Questions from Asteroids:

Deadly Impact (and some

sample answers).
(Note: the hyperlinks take you to informative material on other websites. I would not
test you on material you find there unless that material appears elsewhere in our
course.)

Who was Gene Shoemaker?

Gene Shoemaker was a geologist. He is generally credited with having proven that meteor crater
in Arizona was due to the impact of an object from space, not to a volcanic event as had been
believed. He was the world's leading expert on impact phenomena throughout his career in the
late 1900's, and helped train Apollo lunar astronauts in lunar geology.
A short biography of Dr. Shoemaker can be found here.

What event was responsible for a mass extinction about 65

million years ago? Where did it probably happen?
The impact of an asteroid (or comet nucleus) about 65 million years ago raised large amounts of
dust and debris into the upper atmosphere, which blocked sunlight from reaching Earth's surface
for weeks or perhaps months. This led to the extinction of approximately 2/3 of all living species,
plant and animal, on the Earth (including all the dinosaurs).

The impact took place on the northern part of what is now the Yucatan Peninsula of
Mexico, as revealed by a large impact feature there of approximately the right age.
Dr. Simon Lee, of England's University of Bristol, has a website devoted to this mass
extinction event, and it's a good starting point if you're looking for more information.

About how often does Earth get hit by big impacts (capable of
causing large-scale destruction)?
The program did not give a specific frequency because we don't know with precision. However,
we do know that Earth has suffered many of them in the past -- and will suffer them again in the
future.
Dr. David Morrison, one of the world's leading planetary astronomers, estimates that we can
expect one or two of them every million years. That's rare on the scale of a human lifetime, but
the Earth has existed for more than fourthousand million years (more than four billion years),
so, in geological terms, that's a lot.
Dr. Morrison maintains a fascinating set of web pages about impacts that is well worth browsing.

What happened in the Tungas River region of Siberia in 1908?

A relatively small piece of a comet nucleus impacted Earth's atmosphere and exploded with the
force of a large nuclear weapon. It flattened the forest for miles around, but left no crater in the
ground. Comet nuclei are made of low-density ices (not rock and metal like asteroids), so the
"Tunguska" impact event did not actually reach the ground before it detonated.
It should be noted (even though it wasn't in the program) that impacts of objects from space
happen at thousands of miles per hour, 25,000 mph at minimum. When something travelling this
fast comes to a sudden stop, either in the atmosphere or at the surface, its energy of motion is
converted to heat energy nearly instantly -- producing an explosion.

How did Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 end? When?

Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 broke into many pieces and collided with Jupiter in 1994. It provided
very dramatic confirmation of Gene Shoemaker's contention that large, violent impact events still
take place in the solar system, and can happen to the Earth in the future.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center has a good set of web pages -- including several dramatic
pictures -- about the SL9 impacts on Jupiter.