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Cosmic Impacts

Picture Gallery
- - - All craters great and small
    - From a 5-millimetre dent on a satellite to a 3-kilometre pit in the surface of Mars, the scars of impact events can be seen at every scale. We present a gallery of some particularly appealing ones from Earth and beyond.
News features
- - - Tunguska at 100 - Premium content
    - The most dramatic cosmic impact in recent history has gathered up almost as many weird explanations as it knocked down trees, writes Duncan Steel.
    - 25 June 2008
  - - The hole at the bottom of the Moon - Premium content
    - A giant crater on the lunar farside holds the key to a catastrophic bombardment that reshaped the Moon, Earth and other planets. Eric Hand reports.
    - 25 June 2008
  - - The burger bar that saved the world - Premium content
    - Fewer people are searching for near-Earth asteroids, astronomer David Morrison said in the 1990s, than work a shift in a small McDonalds. But that group — a little larger now — has over the past two decades discovered a host of happily harmless rocks, and in doing so reduced the risk of an unknown asteroid blighting civilization. David Chandler puts together the story in the words of those who watched, and those who watched the watchers.
    - 25 June 2008
Opinion
- - - COMMENTARY: What Spaceguard did - Premium content
    - A survey of large objects near Earth has shown that there is little risk of a cataclysmic impact in the next century. Alan Harris asks if such cataloguing efforts should continue.
    - 25 June 2008
Books & Arts
- - - In retrospect: Lucifer's Hammer - Premium content
    - Oliver Morton recalls how the first major science fiction novel to depict an impact event conjured the thrill and the horror of natural cataclysm — and even inspired some researchers.
    - 25 June 2008
  - - Message from the heavens - Premium content
    - Discerning the meaning behind Maurizio Cattelan's violent, provocative and now highly valuable sculpture of Pope John Paul II felled by a meteorite raises many questions for viewers, explains Martin Kemp.
    - 25 June 2008
News & Views
- - - Forming the martian great divide - Premium content
    - Early in its history, Mars suffered a convulsion that left a lasting geological and topographical scar. The latest work adds to evidence that the cause was external — a massive impact.
    - 25 June 2008
Letters
- - The Borealis basin and the martian crustal dichotomy - Premium content
    
    Jeffery C. Andrews-Hanna et al.
    
    25 June 2008
  - Mega-impact formation of the Mars hemispheric dichotomy - Premium content
    
    Margarita M. Marinova et al.
    
    25 June 2008
  - Implications of an impact origin for the Martian hemispheric Dichotomy - Premium content
    
    Francis Nimmo et al.
    
    25 June 2008