How dangerous is an asteroid impact on Earth? The horrific damage a 1,500-foot asteroid can do is detailed here.
With thousands of asteroids hovering around our planet, it’s a question of when, not if, an asteroid will strike. Fortunately, anyone living on the planet today has never witnessed an actual asteroid strike where a space rock measured more than a few feet. The closest we got was the Chelyabinsk incident in which an incoming asteroid blew up in the sky and still managed to injure thousands with its shock wave. Just two weeks ago, another rocket hit Earth, but few remnants landed. So, what if a 1,500-foot asteroid hits Earth tomorrow? For example, New York, a large and crowded city. How serious is the damage? How many people will they kill?
To answer the above questions, complex scientific analyzes and models are required. But thanks Asteroid launcherDesigned by programmer Neil Agarwal, answers to questions can be found in seconds. Interactive Maps are part of several educational apps that help you do everything from troubleshooting your shopping cart to designing your next iPhone.
An interactive map revealing the damage caused by the asteroid impact
To answer the question posed earlier, an iron asteroid 1,500 feet in diameter and hitting Earth at 150,000 miles per hour at a 45 degree angle could do a lot of damage. Assuming the asteroid hits New York, that’s exactly what will happen.
The asteroid will immediately create an 11-mile-wide crater to a depth of 2,292 feet. The impact alone will instantly vaporize 2,183,697 people. Yes, it would kill more than two million people instantly. The energy released by the collision would be as powerful as 141 gigatons of TNT. But that is not all. The impact would also create a 21-mile-wide fireball that would claim an additional 11,502,066 lives. Trees would have burned within 179 miles of impact. Then a shock wave will come and a magnitude 7.9 earthquake will cause more destruction.
It’s easy to see that the destruction will be unlike anything our minds can imagine. Agarwal built this app using Apple Maps. He added various customization options where you can control the composition, speed, angle of the asteroid impact and the location of the impact.
“I like playing disaster scenarios in my head, so I’ve always wanted a tool that would help visualize the effects of some major natural disasters. Asteroids are a good choice because their effects are far-reaching. I think this tool might also help people better appreciate our need for distraction from asteroids as well. He was on NASA’s DART mission,” Agarwal said Inform Versus.
