Impact Crater Visualizations
Compiled by David Mogk at Montana State University and Kendra Murray at Carleton College.
This page has links to visualizations of impact events and the structures they form.
Chesapeake Bay Impact Effects (more info) : This PowerPoint show depicts the effects (blast, heat, etc.) of the Chesapeake Bay impact. To emphasize the human consequences of asteroid and comet impacts, the slides show what would happen to East Coast communities if an identical object hit the same place today. (The impact actually happened roughly 35 million years ago.)
Impact effects were estimated with the
Earth Impact Effects Program (more info) . Effects shown on these slides are at best very approximate, and, consequently, these slides should only be used to stimulate discussions about impact hazards.
Satellite images were obtained through the NASA Earth Observing System Higher Education Alliance ("GeoBrain") which provided funding for this work.
Peak Ring Crater Animation, Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona (more info) : An annotated animation taking the viewer through the sequence of events during an impact, in cross section view. The animation speed cannot be controlled, unfortunately, but the images are large and clear.
Tsunami from Asteroid Impacts, Australian Spaceguard Survey (more info) : This page is a repository of news, information, publications, and visualizations intended to provide a brief introduction to the effects of an asteroid or comet striking the Earth above an ocean. It includes recreations of impacts such as the
Chicxulub (more info) 65 Ma, and animated scenarios of potential future encounters like
Apophis in 2036 (more info) . Most of the visualizations can be found under the heading
Asteroid/Tsunami News (more info) . Background information on
tsunamis,
impacts, and the characteristics of
impact-generated tsunamis is also included, with additional animations. The page is worth sifting through.
For more tsunami animations, see the Tsunami Visualizations Cutting Edge page.
Computer Model of Chicxulub Crater Formation, SPACE.com (more info) : A dynamic simulation developed from seismic data of the Chicxulub Crater, explaining the formation the inner ring observed in this and other large impact structures. According to the model, the crater collapsed inward, forcing up a central mound that soared three times the height of Mount Everest. It then collapsed down and out to produce the inner ring. This model was presented at the 2000 GSA meeting.
How big was the Chesapeake Bay impact? Insight from numerical modeling, GSA Online Journals (more info) : This article published in
Geology reports the results of numerical modeling of the unique impact structure in Chesapeake Bay. By modeling different rheological contrasts between the crystalline basement and overlying pelagic sediments at the time of impact, the authors were able to reproduce the unique impact structures observed in seismic data. The
GSA Data Repository (more info) provides large, downloadable QuickTime animations of the models discussed in this paper; scroll down to item 2005183.
Moon Crater Simulator, VolcanoWorld (more info) : This applet simulates the formation of craters on a 300 km by 300 km section of the moon. This is done by randomly simulating crater formation using the formula N(D)=kD^b where N is the number of craters formed of diameter D, k is a constant (in this case .85) and b is the size index (found from data to be a number between -1.6 and -2.0). The applet creates a pop-up graph with two sets of data. The red circles represent the total number of craters formed of each diameter. The blue squares are the number of craters that are at least partially visible, that is, not covered by another larger crater.
Air Gun Experiment, NASA (more info) : This video shows an impact experiment of a high-speed impact into a frozen comet-like material (dust, ice, window cleaner and Worcestershire sauce) over a highly porous target (garden perlite). The impact makes a small hole in the comet, simulating a strength-controlled crater, but a large crater grows below and peals back the surface crust like petals of a flower. The result is similar to a deeply buried explosion.
