- 65 Million Years Ago
At the end of the Cretaceous Period, 65 million years ago, all the dinosaurs died out. The question of why the dinosaurs went extinct is one of the most frequently asked questions to all dinosaur palaeontologists. Could it have been an impact?
http://www.abc.net.au/dinosaurs/chronology/65/default.htm
(Added: Sat Oct 26 2002)
- Arizona Meteor Crater
Today the crater is 550 feet deep, and 2.4 miles in circumference. Twenty football games could be played simultaneously on its floor, while more than two million spectators observed from its sloping sides.
http://www.meteorcrater.com/
(Added: Mon Oct 28 2002)
- Arizona Meteor Crater
50,000 years ago, a huge iron-nickel meteorite, hurtling at about 40,000 miles per hour, struck the rocky plain of Northern Arizona with an explosive force greater than 20 million tons of TNT. The meteorite estimated to have been about 150 feet across and weighing several hundred thousand tons, in less than a few seconds, left a crater 700 feet deep and over 4000 feet across.
http://www.barringercrater.com/
(Added: Sat Oct 26 2002)
- Asteroid and Comet Impact Hazards
The Earth orbits the Sun in a sort of cosmic shooting gallery, subject to impacts from comets and asteroids. It is only fairly recently that we have come to appreciate that these impacts by asteroids and comets (often called Near Earth Objects, or NEOs) pose a significant hazard to life and property.
http://impact.arc.nasa.gov/
(Added: Tue Oct 29 2002)
- Classification of Meteorites
Several hundred tons of meteoroids enter the Earth's atmosphere each day. Most of these are very small pieces (milligrams) that burn up quickly in the atmosphere and never reach the surface.
http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/meteors/classification.html
(Added: Tue Oct 29 2002)
- How the Leonid Meteor Shower Works
HowStuffWorks looks at meteorites and shooting stars in general and November's Leonid shower in particular.
http://www.howstuffworks.com/leonid.htm
(Added: Sun Oct 27 2002)
- Meteor Showers
Find out when the next meteor shower is using this site. A calendar and viewing instructions are given.
http://comets.amsmeteors.org/
(Added: Sat Oct 26 2002)
- Meteorite Impacts
Sixty-five million years ago, about 70 percent of all species then living on Earth disappeared within a very short period in what is termed the Cretaceous-Tertiary Mass Extinction---commonly known as the K-T Event (K is used to denote the Cretaceous period rather than C to avoid confusion with other periods such as the Cambrian). Among the species that disappeared were the last of the dinosaurs. The cause of this and other sudden species extinctions has long been an important and controversial topic.
http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/meteors/impacts.html
(Added: Tue Oct 29 2002)
- Meteors and Meteor Showers
Interplanetary space is littered with rocks tens of meters in diameter or less. When these meteoroids strike the Earth's atmosphere at high relative speeds they leave visible trails created when the intense heat caused by friction vaporizes them. These are called meteors ("shooting stars").
http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/meteors/showers.html
(Added: Tue Oct 29 2002)
- Meteors, Meteorites and Impacts
A meteor is a bright streak of light in the sky (a "shooting star" or a "falling star") produced by the entry of a small meteoroid into the Earth's atmosphere.
http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/nineplanets/nineplanets/meteorites.html
(Added: Mon Oct 28 2002)
- Terrestrial Impact Craters
Impact craters are geologic structures formed when a large meteoroid, asteroid or comet smashes into a planet or a satellite. All the inner bodies in our solar system have been heavily bombarded by meteoroids throughout their history. The surfaces of the Moon, Mars and Mercury, where other geologic processes stopped millions of years ago, record this bombardment clearly.
http://www.solarviews.com/eng/tercrate.htm
(Added: Mon Oct 28 2002)
- The International Meteor Organization
The International Meteor Organization (IMO) was founded in 1988 and has more than 250 members now. IMO was created in response to an ever growing need for international cooperation of meteor amateur work.
http://www.imo.net/
(Added: Sat Oct 26 2002)
- Tunguska
On June 30th, 1908, something exploded 8 km high on the river Stony Tunguska, destroying about 2150 square kilometre of Siberian taigà. Still today, it is not clear whether it was a comet or an asteroid or something else. We are searching for an answer.
http://www-th.bo.infn.it/tunguska/
(Added: Sat Oct 26 2002)
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