Murder By Space Rock Research Paper

Impact craters are geologic structures formed when a large meteorite, asteroid or comet smashes in to a planet or a satellite. Meteorites are small rocks in space that hit the earth's atmosphere at a high velocity. Throughout their history they have heavily bombarded all the inner bodies in our solar system. In this experiment we will use marbles as our meteorites, these will be free falling objects that will be used to copy an asteroid impact. The surfaces of the Moon, Mars and Mercury, where other geologic processes stopped millions of years ago, record this bombardment clearly. On the Earth, however, which has been

Scientists gear up to drill into ‘ground zero’ of the impact that killed the dinosaurs

Explore and observe the objects in the solar system to understand how they formed and evolve

Many people often assume the asteroid completely wiped off the land and marine species with just the impact of the asteroid, but was rather the tipping point of what came next. In fact Choi stated that “ "We have shown that these events are synchronous to within a gnat's eyebrow, and therefore, the impact clearly played a major role in extinctions, but it probably wasn't just the impact.” ( Choi). The ultimate reasons for the dinosaurs and other species extinction was the blockage of sunlight which initially darkened and chilled to earth to extreme temperatures ( Jones). At this point many animals and even plants started to die off because of the chilling conditions, but that wasn't the only reason for the extinction of these species. Soon after the dust had settled and the earth was able to receive light, the planet initiated a greenhouse affect. Which not only put the remaining species at high temperatures, but their food also became inhabitable (Choi). The evidence of an asteroid theory is supported by the impact crater, rare metal, melted rock, fractured crystals, and the fossil record (Jones). The impact crater is actually one the main key examples of why the asteroid may have been responsible for the cretaceous mass extinction. It showed the asteroid landing on the Yucatan peninsula, and traveling at 30 kilometers per second (Jones). Not

Space has fascinated the human race since the ancient times, from the Egyptians and Romans to now in present day astronomers. Ever since the first man touched down on the moon it was possible to explore other regions in Earth’s universe. The topic will be addressed through two different genres and they will express the differences and the similarities. Mike Wall’s article about Pluto will give insight on the planet and the documentary will give the insight on space through the Hubble

The Cretaceous mass extinction is the most well-known case of meteorite impact on the earth, but it certainly is not the only one. It is merely the most well-known. Due to the impact, debris entered earth's atmosphere and caused the plant life of the time to die off due to the lack of sunlight to survive. This made food much more scarce for the species that were dominant at the time. The competition was simply too much for them, and as the plant life died out, so did the herbivores and then the carnivores died out as well. Not only the land was impacted, however, the sea life was affected heavily by this impact as well. The lack of sunlight caused the oceans to become colder, causing the habitats of many marine animals to be drastically altered

Asteroids left unchecked can be very dangerous to Earth. According to the Crater Data Chart, some craters have a diameter of “300 km”. That would cause so much destruction if it landed in a place where people live! Also, in the Tunguska Meteor Impact, it says some asteroids (like Tunguska) release “energy equivalent to about 185 Hiroshima bombs”. One Hiroshima bomb was absolutely catastrophic. Imagine how much damage one hundred and eighty five of those bombs could do!

Then in 1991, a massive meteor crater 110 miles in diameter was discovered on the edge of the Yucatán Peninsula, extending into the Gulf of Mexico. The Chicxulub Crater, as it was dubbed, was named for a nearby village. Scientists believe the bolide that formed it was roughly 6 miles in diameter, struck the earth at 40,000 miles per hour and released 2 million times more

According to the NASA, the asteroid, a 100ft-wide rock which is currently heading towards the Earth, has a chance to plough into the Earth next year when it makes another flyby.

The impact hypothesis, believes that an asteroid hit the earth that killed all the dinosaurs. This not only killed non avian dinosaurs, but flying reptiles, marine reptiles, reef and plankton. By an asteroid hitting the earth, it changed the atmospheric levels. Evidence shows, high levels of iridium that’s a rare metal to earth covered layers of rocks. This support the theory that a large mountain sized rock hit earths’ surface. The results of the asteroid hitting the earth caused a crater on the earth’s surface because of the force of the rock causing the surface to move and create a wave like structures. The impact and the different levels of iridium killed off the dinosaurs because they were able to live with the different atmospheric levels.

The human race must develop an effective planetary defense to prevent the very real danger of a catastrophic asteroid impact to Earth .Any planetary defense created by the human race must start with an excellent detection and tracking system. The second layer of defense involves deflecting truly dangerous asteroids away from orbits intercepting Earth. Research has identified many options to mitigate the danger of asteroid impact. The options for asteroid defense are widely varied and can provide customizable missions to deflect any realistic scenario for an asteroid impact. But, before humanity can deflect anything, a detection system must find it.

However, this happened around 50,000 years ago, resulting in a crater 1 mile across, 2.4 miles in circumference and more than 700 feet deep. The impact of the meteor had energy of more than 20-million tons of TNT, and shook the southwestern plain for miles. The meteor left little evidence of its origin behind, it vaporized on impact with the earth. Moreover, erosion has done little to change the original crater.

Space exploration is one of the most important and essential technologies in our astronomical history. In the recent 70 years human have started using rocket science and other specialties to bring probes and humans into extra-terrestrial space, as to make detail observations and explorations of other planets and celestial

Scientists have never proven this to be 100 % true, but it is one of the beliefs on how the dinosaurs became extinct. Both scientists and paleontologists, feel that a meteor must of hit Earth, a few million years ago, killing the dinosaurs. The meteor that might of wiped out the dinosaurs also could have brought about the ice age, because of the huge dust cloud that was thrown into the air. Also, even though this meteor strike never hit Earth, the world watched in awe as thousands of meteors hit the planet Jupiter two years ago. For about one week, many meteors collided into Jupiter causing huge craters on it’s surface.

Space can be excellent. The planets, stars, systems and nebulae make effortless and vivid shapes noticeable to our telescopes.