When the earth is hit by a large enough asteroid, will it explode immediately?

Question

When the earth is hit by a large enough asteroid, will it explode immediately?

Answer 1

definitely yes, and it will create a very huge crater, like the one in arizona.

Answer 2

By "it" do you mean the earth or the asteroid?

Look; there will be a lot of heat (from the kinetic energy of the thing), a lot of noise, and bits of stuff will fly in all directions, mostly away from the impact site. I suppose that is an explosion.

Answer 3

It is theorized that the earth was hit by an object the size of Mars and that the end result was the creation of the moon.  Given that, it would take a REALLY large object going VERY fast to cause the earth to actually explode.  What would probably happen is that the earth would fragment but all the bits would either stay in a loose cluster and come back together to reform the planet or they would spread out to form a new asteroid belt.

Answer 4

it won't explode, but you mean be smashed to all h**l?  set a tennis ball ontop of a basketball and drop both... that'll be your answer

Answer 5

No.It may change the speed of rotation of earth or tilt angle only .

Answer 6

Depends on how large you are talking

Answer 7

The answer is probably no; because there is no asteroid large enough to shatter the earth.  The largest, Ceres, is about 600 km in diameter.

If a very large asteroid, say 100km across DID hit the earth, it wouldn't need to shatter ift -  so much heat would be produced  that the earth's crust could melt.

As another answerer said; even one a few km will probably cause us to become extinct.  It would probably land in the ocean; causing km high tidal waves to circulate for years.

Under our current technological ability; if there was an asteroid several km across heading our way soon; we would not be able to do a thing about it; despite the plots of some science fiction movies.

Answer 8

If an asteroid strikes Earth, it will be a really, really bad day no matter how big it is. If the asteroid is a mile in diameter, it's likely to wipe out life on the planet. Let's hope that doesn't happen anytime soon! If its a mile or larger in diameter it will wipe out all life on earth as we know it. It will seem to have an explosion effect since the power that will given off by this mamoth slam will be like someone setting off 10 million hydorgen bombs, and since this asteriod is traveling at about 30,000mph, i think its safe to say that in a blink of an eye, you will be dead even if you are 200 miles away since it will explode as soon as it makes contact. This site goes into all the details.

Answer 9

If it's large enough, sure.