Scientific Accuracy Of The Movie Armageddon

The movie Armageddon is extremely entertaining, some parts are incredibly dramatic while other parts are almost humorous, but at no point in time is Armageddon portrayed as scientifically accurate. Watching the movie as a child it was almost scary thinking that this is something that could actually happen in real life, and now as an adult with an astronomy class (thank you Professor Roberta Koch) and geology class under my belt, the plot of the movie is almost laughable; until Bruce Willis sacrifices himself for the sake of humanities survival. That part is always sad regardless of who you are or what your scientific background is. But going back to the scientific accuracies of the movie, or the lack there of, is the premise of this review.

First off, there are no asteroids in the solar system that big. We'd have discovered them ages ago; Ceres, the largest asteroid in the main Asteroid Belt, is about 900 kilometers across, and Texas (at its widest point) is about 1,400 kilometers across. Even if we assume the size is an exaggeration, it still doesn't work out. A comet could not simply impact an asteroid and knock it out of orbit. The third inaccuracy I’m pointing out is that the big asteroid is preceded by lots of little ones which hit New York City, Paris, Shanghai, etc. It is possible for the Earth to be pelted by precursors of the main asteroid, hypothetically speaking, if the initial impact with the comet sent shrapnel flying. But that shrapnel would disintegrate quickly, and most likely by the time the shrapnel reaches the Earth, very little would be left. And another thing: why do movie asteroids only target big cities? I bet upstate New York got hit

During the movie we get a very good look at the asteroid, (mostly because the end of the movie took place on the surface rough, jagged surface of the asteroid). But when an object gets to be a certain size, say larger than “the size of Texas,” the strength of its own gravity tends to shape it into a sphere, hence why all the planets are spherical in shape and even most of the dwarf planets. So why is this one jagged? Perhaps because of the comet collision (which in turn means the original asteroid was even larger). But this is just me