With real bombs falling out of fashion, these experts have kept their supercomputers humming by simulating enormous natural blasts. Last year, a group at Sandia National Laboratories tested a new computer by modeling the impact of an asteroid. Not to be outdone, a team at Los Alamos National Laboratory recently tackled the aftermath of such a hit. They revealed their findings at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in early January. The most recent simulation, created by Los Alamos astrophysicist Jack Hills and his colleague Charles Mader, assumes that an asteroid three miles across slams into the mid-Atlantic, thereby creating a series of waves that spreads out from the point of impact.
Tsunamis are unlike other ocean waves.
In the open sea, they are an almost undetectable swell, often barely inches high. But they can travel thousands of miles in a matter of hours. Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories modeled a comet striking the ocean. The Los Alamos model shows that the waves created by an asteroid impact would drown the entire upper East Coast of the U.S. inland to the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. The waves would also swamp the coasts of France and Portugal.