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."

Comments

Why dosen't the moon get knocked out of orbit?

[e1618978]

Really big honkin' rocks hit the earth every X million years, so it seems like they would hit the moon every (X*6) million years or so - why is the moon still there?

Re:Why dosen't the moon get knocked out of orbit?

[pilgrim23]

It does. I am quite sure the orbital dynamics of the Earth and the Moon have been influenced by impacts. Example: prior to the dinosaur killer 64 million years ago, I do believe that Earth had never before experienced an Ice Age. Even BIGGER example: the Permian mass extinction (remember Trilobites?) 248 million years ago; I think there is good indications that Earth's orbit was quite different prior to that event. Certainly the atmosphere, climate zones, sea structure and compositions etc were. Look at the Moon. 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...

Re:Better yet

[foidulus]

Well, a system to deflect/destroy the asteroid would cost a LOT of money, and despite like you said that there would be scientific breakthroughs etc associated with this, in these times of record deficits, nobody wants to be the one who boasts spending all this money on something that seems like a far off event to most people, they want government spending on something more tangible. However, these people who do not want to spend any money would be the ones pointing fingers at scientists and asking why they cannot do anything about it. I suppose it's one of those paradoxical things, people want the benefits of scientific research, but at the same time don't want to spend any money on it.

Just a couple months late

[Control Group]

I could really have used this a couple months ago, when working up background for this (that was only one of several contributions, the full list can be seen here. And now the impact calculator appears down, so I can't check my back-of-the-napkin calculations...

According to me, at 2600kg/m^3 (a number I based off very sketchy research, but now seems a lot more reasonable), 600m in diameter, with an impact velocity of 2.7E4m/s (which is ~1.0E4m/s higher than the average "small rock" terminal velocity when it burns up), the impact would release as much energy as the entire nuclear arsenal of the world twice over (disregarding ablation during reentry, which I'm guessing would be nominal).

And that's hardly a huge rock, either.

Simulation Points

[justanyone]

The interesting features for me would be the following:

• impact in an artic or antartic area where vaporization of large amounts of ice could possibly change global albedo (reflectiveness) as well as add water to oceans;
• if impact is known about in advance, and predicted to occur in a populated area, would we force people to leave at gunpoint or just 'strongly urge' them to leave;
• would an impact collapse popular cave destinations or mineshafts?
• would detonating a large nuke at the point of impact, immediately before the impact, do anything constructive?

just some ideas...

Pretty frequent

[jmichaelg]

The planet killers don't show up very often but the little guys show up routinely. A 3 meter piece of ice has about as much energy as a small nuclear warhead.

Just the thing to show up unexpectedly during a face-off such as the Indian/Packistani one a few years back.As it happens, a chunk of something did happen to show up at about the same time except it exploded over the mediterranean instead of the Indian/Pak border.

To me, the immediate value of MIT Linear and JPL's NEAT program isn't in finding the one in 100 million big rocks, it's in spotting these little ones that could be mistaken for a nuke going off at the wrong time.