Doomsday comet may hit Mars

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by GT182

One that size could possible destroy Mars and we'd be in a world of poop. Just imagine the pieces of Mars heading our way. Not a good thought. Tho extinction for us does come to mind.

Naaah, it'd need to be something like a thousand times bigger to destroy Mars. Something like the size of Venus or Mercury might do it, or it would at the very least create enough debris to dramatically increase the possibility of an impact event on Earth. Planets are very difficult to kill. Very difficult...unless you have a Death Star, or access to a Black Hole.

This makes for good reading:
http://qntm.org/destroy

Plenty of things can destroy life, or forms of life on a planet, or radically change the ecosystem, but those events are contained to the planet it occurs on unless it's some sort of space ship, or a pulsar.

What this will likely do is radically change the climate patterns of Mars, certainly it will be difficult to see the surface of Mars for a while after impact, it will also generate a rather large hole and strip the surface clean for a very large distance surrounding the impact point. It will also make Michael Bay feel very very very small and impotent. Likewise Roland Emmerich.

However, the most likely outcome is that it will make a very pretty passing light show for the Curiosity rover and sail right past Mars and back out into space.