Deep Impact

One of the best things about movies is how they can become a part of your life. How you can fall so deeply in love with one that watching it is almost like a blanket: something warm and comfortable that makes you feel good. And that’s especially true of films that came out in your formative years and stuck with you all the way through adulthood. In 1998, a movie about an asteroid hitting the Earth did that for me. I saw it, loved it, bought it on DVD, watched it a million times, and anytime it’s on TV, which it is…

I aimed a 1,500-foot iron asteroid traveling at 38,000 miles per hour with a 45-degree impact angle at Gizmodo’s office in Midtown, Manhattan.Screenshot: Gizmodo/Neal.FunHundreds of thousands of asteroids lurk in our solar system, and while space agencies track many of them, there’s always the chance that one will suddenly appear on a collision course with Earth. A new app on the website Neal.fun demonstrates what could happen if one smacked into any part of the planet. Neal Agarwal developed Asteroid Simulator to show…