"supercatastrophic" meaning in English

See supercatastrophic in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Adjective

Forms: more supercatastrophic [comparative], most supercatastrophic [superlative]
Etymology: From super- + catastrophic. Etymology templates: {{prefix|en|super|catastrophic}} super- + catastrophic Head templates: {{en-adj}} supercatastrophic (comparative more supercatastrophic, superlative most supercatastrophic)
  1. Very severely catastrophic.
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          "ref": "1979, Tom Gehrels, Asteroids, University of Arizona Press, →ISBN, page 535:",
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          "ref": "1981, Andrew Chaikin, Brian O'Leary, J. Kelly Beatty, The New Solar System, Cambridge University Press, Sky Publishing Corporation, page 104:",
          "text": "A \"supercatastrophic\" collision might provide sufficient energy and momentum not only to break up an asteroid but to disperse the fragments as well. In that case, the fragments would depart on independent, but still similar, heliocentric orbits. The fragments would rarely or never meet again, and the asteroid population would have gained a family of smaller asteroids at the expense of a larger body (or two bodies, counting the projectile, which is most likely to be small compared with the target body).",
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          "text": "If the target body is spherically layered with sufficient strength contrast, these spherical layers may be stripped away. If the impact is large enough in scale, the target body may be catastrophically fragmented throughout. A fraction of the projectile’s kinetic energy will be partitioned into kinetic energy of the resulting fragments, which will therefore be launched away from the target’s original center of mass. For a very large collision, fragments representing more than half of the target mass may be launched at greater than escape velocity, in which case the body is said to have been catastrophically disrupted. (If >> 50% of the target mass is expelled, the collision is termed supercatastrophic.) Fragments traveling at less than escape velocity will reaccrete on a time scale of minutes to hours. Even if the body is entirely disrupted, if it is in orbit about a massive planet, the fragments will be tightly constrained in short-period orbits around the planet and will be subject to fairly rapid reaccretion. If a collision is off-center, the target body’s spin may be greatly affected.",
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          "text": "A \"supercatastrophic\" collision might provide sufficient energy and momentum not only to break up an asteroid but to disperse the fragments as well. In that case, the fragments would depart on independent, but still similar, heliocentric orbits. The fragments would rarely or never meet again, and the asteroid population would have gained a family of smaller asteroids at the expense of a larger body (or two bodies, counting the projectile, which is most likely to be small compared with the target body).",
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-02-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-01-01 using wiktextract (f492ef9 and 9905b1f). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

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