Module 2

Module 2 makes its way towards recognizing the risk to Earth that is posed by objects in space
within our solar system that was raised at the end of Module 1. The work of Luis and Walter
Alvarez brought to our attention that objects in space have caused widespread devastation in the
past and will certainly do so again in the future. Most of the objects that pose risk to Earth were
either left over from the time of solar system formation or during and shortly after the formation
of planets. We begin this Module by looking at how we think the solar system formed and we'll
discuss a few contemporary issues that have rocked the astronomical community over the last
several years. We'll also briefly focus on the origin of the early Earth and Moon in order to
complete the story of how our planet came to be.
The remainder of Module 2 will look at the details of objects in space and their history and then
focus on the risk that they pose to humans. We'll see the measures that have been taken over the
last 20 years or so to try to protect us from devastating collisions like that which led to the
extinction of the dinosaurs, 66 million years ago.
Nebular Hypothesis
The Sun and the bodies that orbit around it are thought to have begun as a nebula (an immense
cloud of gas and dust in space; also called a “molecular cloud”).
The following image is titled "Star Birth Clouds". It shows the Eagle Nebula, as recorded by the
Hubble Telescope, is approximately 1 light year across.
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The nebula that became our solar system began as a large irregularly shaped mass of gas and
dust in space. Within the nebula the pressure of the gases act outwards to cause it to expand
while gravitational forces (forces that pull bodies towards each other) act to cause the nebula to
collapse onto itself.
The force of gravity prevailed over gas pressure and the nebula collapsed and began to spin.
As the diameter of the nebula was reduced, the rate of spin increased.
Due to the interaction of the pressure and gravitational forces, as the nebula was spinning it
became flatter and formed a broad disk as the nebula continued to collapse.
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As the density of the centre of the disk increased along with its temperature the core of the
nebula became the protosun.
Within the cloud swirling eddies developed drawing matter towards their centres to form the
protoplanets.
As the protosun became even hotter gases were driven off the inner region of the Solar System.
The protoplanets became solid planets and continued their orbit, governed by the initial spin of
the swirling nebula.
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Below: Orion Nebula (1500 light years from Earth) with possible “fledgling planetary systems”
shown in the boxes. Our solar system began as part of a much larger molecular cloud like the
Orion Nebula.
The Nebular Hypothesis is attractive because it explains many features of the Solar System. For
example, the orbits of the planets lie in a plane with the sun at its centre. This plane is called the
"orbital" plane or "ecliptic" plane and it is also the plane of the early disk-shaped nebula.
The Nebular Hypothesis also explains why the planets mostly rotate in the same direction and
their axes of rotation are nearly perpendicular to the orbital plane. This direction of rotation was
inherited from the direction of spin of the eddies in the spinning nebula that formed the
protoplanets.
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Venus and Uranus do not rotate in the same direction as the other planets.
Venus’s rotational axis is at right angles to the plane of the planets (the ecliptic plane) but it
rotates in the opposite direction compared to the other planets.
Uranus rotates about an axis that is almost parallel to the plane of the planets.
Modern thinking is that the rotations of both planets were affected by major collisions with other
bodies very early in their history.
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Once planet formation was complete, about 4.5 billion years ago our solar system was populated
by the planets and a variety of smaller objects that we shall examine a little later. In this section
we'll focus of the 8 planets and their characteristics. In the next section we'll see why we went
from having 9 planets (including Pluto) to 8 in the summer of 2006.
The image below shows the 8 planets and their relative sizes. The four small planets that are
closest to the Sun are the "inner planets" and the four large planets that lie further from the Sun
are the "outer planets".
The Inner Planets
Earth-like, "rocky" planets: metallic cores, dominated by silicon and oxygen compounds.
*Astronomical Units (AU): 1 unit is the distance from Earth to the Sun, 149,597,900 km.
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The Outer Planets
“Gas Giants” with thick atmospheres that become denser and hotter towards their rocky cores.
Name Diameter (km) % of earth Distance from Sun

Jupiter 139,822 1,097% 5.2
Saturn 116,464 914% 9.5
Uruanus 50,724 398% 19.2
Neptune 49, 244 386% 30.1
The following figure shows all 8 of the planets. Can you name them all correctly based on their
relative size? To see if you are correct compare this image to the first image in this section.
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The following video summarizes how the solar system formed from a nebula and explains why
the inner and outer planets are distinctly different from each other.
Watch YouTube video.
The Sun compared to the planets
Wikipedia: Planets and sun size comparison CC BY-SA 3.0 Lsmpascal
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Small Solar System Bodies
These objects orbit the sun but are not planets of any type nor are they satellites of any type of
planet (a satellite being a body such as moon that orbits a planet). Small solar system bodies are
made up of solid material from the nebula that either did not accumulate into planets or did form
larger objects but were shattered into many fragments during collisions near the end of planet
formation. Note that while asteroids and comets are mentioned in this section but
greater detail of such objects are provided in Module 2.6.
Asteroids
In comparison to the planets asteroids are mostly relatively small solar system bodies that are
largely made of rocky and/or metallic materials and are found throughout the solar system. The
region with the largest concentration of asteroids is found just beyond the orbit of Mars out to
about half way to Jupiter’s orbit and is known as the Asteroid Belt (white dots in the image
below). These asteroids range in size up to about 800 km in diameter, the largest object being
the object called "Ceres". Ceres was thought to be a planet when it was first discovered in 1801
but it was soon recognized to be just one of many objects in this region of space. We'll see more
about Ceres in the more detailed section on Asteroids in the next section of this module.
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Just beyond the Asteroid Belt are three other clusters of asteroids that are also shown in the
figure above.
The Hilda Asteroids (orange dots in the above figure) form three clusters that extend from the
outer limit of the Asteroid Belt to the edge of Jupiter's orbit.
Two other clusters of asteroids (both shown as green dots) are the Trojan and Greek Asteroids
that orbit behind and ahead of Jupiter, respectively, along the planet's orbital path. Note that the
Trojan and Greek asteroid clusters appear to be extensions of two of the Hilda asteroid clusters.
The Hilda, Trojan and Greek Asteroids are in orbits that are controlled by the immense gravity of
Jupiter as it orbits the Sun.
The following video shows the orbiting asteroids in the region between Jupiter and the Sun. It
shows very clearly that the orbits of the Hilda Asteroids, like the Trojans and Greeks, closely
follow Jupiter in their orbits. This video has no dialogue.
There are millions of asteroids in the solar system. Many are believed to consist of material that
didn't come together to form planets during the period of planet formation in the nebula. Some
asteroids are thought to be fragments of planets or planetoids that were broken up due to
collisions during the late stage of planet formation.
Note that there are many asteroids in orbit between Mars and the sun; many of these are termed
“Near Earth Objects” and include asteroids that pose the greatest risk of collision with
Earth. We'll focus on Near Earth Objects later in this Module.
Trans-Neptunian Small Solar System Bodies
Asteroids make up the majority of small solar system bodies that orbit between Neptune and the
Sun but there are many, many more small bodies in orbits about the Sun that are beyond the orbit
of Neptune. These objects are called “trans-Neptunian Small Solar System Bodies” or "trans-
Neptunian objects".
Trans-Neptunian objects contain large amounts of water-ice and other volatile compounds and in
the past this composition distinguished them from asteroids. However, large volumes of water
are now known to make up many asteroids so this distinction is no longer true. Trans-Neptunian
objects differ from asteroids by being located beyond Neptune.
The objects are made up of material that was left-over from the nebula.
The Trans-Neptunian bodies occur in two distinct regions: the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud
and both of these regions are shown in the following image.
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Both are regions of space around our Solar system that, combined, contain up to trillions of
small, icy bodies that become comets when their orbits are disturbed by the gravity of other
objects in space and they fall towards the sun in the centre of our solar system.
Kuiper Belt: a disk-shaped region past the orbit of Neptune, 30 to 100 AU from the Sun.
Oort Cloud: a huge spherical “cloud” of many billions of icy bodies, surrounding the outer
limits of the Solar System and extending approximately 3 light years (about 30 trillion
kilometers) from the Sun.
Interstellar Objects
Interstellar objects are the newest class of small solar system bodies. These are objects that
normally pass through the solar system, having arrived here from "interstellar space" (the space
between star systems), so that they are not native to our own solar system. They are
normally only small solar system bodies temporarily; the exception would be if they crashed
into a solar system object during their passage through our solar system. An important
difference between solar system bodies and interstellar objects is that the latter are not
"gravitationally bound" to any star (including the Sun). They are thought to include objects that
are compositionally similar to comets or asteroids but the majority of interstellar objects are
thought to be icy bodies (like solar system comets). Such objects are distinguished from similar
objects from within our solar system by their trajectory; an interstellar object typically follows a
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strongly hyperbolic trajectory (eccentricity greater than 1) that shows it arriving from outside of
the solar system and then continuing on along a path that takes it out of the solar system after
circling the Sun. The figure below compares the trajectory of a comet from within our solar
system to the trajectory of the first interstellar object to be found in our solar system (described
in detail, below). The comet has a trajectory that is elliptical (grey path) in shape whereas the
interstellar object has a trajectory that is hyperbolic (green path) in shape.
https://astronomynow.com/2020/04/14/oumuamua-was-a-unique-object-now-astronomers-think-
there-could-be-trillions-just-like-it/
This first interstellar object was formally recognized as being from beyond our solar system in
early November 2017 (its discovery date is reported as Oct. 19, 2017). It is named
"'Oumuamua" which in Hawaiian means "first messenger from afar” and NASA reports that it is
pronounced “oh MOO-uh MOO-uh”. It's official designation number is "1I/2017 U1
('Oumuamua)". It was identified as an object from outside of our solar system due to its speed
and its orbital path. It was traveling faster than any object that is just falling at speeds
determined solely by the Sun's gravitational force. Such speeds could have developed if the
object had passed nearby one of our largest planets, the gas giants, with strong gravity that could
have caused the object to accelerate. However, an analysis of the objects trajectory indicated
that it had come nowhere near one of our giant planets so it must have arrived at high speed from
outside of our solar system. Its orbit has the highest eccentricity (1.20) ever observed for an
object in our Solar System and that trajectory indicated that the object originated from beyond
the solar system and that, after circling the sun, it would return the object back to interstellar
space. Click here to see an animation of Oumuamua's orbital path compared to the orbits of
the planets. Note that Oumuamua's orbit is at a high angle to the ecliptic plane. This animation
also shows that the nearest the object came to Earth was 0.276AU after it circled the Sun and
was on its way back to interstellar space.
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‘Oumuamua is a relatively small object with a length of approximately 400 metres; it is thought
to be “cigar-shaped” with intermediate and minor axes lengths close to 40 metres. This shape
was thought to be surprising by some and, coincidentally, it is similar to the shape that is
sometimes recommended for interstellar space ships. This led some to suggest that it was
actually an alien spacecraft but continued observation as it moved away from the Sun provided
no supporting evidence of this suggestion.
When it was first observed ‘Oumuamua was thought to have been a comet but its designation
was changed to an asteroid when it did not develop a tail as it passed near the sun. However,
subsequent analysis suggested that the object is covered by a surface coating formed by very
long-term bombardment by cosmic rays. It was proposed that the material beneath the surface of
the object may well be icy in nature but because the volatile components are protected by the
coating from the effects of solar radiation as it circles the sun it does not develop a tail. While no
comet tail was seen as Oumuamua moved away from the sun its velocity increased in a manner
that suggested that it was gaining speed due to vaporization of ice, suggesting that it was, in fact
made up largely of ice. That raised the question of what kind of ice might not produce a
prominent tail like those associated with most comets. As of the spring of 2021 it is widely
believed that Oumuamua is made of nitrogen ice like that which covers much of the surface of
the dwarf planet Pluto . This means that Oumuamua may be a chunk of material from a body
that was similar to Pluto, at the farthest reaches of some distant solar system, before it began its
long journey that brought to our solar system in 2017.
Artist's (M. Kornmesser) impression of 'Oumuamua.
A Ted Talk by Karen J. Meech was released in June 30, 2018, that includes new details about
'Oumuamua. Here's the link to that presentation:
https://www.ted.com/talks/karen_j_meech_the_story_of_oumuamua_the_first_visitor_from_anot
her_star_system?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare
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Note that while this Ted Talk does not include closed captioning it does include a separate
transcript of the dialogue.
A possible second interstellar object (an asteroid according to current information) named 2015
BZ5209 was identified May of 2018 as an asteroid that may have originated from beyond our
solar system but this object has been with us (in our solar system) for the last 4.5 billion years (it
would have arrived in our solar system a little after Earth formation was pretty much
complete). Nicknamed "Bee-zed" its weird orbit identifies it as being an "unusual" asteroid
compared to all others. It follows the same orbital path and at the same speed as Jupiter but in
the opposite direction! Every time it passes by Jupiter it weaves out of the gas giant's path,
avoiding collision, and then returns to the orbit once again.
The following link is to a CBC article about 2015 BZ5209:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/retrograde-interstellar-asteroid-1.4669311
There is an ongoing debate as to whether or not Bee-zed is actually an interstellar object; either
way it's unusual behaviour distinguishes it from other small objects in our solar system.
If Bee-zed is not really an interstellar object the second such body to be recognized is officially
as designated as 2I/Borisov (often referred to as as just "Borisov"). Borisov is similar to comets
in our solar system although its volatiles include much more carbon monoxide than comets from
our own solar system. Borisov's trajectory through our solar system took it to within 2 AU of the
sun, crossing the ecliptic plane in space between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. In
comparison, Oumuamua crossed the ecliptic plane crossed the ecliptic plane between the Sun
and Mercury, 0.255AU from the Sun. Because Borisov did not come closer than approximately
300,000,000km of Earth it's size cannot be precisely determined; it is estimated to have a
diameter in the range 1.4 to 16 km. The image below is an artists conception of Borisov.
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Problems with Pluto led to turmoil in the astronomical community in 2006 when its status as a
planet was challenged. The outcome of the debate that ensued changed our understanding of the
planets forever. Discovered on February 18, 1930, Pluto was considered to be the 9th planet of
our solar system until late in the summer of 2006. On September 13, 2006 Pluto was reclassified
as a dwarf planet along with a growing number of similar objects in our solar system. The
problems with Pluto were that it differed in many ways from the other planets and these
differences strongly suggested that Pluto did not form in the same manner as the other planets
within the evolving nebula. For that reason many people believed that it was not a true planet.
The problems with Pluto!
1. It rotates in the opposite direction to most planets which inherited their direction of
rotation from the nebula.
2. It is NOT a gas giant like the other "outer" planets; Pluto is like the inner "rocky" planets,
largely lacking a gaseous atmosphere.
3. Pluto has a strongly eccentric orbit (meaning that it is strongly elliptical rather than
circular like most planets). This orbit is not consistent with most of the other planets
much more circular orbits that were established by the rotating nebula.
4. Its orbital path is tilted at 17° to the plane of the orbits of most of the other planets; again,
this orbital plane differs from the orbital planes of the other planets where determined by
the plane of the rotating nebula.
The figure below shows the orbits of the planets and Pluto, illustrating points 3 and 4, above.
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Pluto's orbit about the Sun takes 248 Earth years and it follows a strongly elliptical path so that
its distance from the Sun varies considerably. The average distance from Pluto to the Sun is 5.9
billion km but it varies from a maximum distance of 7.38 billion km to a minimum of 4.44
billion km. The distance from Neptune to the Sun varies from 4.45 billion km to 4.55 billion
km. So, for parts of it's orbit Pluto is closer to the Sun than Neptune; this was most recently the
case from January 1979 until February 1999.
The problems with Pluto had been known for many, many years; it was too different from the
other planets to have formed in the same manner as the other planets so it likely didn't belong in
the list of true "planets". On the other hand, astronomers didn't really have a good definition of
what a planet really is so there was little basis for making a decision regarding Pluto's
status. Besides, for almost 80 years school children had learned of the "9" planets, not the "8"
planets, so that Pluto was firmly fixed in public knowledge that would be difficult to change.
However, the problems with Pluto became an important concern when a new object was
discovered and formally named 2003 UB313. This object has a diameter of 2,326km (compared
to Pluto's 2368 km diameter) and, like Pluto, it has a highly eccentric orbit about the Sun (see the
image below) and an orbital plane that is at a high angle to the orbital plane of the original 8
planets. In 2005 the discoverers of 2003 UB313 argued that because Pluto was considered to be
a planet then 2003 UB313 should also be classified as a planet. There was resistance to growing
the list to 10 planets because everyone was accustomed to having 9 planets. There was a concern
that if another planet was added that the list would become endless. The fact was that many
astronomers knew that Pluto (and 2003 UB313) were both likely "Kuiper Belt Objects" and if all
Kuiper Belt Objects as large as Pluto were included as planets the list would become very, very
long as our ability to see deeper into the fringes of our solar system improves over time.
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The matter of 2003 UB313 was the main event at the 2006 International Astronomical Union
(IAU) General Assembly which was held in Prague in August of that year. To support the
argument for assignment of 2003 UB313 as a planet a detailed proposal was prepared that
defined objects that orbit the sun in a detail that had not previously been undertaken with any
real degree of success.
The following definition was proposed prior to the 2006 meeting and, if adopted, would mean
that 2003 UB313 would become officially recognized as a planet:
Planets: orbit a star (the sun), have enough mass to produce gravity strong enough to make them
spherical, not a star or moon of another planet.
If this definition was approved by the General Assembly not only would 2003 UB 313 be added
to the list of planets but Pluto would remain a planet. In addition, the object Charon (sometimes
thought of as a moon of Pluto) along with Ceres (the largest known asteroid) would be added to
the list of planets bringing the total to 12 planets in our solar system. Furthermore any objects
that are discovered in future that satisfy the definition would also become planets.
The diagram below shows how this definition of "planets" would change our vision of the solar
system.
The outcome of the 2006 IAU General Assembly
The proposed definition of "planet" was rejected by the majority of participants and the
following three definitions were approved:
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1. “Planet” is defined as a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient
mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic
equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has “cleared the neighbourhood*” around its
orbit. Note: "Cleared the neighbourhood means that the planet has used its gravity to “absorb” or
control other bodies in the vicinity of its orbit (i.e., its neighborhood).
2. A “dwarf planet” is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass
for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium
(nearly round) shape , (c) has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit, and (d) is not a
satellite.
3. “Small Solar-System Bodies” are defined as all objects that are not planets, dwarf planets or
satellites of planets or dwarf planets.
Source: www.universetoday.com/525/plutos-out-of-the-planet-club (link no longer available as
of March, 2016)
Because Pluto's orbit crosses the path of many Kuiper Belt objects it does not satisfy the criteria
of having "cleared its neighbourhood" so it does not meet the definition of "planet" as approved
by the General Assembly; for that reason Pluto was dropped from the list of planets. For the
same reason 2003 UB313 and Ceres did not meet the new definition and were excluded from the
list of planets. However, all three objects do fit the definition of Dwarf Planet so they do have
some elevated status above small solar system objects. As for Charon, it remains a moon of
Pluto.
The following figure illustrates the planets and dwarf planets as they were defined at the 2006
IAU General Assembly.
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Planetary update:
• The object formerly known as 2003 UB313 was officially named “Eris”, after the Greek
god of discord.
• Its moon will be named Dysomia (the daughter of Eris).
• The dwarf planet Pluto has a new official name: 134340 Pluto
How many dwarf planets are there in the Solar System?
In 2006 there were three dwarf planets that had been formally assigned to this category of object.
According to Mike Brown (Professor of Planetary Astronomy at the California Institute of

Technology and the discoverer of 2003 UB313), as of February 23, 2021, there are:
10 objects which are nearly certainly dwarf planets,

27 objects which are highly likely to be dwarf planets,
68 objects which are likely to be dwarf planets,
130 objects which are probably dwarf planets, and
741 objects which are possibly dwarf planets.
These numbers were the most up-to-date values available on May 10, 2021. You can check for
more recent values at Prof. Brown's web site
at http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/dps.html#table
Big News about a former planet now dwarf planet - Pluto
Prior to 2015 the best images of Pluto came from Hubble Space Telescope that was launched in
April of 1990. Before Hubble became operational the best images that we had were
merely several pixels of light in otherwise dark space due to the immense distance to Pluto
(average distance: 5.91 billion kilometres). The following shows a Hubble image of Pluto:
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In 2006 NASA launched an interplanetary space probe called "New Horizons" that would fly
close to Pluto and provide an opportunity for images with a resolution that were previously
impossible. On July 15, 2015, New Horizons made its closest approach to Pluto at distance of
12,500 km. The day before the closest approach we could see Pluto as shown in the following
photograph:
The day of the closest encounter provided an opportunity to send back to Earth images that were
previously beyond human imagination. The image, below, is just one many scenes of the
landscapes of Pluto that are available at NASA's New Horizons Image Gallery:
NASA's figure caption: "In this highest-resolution image from NASA’s New Horizons
spacecraft, great blocks of Pluto’s water-ice crust appear jammed together in the informally
named al-Idrisi mountains. Some mountain sides appear coated in dark material, while other
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sides are bright. Several sheer faces appear to show crustal layering, perhaps related to the layers
seen in some of Pluto’s crater walls. Other materials appear crushed between the mountains, as if
these great blocks of water ice, some standing as much as 2.4 km high, were jostled back and
forth. The mountains end abruptly at the "shoreline" of the informally named Sputnik Planum,
where the soft, nitrogen-rich ices of the plain form a nearly level surface, broken only by the fine
trace work of striking, cellular boundaries and the textured surface of the plain’s ices (which is
possibly related to sunlight-driven ice sublimation). This view is about 10 km wide. The top of
the image is to Pluto’s northwest." Source: https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/the-
mountainous-shoreline-of-sputnik-planum
In July 2017 NASA released a fabulous flyover Pluto video based on the New Horizons
images. The link below is to that video on YouTube.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1fPhhTT2Oo
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Before leaving the section on the Solar System we'll finish up by looking at the stages of planet
formation in the nebula in a little more detail and at the formation of the moon by a major
collision between the nearly completed Earth and a protoplanet.
Accumulation of material within the nebula to form the Earth and other planets was a three-stage
process that was completed by about 4.56 Billion years ago.
Stage 1
• Dust-size particles come into close contact and "stick" together, gradually forming larger
objects.
• Turbulence in the nebula is thought to play an important role in bringing small objects
into close proximity.
• The objects grow until they have sufficient mass so that their gravitational attraction of
the larger objects pulls smaller objects into them and they grow into “Planetesimals” that
exceed 1 km in diameter.
Stage 2
• Planetesimals underwent relatively rapid accretion as they came together to form larger
objects called "planetary embryos".
• This stage saw the formation of tens to about 100 objects ranging in size from that of our
moon to the size of Mars; these large planetary embryos are often called "Protoplanets".
• This period of planet formation is thought to have taken only a million years.
Stage 3:
• Protoplanets from Stage 2 are attracted to each other due to their gravity, resulting in
massive collisions and forming larger objects that ultimately became the planets of the
solar system.
• This stage is believed to have taken 50 to 100 million years. Approximately half of the
heat within the Earth today was produced by the energy released during collisions of the
protoplanets during this stage of Earth's formation.
• During the later part of Stage 3 the Moon came into existence.
The formation of the moon
The Lunar orbit suggests that it was captured from debris ejected from the Earth during a stage 3
impact.
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Towards the end of Stage 3 the Earth had an ocean of molten rock; melting due to the energy
released from frequent large collisions.
It is believed that the formation of the moon began when one or possibly two very large objects
(up to Mars in size) had oblique collisions with Earth and ejected a ring of molten debris into
orbit around the planet.
Once in orbit the molten debris accreted (came together) in a manner similar to the accretion of
the planets.
It is estimated that the Moon was pretty much complete after a decade following the causal
collisions with Earth. Right after its formation the moon was likely a molten mass but it cooled
to form a solid crust when impact frequency and magnitude diminished.
The video, below, is an animation showing how it is believed that the moon formed. The video
has no dialogue. Warning: turn the sound off if you have an aversion to moderately annoying
music.
Since its formation the moon has slowly been moving farther and farther from Earth. Just
following completion of Lunar construction it was in an orbit about the Earth that was about 15
time closer than the current orbit. A billion years later the orbit was 4 times closer than today; it
has been moving away from the Earth ever since it formed.
The photo on the left, below, shows the moon over Brighton Wharf as it can be seen on a clear
night. The photo on the right is my vision of what the moon would have looked like in sky
shortly after its formation when it was 15 times closer than it is today.
You may also want to see the following is a 25 minute movie on the birth of the moon that
explores some details that are not covered above.
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Ever since the formation of the Earth it has been bombarded by debris from space.
• The following diagram shows the rate of change in the number of space objects that have
collided with Earth since it formed.
• During the third stage of planetary formation the rate at which objects collided with Earth
was a billion times the current rate of impact.
• The rate decreased rapidly as fewer and fewer objects were left in the vicinity of Earth,
having accreted to construct the planet.
• By 4.3 billion years ago the impact rate was reduced to about 20 times the current rate.
• From 3.8 to 4.1 billion years ago there was a period when the impact rate rose to almost
1000 times the current rate when it is believed that a disturbance in the asteroid belt
caused an increase in the number of small bodies entering the inner portion of the solar
system. This period is shown in the diagram below as the "late heavy bombardment".
• By 3.5 billion years ago the impact rate had fallen to current levels and has remained
more or less constant since that time.
• According to NASA about 100 tonnes of material from space comes into Earths'
atmosphere every day, mostly as very fine particles. On average, only one body with a
diameter of 1 metre will reach Earth each year.
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Debris in space today comes in a variety of forms:
Comets
• A comet is a mixture of ices, both water and frozen gases (carbon dioxide, methane,
ammonia) and dust and are often called “dirty snowballs”.
• Comets are made up of material that was not incorporated into planets when the solar
system was formed (most comets are about 4.6 billion years old).
• Most comets have elliptical orbits about the Sun as shown in the following
illustration. Some comets orbit within the planetary region of the solar system (as in the
example below) whereas others have an orbital path that takes them very far out into the
Oort Cloud, taking millions of years for a complete orbit about the Sun.
Most comets began as trans-Neptunian objects but their orbits have been disturbed in such a
way as to produce new orbital paths that circle the sun. The following figure shows the orbit of
the famous Halley’s comet.
Anatomy of a Comet
The next figure shows the important components of a comet.
For most of its orbit about the sun a comet is just a solid mass made up mostly of ice and frozen
gases along with dust and other solids. This solid mass makes up the nucleus of the comet and it
is very hard to see against that blackness of space.
However, once a the dark solid mass of a comet approaches the Sun two changes happen:
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1. The nucleus heats up and the water ice and solid (frozen) gases melt and change to a gaseous
state. As a result of melting, dust and other solid debris that had been frozen into the nucleus is
released. The liberated gas and solid particles lag behind the moving comet to form two tails
(see below for details) that extend away from the nucleus.
2. Ultraviolet light from the sun causes the the gas and dust to fluoresce or glow so that the
entire comet, including its tails, becomes prominently visible. As the comet comes closer to the
sun it becomes more brilliant and its tail becomes longer as it crosses the night sky.
It is during this period when the comet appears as in the photograph below.
Coma: this is the brightest part of the comet and is a glowing dense cloud of water, carbon
dioxide and other neutral gases derived from the nucleus.
Dust tail: composed of smoke-sized dust particles driven off the nucleus and come behind after
the comet has passed.
Gas tail: these are charged gas ions that are released from the nucleus.
The tails do not lie along the path that the comet has followed (like the exhaust contrail does
behind a jet flying high over head) because the material making up the tails is pushed by solar
wind. Solar wind is made up of charged particles that follow straight-line paths that radiate
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outward from the sun. Gas ions originating from the comet are more readily moved by solar
winds than is the dust. Thus, the solar wind can cause separation of the gas ions from dust
particles. The gas ions are readily pushed along a line that parallels the solar wind (the line
passing through the centres of the comet and the sun). The dust tail is also pushed towards that
line but much less effectively so that the dust tail is at an angle to the line paralleling the solar
wind. This is illustrated in the figure below. Note that when the path of the comet is at a small
angle to the direction of solar wind there is not enough separation of the gases and dust to cause
the development of two tails. Two tails are best developed when the line from the sun to the
comet (and, therefore the line followed by solar wind) is at a right angle to the path of the
comet. In the figure below you can see that as the comet's path moves around the sun the
angular difference between the two tails changes.
Because a comet loses volatiles (water and gases) with every pass by the sun, after several
hundreds of passes by the Sun only a rocky object remains.
Where do comets come from?
Answer: the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud.
Both are regions of space around our Solar system that, combined, contain up to trillions of
small, icy bodies that become comets when their orbits are disturbed by the gravity of other
objects in space and they fall towards the sun in the centre of our solar system.
Gravitational interaction with the outer planets can also disturb the orbit of icy bodies, sending
them on their elliptical orbits around the sun where we see them as comets.
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Exploration of comets
Spacecraft from Earth have visited Comets over the last decade giving us a close look at these
visitors from the outer regions of our solar system. The section linked below provides
information on the 2014-15 European Space Agency's Rosetta Mission which resulted in the first
"soft" landing on a comet and the NASA's 2005 Deep Impact Mission which crashed a probe
into a comet.
Rosetta Mission, 2014
On 12 November 2014, ESA's Rosetta mission soft-landed its Philae probe on comet
67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the first time in history that such an extraordinary feat has been
achieved. The video immediately below was produced to "advertise" the mission but I include it
here largely for the Game of Throne Fans out there, particularly those who are fans of
Littlefinger [Game of Thrones *spoiler alert*: no matter what you think of Littlefinger, the
Battle of the Bastards would have been lost without his help.....and, yes, Jon Snow would be
dead....for good this time].
The following video shows the soft landing of Rosetta's lander Philae on the surface of comet
67P/C-G on Nov. 12th, 2014. The video has no dialogue.
Deep Impact, 2005
Previously on July 4, 2005, JPL’s spacecraft Deep Impact’s mission was complete when its
impactor collided with Comet Temple 1.
The purpose of the mission was to observe the formation of a crater and to analyse the debris that
was ejected to determine the comet’s composition.
The impact crater was made by a 370 kg mass that was launched from Deep Impact. The video
has no dialogue.
Asteroids
Asteroids are relatively small (metres to less than 800 kilometres), dense objects that orbit the
Sun. Most are not massive enough to develop a spherical shape so that many of them are
irregular in shape. They are largely made up of inner solar system material that was not formed
into planets or fragments of planets produced by collisions early in the history of the solar
system.
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Asteroids come in a variety of forms, examples of which are given below.
Asteroid Gaspra
Like most asteroids, Gaspra has a heavily cratered surface due to billions of years of exposure to
smaller objects that have been drawn into it by its gravity.
Asteroid Ida
Ida is large enough to have its own 1.5 km diameter satellite (Dactyl) in orbit around it.
Asteroid 25143 Itokawa
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This is a relatively small asteroid 690 by 300 metres that circles the sun in an orbit that crosses
Earth's orbit. It is particularly notable because it appears to be an aggregate of broken up rock
material with little observable cratering on its surface.
Astroid Eros
Eros is a large asteroid (33x13x13km) with an orbit approximately 17,800,000km from the Sun.
Eros rotates with a strong wobble due to a giant gouge that may be a scar from a past collision?
Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous - Shoemaker (NEAR Shoemaker) spacecraft orbited and then
touched down on Eros in 2000, the first human contact with an Asteroid in history. The
following link will load an excellent animation that was produced by NASA of the landing on
Eros. The animation has no dialogue.
Watch animation here.
The next video is film footage of the landing of NEAR-Shoemaker on EROS. The film shows
the surface of EROS coming closer and closer until the craft touched down (quite abruptly) on
the surface of the asteroid. The video has no dialogue.
Watch YouTube video here.
Ceres - more than just an asteroid!
While Ceres is member of the asteroid belt, and the largest of the asteroids, it is also a "dwarf
planet" as we currently define dwarf planets. When I first started teaching about asteroids the
best photos of Ceres that could be found were blurry and pixelated blotches of light. When the
Hubble Space Telescope was put into a low orbit around Earth it increased our ability to see
deeper into space than ever before and produced images like that below of the largest of the
asteroids.
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NASA's Dawn mission visited Ceres in the Asteroid Belt over 2015-16, came to within 375 km
of the surface of the dwarf planet/asteroid.
Just by coincidence I write this section on June 30, 2016, the last official day of the Dawn
mission. It's great to be an earthling over 2014 and 2016 and be able to watch Rossetta, Dawn
and New Horizon as they provide the first ever glimpses of parts of space that have been, at best,
blurry, pixelated images.
The following image is a full view of Ceres and it is followed by a shot of Ceres taken on May 4,
2015, when Dawn was 13,600 km from the asteroid.
The following image was taken with Dawn in its nearest orbit to the surface.
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The Classification of Asteroids
Asteroids are classified on the basis of the light that is reflected from the surface of the
object. One such measure is the proportion of light reaching a surface that is reflected back from
that surface; this measure of reflectivity of an object is called its "albedo" and it varies from 0
(no light is reflected which would appear as a very black object) to 1.0 (all of the light is
reflected which would appear as a bright object).
The three most common types of astroid are:
C-type: Extremely dark asteroids with albedo of 0.03 (only 3% of light reaching the surface is
reflected). Over 75% of all asteroids are this type and they are thought to be "stony" bodies with
a composition comparable to the composition of solids in the nebula.
S-type: about 17% of all asteroids of this type which is relatively bright (albedos range from
0.10 to 0.22) and they are thought to be made of the metals nickel-iron mixed with rocks that are
similar to those making up the Earth's lithosphere.
M-type: making up the majority of asteroids that are not C- or S-type, these asteroids have
albedos in the range 0.10 to 0.18 (overlapping with S-type) and they are believe to be almost
pure nickel-iron.
Absolute magnitude and size of asteroids
The Absolute Magnitude (normally denoted by the capital letter H) of an asteroid is essentially
a measure of how bright it is and brightness will vary with the asteroid's size and its albedo. For
constant albedo the brightness increases with the size of the asteroid; for constant size the
brightness increases with the albedo of the asteroid. due to the manner in which absolute
magnitude is calculated the smaller the magnitude the larger the size of asteroid.
The absolute magnitude of an asteroid may be used to estimate its size. However, because the
exact albedo of an asteroid may not be known, the size that is determined from absolute
magnitude will span a range that reflects the natural range in variation in the albedo of asteroids.
For example, an asteroid with magnitude of 3.0 ranges in size from 670km to 1490km. An
asteroid with a magnitude of 20 will range in size from 270m to 590m in size.
Asteroids: How big is big?
As we will see later in this module, the mass of an asteriod, which is governed by its overall size
and the density of the material that it is made of, is an important variable in determining how
much damage would result if it collided with the Earth (or anything else). It's often difficult to
visualize the overall size of an object just from knowing its dimensions. The following short
video show asteroids of various size in comparison to New York City. Note that the video
includes the name of each asteroid that it illustrates, some of which are described above. The
video has no dialogue, just really annoying (to me) music.
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Meteoroids, meteors, meteorites and bolides
This section describes the relatively small objects that are found in space and which commonly
make it through the Earth's atmosphere and crash onto its surface.
It is estimated that about 100 tonnes of material from space enters the Earth's atmosphere each
day...much of this burns up in the atmosphere.
Here are some definitions to begin with:
Meteoroid: a piece of stone or metal that travels in space (smaller than an asteroid, from dust
size to a metre in diameter)
Meteor: a meteoroid that falls towards the Earth, heating up due to friction and glowing as it
crosses the sky.
Meteorite: a meteor that lands on the Earth’s surface.
Bolide: a large, particularly bright meteor that often explodes (sometimes called a "fireball").
The following video shows a compilation of videos taken as a meteor passed through the evening
sky over the United States in 1992 (note that the video has no dialogue). Breaking up as it
passed across the atmosphere, pieces of the meteor fell to Earth in Peekskill, New York. The
final image of the video is that of a car owned at the time by 17 year old Michelle Knapp (who
also got to keep the large meteorite that did the damage). A still photo of the car is reproduced
below the video. This object, known as the "Peekskill Meteorite", is particularly famous because
it was witnessed by thousands of people as it soared across the sky over the United Sates.
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The car in the photo. Below, is the 1980 Chevrolet Malibu that was struck by a large piece of the
Peekskill meteorite. It had just been purchased for $3000 but because of the novelty of it having
been hit by a meteorite it sold for $10,000 shortly after it was hit.
Classification of Meteorites
Because meteorites fall to to the Earth they have been classified according to their
composition. The figure below shows a simple classification of meteorites
Note that the Achondrites or "Martian meteorites" are meteorites that come from the crust of
Mars. The following link provides some details on this particularly important class of meteorite:
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NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Martian meteorites
Below: the world’s largest meteorite is named the Hoba Meteorite and was discovered in
Namibia. It is an iron meteorite with a weight of approximately 60 tonnes.
A brief note about bolides.
In the live ERSC 1P92 class I would often ask the group of 500 or so students how many of them
had seen a meteor. Fewer than half had ever seen one. When I asked if anyone had ever seen a
bolide there were often no people in class who had seen one. In my lifetime I've likely seen 10
meteors and one appeared to have come down within a kilometre or so from where I saw it. I
have also seen the flash in the sky of a bolide once in my lifetime. That was back in
Peterobough, Ontrario, one early evening in the mid 1960s when I was about 12 years old. The
sky to the west became bright white as something flashed below the horizon. It turned out to be
a bolide in the sky over a location near Lake Huron.
If you have ever seen a meteor or a bolide why not describe it in the General Discussion forum
for this course. Tell us where you were when you saw it, what it looked like, did others see it at
the same time.....anything that comes to mind.
Despite the fact that few people recall seeing bolides they are not that unusual. The following
map shows the spatial distribution of bolides that were reported by human observers and for
which location coordinates were provided over the period from April 15,1988 to May 2,
2021. The web site at https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/fireballs/ provides information on the data used
to compile this map and includes an interactive version of the map as well as the data on which
the map is based. Note that each coloured circle on the map represents a bolide and the size of
the circle is proportional to the magnitude of the energy released; the colour scale on the right
hand side of the diagram can be used to interpret the colour of each circle in terms of the
calculated energy released by each bolide in kiloton equivalent TNT. If you go to the site linked
above you can click on each point to find out the energy released by the explosion (called
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"impact energy" on the map), the date the bolide was observed and the longitude and latitude of
the explosion.
Brock University is home to an all-sky-cam that is located above the Department of Earth
Sciences. The camera scans the entire sky at night and provides video records the passage of
bright objects moving across the sky. It is part of a network of such cameras across Ontario that
are operated by the Meteor Physics Group at the University of Western Ontario.
The annotated image below was taken by the camera at Brock on September 24, 2018. The
image shows the entire sky and the locations on the ground of the Schmon Tower and the Cairns'
Building are shown around the periphery of the image. The centre of the image is directly above
the location of the camera. The compass directions (North, West, South and East) are shown by
their first letters around the circle and the brightly shining moon is prominent. The dotted line is
made up of sequential images of the meteor and delineates its path as it moved overhead
across the sky from the northeast to the southwest (SW). I'm grateful to Phil McCausland,
University of Western Ontario, for not only providing us the image but also for working to
bring the all-sky-cam to Brock.
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See the following page for a useful graphic for remembering what these object are. Thanks to
Giulia Forsythe for sharing her creation with the class.
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Today there is considerable concern about space objects colliding with Earth, despite the paucity
of recorded strikes directly on humans:
• Ancient records from China indicate that people have been killed by falling meteorites;
no such deaths are well documented from modern times.
• A meteorite killed a dog when it fell in Egypt in 1911.
• Elizabeth Hodges, of Sylacauga, Alabama, was given a terrible bruise on the side by a
falling meteorite in 1954.
• A young boy was struck on the head by a meteorite that had been slowed down by the
leaves of a banana plant in Uganda in 1992.
• On February 15, 2013, the Chelyabinsk bolide exploded over Russia and its shock wave
resulted in 1491 injuries, largely from glass and debris but also included temporary
blindness due to the brightness of the fireball. There were no reported injuries directly
attributable to meteorite fragments hitting people.
• In 2009 Gerrit Blank (see below) claimed to have been hit in the hand by a glowing pea
sized meteorite. His claim is widely believed to have been a hoax!
So why the concern today?
Three events over the 20th Century heightened concern that objects in space may pose a
serious risk to humans and all other life on Earth. These events were:
The Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) Extinction Event
(Formerly known as the "Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) Extinction Event)
Recognition that a major impact led to the extinction of the dinosaurs and much other life led to
serious consideration that a similar event could happen at any time!
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If you recall, at the end Module 1, we learned about Luis and Walter Alvarez, who found the first
evidence that the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs and many other groups of
organism was likely the result of the collision of a large space object with Earth 66 million years
ago. This was the first good proof that an object or objects from space could have devastating
effects on the Earth.
If you've forgotten the details of the Alvarez discovery go back to the video at the very end of
Module 1.
The Tunguska Event
On June 30, 1908, at 7:30am a 15 megaton blast was felt over a large area of Siberia (the
Hiroshima nuclear explosion was about 0.02 megatons; 750 X Hiroshima).
• The blast was an airburst (explosion) of a 60 m diameter asteroid.

• The explosion was heard in London England.
• Over 60,000 trees were flattened over an area of 2000km2 (see below)
This was the first such atmospheric explosion of an object from space that had been well
documented. The magnitude of the blast and its pattern of devastation indicated that even an
object as small as 60m in diameter could have locally devastating affects if one exploded over a
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city. The following map shows the extent of damage if such an object like that over Tunguska
exploded over St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada.
Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (SL-9)
In 1992, Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (SL-9) passed near to Jupiter when it broke up into at least
21 separate fragments, up to 2 km in diameter. The pieces dispersed over several million
kilometres along its orbit as shown in the image below.
Between 16 July 1994 and 22 July 1994 the fragments impacted the upper atmosphere of Jupiter.
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This was the first collision of two solar system bodies ever witnessed (and it was watched
worldwide on television).
The first fragment struck Jupiter with energy equal to about 225,000 megatons of TNT creating a
plume which rose about 1000 km above the planet.
A later fragment struck with an estimated energy equal to 6,000,000 megatons of TNT (about
600 times the estimated arsenal of the world). The fireball rose about 3000 km above the surface
of the planet.
The multiple collisions between very large objects and Jupiter clearly illustrated that such
catastrophic events still happen in our solar system and they can happen anywhere at any time
and they can be far, far worse than the collision that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.
These three events illustrated that:
• Such impacts were possible and not just the stuff of SciFi. We could see it happen (with
the aid of space telescopes).
• Major impacts can have a devastating effect on all life on Earth.
• Even minor impacts on Earth (Tunguska) that have taken place in recent record could kill
millions and cause billions of dollars in damage.
• Governments and insurance companies developed concern regarding the risks and costs
of such events.
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These events caused scientists and politicians to pause and think about what is known about the
risk of space objects to the Earth. The answer was repeatedly the same: very, very little.
In light of these three 20th Century events researchers have focused on several questions:
• What has been the frequency of impacts with Earth?

• How many objects are close enough to Earth to pose a risk?
• What happens when an object of a given size arrives at Earth?
• How do we assign a level of “risk” to space objects?
• What does the geologic record tell us about major impacts (the past is the key to the
present)?
Frequency of Impacts
The following is based on estimates of modern objects and the geological record of impacts
worldwide.
These are average values; large events can happen at any time!
The average time between impacts can be resolved for smaller regions of Earth to evaluate
human risk:
For example, in the diagram above it can be seen that a Tunguska-class impact (60m diameter
object) can be expected to take place somewhere on Earth once every 300 years. However, of
greater interest, in terms of the outcome of such an event, is how frequently such an event can be
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expected over populated areas of the Earth. The probability must be weighted by the proportion
of the area of the Earth that is populated by humans. For example,
• Average interval between impacts for the entire Earth (100% of the Earth's surface)= 300
years.
• Average interval between impacts for populated areas (which make up about 10% of
Earth surface)= 3,000 years
• Average interval between impacts for world urban areas (which make up 0.3% of Earth
surface)= 100,000 years
• Average interval between impacts for U.S. urban areas (which make up 0.03% of Earth
surface) = 1,000,000 years
Original source: http://impact.arc.nasa.gov/reports/spaceguard/index.html
So the frequency of Tunguska class impacts on a US urban area is actually very

small. However, as we saw earlier, such an impact over an urban area can be very deadly and
destructive.
The Search for Near Earth Objects (NEO)
How many objects are out there that pose a risk to Earth?
This is a question that hadn't really been considered seriously until the latter part of the 20th
century. While we watched Jupiter being bombarded by huge cometary fragments we had no
real idea of whether or not there were many comparable objects in a position to collide with our
home planet.
By 1998 sufficient concern had been generated that NASA founded the Near Earth Objects
Program in an effort to, as quickly as possible, identify objects that pose a risk to Earth.
Near Earth Objects* include both Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) and Near Earth Comets
(NECs) as defined below:
NEAs are asteroids that are in orbits in which they come to within 1.3 AU of the Sun;
NECs are comets in orbits in which they come to within 1.3 AU of the Sun AND have orbital
periods (time for a complete orbit) of less than 200 years.
Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are asteroids that come to within 0.05 AU of the
Earth and have a minimum diameter of 110m.
*Definitions are derived from information at http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/neo/groups.html on April 21,

2015. Recall that AU is the abbreviation for "Astronomical Unit" and 1AU is the distance from
the Earth to the Sun.
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In its first year of operation (1998) the Near Earth Program's budget was 10.5 million dollars and
it's mandate was to discover 90% of all NEOs that were 1km in size or larger over the next 10
years. The data that is needed to fulfil this mandate comes from large field telescopes that swept
the skies taking digital photographs. Photos from the same region of space but at different times
are digitally overlain to identify objects that displayed a particular type of motion.
The following link explains how the NEO Search Program

works: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/programs/intro.html
The following photograph shows one of the telescopes that is used to collect data for the NEO
Program.
It has been estimated that there are approximately 1000 NEAs that exceed 1 km in size. As of
April 21, 2015, 871 NEAs that are 1km in size or greater have been discovered; 5 asteroids
greater than 1km have been discovered so far in 2015 so it is believed that the initial target will
be reached well before the end of 2015.
As they close in on meeting their initial mandate the focus of the search is now on discovering
90% of all NEOs that are larger than 140 m; to help achieve this goal the Program's budget was
increased to $40 million in 2014.
The following figure shows how well the program has done in discovering NEAs based on
observations spanning the period from January 1980 to May 6, 2021. The blue region of the
diagram represents all NEAs discovered over that period, the orange region represents all NEAs
discovered that are larger than 140m in size and the red region represents all NEAs that are
larger than 1km in size. Note in particular the sharp increase in the number of newly discovered
NEAs at the beginning of 1998 when the NEO Program began. Note also that the number of
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discoveries of large NEAs has been increasing very slowly over the last few years because most
of them have already been discovered. In contrast, many more of the smaller NEAs are being
discovered every year because there remains a large number yet to be found. To go to an
interactive version of the figure below click here.
As of May 6, 2021 Near Earth Object discoveries include 114 Near Earth Comets and 25,766
Near Earth Asteroids totaling 25,880 Near Earth Objects.
Of the 25,766 NEAs, 889 are 1km in size or larger and 9,635 are 140 metres or larger.
Of the 25,766 NEAs 2,177 are Potentially Hazardous Asteroids and 157 of them are 1km in size
or larger.
When the program began in 1998 there were 500 NEOs, 447 of these were NEAs and 200 of the
NEAs were 1km or greater in size.
The Near Earth Object Program has certainly gone a long way to answering the question of
"How many objects are out there that pose a risk to Earth?".....but there are still many left to
discover.
An additional value of the findings of the NEO Program is that all newly discovered asteroids are
reported directly to the Near-Earth Object Human Space Flight Accessible Targets Study
(NHATS) that began in September 2010. The NEO Program shares its data with NHATS and
this data will inform planning for possible operations such as commercial mineral and metal
recovery in the future. What was the topic of science fiction just a couple of decades ago will
likely become a reality in your lifetime.
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As new objects are discovered their orbits are calculated on the basis of the motion observed on
photographs and as more and more photographs are collected the accuracy of the projected orbits
improves so that we know with considerable certainty where the objects will be up to hundreds
of years into the future.
The Centre for Near Earth Objects Studies web site includes a huge amount of information about
the objects that come relatively close to the Earth: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/orbits/
What Happens When an Object Impacts With Earth?
The outcomes of an object from space impacting on the Earth's surface depends on a number of
factors. The size and speed of the object are most important because combined they determine
how much energy is released on impact.
• Asteroids approach the Earth at speeds of 15 to 25 km/sec (54,000-90,000 km/hr).

• Comets can approach the Earth at speeds up to 70 km/sec (252,000 km/hr).
Depending on the mass (volume X density) the atmosphere may slow the object down to about
200 km/hr.
The energy released upon impact is the Kinetic Energy (denoted by "E") of the object.
Kinetic Energy = E = ½ mV2
• Where m is the mass of the object and V is its velocity.

• As the mass of the object increases so does the Kinetic Energy
• Double the mass leads to a doubling of the Kinetic Energy
• The Kinetic Energy increases with the square of the velocity; when velocity increases by
a factor of two (i.e., it doubles) the Kinetic Energy increases by a factor of 4 (four times
the value).
The available Kinetic Energy determines the outcomes of the impact.
It is crucial to understand that all large impact craters are formed by the explosive release
of kinetic energy that takes place on impact. The explosive release of kinetic kinetic energy
produces a great deal of heat and compressional shock waves waves that travel symmetrically
outward in all directions.
Specific effects at impact can include:
Heat wave
• Much of the kinetic energy may be converted to heat that radiates outward from the
impact or atmospheric explosion.
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• Radiant heat is also derived from the temperature of the object due to friction as it passed
through the atmosphere, by compression of air, from the "fireball" if the object explodes
to release energy as light and heat.
• Can incinerate the area close to the event and start fires all around the site.
Pressure wave (atmospheric shock wave)
• Shock wave front due to compression of the air from the explosion in the air on upon
impact followed by winds that can exceed 500km/hr.
• The shock wave can knock down buildings and trees all around the site.
• Hurricane-like winds cause further devastation but, on the bright side, may blow out fires.
• The following video shows a compilation of videos showing the shock wave generated
by a 17m diameter bolide that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in February
2013. The pressure wave produced by the Chelyabinsk bolide is reported to have caused
injury to almost 1500 people due to flying glass and other debris but no injuries were due
to a direct hit by fragments of the object.
The video, below, records a shockwave produced by the Chelyabinsk bolide. Note that the
language is Russian and no English subtitles are available but dialogue isn't really necessary to
get a good idea of what the shockwave was like.
Crater Formation
• Impact of an object on the Earth surface results in an explosion that displaces crustal
material into the atmosphere leaving a large crater on the surface.
• In general, the impact crater is 20 to 30 times the diameter of the impacting object,
depending on the nature of the material making up the surface that is impacted.
• The impact crater and its immediate surroundings are the site of complete devastation.
• We will examine crater formation in some detail a little later in this module.
The following photo shows Wolf Creek crater in Australia; this crater formed about 300,000
years ago. The crater is 875 metres across and its rim rises 25 metres above the surrounding
plains and the crater floor is 50 metres below the top of the rim.
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Rain of small rocks and dust
• Material ejected from a crater (both asteroid and Earth material) or produced as an object
explodes in the air can travel for thousands of kilometres.
• Large debris falls relatively close to the impact whereas dust is carried in the atmosphere
for years.
• Secondary damage to anything remaining in the region around the impact or explosion.
• Hot material that is ejected can cause fire for considerable distance around the impact
site.
• Increased atmospheric dust due to an impact can cause a reduction in sunlight reaching
the Earth's surface and result in significant global cooling.
Tsunamis
• When an asteroid impacts on a large water body (e.g., the ocean) a wave is generated that
travels very quickly over the water surface, steepening and flowing onshore along
coasts. Wave speeds have been recorded at almost 800 kilometres per hour (generated
by earthquakes, not asteroids).
• At the shoreline waves can reach over 100 metres in height and wash out buildings for
kilometres away from the shore.
• Large objects impacting on the ocean surface can generate tsunamis of much greater
magnitude than has been seen in historic times.
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The fictional film, Deep Impact (1998) depicted the events like earthquakes and tsunamis that
would occur if a comet were to collide with Earth.
Earthquake
• Much of the energy released on impact will produce shock waves through the Earth, thus
generating earthquakes.
• Earthquakes produced by terrestrial processes can produce events up to approximately
9.5 on the Richter Scale (a logarithmic scale that is proportional to the amount of energy
released in the crust due, most commonly, the breaking of rock in the crust).
• A large impacting object, like that that caused the mass extinction 66 million years ago
could generate a magnitude 13 earthquake.
• Surface shock waves can devastate the landscape (including buildings) hundreds of
kilometres from the impact site.
A footnote on human-made junk in space.
There are currently millions of bits of debris orbiting the Earth that was produced by human
activity. This material is often called "space debris", "space junk", "space litter", etc. and some
of it poses a direct risk to orbiting satellites that cross the path of large pieces of space junk.
In 2013 it was reported that there were over 170,000,000 such objects smaller than 1cm were in
orbit above the Earth. Wikipedia reports that there are about 670,000 pieces of debris that ranges
from 1 to 10 cm in size and about 29,000 are larger than 10cm.
Space debris consists of:
• frozen bits of nuclear reactor coolant that are leaking from old satellites
• jettisoned spacecraft parts
• nuts and bolts
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• solar cells
• abandoned satellites
• paint chips
• nuclear reactor cores
• spent rocket stages
• solid fuel fragments
The following figure shows objects that humans have put into orbit about the Earth that are
currently being "tracked". 95 percent of the objects shown are not satellites, they represent
debris!
"Debris-GEO1280" by [[user:]] - NASA Orbital Debris Program Office, photo gallery. Licensed under Public
Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
• Most of the debris in space is small but it's travelling extremely fast. Below altitudes of
2,000 km, the average relative impact speed is 36,000km/h.
• A 1mm metal chip could do as much damage as a .22-caliber long rifle bullet. Bits this
size don't generally pose a large threat to spacecraft, but can erode more sensitive
surfaces and disrupt missions.
• A pea-sized ball moving this fast is as dangerous as a 400-lb safe travelling at 100
km/h. Objects this large may penetrate a spacecraft; this could be fatal.
• A metal sphere the size of a tennis ball is as lethal as 25 sticks of dynamite. An object
like this will penetrate and seriously damage a spacecraft.
Large pieces of human space junk can pose a significant risk when they return to Earth at
densely populated locations. In the April of 2018 the world waited nervously for a collision with
Earth by an entire space station the size of a school bus that had been put into orbit by
China. The space station, Tiangong-1, launched in September of 2011, finally returned to Earth
on April 2, 2018, after a long period of orbital decay that made it difficult to provide much
52
forewarning of precisely what part of the Earth would be at risk. Fortunately, re-entry was over
the Southern Pacific Ocean where it reportedly mostly burned up during its descent.
The following video shows Tiangong-1's re-entry as it burned up while passing through the
Earth's atmosphere. Closed captioning is available only in Spanish in this video but the only
dialogue are expressions of awe made by someone at what is going on in the sky.
Quantifying the Risk of Impacts
Grollmann, (original source was http://www.gcr.com/sharedfile/pdf/Topics11Grollmann-en.pdf

but this is NO LONGER AVAILABLE) described the types of damages as evaluated by the
insurance industry. Note that in the following descriptions the period between impacts is, in
some cases, smaller than the scientific data support.
Grollmann divided space objects up by size into four classes of asteroids and described the
nature and magnitude of the various outcomes of impacts for each class.
Type I Asteroid: ranging from 0-30 m in diameter; 10,000 – 50,000/year.
• Normally explodes before impact into dust and small fragments.

• On March 27, 2003, such an explosion took place and the fragments (the size of tennis
balls) crashed into several houses in Park Forest, Illinois.
• Fragments cause damage but no risk of heat wave, earthquakes, etc., but shock waves can
be locally significant (e.g., the Chelyabinsk bolide)
The image below shows damage caused by a small meteorite impacting a Subaru Leone 4WD
vehicle.
Like the Earth, the moon is also bombarded by space debris and a NASA program monitor's
lunar impact events constantly. On March 17, 2013, the most spectacular such event took place
when a 30 to 40 cm diameter meteoroid weighing about 40 kg and travelling at 25 km/sec
collided with the lunar surface releasing energy equivalent to 5 tons of TNT. Unlike Earth these
relatively small meteoroids impact the lunar surface rather than exploding in the atmosphere
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because there is no atmosphere on the moon. The video, below, shows and discusses the March
17, 2013 lunar impact.
Type II Asteroid: 50 m diameter; every 250 yrs.
• Explodes in the air.

• Over land the heat wave starts fires within several kilometres below the explosion.
• Heat and pressure waves cause extensive damage within 25 or 30 kilometres of
explosion.
• Diminishing damage from pressure wave and winds to almost 100 kilometres.
• Damage can exceed that of a major earthquake.
• 10-15 metre tsunamis can cause extensive damage to large coastal cities (e.g., Vancouver,
San Francisco, Tokyo if the Pacific receives the impact).
Type III Asteroid: 1 km diameter; every 100,000 yrs.
• Objects of this size impact the surface; a 1 km object would create a 20 to 30 km

diameter crater.
• Very heavy damage for 500 km around the impact site due to heat and pressure wave.
• A major earthquake would add to extensive damage.
• Forest fires rage across the entire continent due to extensive heat wave and falling hot
debris.
• Local climatic change would have an effect on fauna and flora for decades to come.
• An impact at sea would send masses of water upwards to 10 km. Tsunamis would make
landfall as waves hundreds of metres high. Los Angeles, Tokyo, Hong Kong,
Miami…..destroyed except for concrete-reinforced ruins.
The map on the following page shows the extent of “heavy damage” across southern Ontario is a
1km diameter object impacted the city of Toronto.
54
Type IV Asteroid: 10 km diameter; every 50 million yrs.
• Impact crater: 300 km in diameter.

• Entire continent destroyed.
• Falling masses of molten rock would start forest fires world-wide.
• Magnitude 12 or greater earthquake would just add to the devastation.
• Auxiliary damage as nuclear power plants are destroyed.
• Global cooling of climate due to dust in the atmosphere would set back both plants and
animals.
• Global food supply jeopardized.
How do we assign a level of "risk" to space objects?
We can define "risk" as being the likelihood of some negative outcome arising from an event or
action.
In general the level of risk depends on the frequency of the event causing risk and it's scale (i.e.,
the extent of damage and the number of people affected).
Car accidents occur with a high frequency but they are of very small scale, normally affecting
only a few people per accident. However, car accidents have a relatively high frequency so that
everyone has a fairly high risk of being affected by a car accident.
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Airplane crashes occur very infrequently but their scale is moderate, possibly affecting up to
hundreds of people. The risk of an airplane crash is considered to be low because of the very
low frequency.
Asteroid impacts have a very low frequency but potentially have a very large-scale effects (may
affect billions of people) but overall the risk is low to the very low frequency.
However, for the average person the risk of death due to an asteroid impact is only twice
the risk of dying from a "snake, bee or venomous bite or sting" according to an article in
Livescience in 2005 entitled "The Odds of Dying".
The Torino Scale
The Torino Scale is a measure of the risk posed by a given asteroid or comet expressed as a
value from 0 to 10 with each value defined as shown in the following table.
The numerical values that are assigned to risk of impact, above, are based on a combination of
the probability that a given object will collide with Earth and the amount of damage that such a
collision will produce. The diagram below shows how the values of risk in the table relate to the
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probability of collision and the damage due to impact. The "probability of impact" is the
computed likelihood that within the next 100 years the object will collide with Earth given the
known orbit of the object with respect to the Earth's orbit. The amount of damage caused by an
impact by the object is approximated by the amount of kinetic energy that is released on impact,
expressed in units equivalent to megatons of TNT explosive power (MT). On the inside of the
Kinetic Energy scale the approximate diameter of an object that would release the amount of
energy indicated is shown in gray letters.
57
The Formation of Impact Craters
Impact craters form when an object explodes on impact with Earth's surface, releasing its kinetic
energy and displacing crustal material, ejecting it into the atmosphere leaving a large crater on
the surface (1 km diameter asteroid produces a 20 to 30 km diameter crater). Crater formation
takes place in three stages as described below:
1. Contact/compression Stage.
• A very brief stage (fraction of a second) when pressure and temperature increase
suddenly due to the explosive release of kinetic energy on impact.
• Rock in immediate contact is vaporized, surrounding rock melts due to the high
temperatures.
• Rock adjacent to the impact is displaced upwards and other material is ejected.
• Spalled material is derived from the impacting object.
• The crustal rocks beneath the impact site are compressed.
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2. Excavation Stage
• This is the stage when material is ejected upwards, away from the impact site.
• Rock beneath the impact continues to be compressed into a short-lived “transient” crater.
• The Chicxulub Crater would have taken less than 2 minutes to complete this stage.
3. Modification Stage. (refer to image on the following page)
• For craters >4km diameter a peak rises up in the centre as rock that was compressed and
pushed downwards in Stage 2 rebounds and rises upward.
• Central uplift reaches 10% of the crater diameter.
• The rebounding event takes only a few minutes.
• The crater walls slump into the crater. Initially large slumps occur but these that become
smaller and less frequent over time as the initially steep walls become stable.
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Anatomy of a Crater
The following figure shows the characteristics of simple craters (without a central uplift) and
complex craters that have a central uplift and are floored with solidified molten rock. Note that
both craters display a complex array of fractures beneath the crater. Identification of these
fractions is an important indicator that a crater is formed by an impact rather than by other
processes.
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Examples of Impact Craters
The Planetary and Space Science Centre at the Department of Earth Sciences, University of
New Brunswick, maintains the Earth Impact Data Base which provides information on all
confirmed impact craters on Earth. Check out the photos and other details of impacts near you
at: Earth Impact Data Base. The following map shows the location of all of the impact craters
that have been confirmed.
Some notable examples of craters on Earth:
Below, crater at Brent, Ontario. Rim diameter: 3.8km Age: 400 million years.
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Below, Meteor Crater, Arizona, Rim diameter: 1.2 km Age:49,000 years.
The discovery of Meteor Crater, Arizona, generated a great debate over its origin. The following
video provides a good summary of the arguments as they unfolded beginning in the late 19th
century. Meteor Crater was the first impact crater that was proven to be just that but widespread
belief of its origin by impact didn't come until the 1960s.
Below, Haviland crater, Kansas < 1000 years old, 15 metres diameter
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Below, Macha Crater (see arrow), Russia, 300 m, 7000 years old.
Below, New Quebec Crater, Rim diameter: 3.4 km Age: 1.4 million years.
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Craters that are out of this world!
Below, craters within craters on Earth's moon.
Below, a complex crater on Mars.
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Below, a chain of craters on Jupiter's moon Ganymede. The chain was formed multiple
fragments on the same trajectory collided with the surface.
The lunar surface continues to be bombarded with objects on a regular basis and the impacts
have been observed from Earth. The following video shows the impact of a 40 centimetre object
impacting the lunar surface on March 17, 2013. The impacting object was travelling at over
90,000 km/hour on impact and created an 18m diameter crater. The following video shows the
impact event; the video has no dialogue and the music is quite tolerable.
See YouTube video here.
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So we (I’m referring to humans) have found a lot of debris in space, much of it left over from the nebula,
that is close by to Earth and we've been able to determine where the debris will be for hundreds of years
into the future so we know the risk that those objects pose. The question now is just how much warning
will we have before a significant object collides with Earth.
Here’s an answer from David Morrison of NASA that he gave a few years ago:
“With so many of even the larger NEOs remaining undiscovered, the most likely warning today would be
zero -- the first indication of a collision would be the flash of light and the shaking of the ground as it hit.
In contrast, if the current surveys actually discover a NEO on a collision course, we would expect many
decades of warning. Any NEO that is going to hit the Earth will swing near our planet many times before
it hits, and it should be discovered by comprehensive sky searches like Spaceguard. In almost all cases,
we will either have a long lead time or none at all.”
What space object has posed the greatest risk?
2002 NT7?
• A 2 km diameter asteroid with an impact velocity of 28 km/s

• When first discovered it was thought to be in an orbit that would have it collide with Earth on
January 31, 2019
• 2002 NT7 was the first space object to be assigned a high risk of impact when it was first
discovered.
• With further observations the projected orbit became more accurate and showed that it would
miss the Earth on the collision date by a large margin. As a result, it was removed from the list of
threatening objects.
The figure below shows the a diagram that was published by BBC news at the time of discovery of 2002
NT7; it predicts a collision but after more observations the orbit of 2002 NT7 was more accurately
predicted and the risk of collision was removed.
66
Another close call: 2002 MN June 14, 2002
• On June 14, 2002, asteroid 2002 MN passed within the moon’s orbit of the Earth (within
120,000 km of Earth and about 1/3 the distance from the Earth to the moon).
• The asteroid is the size of a football field (50 – 120 m in diameter) and is traveling at
37,000 km/hr.
Which Potentially Hazardous Asteroid will come closest?
99942 Apophis
• When first discovered it was thought that this 325 metre diameter asteroid could very
possibly impact with Earth on April 13, 2029.
• As more data became available it was found that it will come very, very close to Earth;
the current estimate is that it will come to within 31,000 km of Earth (close enough to
collide with some of our satellites that are in orbit about the Earth.)
• It will come so close in 2029 that its interaction with Earth's gravity may alter its orbit so
that it may come even closer on Friday, April 13, 2036.
• By 2016 enough new data had been collected on Apophis' orbit to rule out the likelihood
of an impact with Earth in 2036 but, at that time, the orbital projections indicated a
serious threat of impact in 2068. So Apophis continues to be under constant scrutiny
because as new data becomes available the projections of its orbital path in future become
more and more accurate.
The following is a brief video about Apophis that was made in 2011.
Good News (for now) about Apophis!
On March 26, 2021, it was announced by NASA scientists that a 2068 impact by Apophis with
Earth had been ruled out due to additional data that indicated that the asteroid posed no risk of
impact with Earth over the next 100 years. This is a great example of how ongoing data
collection through the Near Earth Object Program is constantly improving our ability to provide
reliable forewarning of objects that might impact the Earth with possibly devastating outcomes.
Here's a link to the March 26, 2021 announcement
Point: close approaches have always happened but we have just begun to be able to see
them coming. The Near Earth Object program lists all recent and upcoming close
approaches at the following web site:
http://neo.ssa.esa.int/close-approaches
This link above will take you to a great site to explore in order to find out which NEOs will have
close encounters with the Earth the near future. The column on the left hand side of the table
67
shows the name of the official name of the NEO and if you click on the name of an asteroid it
will take you to a page with information about the object, including an animated diagram
showing the orbit of the object with respect to nearby planets. If you click on that diagram you
will see the relative motion of the object and the planets as it makes its near-Earth
encounter. Returning to the table linked above, the second column shows the date on which the
object will make its close approach. The next three columns show the distance that the object
will be from the either at the time of its closest approach or the "Miss Distance" of the
object. The distance is given in three different units: from left to right, in kilometres, in
astronomical units (au; recall 1 au= the distance from the Earth to the Sun and "Lunar Distances"
where 1 LD is equal to the distance from the Earth to the moon. After the three columns of miss
distances are two columns that describe the "magnitude" of the object, first as "absolute
magnitude" (H) and second as an expression of the brightness of the object. The column on the
far right hand side of the table states the velocity of the objects relative to the Earth.
Collision Avoidance Strategies
Several approaches have been suggested:
1. Land astronauts (including Bruce Willis) on the object, drill into it and plant nuclear bombs.
• The explosions should break the object up into smaller, harmless pieces (or, a gazillion
chunks of asteroid will destroy the Earth rather than a single very large thud).
2. Detonate nuclear explosives at selected locations in space near the object.
• The blasts will “nudge” the object away from the blasts, sending it off the course for
collision with Earth.
3. Attach "solar sails" to the object and let solar energy push it out if its collision course.
• Solar sails would use solar winds to push the object into a new, safer orbit.
4. Attach rockets to the object to send it off on a new orbit that poses no risk to the Earth.
5. Kinetic impactors. Crash an object into the asteroid so that it is pushed just enough out of its
original orbit and out of the collision course.
Released in May of 2015 the video on YouTube that is linked below describes a joint US/EU
mission aimed at evaluating an approach to dealing with threatening asteroids. Note that it may
also have economic implications because the problem of moving asteroids into orbits that are
more convenient to mining them for earth-bound purposes might benefit from similar
technology.
Asteroid Impact Mission - on YouTube
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Here's a YouTube video from 2019 that deals with How Scientists Are Preparing for an
Incoming Asteroid.
Early detection of objects that have a high risk of collision with Earth.
Under current conditions if a large object were discovered within less than a few years before
impact with Earth we likely won't have enough time to mount a successful avoidance
strategy. So, the NEO program is the best protection that we have today.
A relatively recent close approach by a very large asteroid
Asteroid 33122 Florence: a 5km diameter potentially hazardous asteroid, came to within 18
lunar distances from the Earth on September 1, 2017. The photo below (from NASA/JPL Center
for Near-Earth Object Studies) shows that as Florence came closest to the Earth it was
discovered to have two moons orbiting around it, each somewhere between 100 and 300m
diameter.
69
The Nemesis Hypothesis
The current interest in space objects that pose a risk to Earth aims at finding those particular
objects for which a reaction by humans might save us from a devastating impact. Today we
evaluate risk on the assumption that the number of dangerous objects in space around us does not
vary significantly with time. Thus, the historical impact rate that we see will not be significantly
more or less in the future.
However, over long periods of time there may well be variation in risk that significantly changes
the probability of large impacts. The Nemesis Hypothesis arose when paleontologists realized
that extinction events appear to take place with a regular periodicity of about 26 million
years. This, in turn, led them to suggest that the frequency of impacts with Earth may vary with
this same periodicity. This suggestion raises the obvious question of "why would impact rates
vary with a 26 million years periodicity"? The Nemesis Hypothesis was developed as a possible
explanation for such variation in impact rates over long periods of time. It was developed by
colleagues of Louis Alvarez and is described in some detail in the following video.
See video.
Summary:
Impacts and mass extinctions
Mass extinction involves the loss of many groups of organisms over a relatively short period of
time. Many mass extinctions have taken place over geologic time; arrows in the figure, below,
point to the 5 major extinctions of the past 600 million years.
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Modern thinking is that the demise of the dinosaurs was due to the effects of a large number of
significant impacts over the span of several hundred thousands of years.
The vast amount of dust and debris that was sent up into the atmosphere due to the impacts is
thought to have caused a prolonged period of cold climate. Recent literature suggests that
smoke and ash from global forest fires that followed the impact may have contributed
significantly to cooling the Earth. Dinosaurs and many other groups of organisms could not
adapt to the cold temperatures and became extinct.
By closely examining data on the extinction rates on Earth over the past 275 million years
palaeontologists Dave Raup and Jack Sepkowski found that major extinction events actually take
place quite regularly about every 26 million years (see the following figure in which green dots
represent peaks in extinction rate that are believed have resulted from impact events). Raup and
Sepkowski went further, suggesting that because three of the mass extinctions were likely due to
impacts that they all might be caused by impact events and this would suggest that every 26
million years there was an increase in the probability of impacts with the Earth (i.e., clusters of
impacts every 26 million years).
Why the 26 million year periodicity for the extinctions?
It has been suggested that the regular periodicity may be due to the existence of a companion
star to the Sun that has been named "Nemesis”. Nemesis is postulated to be a dwarf star; 1/3
the size of the sun and 1/1000 as bright. Nemesis would circle the Sun in an orbit that was 2.8
light years across and it would take 26 million years for one complete passage around the sun.
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The suggestion is that Nemesis' orbit would bring it close to the Oort Cloud (a vast area with
billions of frozen objects that become comets when they orbit about the sun) once every 26
million years and at that time the dwarf star's gravity would disturb the objects, sending them
towards the sun. This would result in a “comet shower” reaching the inner solar system and
lasting for a few million years and over that time the chances of collisions with Earth is
increased.
In this way the number of impacts with Earth would greatly increase every 26 million years, or
so, as Nemesis makes its way around it's orbital path.
The Nemesis Hypothesis has yet to be substantiated…..

The Nemesis Star has not been discovered.
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Module 2 makes its way towards recognizing the risk to Earth that is posed by objects in space

The Inner Planets

Name Diameter (km) % of earth Distance from Sun

Watch YouTube video.

The Sun compared to the planets

Wikipedia: Planets and sun size comparison CC BY-SA 3.0 Lsmpascal

Watch YouTube video.

Trans-Neptunian Small Solar System Bodies

Artist's (M. Kornmesser) impression of 'Oumuamua.

The following link is to a CBC article about 2015 BZ5209:

The problems with Pluto!

The outcome of the 2006 IAU General Assembly

How many dwarf planets are there in the Solar System?

According to Mike Brown (Professor of Planetary Astronomy at the California Institute of

10 objects which are nearly certainly dwarf planets,

Big News about a former planet now dwarf planet - Pluto

The formation of the moon

Watch YouTube video.

Watch YouTube video.

The next figure shows the important components of a comet.

Where do comets come from?

Answer: the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud.

Rosetta Mission, 2014

Watch YouTube video.

Watch YouTube video.

Deep Impact, 2005

Watch YouTube video.

Asteroid 25143 Itokawa

Watch animation here.

Watch YouTube video here.

Ceres - more than just an asteroid!

The three most common types of astroid are:

Absolute magnitude and size of asteroids

Asteroids: How big is big?

Meteoroids, meteors, meteorites and bolides

Here are some definitions to begin with:

A brief note about bolides.

So why the concern today?

The Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) Extinction Event

(Formerly known as the "Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) Extinction Event)

The Tunguska Event

• The blast was an airburst (explosion) of a 60 m diameter asteroid.

Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (SL-9)

These three events illustrated that:

• What has been the frequency of impacts with Earth?

Original source: http://impact.arc.nasa.gov/reports/spaceguard/index.html

So the frequency of Tunguska class impacts on a US urban area is actually very

The Search for Near Earth Objects (NEO)

*Definitions are derived from information at http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/neo/groups.html on April 21,

The following link explains how the NEO Search Program

What Happens When an Object Impacts With Earth?

• Asteroids approach the Earth at speeds of 15 to 25 km/sec (54,000-90,000 km/hr).

Kinetic Energy = E = ½ mV2

• Where m is the mass of the object and V is its velocity.

The available Kinetic Energy determines the outcomes of the impact.

Specific effects at impact can include:

Pressure wave (atmospheric shock wave)

Watch YouTube video here.

A footnote on human-made junk in space.

Space debris consists of:

Watch YouTube video here.

Quantifying the Risk of Impacts

Grollmann, (original source was http://www.gcr.com/sharedfile/pdf/Topics11Grollmann-en.pdf