A new interactive map brings the 1998 film Deep Impact to life, allowing users to drop a space rock anywhere in the world to watch the devastation unfold.
Called asteroid launcherthe system allows you to choose an impact location, the diameter of the asteroid, the speed at which it hits the ground and the angle of collision – and press “throw” to see the destruction it causes and the number of people killed.
If an asteroid measuring a mile in diameter crashes into Times Square at 152,000 miles per hour, it would create a crater 34 miles wide and vaporize 9,486,287 people with an impact equivalent to 6,403 gigatons of TNT.
The system also shares other catastrophic events that track, including shock waves, fireball size, and wind speed.
Asteroid Launcher is the brainchild of creative coder Neal Agarwal who told DailyMail.com that he was inspired by his favorite movie Deep Impact and wanted to create a disaster simulation website.
Asteroid Launcher allows users to choose a location to drop an asteroid. This simulation released a mile-wide asteroid in New York’s Times Square, creating a 34-mile-wide crater
“I love disaster movies and playing different doomsday scenarios in my head,” Agarwal told DailyMail.com.
“This project took about two months, one month of research and one month for coding and animations.”
He explained the equations behind Asteroid Launcher from the research papers of Dr. Gareth Collins and Dr. Clemens Rumpf, who study the effects of an asteroid impact.
“I chose these research papers because they contain detailed equations and models of all the various effects of an asteroid impact (thermal radiation, wind, shock waves, earthquakes, etc.)” , Agarwal said.
“They also do a great job of summarizing current knowledge in the field.”
The website also shows destructive events that would follow the initial impact, such as that 74-mile-wide fireball that would give more than four million people third-degree burns and kill more than nine million.
Another option shows the intense earthquakes that would be triggered following the impact
Asteroid Launcher details all the events, destruction and deaths that could occur in the event of a real asteroid impact.
For example, if the same-sized asteroid that hit Manhattan hits London while traveling at the same speed of 152,000 miles per hour, it would also create a 34-mile-wide crater that would vaporize over 7.7 million people. in the surrounding area.
In Times Square, the fireball would cover an area of 74 miles and vaporize 30,561,023 people.
And in London, the same fireball would be released on impact, killing 56,082,822 people.
“This tool is more to help the general public learn more about asteroid impacts,” Agarwal said.
Another simulation using London and with the same size asteroid that hit New York would also release a fireball 74 miles wide
Asteroid Launcher also formulates wind speeds after the asteroid hits. In the case of London, the wind within 150 miles of the crater would be faster than storms on Jupiter
Asteroid Launcher is the brainchild of creative coder Neal Agarwal who told DailyMail.com that he was inspired by his favorite movie Deep Impact and wanted to create a disaster simulation website.
“Scientists have even more accurate models of asteroid impacts which they run on supercomputers – this simulation is a more simplified version.”
Asteroid Launcher uses Apple Maps to pull satellite images of Earth into its simulation and overlay visualizations over the selected area to show users how far the destruction has traveled.
It also provides different options for the composition of the asteroid.
Users can drop a 2,400-foot-wide golden asteroid over Los Angeles at 247,000 miles per hour, leaving a 34-mile-wide crater in the ground and killing 5,210,549 people.
The simulated events in New York and London only happen once every 22 million years, but Earth should have a close call when a football pitch the size of three should approach within 19,600 miles from the surface of our planet in 2029.
The asteroid Apophis, named after the serpentine Egyptian god of chaos (also known as Apep), will pass Earth on April 13, 2029.
While researchers ruled out the possibility of the 1,115ft object hitting Earth, the close shave will present a unique opportunity to study an asteroid in detail; most of the others that come close are much smaller.
“Apophis’ close approach in 2029 will be an incredible opportunity for science,” said Marina Brozović, a radar specialist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who works on radar observations of near-Earth objects. (NEO).
“We will observe asteroids with optical and radar telescopes. With radar observations, we may be able to see surface details that are only a few meters in size.
The simulated events in New York and London only occur once every 22 million years, but a football field the size of three football fields is expected to approach within 19,600 miles from our planet’s surface in 2029. Pictured is a simulation of how close it is
It is expected to make its closest approach before 6 p.m. ET, when it will be over the Atlantic Ocean.
According to NASA, however, it will be visible in the sky hours before that point.
Apophis will appear in the Southern Hemisphere night sky for the first time, making itself known to viewers on the east coast of Australia.
It will then head west to reach the equator in the early afternoon before crossing the United States around 7 p.m.
The massive space rock will travel so fast it will cross the full width of the moon in less than a minute, NASA said in a 2019 statement.
While 19,000 miles may seem like a long way off, the space agency says it’s rare for an object this size to come so close