Destroy the World With This Asteroid Launcher Simulation

Creative coder Neal Agarwal has launched his newest project: Asteroid Launcher. You can choose the asteroid’s composition (iron, stone, comet, etc.), size, speed, angle of incidence, and place of impact. Then you click “launch” and see the havoc you’ve wrought upon the world, with all kinds of interesting statistics. I bombarded Los Angeles with an iron asteroid a half-mile across moving at 50,000 mph and the results were significant, as you can see from the fireball it created:

Some of the most interesting bits about the impact:

• The crater is 2,087 ft deep.
• Clothes would catch on fire within 86 miles of the impact.
• An estimated 4,343,300 people would die from the 249 decibel shock wave.
• Winds would reach 13,373 mph; within 105 miles it would feel like being inside an EF5 tornado.

Crikey! See also the description of the much more massive meteorite that slammed into the Yucatan peninsula 66 million years ago:

The meteorite itself was so massive that it didn’t notice any atmosphere whatsoever,” said Rebolledo. “It was traveling 20 to 40 kilometers per second, 10 kilometers - probably 14 kilometers — wide, pushing the atmosphere and building such incredible pressure that the ocean in front of it just went away.

And The World’s Loudest Sound:

The sound made by the Krakatoa volcanic eruption in 1883 was so loud it ruptured eardrums of people 40 miles away, travelled around the world four times, and was clearly heard 3,000 miles away.

• Earth
• Neal Agarwal
• science