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Planetary science

Intermediate impact factors

Nature volume 420, pages 273–274 (2002)Cite this article

No statistical documentation of objects of a certain size that enter Earth's atmosphere has hitherto been available. Analysis of data from US government satellites has bridged the gap.

The natural world that scientists explore often seems pathologically arranged to thwart discovery. To peer inside the nucleus, we must build massive accelerators and detectors the size of office buildings; the mysterious beginnings of our Universe are shrouded by tremendous distances, requiring telescope mirrors as big as swimming pools to collect photons liberated billions of years ago. So there is something satisfying about turning nature to our own purposes, applying its peculiar properties to explore the edges of our knowledge and forcing nature itself to become the tool with which we explore the Universe. On page 294 of this issue, Brown et al.1 describe how they have used a detector as big as the Earth itself — the planet's protective, blanketing atmosphere, which acts as a scintillator to detect the powerful but rare impacts of small asteroids or comets.

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Figure 1: Shooting stars.

AP (main image); J. W. YOUNG (TMO, JPL, NASA) (inset)

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  1. the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, 1629 E University Boulevard, Tucson, 85721-0092, Arizona, USA

    Robert Jedicke

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  1. Robert Jedicke
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Correspondence to Robert Jedicke.

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Jedicke, R. Intermediate impact factors. Nature 420, 273–274 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/420273a

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