Asteroid Impact
Pick a size, material, speed and angle — and feel the energy in joules and megatons of TNT.
Impact energy
54.2Mt TNT
Between Tunguska (1908) and Chicxulub.
Crater diameter
2.19 km
Simple crater
In kilotons
54,250 kt TNT
Asteroid mass
1.57×10⁹ kg
Load a real impact
Compare with real impacts
Energy spans many orders of magnitude, so the bars use a logarithmic scale.
Bars are on a log scale (each step is ×10). Reference energies are widely cited observed or estimated values.
Crater size uses the simple π-scaling approximation for a land impact; small bodies often explode in the air (an airburst) and leave little or no crater.
Physics from Collins, Melosh & Marcus (2005), "Earth Impact Effects Program". Energy = ½mv²; crater from π-scaling. Real-impact energies from NASA/JPL and the published literature.
Earth Impact Effects Program (Collins et al. 2005)Embed this tool
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