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odie5533
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Homework Statement
A meteor of mass about 3.4 x 10^12 kg is heading straight for Jupiter. When it hits there will be a huge release of energy, visible her on earth. Assuming it has fallen from far away, how much energy will be released when it hits Jupiter? The radius of Jupiter is 7 x 10^7 m and its mass is 1.9 x 10^27 kg.
A) 3.4 x 10&19 J
B) 5.8 x 10^18 J
C) 5.4 x 10^22 J
D) 6.8 x 10^19 J
E) 6.1 x 10^21 J
The Attempt at a Solution
I'm somewhat lost as to how to approach this problem. When I've worked with energies, it has always involved velocity. In the chapter on gravitation in my text I only found mention of gravitational potential energy, [tex]U = -\frac{Gm_{e}m}{r}[/tex], but I don't have the distance between the masses. I'm guessing the collision would be inelastic, but I'm not sure how that helps. I can only think of ways of solving this if I'm given the velocity of the asteroid. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.