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discovered by Shoemaker
& Levy, split into over 21
fragments and dispersed over several million kilometers along Jupiter's orbit
between
July 16-22, 1994. The energy was equivalent
to over 200 million Megatons of TNT.
Aerial
Explosion of fragment G
in Jupiter's upper atmosphere is shown below:
The matter-antimatter explosion resulted in a
brilliant blue-white
flash of light, similar to a nuclear explosion, that was a hundred times brighter than the sun.
The expanding bubble of gas grew hundreds of times in volume; then cooled and began
to erupt into a enormous plum. The plume grew to five times
the diameter of the earth. If the fragment had collided with earth,
humanity would have been driven humanity back to the stone age or eliminated
life on earth completely.
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