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

Cool

[Zoshnell]

Then I can see at which point Bruce Willis and his crew will have to detonate the nuke warhead to save us all. Hollywood here I come!

Oh wait... f1r5t p05t

Re:Cool

[Jason Straight]

Perhaps the software can be modeled to simulate the dropping of a turd in the toilet, so I can see what the minimum safe distance to keep my toothbrush from the toilet will be.

Re:Cool

[Scratch-O-Matic]

Reminds me more of the "Radical Vertical Impact Simulator" from "Spies Like Us."

Re:Cool

[caulfield]

...an online program that calculates the effects of an asteroid impact that can be customized for several parameters.

Of Course! What Armageddon needs is parameters!

bash$ armageddon --no-ben-affleck --no-bruckheimer --no-rediculous-fucking-mech-warrior-drilling-mach ines-with-shitty-transmissions --with-scenes-longer-that-5-seconds

Duh! (karma to burn)

Now I can answer that age old question.

[dtfinch]

What would happen if a neutron star the size of the moon smacked into the earth at the speed of light?

Inputs:
Projectile Diameter: 10000000.00 m = 32800000.00 ft = 6210.00 miles
Projectile Density: 80000 kg/m3 (ironx10, probably an underestimate)
Impact Velocity: 300000.00 km/s = 186300.00 miles/s (speed of light)
Impact Angle: 45 degrees

Output:
Energy: 1.88 x 1042 Joules = 4.50 x 1026 MegaTons TNT
Transient Crater Diameter: 2897115.48 km = 1799108.71 miles
Final Crater Diameter: 20162191.03 km = 12520720.63 miles

We might not make it.

Re:Now I can answer that age old question.

[Anonymous Coward]

ummm....if something has velocity = speed of light, then does it not have "undefined" mass? m = m_0/sqrt(1-(v^2/c^2))

Re:Now I can answer that age old question.

[eggstasy]

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! :)

some hints

[AtariAmarok]

when big slow rocks get hit, they can break up into little fast rocks that might impact your ship

The fastest way to a high score is to treat the rocks as obstacles, and concentrate on shooting the little fast ship.

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?

[strictnein]

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.

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

[another_henry]

Because it's REALLY FUCKING BIG. Agh! Why is it that so many people don't get this? (not a rant at you in particular) What is it with everyone thinking that by mining the moon or landing rockets on it we're going to shift it out of its orbit or something? It's -big-, people!

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

[goodhell]

Actually the moon is slowly expanding its orbit. It is moving farther and farther from the earth and one day the earth will no longer have a moon. Check it out here. A brief explanation on our falling moon!

But by the time we don't have a moon, we'll have a giant space station up there that will take its place. And then everyone will be quoting "That's no moon, that's a space station."

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

[Hentai]

Umm... Tycho Crater actually isn't nearly as big as Copernicus crater, and even that didn't "crack" anything more than the moon's outer surface. The moon is really, REALLY big - at the size of planets and moons, anything big enough to deform its general shape won't leave a "crater" so much as just mush the moon into two or more smaller objects, that will each collapse into spheres under their own gravity. So if you're seeing a crater on something the size of a planet, it was WAY too small to actually break it.

Likewise, the earth's orbit hasn't shifted significantly since the moon was formed - which was at least 3 billion years ago. Anything else big enough to shift the earth's orbit would have made another moon. Remember, at these scales, the concept of solididity doesn't work exactly the way you'd think it would.

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

[Carnildo]

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.

Everytime I run it

[Anonymous Coward]

I die. This isn't very fun. How do you win?

Re:Everytime I run it

[Jhon]

[Cheesey synthesized voice]
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
[/Cheesey syntheszed voice]

Hmm?

[Knight Thrasher]

Doeas this mean the effects of an impact on... the planet? A human? A dead badger?

Re:Hmm?

[MBAFK]

"A dead badger?"

Who cares about the badger, what about the mushrooms and the SNNNAAAKKE!

Re:Hmm?

[shadowbearer]

I FINALLY got that stupid song out of my head, and you.... you...

You insensitive clod! :)

SB

Good simulation

[ximor_iksivich]

Good simulation, but I think the impact would depend upon which part of the planet the meteor/asteroid strikes as the geographic composition would affect that.

AWWW....

[Ogrez]

When I saw program... I was thinking along the lines of the Truck dismount..

Not really that funny until you start thinking of the little mans position riding the meteor...

Homeland security issue?

[vudufixit]

If you notice an asteroid with a swarthy complexion, a headscarf and a Koran using this simulation against sensitive targets on Earth, please notify the Dept of Homeland Security - immediately.

Meteor Crater up near the Grand Canyon

[portforward]

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.

Better yet

[ObviousGuy]

Why not start researching realistic methods of destroying/deflecting these menaces before they get the chance to do their damage on us? If we change our mindset from one of reacting to one of being proactive towards the elimination of these threats, we will not only improve our chances of surviving an asteroid attack, we will also be able to reap the scientific technology breakthroughs that came along with such research.

I'm just a lowly slashbot and don't have much say in how things are run at the upper echelons of government, but I think that it goes without saying that anyone who is serious about eliminating these threats needs to focus energies on 1) identifying suspicious threats, and 2) developing and using technologies that will neutralize those threats.

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.

Re:Better yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not start researching realistic methods of destroying/deflecting these menaces before they get the chance to do their damage on us? If we change our mindset from one of reacting to one of being proactive towards the elimination of these threats, we will not only improve our chances of surviving an asteroid attack, we will also be able to reap the scientific technology breakthroughs that came along with such research.

I think it's sad that we can't talk about assteroids without wanting to save the planet

Re:Better yet

[elviscious]

For starters because most of the life threatening asteroids that we see usually end up being discovered as they fly by us. It seems that most of the time we find out about the asteroids after they have just passed dangerously close to us, or when they are so close we would be screwed.

I would say that it would be more useful to start at the beginning of the problem and search the sky for these first... but I think most of that money was probably redirected to Mars.

Re:Better yet

[3waygeek]

Like this proposal from two former astronauts?

ouch

[gmiley01]

Your Inputs:
Distance from Impact: 1.00 km = 0.62 miles
Projectile Diameter: 3218.68 m = 10557.27 ft = 2.00 miles
Projectile Density: 8000 kg/m3
Impact Velocity: 80500.00 km/s = 49990.50 miles/s
Impact Angle: 45 degrees
Target Density: 3000 kg/m3
Target Type: Competent Rock or saturated soil
Energy:
4.53 x 1029 Joules = 1.08 x 1014 MegaTons TNT
The average interval between impacts of this size somewhere on Earth is 7.0 x 1012years
Crater Size:
What does this mean?

Transient Crater Diameter: 1423.11 km = 883.75 miles
Final Crater Diameter: 3678.54 km = 2284.37 miles
The crater formed is a complex crater.
Ejecta:
What does this mean?

Your position was inside the transient crater and ejected upon impact

-------------

Hope this doesn't hit me...

Re:ouch

[Camel Pilot]

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?

Re:ouch

[ptbarnett]

I noticed on their examples they used 20 km/s consistantly. Is this the solar system speed limit or something?

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!

Sims for Bruce Willis and two space shuttles?

[Vexler]

That way, we can watch "Armageddon" from the comfort of our research lab plasma screens.

Other simulation available

[MarkGriz]

Seems they've also designed an IP Packet Impact Simulator

It might be overkill

[Anonymous Coward]

But could this simulation be used to calculate the airspeed velocity of a laden swallow?

Apparent impact on server

[Anonymous Coward]

Now we know that striking a webserver with millions of weightless packets, some traveling at the speed of light, will... um, kill it.

Why not??

[Virtucon]

Why not put the grad students to work on identification and tracking solutions rather than the assessment of the impact.

Let's see, any asteroid, of say the size of the HST falling to earth will cause damage. This is not spongeworthy!

Now scientists and FUD dwellers have a rapid tool to ascertain everyone's doom. What we need now is a wireless version, running on a PDA so we can calculate at any whim a what if scenario because the big rock will fall on us and we didn't see it coming!

1) First Identify and Track
2) ???
3) Profit!

Aiming?

[Alsier]

I can't find the field to enter in my ex-girlfriends coordinates in.

Re:Aiming?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I can't find the field to enter in my ex-girlfriends coordinates in."

Is there a coordinate system that makes use of imaginary numbers?

Maybe you need to change your diet?

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

How far above the toilet are you sitting?!? That's a lot of splash! Consider a change of diet, or stop standing on the seat when you use it.

Actually, it's the FLUSH that disperses the fine mist of coliform bacteria...

I wonder what they'll name the crater...

[djward]

where their server used to be?

mist effects make that irrelevant

[arete]

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.

Re:mist effects make that irrelevant

[Mateito]

> it's generally your refrigerator door handle,
> followed by other door handles. Which you
> probably touch before you eat.

Must remember:

- Open fridge
- take out food on plate
- close fridge
- scratch balls
- eat

Re:mist effects make that irrelevant

[cens0r]

Actually the germs from your own digestive tract aren't that harmful to you. It's someone elses you should worry about.

Uh-oh

[holzp]

That crater over there was their server having just been hit by the Slashdot asteriod.

What do you mean?

[dethl]

But could this simulation be used to calculate the airspeed velocity of a laden swallow?

African or European?

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.

Damn Slashdotters

[Sycraft-fu]

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.

It must be our fault

[Saganaga]

I hear about people proposing that we should be prepared to attack or deflect any large asteroid heading towards Earth. Instead of trying to do that, I think we should try to understand why the asteroids are attacking us. We need to examine what we have done to the asteroids to make them hate us so much. Ultimately, that's the only way to stop asteroid attacks.

But no body count

[shoppa]

It calculates the blast, depth of ejecta, and the force of the air blast at a distance from ground zero.

But no body count! (Or obliterated body count, probably more appropriate here.)

Standard Texas Unit

[TomorrowPlusX]

I'm disappointed at the lack of standard-texas-units for the meteor diameter.

Or, for that matter, the standard volkswagon-bug unit.

It's on a faster server now

[Sycraft-fu]

Though it's still kinda loaded. Limited to 100 connections at a time. Still a high load, but should work fine now.

Re:It's on a faster server now

[Anonymous Coward]

...should work fine now.

Not to worry. We'll soon put a stop to that.

Anvil calculations

[Cyran0]

...or, if you're Wile E. Coyote...

Inputs:
Projectile Diameter: 1 m = 3.28 ft
Projectile Density: 8000 kg/m3
Impact Velocity: .10 km/s (terminal velocity)
Impact Angle: 90 degrees

Output:
Crater depth: 3 ft
Crater shape: coyote
Sign poking out of crater: "Ouch!"

Dave Barry's Simulation

[35ft_twinkie]

What happens if a big asteroid hits the Earth? Judging from realistic simulations involving a sledge hammer and a common laboratory frog, we can assume it will be pretty bad.

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...

No need to worry ...

[Greedo]

Your Inputs:

Distance from Impact: 0.00 km = 0.00 miles
Projectile Diameter: 0.05 m = 0.16 ft = 0.00 miles
Projectile Density: 1500 kg/m3
Impact Velocity: 0.01 km/s = 0.00 miles/s
Impact Angle: 90 degrees
Target Density: 1000 kg/m3
Target Type: Competent Rock or saturated soil

This projectile is too small to traverse the atmosphere intact; it does not form a crater on the surface.

The energy shown below is deposited in the atmosphere.

... so be sure to turn on the fan.

Energy:

1.23 Joules = 0.00 KiloTons TNT
The average interval between impacts of this size somewhere on Earth is less than 1 month.

Yikes! Less than once a month? You need to see a doctor, pronto!

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.

-1 WRONG

[winwar]

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.)

I love degenerate cases.

[Atario]

So, if a ball of solid iron the same size as Earth creeps up to us at 1 cm/sec, the "crater" (indentation?) will only be 45 miles across, and no one much will feel it. Also, we can expect this to happen every 800,000 years.

No matter how many times you run it...

[HedonismBot]

it always lands on Moe's