Have you ever wondered how much damage an asteroid could cause? Wonder no more! The Impact Effects Calculator from our good friends at the University of Arizona can take all the guesswork out of your doomsday theories.
How much damage can we get out of a VW Golf hurtling from space? Let's find out!
Its 1080 kg, and roughly a 2 meter diameter (compressed). That gives it roughly 45 kg per cubic meter of density. We'll bring it in at 90 degrees into sedimentary rock. Let's see what sort of damage we can cause with an 11 km/s speed (the minimum impact velocity).
The projectile bursts into a cloud of fragments at an altitude of 82500 meters = 270000 ft
Ok, that's too slow. Let's speed it up to 17 km/s.
The projectile bursts into a cloud of fragments at an altitude of 84200 meters = 276000 ft
We did worse! I'm guessing we're just too light. Let's make it entirely iron. New density: 8000 kg per cubic meter.
The projectile bursts into a cloud of fragments at an altitude of 9630 meters = 31600 ft.
Large fragments strike the surface and may create a crater strewn field.
That's better, but if we are going to bean the earth with a VW, we want a real impact. Let's try adding some antimatter and moving up to the max speed for something orbiting the sun. New density: 100,000 kg/m^3. New speed: 72 km/s.
The projectile lands intact, with a velocity 67.8 km/s = 42.1 miles/s.
That's more like it! Isn't astronomical physics fun?
Posted by Moore at November 11, 2009 11:06 AM