Possibilities.

[KJbushway]

I am currently watching Syfy's movie Meteor, usually the only movies of theirs that are some what good.
What is the possibility of a comet striking a rather large or even a small asteriod? What are some un-seen side affects?
Which would be obliterated? I would think the Dense icy comet, but I am no scientist.

 

[TorontoTrekker]

I'm sure one of our professional astronomers can answer the question about the probability (which is probably very small, given that the asteroids aren't really that close together and comets aren't all that big either), but I had to ask...

I am currently watching Syfy's movie Meteor, usually the only movies of theirs that are some what good.

When did SyFy remake Meteor?

Or are you referring to the 1979 movie? I always thought it had a lot of wasted potential - it had a great cast, but they were mostly wasted in this particular movie. (I'm particularly thinking of Martin Landau's histrionics. Generals should not stamp their feet and flounce out of a room when they don't get their way.)

 

[Gepard]

When did SyFy remake Meteor?

Forget that -- Since when are SyFy movies good?

 

[Canadave]

I don't know what the odds of it happening are, but I imagine that the effect would be to take two moderately sized objects orbiting the sun and turn them into smaller objects orbiting the sun.

 

[M'Sharak]

I am currently watching Syfy's movie Meteor, usually the only movies of theirs that are some what good.

When did SyFy remake Meteor?

Or are you referring to the 1979 movie? I always thought it had a lot of wasted potential - it had a great cast, but they were mostly wasted in this particular movie.

This one's a 2009 two-part mini, and not a remake - also featuring a pretty good cast mostly wasted, I'm told.

 

[Jadzia]

What is the possibility of a comet striking a rather large or even a small asteriod?

It probably happens frequently... in the universe at large.

If you mean events only in our solar system, then over what time frame?

What are some un-seen side affects?

A collision of massive objects is going to produce immense amounts of heat, and the debris would splash out in all direction, colliding with other things. At worst, it could introduce enough instability in the asteroid belt that you get a chain reaction of collisions... more and more debris

Which would be obliterated? I would think the Dense icy comet, but I am no scientist.

It would depend on the composition of each. If one body is loosely held together (a ball of gravel) I imagine that would easier to shatter than something fused, like an solid lump of iron.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I wrote a little review of this movie on another BBS. This is part of it:

The second thing, of course, was the bad science. Why is it that everyone who makes an asteroid or meteor movie is ten times as ignorant as the people who make the usual bad movies? When a studio decides to make an asteroid or meteor movie do they put out ads for Voc Tech dropouts or something? We have a main belt asteroid that was split in half by a comet and deflected to a collision course with Earth and made it here in a couple of days, which means it had to be moving faster than anything else in the Solar System; then when it got here, it took a half an hour to get from the space station to the atmosphere. And after they announced it was entering the atmosphere, which would have put it about a minute from impact, they announced that it was entering Earth's gravitational field. And they were going to save the world by blowing up this asteroid with nuclear weapons after it had entered the atmosphere. But at the last possible second, they were able to divert the nuclear missiles of at least three nations while in flight to put a little English on the thing and spin it safely out of the atmosphere again (not even mentioning that if this could possibly happen the asteroid would intersect Earth's orbit again in the same place one year later); and, somehow, this last-minute trick eliminated all fallout from these nuclear explosions. I could find a sportswriter from the Herald who is more scientifically literate than that.

I frequently enjoy the Saturday night movie, especially if it's a campy one like Sharktopus, because I like B-Movies, but this one was just unenjoyably awful.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Luckily, meteors are most likely to strike the ocean, in which case Megashark can intercept them in-flight.

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I16_8l0yS-g&feature=related[/yt]

 

[RJDiogenes]

Megashark versus Meteor. It's almost inevitable.