How would an asteroid impact on Earth look like? New website gives horrific account

NASA has so far identified 28,000 small and big asteroids and comets that approach Earth’s orbital neighbourhood while passing through the inner solar system. While many countries have spent billions on weapons for their defence against other nations, planet-killing asteroids are something which we would have no protection against, if one hurtles toward us. Around 66 million years ago, one such asteroid measuring roughly 10 km wide struck our planet and wiped out the dinosaurs. 

As asteroids remain the biggest threat and concern of scientists, a new website named 'Asteroid Tracker' has emerged that estimates the havoc a huge space rock wreaks if it happened today. 'Asteroid Tracker' is a free easy-to-use website which gives its users options to choose an asteroid made of iron, gold, rock or carbon and a location to choose from anywhere in the world. 

(Image: Asteroid Launcher)

When entering the website, you can also choose the size of the asteroid (up to 1.6 km) barrelling at a maximum speed of over 4,00,000 km per hour. After selecting a location from the world map and launching the asteroid, the website tells an estimated number on the width of the crater formed after the impact and the number of people that might get killed by the asteroid.

On dropping an iron asteroid which is 2,400 feet in diameter at a speed of 1,94,730 km per hour in New York, the website says that the impact would create a 24-metre-wide crater which would be 2,519 feet deep. Scarily enough, as many as 5,57,230 people would get instantly vapourised in the crater as the energy released during the collision would be equivalent to 275 gigatons of TNT. The website also says that over 1.5 crore people would be killed due to the 46 km wide fireball. Moreover, this fireball would cause clothes to catch fire within 236 km of the impact and burn trees within a radius of roughly 400 km.

The impact will also trigger an earthquake of 8.2 magnitudes. Needless to say, the extent of damage would depend on the population density along with the size and velocity of the asteroid. 

To make sure such a fateful day never arrives, NASA launched its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission which crashed into an asteroid moonlet on September 26. The mission was aimed at demonstrating the feasibility of changing an asteroid's trajectory, an idea on which planet-saving technologies can be built.