Unusual lessons learned from the SL9 radio observations and their potential consequences to earth's radiation belts

摘要

Motivated by the editor's request to write a Radio Science paper as part of the AGU Grand Challenge series, we decided to use our work on radio observations of the 1994 impact of comet D/Shoemaker-Levy 9 (SL9) on Jupiter. Our intention is to relate this work to potential consequences for Earth. The scenario being considered is an asteroid on a direct impact path to Earth, and the consequences of shattering it into pieces small enough to not hit Earth's surface. Such fragments would explode in the atmosphere, and because there are numerous such explosions, the ionosphere and trapped radiation (van Allen) belts might be significantly modified, as occurred with SL9.