EVER wondered what would happen if an asteroid crashed into your local area?
An expert has made a chilling simulator to see just how serious such an event would be in any part of the world.
1
You can select from type of asteroid, size and even speed to get an estimation of what might happen.
This includes how many would die as a result.
Aiming a 1km-wide stone asteroid travelling at 58miles per hour with an impact angle of 45 degrees towards London would have devastating consequences, the site suggests.
It would leave a humongous 26km-wide crater decimating the capital.
An estimated 4,056,089 people would be vaporized in the crater.
But even more would die from the 56km-wide fireball that comes with such an impact.
The simulator suggests more than 24million would perish as a result of the fireball alone.
And an estimated 6,468,423 people would die from the shock wave too.
Most read in Tech
If that weren’t enough, the wind blast from it would cause an estimated 12.7million deaths, stretching into parts of France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.
It would also cause an 8.3 magnitude earthquake.
Of course, you could try something much smaller.
Most small comets burn up as they blast through Earth’s tough atmosphere.
Fortunately it’s all just a simulation based on scientific data and not a depiction of any known asteroid heading our way.
In real life, Nasa is constantly scouring space for the huge rocks.
Potential hazardous and near Earth objects are detected all the time but never come close enough to cause concern.
The space agency is already preparing for the future though, having recently tested a spacecraft designed to smash into dangerous asteroids.
They used the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) to intentionally crash into a space rock 11million miles from Earth which actually posed zero threat to us.
But they successfully pushed the asteroid into a different direction, showing we could do the same mission again for real dangers in the future.
You can try the simulator for yourself at neal.fun/asteroid-launcher.
Creator Neal Agarwal developed it using papers by Dr Gareth Collins and Dr Clemens Rumpf.
“I grew up watching disaster movies like Deep Impact and Armageddon, and so I always wanted to make a tool that would let me visualize my own asteroid impact scenarios,” he told Gizmodo.
“I think this tool is for anyone who loves playing out ‘what-if’ scenarios in their head.”
Find out more about science
Want to know more about the weird and wonderful world of science? From the Moon to the human body, we have you covered…
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online Tech & Science team? Email us at [email protected]
This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk
