asteroid impact tagged posts

Gigantic Asteroid Impact Shifted the Axis of Solar System’s Biggest Moon

Kobe University HIRATA Naoyuki was the first to realize that the location of an asteroid impact on Jupiter’s moon Ganymede is almost precisely on the meridian farthest away from Jupiter. This implied that Ganymede had undergone a reorientation of its rotational axis and allowed Hirata to calculate what kind of impact could have caused this to happen. © HIRATA Naoyuki (CC BY)

Around 4 billion years ago, an asteroid hit the Jupiter moon Ganymede. Now, a Kobe University researcher realized that the Solar System’s biggest moon’s axis has shifted as a result of the impact, which confirmed that the asteroid was around 20 times larger than the one that ended the age of the dinosaurs on Earth, and caused one of the biggest impacts with clear traces in the Solar System.

Ganymede is the la...

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Mars Moon got its Grooves from Rolling Stones

Much of Phobos' surface is covered with strange linear grooves. New research bolsters that idea the boulders blasted free from Stickney crater (the large depression on the right) carved those iconic grooves. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Much of Phobos’ surface is covered with strange linear grooves. New research bolsters that idea the boulders blasted free from Stickney crater (the large depression on the right) carved those iconic grooves.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

A new study bolsters the idea that strange grooves crisscrossing the surface of the Martian moon Phobos were made by rolling boulders blasted free from an ancient asteroid impact. The research, published in Planetary and Space Science, uses computer models to simulate the movement of debris from Stickney crater, a huge gash on one end of Phobos’ oblong body. The models show that boulders rolling across the surface in the aftermath of the Stickney impact could have created the puzzling patterns of grooves seen on Phobos today.

“These grooves...

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Hazardous Asteroid Effects ranked from Least to Most Destructive

Clemens M. Rumpf, Hugh G. Lewis, Peter M. Atkinson. Asteroid impact effects and their immediate hazards for human populations. Geophysical Research Letters, 2017; DOI: 10.1002/2017GL073191

Clemens M. Rumpf, Hugh G. Lewis, Peter M. Atkinson. Asteroid impact effects and their immediate hazards for human populations. Geophysical Research Letters, 2017; DOI: 10.1002/2017GL073191

Violent winds, shock waves from impacts pose greatest threat to humans. If an asteroid struck Earth, which of its effects – scorching heat, flying debris, towering tsunamis – would claim the most lives? A new study has the answer: violent winds and shock waves are the most dangerous effects produced by Earth-impacting asteroids. The study explored 7 effects associated with asteroid impacts – heat, pressure shock waves, flying debris, tsunamis, wind blasts, seismic shaking and cratering – and estimated their lethality for varying sizes...

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