The Asteroid Launcher is an interactive simulator that allows users to simulate how exactly an asteroid might crush, set fire to, and destroy a specific location. The app is made by developer Neal Agarwal who has a knack for data-driven projects, showing impressively detailed scenarios of an asteroid impact.
Agarwal has been creating absurd, funny mini-sites, and his new development is not that different. It can calculate the depth of the crater from the asteroid impact, the number of victims, TNT equivalent, frequency of similar meteor strikes on Earth, volume of sound during the collision, number of shock wave victims, and many others.
An Educational Asteroid Impact Simulator
To use the interactive app, Futurism reports that the user should select the features or composition of the asteroid first. They can choose the space rock's size, speed, and impact angle, and decide if it will be made up of carbon, gold, iron, or stone. Users also have a choice of whether to launch a comet that is made up of ice and dust.
Then users choose which location they want the asteroid to fall into. The site will then provide extremely precise estimates of death and destruction, which takes into account the size of the impact crater, the fireball, shockwave, mega-tornado-like wind speeds, and devastating earthquakes that might ensue.
Although it is horrifying to imagine an asteroid hitting Earth, given its catastrophic impact, some details of the app are admittedly cool. For example, the simulator will also tell how many people are vaporized after the impact or burned due to the fireball, and also tell how many will sustain lung or ear damage due to the shockwave, as well as the number of people killed due to the searing wind speeds.
The simulator is a fascinating app that may be a tool to generate public support for NASA which needs to convince taxpayers that their asteroid-deflecting technology will be put to good use. Therefore, the app is very educational despite the horrifying effects of an asteroid's impact it shows.
Example Scenario of Using Asteroid Launcher
In a scenario tested by Christopher Livingston for PC Gamer, he wrote in his article that dropping a 2,500-foot-diameter asteroid composed of carbon in the small city where he lives resulted in a 5.7-mile-wide crater and vaporized 84,951 people.
The Asteroid Launcher showed the impact of an asteroid of that enormous size, which he said happens to pass by Earth every 200,000 years. His house is outside the impact zone, but the side effects of a giant carbon space rock hitting the ground at 38,000 miles per hour could result in a fireball that would flash-fry another 1.3 million people.
Some people may not turn to ash after the impact, but half a million people would suffer third-degree burns and presumably die later in agony. An additional one million would also receive second-degree burns from the impact.
Meanwhile, the shockwave would kill nearly a million more and destroy buildings within 70 miles of the impact site. Those located 40 mils will experience damaged lungs and ruptured eardrums. People living within 60 miles may also experience tornadoes and earthquakes that will kill thousands more.
RELATED ARTICLE: NASA's DART Spacecraft Worked! Asteroid Killer Changed the Harmless Space Rock's Orbit More Than Expected
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