I've always loved the web for the amount of stuff you could find there. Sometimes you find super useful stuff, sometimes you find useless stuff like this asteroid impact simulator. So sure, it's useless, but you still want to try it... because after all, it's an asteroid impact simulator!
We all remember the disappearance of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago following an asteroid impact with the earth in the Yucatan area. So, this site will allow you to do the same thing today on our planet.
An asteroid impact simulator that you can configure as you wish
This little asteroid impact simulator designed as a bit of a joke has a few basic settings for a successful impact! Select a point on the world's map, define its diameter (from 1m to 1.5km), its speed (from 1 to 100km/s) and the angle of impact (between 5 and 90°). And for the more playful, choose the type of asteroid you want to crush on our planet: iron, stone, carbon, gold, or even an icy comet!
Once your asteroid is ready to destroy part of the earth, click launch asteroid to trigger the impact!
Let's try with a Pierre asteroid, 780m in diameter, launched at 100km/s with an angle of 60° right in the center of Paris...
After a little animation and the representation on the map of the impact, the result is clear, Greater Paris would not resist it... and a huge crater 29km wide and 809m deep would replace Paris and its suburbs. More than 5 million people would die because of the crater.
But that's not all, beyond the "simple" crater, the simulator explains all the other impacts and implications of this incident. Indeed, a 59km wide fireball would set the surface of the globe ablaze around the impact killing nearly 19m people, burning another 12,5 million to the 3rd degree and 25.5 million to the 2nd degree. The clothes of people present within a radius of 306km would burn and trees within a radius of 463km would catch fire.
It's starting to happen, but that's not all...
A shock wave of 247 decibels would kill 3.2 million people and cause many injuries to the lungs and eardrums, but also destroy many buildings.
And if you survived all that…you still have a huge gust of wind moving at 6km/s, sweeping away everything in its path and killing no fewer than 11.6 million people.
And finally, a terrible one earthquake magnitude 8.4 would top it all off by modestly killing two hundred thousand people.
But beyond that, the most important effect to consider is the influence of all the fallout on the atmosphere. The particles could block the Sun's light for a period long enough to affect all life on Earth.
Finally, the simulator indicates the probability of such an event occurring, which is fortunately very low, especially since NASA is already working on methods to deflect the trajectory of any asteroid that could pose a threat to our planet.
In short… good atmosphere!
