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Simulate Asteroid Impacts on Earth
- bprasanna 4y agoInteresting to see the usage of Apple Maps! Any specific reason?
- jstummbillig 4y agoWell, that was fun
- signa11 4y agothis reminds me of the most excellent robert-heinlein book "the moon is a harsh mistress", "we will throw rocks at them" ! highly recommended.
- winReInstall 4y agotanstaafl
- theylovezmw 4y agoLots of fun, Neal's work is always very impressive - not only on the technical implementation level, but the creativity as well.
- themarbz 4y agoCool! Some info on tidal waves for water hits would be even cooler
- gwill 4y agopretty neat. I wish it would tell you an approximate terminal velocity for the mass of your asteroid.
- djexjms 4y agoThird field down after simulating the impact.
- jamesmaniscalco 4y agoThere is a nice calculator for terminal velocity of a sphere in air here: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/airfri2.html http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/airfri2.html That being said, I'm not sure how relevant terminal velocity is for anything but the smallest/slowest ends of the parameters of this app. For an asteroid going 38,000 mph (default speed on linked page), drag just doesn't play a big part - the asteroid passes through the atmosphere in ~5 seconds, not enough time for it to slow down significantly.
- faebi 4y agoI'm not very good in successful HN titles, therefore I let ChatGPT write that one for me with this prompt: Rewrite the following twitter message as a hackernews title. It should be as successfull as possible and attract many readers Original Tweet: New page! Make your own asteroid and launch it at Earth to see the effects.
- panosfilianos 4y agoThis is simply insane at this point.
- TeMPOraL 4y agoMore than, that, if "Simulate Asteroid Impacts on Earth" is really what ChatGPT came up with, then color me impressed - it has done its job perfectly.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- EarthLaunch 4y agoI want this for git commit messages.
- TacticalCoder 4y agoI tried it just for fun yesterday: transforming Git commit message whose subject are too long and that are not in the imperative tense into short title using the imperative tense. For this kind of thing it mostly works.
- brookst 4y agoVery cool. After trying numerous combinations of composition, velocity, and diameter... my takeaway is that most asteroids 70 feet or bigger would do substantial damage at 1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park, CA.
- newaccount2021 4y ago
- twothamendment 4y agoIt would be cool if it could factor in mountains - but I get why that is not an easy task. Fun isn't the best word to describe this page - but it was!
- jvanderbot 4y agoIt's conceptually simple : use visibility based on viewshed for heat and direct blast concussion. Secondary effects (wind) would be harder. But it's computationally extremely difficult, as you say.
- TeMPOraL 4y agoWell, you could cheat. There's so much cheap GPU compute used for mining shitcoins and training glorified Markov chains on Reddit dumps, surely someone could spare a few racks to run some CFD on a detailed GIS model of our planet, to create lookup tables that would allow everyone to cheaply simulate all kinds of fun events, such as nuclear detonations, asteroid impacts, "rods of god", relativistic kill vehicles, supervolcano eruptions, etc. anywhere on the planet, at the push of a button. The social value of this would be immense - even if you and me never used those precomputed LUTs for anything, they would surely help Randall Munroe or Kurzgesagt or others answer even more high-energy "what-if" questions with even greater accuracy!
- vba616 4y ago>surely someone could spare a few racks to run some CFD on a detailed GIS model of our planet, to create lookup tables that would allow everyone to cheaply simulate all kinds of fun events, such as nuclear detonations, asteroid impacts, "rods of god", relativistic kill vehicles, supervolcano eruptions, etc. anywhere on the planet, at the push of a button. Nobody ever did a sequel to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimEarth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimEarth ?
- mehwoot 4y agoshameless plug: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1482770/Terra_Firma/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1482770/Terra_Firma/
- Baeocystin 4y agoDefinitely more colorful than Nukemap. Would love to see something other than a simple circle for the various radii- surely the impact angle and local geography would shape the blast, no? (I realize that is a very hard problem to accurately model.)
- sholladay 4y agoWhy do we enjoy simulating our own destruction so much? I was seeing how big/fast an asteroid that hits New York would have to be to hurt me in Boston. Turns out it would have to be larger than I thought. Would be nice to be able to click a place on the map and see how survivable that location is.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago> I was seeing how big/fast an asteroid that hits New York would have to be to hurt me in Boston. Turns out it would have to be larger than I thought. Did the same on my area with that infamous nuclear bomb simulator/map. Some of the historical warheads seem surprisingly weak relative to modern city sizes. That said, in both nuclear and asteroid impact scenarios, do consider that, while you may be out of range of the thermal and pressure waves, you might still be in range of "extreme disruption caused by survivors closer to the blast moving outwards, emergency services moving inwards, and the economy and social order going to shitters as the country deals with what happened" wave.
- frobolo 4y agoI can only recommend Threads (1984) if you want a glimpse into just how utterly bleak post-apocalyptic life might be. https://archive.org/details/threads_202007 https://archive.org/details/threads_202007
- the_only_law 4y agoI tried dropping a big asteroid in an airport near me, ended up killing millions and causing mass property damage across the entire southeast.
- skilled 4y agoI think this needs to be optimized for impacts that hit water and the effects that would have, because right now it doesn't do that so it feels a bit generic.
- agilob 4y agoSpeed is limited to 100km/s, our Voyager 1 is going 17 km/s doesn't sound so fast.
- zppln 4y agoAn impact this size happens on average every 25,000 years A comet on default settings. T-that can't be right, r-right?
- TeMPOraL 4y agoDon't worry, we're overdue a climate-altering / mass-extinction-triggering supervolcano eruption anyway.
- maxbond 4y agoI'm sure you know this, but just to point out, we're no more "overdue" for a supervolcano because it's been longer than average since an eruption than a gambler is "due" to win because they've pulled the arm on their slot machine enough times. (Though iirc some volcanoes are periodic. But unless I'm quite mistaken, supervolcanoes aren't periodic globally.)
- bee_rider 4y agoIs there really no memory in this process? I imagine to some extent, some tensions would be building up or something like that.
- maxbond 4y agoI don't feel qualified to say there is no "memory", if I make claims any stronger than I've made already I'll be out of my depth, but see the information below for instance: > Most volcanic systems that have a supereruption do not have them multiple times. When supereruptions do occur more than once in a volcanic system, they are not evenly spaced in time. https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/yellowstone-overdue-eruption-when-will-yellowstone-erupt https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/yellowstone-overdue-eruption-when-... I think these are just very complex systems with many different factors, like the kind of rock they're under, what's going on with the continental plate at that time, etc. We don't have a good understanding of what's happening in the mantle, which is especially relevant for hotspot volcanoes like Yellowstone that are fed from the mantle (note that this is not how all supervolcanoes work). Allow me to leave you with an awesome animation of the formation of a very different supervolcano: https://youtu.be/sx3_WJHAERc https://youtu.be/sx3_WJHAERc
- PM_me_your_math 4y agoHow many people tagged NYC with an asteroid? Just wondering.
- mrlonglong 4y agoTrump at his place in Florida. Felt quite satisfying.
- bee_rider 4y agoOh the conspiracy theories that would cause.
- PM_me_your_math 4y agoGet well soon!
- boilerupnc 4y agoWhere's my resulting tsunami info? ;-)
- omoikane 4y agoCame here to ask the same question :) I picked the impact location to be some ocean spot and it didn't kill anyone, I am not sure if that's optimistic.
- JoshGlazebrook 4y agoSame. I just rewatched deep impact recently too so I picked somewhere off the east coast.
- mikewarot 4y agoIt's truly amazing how much stuff you can just dump safely in the middle of Lake Michigan. Of course... there's no calculation of the Seiche it would induce.
- Fomite 4y agoThis was my experiment too - "What if it hits one of the great lakes?"
- adabyron 4y agoThey become even more extraordinarily great lakes! Some believe this has already happened. https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2019/12/great-lakes-meteorites-timeline/ https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2019/12/great-lakes-meteorites...
- donatj 4y agoI've always had a weird fear whenever I was in Duluth that Lake Superior would get hit by an Asteroid. The lake itself seemed like a much bigger and more likely target. A couple people have commented as much, but I wish this took water into account.
- vba616 4y agoI feel like I read somewhere that the K-T boundary asteroid is thought to have been more destructive due to hitting relatively near land than if it had been in the deepest ocean. I don't know how that would compare to hitting land.
- fallingknife 4y agoShouldn't make that much difference. Average ocean depth is about 3km, and the asteroid was 10km in diameter, so ocean not much of a cushion.
- Baeocystin 4y agoIt wasn't so much that it hit near land as it was the type of land it hit- lots of gypsum, which meant a lot of sulfates injected into the biosphere at once, enough to acidify the oceans to the point of food chain collapse. It really hit in just the 'right' spot in terms of maximizing damage.
- sisteczko 4y agoToo bad not everyone thinks in terms of miles, feet nor furlongs. I suggest you add an option for a metric system in your spare time. Otherwise great illustrative site!
- svnpenn 4y agothis only goes up to one mile. Chicxulub was six miles.
- sliken 4y agoSure, but the simulation doesn't include secondary effects like no photosynthesis for a few years.
- aaroninsf 4y ago<click click click> this is fun, I should show it to the kids <scroll, scroll> hmm <scroll, scroll> ... <deletes from browsing history> The kids have enough lingering anxiety from the pandemic I think
- lucb1e 4y agoIs it just the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon ("a cognitive bias in which, after noticing something for the first time, there is a tendency to notice it more often") or do asteroid impact related things always go for Manhattan? I open this map and, bam, there's a map zoomed right onto Manhattan and a "select impact location" prompt.
- jimbokun 4y agoOr sometimes Tokyo.
- lucb1e 4y agoThey've already got earthquakes and tsunamis, can Manhattan not have the asteroids? (Says the European, dodging all natural disasters)
- midasuni 4y agoI do remember Paris being destroyed in one film - armageddon perhaps. O’Neill comments on it in an SG1 episode.
- midoridensha 4y agoWhy is that cities in the northern hemisphere are always the ones destroyed in fiction? There's cities in the southern hemisphere too: destroy some of them! Actually, I want to call out "The Expanse" for this (warning: spoilers): in the episode where one of Mars' interplanetary nuclear missiles gets through Earth's defenses, it strikes South America. But this is the only time I can think of this happening in disaster fiction; usually the entire existence of the southern hemisphere is ignored.
- dwringer 4y agoI think the name itself is a bit of a meme for blast radius calculations and the like.
- rossdavidh 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- annoyingnoob 4y agoWhich is worse, a mile wide fireball in the sky or a mile wide impact? Seems all bad to me.
- IceHegel 4y agoEdward Teller, the inventor of the hydrogen bomb and longtime head of Los Alamos National Laboratory, believed it was possible and even a good idea to place 1 gigaton yield warheads on orbital platforms for asteroid defense. It might seem outlandish to us, but then again, so would a hydrogen bomb.
- ShakataGaNai 4y agoHe's not entirely wrong. If we had a good way of getting a warhead to an incoming asteroid, it'd be a great safety mechanism. Unfortunately, today, there is no one trustworthy to put that sort of weaponry into somewhere that would allow it to strike any location on earth with less than a few minutes warning. Especially since something of that yield would devastate a large portion of earth. Though lets be honest, anything in orbit is dangerous. A crowbar (aka Rods from God aka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment ) is even smaller and just as dangerous.
- midasuni 4y agoImagine you we’re an insane billionaire with the ability to launch objects into say a lunar distance orbit. It wouldn’t require a lot of cold gas to drop some rods onto any spot on earth, and it would be undetectable until the explosion happens. As space becomes easier to access the risk increases exponentially.
- jacquesm 4y agoWell, fortunately we don't have any insane billionaires with the ability to launch stuff into orbit... /s
- lambdadmitry 4y agoIt would require quite a lot of it because you need to significantly change the orbit, especially if you want it to still be plenty fast on impact. And it doesn't make much sense either. A billionaire can just pay a few millions to send a guy in a car bomb or a cessna full of explosives. It's way simpler and just as undetectable until the explosion happens.
- fitzroy 4y agoI'm confused. A 100 ft asteroid that explodes 2.2 miles in the air seems to result in far more deaths from a 0.6 mile wide fireball compared to a 200ft asteroid that would hit the ground in the same location (Fort Lauderdale, FL). 100ft = 211,172 deaths Is this correct? https://imgur.com/a/Elst6Q3 https://imgur.com/a/Elst6Q3
- Metacelsus 4y agoAir bursts give a wider area of destruction than ground bursts.
- overcast 4y agoFor the same reason nuclear weapons detonate over the ground. Greater destruction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_burst https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_burst
- sliken 4y agoDigging a giant crater localizes the destruction and consumes most of the energy An air burst doesn't bother digging a giant crater and has a larger fraction of it's energy dumped into the atmosphere for fireballs, high winds, and direct radiation.
- 4y ago
- prawn 4y agoFirst place I launched, the asteroid landed NE of New York City. One of the places just outside the crater was a town aptly named Dodgingtown, Connecticut.
- papa-whisky 4y agoFrom the other comments here it would appear that this site uses imperial units, but I see it as metric. And no option to switch... Is this being inferred from my location? Anyway, most deaths I've been able to get is with a gold asteroid, max width and speed, impacting near Dindori, India. The fireball would kill about 448 million. Impact angle makes very little difference.
- squarefoot 4y agoIt probably uses your default language settings; I'm in the EU with the OS set up in English and I see imperial units.
- yarone 4y agoI remember a similar app - way less sophisticated - at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.
- rodolphoarruda 4y agoIf you are Brazilian, you can only think of Brasilia when you see simulators like this one. It's always your top of mind first target place.
- uoaei 4y agoCan't help but wonder what the heatmap of location choices looks like for everyone using the app.
- lanewinfield 4y agocan we take a moment and recognize that neal agarwal (the creator of this site) has made an incredible body of work like this that continuously has us thinking, laughing, and interacting? https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=neal.fun https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=neal.fun nice one as always, neal.
- sharkweek 4y agoI adore people who build stuff like this. The “absurd trolley problem” was genius. Fun, silly, sometimes a little weird, corners of the internet are what drew me in in the first place. Every few years I check in on Zombo.com to make sure it’s still there.
- elihu 4y agoI wonder if there's a log being kept? I'm at least mildly curious what percentage of visitors immediately pan over to Moscow and let one rip. It'd also be interesting to break it down by geolocation of the visitor's IP address.
- 1letterunixname 4y agoInteresting. What's the axis orientation for "angle"? Perhaps estimations for not-just-normal-to-the-plane impact trajectories with entry angle and heading?
- 2Gkashmiri 4y agothis is not taking into acount the elevation data from the geography, it is assuming everything is on a flat plane... elevation would be nice, like a mountain would act as a barrier or something
- dylan604 4y agoso for fun, i threw one at Los Angeles. Downtown specifically. By the animation of the fireball and sonic waves, it seems quite devastating. My question is if the fact that downtown LA is in a bowl, would the surrounding mountains lessen the devastation at all compared to the exact same asteroid hitting somewhere else much more flat like say Dallas? Like, would Burbank be less destroyed from an LA impact than say Frisco outside of Dallas with nothing to lessen/deflect? then again, it's california, so the seismic damage might just set of the Big One(tm) resulting in even larger damage as california would just split off into the ocean giving arizona some much needed ocean front property finally.
- ostardo 4y ago,
- TheDesolate0 4y ago
- Simon_O_Rourke 4y agoThere's something immensely satisfying with the idea of a 500m space rock vaporizing Jersey City!
- NiceWayToDoIT 4y agoCool, nice addition would be to recognize sea or ocean and then calculate size and destructive power of a tidal wave.
- kybernetyk 4y agoFeature suggestion: Add an option to switch to metric units (even after 40 years on this planet I can't imagine much when you show me feet or mph).
- cafeinux 4y agoWeird, for me (in an european country) every data appears in metric units.
- LukaD 4y agoThe app probably uses something `navigator.language` to determine which unit to use. Unfortunately the browser doesn't expose any API to get the user's preferred measurement units. I assume it works for you because your browser locale is not en-us.
- RektBoy 4y agoPlease at least make it in normal units which everybody use, not in glass of milk per hour or something.
- lurker616 4y agoI could kill approx 500 million people in the fireball. Anyone higher?
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y agoI am a bit underwhelmed I can't get an asteroid there that will allow me to completely destroy life on Earth.
- balaji1 4y agoYeah.. The biggest fastest asteroid doesn't seem to cause a planet wide issue. What killed the dinos then? Jk... I do not have enough info about the dino extinction, and I understand this is a fun internet toy. Very cool and neal.fun is amazing in general.
- stevespang 4y ago
- krunck 4y agoIt seems to me that the estimates of how frequent a given impact happens are off. An impact by a iron meteorite 200' in diameter at a speed of 20k MPH and 90 degree angle does not happens on average every 454 years. When was the last time any that size rock impacted the earth?
- fallingknife 4y agoI think it's just based on impact energy
- terminal_d 4y agoNukemap: Visualize the extent of nuclear detonations https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
- tianshuo 4y ago[Feature Request] If the asteroid falls into the sea, there should be a simulation for tidal waves.
- tianshuo 4y agoFound a bug, if the impact point is near the south pole/north pole, the regions aren't distorted to match the projection of the map.