A massive asteroid just hit Earth,
right in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
Thanks to NASA’s new infrared telescope,
we were able to detect it
and prepare for the collision.
But our problems are not over yet.
Because now we have a hypercane
coming our way.
Sixty-six million years ago,
an asteroid struck Earth,
causing the extinction of the dinosaurs.
But scientists have struggled
to understand how the asteroid's
impact in one spot
could cause the death of a species
worldwide.
In 1995, MIT lecturer, Dr. Kerry Emanuel,
proposed that the missing link
could be a hypercane.
This massive, dangerous storm
would have the power to inject
vast amounts of water and aerosols
into the atmosphere,
changing its chemistry
and damaging the ozone layer.
This would make the environment
and climate unsuitable for life.
We'll get to that a bit later.
But let’s start from the beginning.
A regular hurricane needs
warm ocean waters
and some kind of disturbance
in the atmosphere.
Think 26 ºC (80 ºF) for at least
45 m (148 ft) below the surface
and lots of wind.
This creates enough energy to speed up
the water’s cycle of evaporating, rising,
cooling and condensing
into thunderstorm clouds.
The more the water evaporates,
the faster the winds become,
forming a swirling storm.
The Saffir-Simpson scale
categorizes hurricanes
based on their speed.
It starts with a Category One hurricane,
which ranges from
119 to 153 km/h (74 to 95 mph),
and goes up to a Category Five,
with wind speeds of 251 km/h (156 mph)
or stronger.
To give you an idea of how bad that is,
Hurricane Katrina,
one of the deadliest in history,
was a Category Five hurricane.
It struck the United States Gulf Coast
with winds of around 280 km/h (175 mph),
leaving almost 2,000 people dead.
And it came with a heavy price tag.
It caused
more than $125 billion in damages.
And a hypercane
would be at least
four times worse than that.
According to Dr. Emanuel’s theory,
it could have wind speeds of up to
804 km/h (500 mph).
And the size
would be almost 50 km (30 mi) tall
and 4,000 km (2,500 mi) wide.
That’s nearly as large as the U.S.
So how could this happen?
Time to go back to that asteroid.
If an asteroid
12 km (7.5 mi) wide,
which is as big as the one
that killed the dinosaurs,
struck the middle of the Atlantic Ocean,
it would heat the water
up to 50 ºC (120 ºF).
That amount of energy
could form a hypercane
in less than 48 hours.
So brace yourself.
If the asteroid caught us off guard,
and there were planes in the air,
the hypercane
could throw them off course as it formed.
The pilots would need to hold on tight
as they struggled through
extreme turbulence to find a place to land.
For you on land,
unless you had an underground shelter,
it would be nearly impossible to survive.
And even if you did have a shelter
or were far away from the storm,
you’d better have an indoor farm set up
and enough power to last
for years to come.
Earth, as we know it, would be destroyed.
The protective ozone layer
that shields us from radiation
would probably be gone, too.
If you dared to step outside,
you’d need to be fully covered.
Otherwise, you could develop skin cancer.
But that’s the least of your problems.
The intensity of the Sun’s radiation
would make photosynthesis impossible
for smaller plants.
Without this process
of converting light energy into
the chemical energy that fuels growth,
they would eventually die.
The food chain would then collapse.
Herbivores would starve,
and even though other animals
could feed off their bodies for some time,
the food supply would eventually end.
Luckily, hypercanes
don’t look to be happening
anywhere in the near future.
Although there were more than 19,000
near-Earth asteroids as of 2019,
with an average of 30 discoveries
every week,
scientists are doing a good job
monitoring threats to our planet.
However, researchers agree that
hurricanes
will continue to get stronger and more deadly,
primarily due to climate change.
So it might be a good idea
to start preparing for those.
How about coming up with a plan
to nuke a hurricane?
That sounds like a story
for another WHAT IF.