Space and Physics
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An awesome website allows you to simulate, in ridiculous detail, exactly what would happen if an asteroid impacted a place in the world of your choosing, including your evil in-laws' house. Asteroid Launcher demonstrates the utter destruction of an asteroid impact and even allows you to choose the size, speed, and impact angle of the extraterrestrial doombringer, so why not dump it on your hometown and see how completely screwed you would be?
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.The site was developed by Neal Agarwal, who puts an extraordinary amount of time and data into making it seriously accurate. You can even choose the composition of your asteroid, which does affect how much damage it will do. In fact, one study found that the size of an asteroid doesn’t actually matter that much – instead, it’s all about the rock composition of the impact area. Certain compositions create dust that goes up into the atmosphere and causes global catastrophe, while others just eviscerate everything in the nearby area.
Go ahead and try it for yourself – or, if you’re feeling more depressed about the idea of a nuclear winter instead of a dino-killing asteroid impact, why not try out a simulator that does the same with a nuclear warhead?
