Asteroids, meteoroids, and other incoming objects can enter the atmosphere or collide with Earth. Investigate meteorites, atmospheric entry, crater formation, past impact events, detection methods, and the consequences of planetary collisions.
The largest confirmed impact structure on Earth no longer looks like a crater. More than two billion years of erosion have removed its rim, basin floor, melt sheet, and most other original topography. What remains in South Africa is a vast arrangement of tilted and shattered rocks centered on the...
Daniel Moreau Barringer was right about the great hole in northern Arizona and wrong about the treasure he expected beneath it. The mining engineer argued that an iron body from space had excavated the crater, challenging an influential volcanic explanation. He then spent more than two decades and...
The crater is almost invisible from the ground. It lies beneath younger limestone and seafloor sediment at the northern edge of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, with roughly half of the structure under land and half beneath the Gulf of Mexico. Yet this buried circle records one of the most consequential...