Latest Impact events Stories

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online A Russian scientist has reportedly found meteorite or asteroid fragments potentially linked to a mysterious explosion that took place over Siberia more than 100 years ago. The Tunguska Event, as it is called, took place in June 1908. It featured a blast that was one thousand times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb and decimated approximately 80 million trees over an 800 square mile area, but resulted in only a single...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Approximately 252 million years ago, during the world’s largest mass extinction event, nine out of ten species vanished from the planet. Based on fossil records from sites in South Africa and southwest Russia, many scientists have long thought the predecessors of dinosaurs largely missed the race to fill habitat niches that were emptied during this event. However, according to an international team of scientists, it turns out they...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online The European Space Agency (ESA) says it has unraveled the mystery as to the origin of water observed in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter. ESA's Herschel space observatory found evidence that the water in this part of Jupiter's atmosphere was delivered by the dramatic impact of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 in July 1994. During this collision, a string of 21 comet fragments pounded into the southern hemisphere of Jupiter, leaving dark scars...

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Initial reports put last Friday’s (Feb 15) Chebarkul meteorite that exploded over Russia’s Urals region at about 10 tons. But after careful analysis, NASA released new information that puts the meteorite closer to 10,000 tons—1,000 times larger than the estimated size reported by the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). “My guess is that someone eyeballed the videos and made an educated guess,” said Margaret...

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online As reports continue to stream in through various media outlets on injuries, damages, and the science behind such events, it seems this morning’s (February 15) meteor strike in Russia’s Ural Mountains region has left a pretty big impression far and wide. At last count more than 1,200 people (at least 200 children) are believed to have been injured by the meteor, most from broken glass produced by the exploding object's...

Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online We’ve had an increasing fascination with comets and asteroids over the past several years. We’ve fictionally sent a rogue group of astronauts to detonate one of these heavenly travelers. We’ve seen the disastrous effect of a potential impact in both movies and on television. We’ve elevated our global anxiety tracking the trajectory of these large, quickly moving celestial bodies. And it seems our vigilance on this matter,...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Researchers are contradicting one hypothesis that comet explosions may have ended the 9,000-year-old Clovis culture. The Clovis comet hypothesis was first reported in 2007, claiming a comet initiated the Younger Dryas cold period nearly 13,000 years ago. This period, also known as the Big Freeze, was a brief period of cold climatic conditions and drought, causing the collapse of the North American ice sheets. According to the...

[ 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...

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Sometime early Monday morning while most of the country was in bed dreaming of sweet nothings, at least two amateur astronomers were out blazing the night skies looking for action. And what they found was the event of a lifetime: A two-second white flash on the surface of Jupiter. Amateur astronomer Dan Peterson, from Racine, Wisconsin, first reported his sighting of the explosion on Jupiter on the cloudynights.com forum. A second...

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online While scientists tend to accept the theory that the Moon was formed following a collision between a young Earth and a second planet, new research published online earlier this month suggests that the impactor might have been larger and traveling faster than previously believed. Current theory suggests that Earth's satellite was formed when the protoplanet was hit by a second world, believed to have been about the size of Mars,...