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Cosmic Impacts

Editorial

  • The unlikely matters

    The study of cosmic impacts and the effects they have offers two lessons for students of science.

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News Features

  • Tunguska at 100

    The most dramatic cosmic impact in recent history has gathered up almost as many weird explanations as it knocked down trees, writes Duncan Steel.

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  • The hole at the bottom of the Moon

    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.

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  • The burger bar that saved the world

    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.

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Opinion

  • COMMENTARY: What Spaceguard did

    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.

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Books & Arts

  • In retrospect: Lucifer's Hammer

    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.

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  • Message from the heavens

    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.

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News & Views

  • Forming the martian great divide

    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.

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Letters