Awesome Asteroids

Feeling gloomy? Things could be worse. An asteroid could smash into your house. Neal.fun’s Asteroid Launcher simulates the approximate impact of an asteroid slamming into the Earth in a location of your choice. The website lets you select a type of asteroid and adjust its diameter, speed, and impact angle.

Arcade1Up created these retro video game systems that you can put on a tabletop or mount on a wall. Each one features a 17″ color LCD screen, arcade-quality joystick and buttons, and comes loaded with eight licensed games. QVC sells the Asteroids, Pac-Man, or Ms. Pac-Man variants, while HSN has a Centipede version.

The latest Replicade mini arcade machines are based on Atari’s classic Asteroids. The 12″ tall game has an ultra-sharp display for the game’s B&W vector graphics and has every detail, including Atari’s “owl eyes” coin slots. Choose from a 3500-unit original version and a 500-unit Overhaul Edition with blue cabinet molding.

Many of the rarest and most precious materials used here on Earth comes from some form of mining. But might there be a better way to harvest these without depleting and polluting our home planet? Kurzgesagt explores the potential for mining a nearly endless supply of resources from lifeless asteroids.

The earth gets pelted by small meteorites on a regular basis, but bigger bits of asteroids breaking through are far less common. MetaBallStudios does their best to give us a sense just how big some of these space rocks can be, standing them besides the skyscrapers of NYC for comparison.