Latest Impact crater Stories

ESA Dramatic underground explosions, perhaps involving ice, are responsible for the pits inside these two large martian impact craters, imaged by ESA’s Mars Express on 4 January. The ‘twin’ craters are in the Thaumasia Planum region, a large plateau that lies immediately to the south of Valles Marineris, the largest canyon in the Solar System. The northernmost (right) large crater in this scene was officially given the name Arima in early 2012, but the southernmost (left)...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Large impacts on the Moon produce unimaginable amounts of energy; however, they may not wipe the mineralogical slate clean. New research, led by Brown University geoscientists, has discovered a rock body with a distinct mineralogy snaking 18 miles across the floor of Copernicus crater – a 60-mile-wide feature on the Moon's near side. Mineralogical signatures of rock present before the impact that created the crater appear to make...

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online One of the most popular theories on the disappearance of the dinosaurs surrounds the 110 mile-wide Chicxulub crater in Mexico. Many scientists believe the extinction was caused by an asteroid that crashed into Earth, leaving only a massive crater behind. However, a group of American scientists is presenting a theory that the culprit was actually a speeding comet, not a relatively slow-moving asteroid as many theories assert....

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online A massive asteroid that crashed into Earth left behind a large impact crater in Australia and changed the entire landscape of the planet, scientists from the Australian National University (ANU) and University of Queensland claim in a recently-published study. According to Stuart Gary of ABC News in Australia, the impact zone is centered in the East Warburton Basin in the northeastern part of South Australia. It was created...

Peter Suciu for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Understanding past collisions between celestial bodies, including asteroids, could help researchers better understand the origins of our Solar System. After all, it was through a series of such collisions some four and a half billion years ago that our planetary system was formed. What started as a giant dusty gas cloud combined to form increasingly large clumps, and as these collided and combined, they grew into what we now know to...

Revising and revisiting the Giant Impact Theory Scientists are revisiting the age-old question of how Earth's moon formed with the development of two new models that work out the complicated physics of planetary collisions. The idea of a moon-forming collision is not new: The Giant Impact Theory put forth in the 1970s suggested that the moon resulted from a collision with a protoplanet approximately half the size of ancient Earth. But the physics underlying such a collision implied that...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Mercury has gained a little more fame in the eyes of Hollywood, after the International Astronomical Union (IAU) agreed to name nine impact craters after Walt Disney. The MESSENGER Science Team proposed nine names for impact craters on Mercury, all of which refer to either a blues singer, animation pioneer Walter Elias "Walt" Disney, or other artists. IAU has been the gatekeeper for planetary and satellite nomenclature since 1919,...

[ Watch the Video: What Is Mercury ] April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online MESSENGER, in orbit around Mercury since March of last year, has discovered assemblages of tectonic landforms unlike any previously found on Mercury or elsewhere in the Solar System. Smithsonian scientist Thomas Watters published the findings in the December issue of Geology. Mercury's surface is covered with deformational landforms, formed by faulting in response to horizontal contraction or...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Researchers are saying the massive dark spot seen on the moon, known as the Ocean of Storms, is a scar from a giant cosmic impact. The team of Japanese scientists says the giant cosmic impact created a magma sea more than a thousand miles wide and several hundred miles deep. The findings may be able to help explain why the moon's near and far sides are so different from one another. The side of the moon that faces Earth has many...

[ Watch the Video: What is the Moon? ] | [ Watch the Video: Planetary Demolition Derby ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Scientists are backing up a theory, claiming that the Moon was created when a planetary body the size of Mars collided with Earth. Planetary scientists found evidence that backs up the Giant Impact Theory, which was first proposed at a conference in 1975. The Giant Impact Theory says that Earth’s moon was created in an apocalyptic collision...