This is the picture of the Messiah crew on the comet, trying to put and end to the huge rock by blowing it up with 4 massive nucler warheads. The 2 crew members in the pic above are in one of the many cracks and crevices there are on the giant rock. It is made up of ice and rock and when the sun hits it, the temperature rises by hundreds of degrees in a matter of minutes and the surface erupts in a mass of gas jets. |
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The comet, aptly named Wolf-Beiderman after the 2 people who discovered it, weighed in at about 100 billion tonnes, yes that's right, 100 billion tonnes! A comet of this weight and the size of New York city would surely put an end to life as we know it. The main problem that the Messiah crew faced was the 14 hour rotational cycle of the comet. This meant that there was only 7 hours of darkness to work in before the sun horizon was approached and heated the comet by 300 deg. in only a few minutes. Explosive outgassing meant it would be like working in a minefield.
All is not lost as you know, and they manage to break the comet into two smaller pieces. The smaller comet, Biederman weighed in at about 30 billion tonnes and was the size of a small city. This is the comet that made impact in the Pacific ocean and created the collossal tsunami.
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This is the smaller comet, Beiderman pictured here on the left. Notice how the sea parts as the comet soars over the top, that gives you an idea of the power of the comet. The larger comet, Wolf was 3 times the size of Beiderman and would still create the devastating cloud of dust that would blot out the sun. Thankfully they manage to blow it up and the world only has to contend with the giant wave, life could go on. |
