Please note: the results below are estimates based on current (limited) understanding of the impact process and come with large uncertainties; they should be used with caution, particularly in the case of peculiar input parameters. All values are given to three significant figures but this does not reflect the precision of the estimate. For more information about the uncertainty associated with our calculations and a full discussion of this program, please refer to this article
Click each effect button (e.g. "Crater") to see the extent of each impact effect!
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Your Inputs:
- Projectile diameter: 50.00 meters ( = 164.00 feet )
- Projectile Density: 8000 kg/m3
- Impact Velocity: 17.00 km per second ( = 10.60 miles per second )
- Impact Angle: 45 degrees
- Target Density: 2500 kg/m3
- Target Type: Sedimentary Rock
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Energy:
- Energy before atmospheric entry: 7.57 x 1016 Joules = 1.81 x 101 MegaTons TNT
- The average interval between impacts of this size somewhere on Earth during the last 4 billion years is 2.2 x 103years
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Major Global Changes:
- The Earth is not strongly disturbed by the impact and loses negligible mass.
- The impact does not make a noticeable change in the tilt of Earth's axis (< 5 hundreths of a degree).
- The impact does not shift the Earth's orbit noticeably.
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Atmospheric Entry:
- The projectile begins to breakup at an altitude of 14100 meters = 46400 ft
- The projectile reaches the ground in a broken condition. The mass of projectile strikes the surface at velocity 12.7 km/s = 7.88 miles/s
- The energy lost in the atmosphere is 3.35 x 1016 Joules = 8.00 x 100 MegaTons.
- The impact energy is 4.22 x 1016 Joules = 1.01 x 101MegaTons.
- The larger of these two energies is used to calculate the airblast damage.
- The broken projectile fragments strike the ground in an ellipse of dimension 0.305 km by 0.216 km
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Crater Dimensions:
- What does this mean?
- Crater shape is normal in spite of atmospheric crushing; fragments are not significantly dispersed.
- Transient Crater Diameter:
1.25 km ( = 0.774 miles )
- Transient Crater Depth: 441 meters ( = 1450 feet )
- Final Crater Diameter:
1.56 km ( = 0.968 miles )
- Final Crater Depth: 332 meters ( = 1090 feet )
- The crater formed is a simple crater
- The floor of the crater is underlain by a lens of broken rock debris (breccia) with a maximum thickness of 154 meters ( = 505 feet ).
- The volume of the target melted or vaporized is 265000 m3 = 9.37e+06 feet3
- Roughly half the melt remains in the crater
Tell me more...
Click here for a pdf document that details the observations, assumptions, and equations upon which this program is based. It
describes our approach to quantifying the important impact processes that might affect the people, buildings, and landscape in the
vicinity of an impact event and discusses the uncertainty in our predictions. The processes included are: atmospheric entry, impact
crater formation, fireball expansion and thermal radiation, ejecta deposition, seismic shaking, and the propagation of the atmospheric
blast wave.
Recent improvements in the airblast calculation are described here.
Earth Impact Effects Program Copyright 2004, Robert Marcus, H.J. Melosh, and G.S. Collins
These results come with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY