Friday, September 12, 2014

Space Science Institute Has Online Tool to Estimate the Impact of Meteor Strikes

Web Link
Some interesting things can be seen with this game. If a school bus-sized meteor were to hit head-on in downtown Denver, the crater would cover most of the city and the blast zone would level buildings throughout much of the immediately surrounding suburbs. A 1,000 foot asteroid, the size of Apophis would cause a crater about 7 miles in diameter and the fireball would cause 1st degree burns all the way from Fort Collins to Colorado Springs. While a 7 mile crater sounds pretty big, the La Garita caldera from a supervolcanic eruption in Colorado 25 million years ago was 47 miles across. The chances of another supervolcanic eruption in Yellowstone are about 20 times greater than a small asteroid hitting Colorado.

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