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News & Views
Planetary science: Go and catch a falling star -
Erik Asphaug
doi:10.1038/ngeo1840
Patches of deposits containing unusual mafic minerals are observed in and around some large lunar impact craters. Numerical simulations suggest that in the slowest of these impacts, asteroidal material, alien to the Moon, could have survived.
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Planetary science: Kick for the cosmic clockwork -
Matija Ćuk
doi:10.1038/ngeo1362
Mercury's spin and its orbit around the Sun are tied to each other in a unique arrangement. According to a set of calculations, random asteroid impacts may have aided the planet's evolution into the current spin-orbit pattern.
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Planetary science: Titan's nitrogenesis -
Catherine Neish
doi:10.1038/ngeo1162
Observations from the Cassini–Huygens mission have produced potentially contradictory constraints on the origin of Titan's atmosphere. Experiments and a simple model demonstrate that a new mechanism for late formation is plausible.
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Letter
Compositional evidence for an impact origin of the Moon's Procellarum basin -
Ryosuke Nakamura, Satoru Yamamoto, Tsuneo Matsunaga, Yoshiaki Ishihara, Tomokatsu Morota, Takahiro Hiroi, Hiroshi Takeda, Yoshiko Ogawa, Yasuhiro Yokota, Naru Hirata, Makiko Ohtake & Kazuto Saiki
doi:10.1038/ngeo1614
The nearside and farside of the Moon are compositionally distinct. The detection of low-calcium pyroxene around large impact basins suggests that the huge Procellarum basin on the nearside may be an ancient impact structure and a relic scar of the violent collision that produced the lunar dichotomy.
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Mercury's spin—orbit resonance explained by initial retrograde and subsequent synchronous rotation -
Mark A. Wieczorek, Alexandre C. M. Correia, Mathieu Le Feuvre, Jacques Laskar & Nicolas Rambaux
doi:10.1038/ngeo1350
The planet Mercury rotates three times about its spin axis for every two orbits around the Sun. Numerical modelling suggests that this unusual pattern could result from initial retrograde rotation that was captured into a stable synchronous orbit, and subsequent disturbance by a large impact.
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Replacement and late formation of atmospheric N2 on undifferentiated Titan by impacts -
Yasuhito Sekine, Hidenori Genda, Seiji Sugita, Toshihiko Kadono & Takafumi Matsui
doi:10.1038/ngeo1147
The origin of Titan's massive nitrogen atmosphere is largely unknown. Laser-gun experiments and numerical calculations suggest that the nitrogen could have been generated by conversion from ammonia during the period of Late Heavy Bombardment.
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Origin of the Ganymede–Callisto dichotomy by impacts during the late heavy bombardment -
Amy C. Barr & Robin M. Canup
doi:10.1038/ngeo746
Jupiter's large moons Ganymede and Callisto are similar in size and composition, but different in surface and interior characteristics. Simulations with geophysical models of core formation indicate that the difference in impact energy received by the two satellites during the period of late heavy bombardment can explain the dichotomy.
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Article
High-velocity collisions from the lunar cataclysm recorded in asteroidal meteorites -
S. Marchi, W. F. Bottke, B. A. Cohen, K. Wünnemann, D. A. Kring, H. Y. McSween, M. C. De Sanctis, D. P. O'Brien, P. Schenk, C. A. Raymond & C. T. Russell
doi:10.1038/ngeo1769
Lunar samples suggest that the inner Solar System was bombarded by asteroids about 4 Gyr ago. Radiometric ages of meteorites suggest an unusual number of high-velocity asteroids at this time, consistent with a dynamical origin of the bombardment in which the asteroids were pushed by outer planet migration onto highly eccentric orbits.
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