Asteroid impact comparison Earth v Jupiter

[Mr Bob]

Question on another forum.

"I think that its hard to compare the impact of an asteroid on Jupiter to the impact of one on earth, as Jupiter is much larger and therefore has a much stronger gravitational pull, and the impact would be harder. My partner thinks that the gravitational pull would not affect the speed at which the asteroid hits Jupiter because the asteroid gets most of its speed from the fact that it is chunks flying off big rocks / planets or whatever"

Any ideas? Cause I sure dont have any. tia

[Lee]

Jupiter has a larger mass, thus there is a higher force of attraction between it and another body compared with earth, higher force for a given mass is more acceleration..... more acceleration (depending on the time applied of course) gives more velocity.....
Simple kinematics in the end isn't it??

[sheeny (Al)]

Yes, it is simple kinematics. It just depends on the initial velocity of the asteroid (relative to the planet it's about to hit) whether the change in velocity due to acceleration is significant or not.

Sorry, it sounds like a cop out, but its the best I can sum it up without some real numbers.

Al.

[OneOfOne (Trevor)]

Of course once it hits the atmosphere it is going to loose speed much faster at Jupiter than the Earth.

A similar comparison would be between Venus and Earth (the difference in gravity would negligible). It would have to be one hell of a rock to make it all the way to the surface of Venus....and resistant to the effects of sulphuric acid on the way down.

[avandonk]

The mass of Jupiter is 318 times that of Earth so the component of velocity increase due to the planet of any passing colliding object would be 318 times higher in the case of Jupiter as compared to Earth.
Just think of dropping a ball from rest at some arbitrary distance onto both planets surfaces. The only difference being the ball would hit Jupiters atmosphere well before it hit the surface of the Earth so a correction would have to be made for the difference in their diameters.
I calculate that it is alot!
Bert