Shoemaker-Levy 9 Comet
The comet was discovered by Eugene & Carolyn Shoemaker and David Levy in 1993. Shortly after the discovery, they determined that comet's elliptical path was on a collision course with Jupiter. The following year, the comet split into over 21 fragments. Between July 16-22, 1994, the fragments impacted Jupiter's atmosphere and surface over several million kilometers.
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When the fragments hit, the explosions were on the back side of Jupiter and were not visible on earth. |
The aerial explosion of fragment G in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter is shown below. The explosion produced a brilliant blue-white flash of light that was a hundred of times brighter than the sun. The expanding bubble grew hundreds of times in volume. The plume of gas and debris towered to over 3,000 kilometers into the sky. Small black material floated on the top of Jupiter's atmosphere and slowly settled down into the clouds. Over the months, the upper atmosphere winds distorted the shape to form a black belt.
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The energy the antimatter comet was equal to over 200 million Megatons of TNT. If an antimatter fragments had hit the earth, the destructive plume would have been five times the diameter of the earth; and we would not be living on earth today.