We can keep making doomsday movies –– but we might want to give up the old asteroid-hitting-an-ocean-causing-waves-of-destruction trope.
That's because researchers with Los Alamos National Laboratory found that an asteroid landing in open water would probably be a little anti-climactic.
Through 11 simulations, they determined about 80 percent of the asteroid's energy would vaporize nearby water, making it a gas. Twenty percent would send water straight up in the air.
Only a tenth of one percent of an asteroid's energy would go toward making waves. And while those waves would be big, they'd die out quickly.
One of the researchers compared it to landslides in Iceland and Norway. In the 1930s, a landslide created waves that devastated a nearby village, but the water still couldn't travel very far.
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The researchers note if an asteroid hit within about 12 miles of a coastline, it would be "devastating."
But considering 70 percent of the Earth's surface is water, and most of it is open, we should probably be more worried about an asteroid hitting land.
Of course, we have movies for that plotline, too.
