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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."
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
"Do you suppose that's why God lives in the Heavens? Because he lives in fear of His creations?" - Steve Buscemi
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.
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.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I die. This isn't very fun. How do you win?
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.
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.
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.
I have been pwned because my
Seems they've also designed an IP Packet Impact Simulator
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
I can't find the field to enter in my ex-girlfriends coordinates in.
where their server used to be?
But could this simulation be used to calculate the airspeed velocity of a laden swallow?
African or European?
"Some fight for law. Some fight for justice. What will you fight for? One day, you will see."
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.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
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.
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.
I'm disappointed at the lack of standard-texas-units for the meteor diameter.
Or, for that matter, the standard volkswagon-bug unit.
lorem ipsum, dolor sit amet
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."
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...
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
...or, if you're Wile E. Coyote...
.10 km/s (terminal velocity)
Inputs:
Projectile Diameter: 1 m = 3.28 ft
Projectile Density: 8000 kg/m3
Impact Velocity:
Impact Angle: 90 degrees
Output:
Crater depth: 3 ft
Crater shape: coyote
Sign poking out of crater: "Ouch!"
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.
Yikes! Less than once a month? You need to see a doctor, pronto!
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
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.
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]