when you use them the way you WANT !!!

For more good eyes, read this guy’s post:

An odd mixture of impressive graphics and scientific illiteracy. The creator of this apocalyptic “entertainment” clip may have started with a shot or two from Discovery or The Science Channel, but if we assume that 95% of this animation is “bad science” (and thus home-made), why wouldn’t they just create it all from scratch?

Just a few of the more problematic elements:

01. Objects that size, unless recently formed, are not geologically active. Thus, no sinister glowing craters on the planetoid as it approaches earth.

02. The view of outer space from anywhere near the earth does not show a giant glowing galactic plane/core.

03. The object is shown on a course pretty much set to hit the earth dead center, but then does one “victory lap” to show off its shadow over New York before landing in the Pacific Ocean. And no, the speed of the earth’s rotation would not account for this. Bonus hint: objects approaching from deep space do not have a shadow, because they are not between the sun and the earth.

04. The ejecta from the impact are shown starting to fall back to earth too soon. The one that happened four billion years ago, for example, formed the moon, so that may give you an idea of exactly how far out debris would be thrown.

05. The energy released from the impact of an object this size would melt the lithosphere. No fires, no Big Ben and the Parthenon in flames. Just magma everywhere.

I could go on, but you get the point. Also, because there is at least one other version of this video out there set to Terminator music that shows some Japanese subtitles midway through, I suspect that Count to 10’s theory about its origin is correct. Disappointing; I thought they were better educated in Japan.

HTL on December 28, 2008 at 3:01 PM

I would like to see an experiment that proves the calculations though.

Buddahpundit on December 29, 2008 at 1:08 PM

Here’s an example of an experiment along those lines. The impact effects were greater than expected.

Am I the only old Pink Floyd fan who remembers “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun”?

NeighborhoodCatLady on December 28, 2008 at 2:02 PM

Nope, I’ve been a PF fan for a long, long time. How about some other PF tites like “Adam Heart Mother” or “Umagooma.”

Don’t feel you are an island onto yourself here, pal!

I’m in my mid 50’s and Pink Floyd has never been a favorite with me either. In fact, I’ve listened to Dark Side Of The Moon countless times and I’m still trying to figure out what all the shouting is about.

pilamaye on December 28, 2008 at 4:04 PM

In my younger days in order to fully enjoy Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon one must first smoke a fattie and then listen to it with a good set of headphones…doing so will even make athiests see God…/figure of speech

I would also advise reading the lyrics while listening.

Ahh, the exquisite piano mastery of Richard Wright and the orgasmic vocals of Clare Torry. RIP Richard. I do hope Pink Floyd will continue on with David Gilmour and Nick Mason in some manner or form. Hell, bury the hatchet mates and invite Roger Waters back before you’re all ready for the old folks home.

kevcad on December 28, 2008 at 2:06 PM

I couldn’t agree more, she belts it out in that song for sure and you can just “feel” the emotion she puts into it, one of my fav tracks…great stuff!

I too wish the band would bury the hatchet and tour just one more time. The last time I saw them was at ASU’s Sun Devil Stadium, I was working for the university and volunteered to work the concert and had an all access pass, of couse I saved the pass!

Amazon Women on the Moon

Best… Movie…. EVAH!

Kini on December 28, 2008 at 4:30 PM

Hehe…not too many people know about that movie, I have it on an old VHS tape…hilarious movie!

So it appears that a ball of iron would not have time between when it entered the atmosphere and hit the ground to slow down to anywhere near terminal velocity.

pedestrian on December 29, 2008 at 3:37 AM

Perhaps, but I don’t have enough worry capacity to worry about it. I would like to see an experiment that proves the calculations though.

I should have been an apocalypse scientist. I think it’s one heckuva growth industry.

Don’t know if my insurance covers giant azz rocks falling from the sky tho :o/

Are you claiming that the formula E = 1/2 mv^2 is a conspiracy to scare people?

pedestrian on December 29, 2008 at 1:06 AM

Of course it is!

Everyone knows that energy is directly proportional to the inverse square of a person’s age. :)

Buddahpundit on December 29, 2008 at 2:35 AM

As pedestrian pointed out, the impactor will be traveling much faster than terminal velocity.

Terminal velocity is a function of atmospheric drag and this object spends all but the last few seconds accelerating towards the earth outside the atmosphere.

uhhh… ground zero was somewhere in the northeastern US. The end of the video made it clear.

AbaddonsReign on December 28, 2008 at 6:50 PM

It impacted southeast of Japan. You can see Japan as well as Korea at the moment of impact. In the end the main crater is also shown in the former pacific, you can see former coast lines of Asia and Australia.

That foreign meteorite would be striking the Earth at the same velocity as my homemade one, wouldn’t you think?
Buddahpundit on December 29, 2008 at 2:35 AM

Here is your scientific experiment for an object that was much softer than iron, but about 50m: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

It didn’t hit the ground, but was still “1,000 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan”.

A 50m ball of iron is basically a large bullet. According to your parameters, the website says

“The mass of projectile strikes the surface at velocity 37.6 km/s”

So it appears that a ball of iron would not have time between when it entered the atmosphere and hit the ground to slow down to anywhere near terminal velocity.

I did a quick calculation of how much energy it lost while it was in the atmosphere, slowing from 50km/s to 37km/s. If the heat stayed inside the iron, it would raise the temperature of the iron by about 1 million degrees C. Naturally most of that energy was lost to the atmosphere, but you get the point.

Are you claiming that the formula E = 1/2 mv^2 is a conspiracy to scare people?

pedestrian on December 29, 2008 at 1:06 AM

Show me an experiment.

Here’s an experiment for you. If I were to drop a 50 m spherical chunk of iron from a height that would allow my homemade meteorite to gain terminal velocity, which wouldn’t be all that high actually, would it create the same impact damage as a same sized iron meteorite that entered Earth’s atmosphere traveling 50 km/sec? That foreign meteorite would be striking the Earth at the same velocity as my homemade one, wouldn’t you think? I’m not considering what broke off the earthbound meteorite as it encountered all the forces that determine the terminal velocity of an object striking earth, just the impact crater/earthquake. According to your website, that would be a 5.9 richter earthquake 5 km away from impact and a 1.4 mile diameter crater that is 1/2 mile deep.

I don’t think a 50 m diameter chunk of iron can impact the the ground like that traveling at terminal velocity. Where the parameter states “impact velocity”, I think they are calculating the speed of the meteorite in space as the speed of impact on Earth’s surface.

Anybody know what TDC show the video came from? The CGI was pretty good for TV.

I think you proved my point that there is no experiment that the doomsayers can show that demonstrates these contentions regarding the top scare tactics of the day.

Buddahpundit on December 29, 2008 at 12:56 AM

Are you claiming that the formula E = 1/2 mv^2 is a conspiracy to scare people?

If you want a scientific demonstration of how kinetic energy can generate heat, try, um, rubbing your hands together?

R. Waher on December 28, 2008 at 11:45 PM

Interesting. Are you saying that the more humans rub their hands together, the more global warming ( no matter how infinitesimal ) will occur?

I think you proved my point that there is no experiment that the doomsayers can show that demonstrates these contentions regarding the top scare tactics of the day.

As I always like to point out, apocalypse scientists ( like their apocalypse religious preacher cousins ) need to generate fear to maintain an income. No scientist has ever willingly put himself out of business by assuring the taxpayer “relax folks, nothing to worry about”.

I’d also like to see a scientifically based experiment that proves runaway greenhouse effects and other goreisms while you’re at it.

Buddahpundit on December 28, 2008 at 11:14 PM

Believing that a massive object hitting another object at high velocities will release large amounts of energy as heat isn’t the same as believing in man-made global warming.

If you want a scientific demonstration of how kinetic energy can generate heat, try, um, rubbing your hands together?

Try a 1km diameter iron meteor at 50 km/s. It will be 500 times as bright as the Sun at 100 km away.

pedestrian on December 28, 2008 at 10:49 PM

That’s not really big. We could make our own meteor with Earth’s iron and push it into another planet’s atmosphere, or into our own atmosphere. It would have to be built in space and would take a lot of shipments of iron.

Oh, hey, maybe that’s the solution for terraforming Mars!! Let’s hope the Heaven’s Gate Hale-Bopp survivors running NASA didn’t read that and are getting ideas.

It is Apophis
redshirt on December 28, 2008 at 7:34 PM

In the link, in 2005, NASA’s Mary Cleave shelved any current response to the Apophis threat. So if anything happens in 2029, people can…blame Bush!