Abstract:
An asteroid hitting the Earth may cause the extinction of dinosaurs, 65 million years ago. The re-search aim of this paper is how the energy of the asteroid hitting the Earth can be depending on the chosen of the aphelion distance and the perihelion distance, while the mass of the asteroid is fixed. The adopted aphelion distance of the asteroid is 1.90, 2.15, 2.65, 3.25, 3.95 and 5.2075 AU, respectively. The adopted perihelion distance of the asteroid is 1.0009, 0.95, 0.90, 0.85, 0.80, 0.75, 0.70, 0.65, 0.60, 0.55 and 0.50 AU, respectively. Our calculated results show that the larger the aphelion distance of the asteroid is, the larger the energy of its hitting the Earth is; the smaller the perihelion distance of the asteroid is, the larger the energy of its hitting the Earth is; the minimum kinetic energy of the asteroid hitting the earth is 1.0725
10
23 J, and the maximum kinetic energy is 5.8280
10
23 J.