Purdue University recently unveiled 'Impact: Earth!' a new website that allows anyone to calculate the potential damage a comet or asteroid would cause if it hit the Earth. The interactive website claims to be scientifically accurate enough to be used by homeland security and NASA, but user-friendly and visual enough for elementary school students. Jay Melosh, the distinguished professor of earth and atmospheric sciences and physics at Purdue, led the creation of the impact effects calculator.
Users first enter a few parameters such as the diameter of the impact object, its density, velocity, angle of entry and where it will hit the Earth. The site then estimates the consequences of its impact, including the atmospheric blast wave, ground shaking, size of tsunami generated, fireball expansion, distribution of debris and size of the crater produced. The calculator is available at http://www.purdue.edu/impactearth.
'Impact: Earth' is a more visual and user-friendly update to an impact calculator Melosh created with Robert Marcus and Gareth Collins about eight years ago while at the University of Arizona. Melosh and Collins collaborated with Information Technology at Purdue (ITaP) to update the programme and create a graphic interface to make the site easier and more fun to use. The impact calculator is projected to be a valuable source for the scientifically accurate reconstruction of impact effects.
The "Impact:Earth!" calculator website was developed by Information Technology at Purdue (ITaP), which develops online tools to support learning and scientific discovery, including the nationally acclaimed classroom technologies HotSeat and Mixable. The site will be updated with additional features in coming months.
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