Ever imagined what would happen if Jakarta was hit by an asteroid the size of the National Monument? Now you don't need to imagine anymore because there is a simulator that can answer this question.
The simulator is called Asteroid Launcher, a web app created by programmer Neal Agarwal. You can use Asteroid Launcher to see the impact of an asteroid collision anywhere in the world, including Indonesia.
Agarwal said the simulator follows Math and Physics calculations based on research papers from Dr. Gareth Collins and Dr. Clemens Rumpf who both studied asteroids, as quoted from Gizmodo, Sunday (1/1/2023).
It's easy to use Asteroid Launcher. All you have to do is visit the site https://neal.fun/asteroid-launcher/, select the city you want to hit, then select the type of asteroid, its size, speed, and angle of impact.
After the asteroid is launched, you will be able to see statistics about the impact damage caused by the asteroid. Even for an asteroid that explodes in the sky and becomes a fireball, there are still damage statistics.
Now, let's try to 'crash' an asteroid into Jakarta. A rock asteroid the size of Monas with a diameter of 130 meters, a speed of 5 km/sec, and a collision angle of just 45 degrees could cause severe damage to the heart of the capital.
This collision could cause a crater 1.8 km wide and 385 meters deep. The force of this asteroid impact is equivalent to 14 megatons of TNT and could have killed around 8,800 people in the crater.
The collision also caused a shockwave that is estimated to have killed 194,000 people. This violent collision also generated winds with monstrous speeds of up to 2 km/s which could have killed more than a million people.
Not only that, the impact of this asteroid can also cause earthquakes measuring 5.2 magnitude which can be felt up to a distance of 16 km from the center of the collision.
Luckily we don't have to worry about asteroid collisions because NASA has monitored more than 19,000 asteroids near Earth. NASA also recently successfully carried out the DART mission to crash into an asteroid and change its course as an effort to defend Earth.