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Asteroid Impact Simulator Available
crem_d_genes writes "Scientists at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory have developed an online program that calculates the effects of an asteroid impact that can be customized for several parameters. Results and the frequency of the type of event you have selected are displayed with an explanation of what they mean. A news briefing of the full story is available."
I went to the Meteor Crater in Northern Arizona and at the visitor center they had something very similar, with graphics and everything. You put in the speed, angle, size and density of the asteroid, and they had a graphical display of the damage.
Not to take anything away from the UofA. I live in Tucson, and know some of the planetary scientists.
Really big honkin' rocks hit the earth every X million years
Because the moon is much much much bigger than those "big honkin' rocks". A big meteor hitting earth or the moon is 1km in diameter.
A 1-2km rock hitting earth destroys most life on a continent on earth. 5-10km destroys most (larger) life across the planet.
The cockroaches will, of course, continue to live.
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You do realize when you flush it aerates it and the fecal matter can travel up to 20 feet.
So make sure you put the cover down if you want your toothbrush to be safe.
We all live in a #FFFF00 submarine...
To me, at least, that simulator wouldn't matter. You're discussing the expelling of toliet water. You can either consider it relatively clean or not. If you consider it not, you have to account for the very fine mist that probably covers most of your bathroom whenever you flush that toliet - you need a cabinet to keep your toothbrush in if that freaks you out.
It gets worse, though - the most germy place in your house isn't your toliet seat, bathroom floor or toliet water (which is clorinated anyway) - it's generally your refrigerator door handle, followed by other door handles. Which you probably touch before you eat.
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Impact Velocity: 80500.00 km/s = 49990.50 miles/s
Ooch is right. I think your velocity might be a little above the mean at a ~1/4 of the speed of light.
I noticed on their examples they used 20 km/s consistantly. Is this the solar system speed limit or something?
Load average on the server is currently 98. We are trying to move it to a more powerful, less utilized server. Oh and it's actually hosted at the Electrical and Computer Engineering department.
Though it's still kinda loaded. Limited to 100 connections at a time. Still a high load, but should work fine now.
You believe incorrectly. There have been multiple ice ages in Earth's geologic history. During the Permian and late Proterozoic for instance. Less extensive or more poorly constrained events happened at other times (Carboniferous, Ordivician and Silurian, and earlier in the Proterozoic, etc.)
Those results are hardly user-friendly. If you're not a physics genius, there's a better simulator here. :)
In addition to the scientific number-spam, it briefly explains the results and even presents a picture of a real crater that is thought to have been caused by a meteor similar to the one you specified.
It doesn't seem to have the same degree of flexibility as the one in the article, however, but at least it's fun!
Like this proposal from two former astronauts?
Try this simulator referenced earlier in the thread:
http://janus.astro.umd.edu/astro/impact.html
If you enter a speed lower than 11.2 km/s, you will get this error message:
As an object falls toward a planet, it is accelerated by the planet's gravity. The slowest possible impact speed for interplanetary material is the planet's escape velocity. Impact speeds for Earth range from 11.2 km/s to 72.8 km/s. Try again with a faster speed!
Next full Moon, look closely at Tyco Crater. That is one honkin HUGE hole! look north and south near Tyco. What you see is...cracks. Sometime in the past, a collision occurred that almost cracked the moon in half. The luck of the draw isn't every X*6 million years, it is once....only once. So far, Mammals have won this all important lottery
At the speeds and scales involved in asteroid impacts, the bodies involved are effectivly liquid. You can't "crack" the moon any more than you can "crack" a drop of water. The "cracks" you see are splashes of rock, thrown out during the impact.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.