Impact Craters In The Solar System

Planetary surfaces throughout the Solar System, and the current interest in impacts on the Earth, attest to the importance of impact cratering as a geological process. Impact craters have been identified on all but one of the planetary surfaces we have explored. The authors document the wide variety of crater types that have been observed on the planetary surfaces explored to date, approaching the subject in the context of comparative planetology. Each chapter focusses on a specific crater morphology and discusses what the craters tell us about the surfaces of bodies on which they are found. This approach illustrates not only impact craters themselves, but also emphasizes similarities and differences in crater morphology throughout the Solar System and the implications thereof.

The genesis of modern searches for observable meteoritic phenomena on the Moon is the paper by Lincoln La Paz in Popular Astronomy magazine in 1938. In it he argued that the absence of observed fashes of meteoritic impacts on the Moon might be interpreted to mean that these bodies are destroyed as luminous meteors in an extremely rarefed lunar atmosphere. The paper suggested the possibility of systematic searches for such possible lunar meteors. With these concepts in mind, I was surprised to note a transient moving bright speck on the Moon on July 10, 1941. It appeared to behave very much as a lunar meteor would – except that the poorly estimated duration would lead to a strongly hyperbolic heliocentric velocity. Thus, the idea of systematic searches for both p- sible lunar meteors and meteoritic impact fashes was born. It was appreciated that much time might need to be expended to achieve any positive results. Systematic searches were carried out by others and myself chiefy in the years 1945–1965 and became a regular program at the newly founded Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers, or ALPO.

Impact Cratering Across the Solar System, Volume Three in the Comparative Planetology series, provides an up-to-date, accessible, and comprehensive discussion of the impact landforms and processes that shape and drive the evolution of planets, moons, and smaller bodies. This book is a necessary resource for sourcing reliable, thorough, and accessible information on how impact cratering manifests throughout the Solar System; these difficulties are especially compounded by the rate at which new mission data have become available, and the diversity of new discoveries, over the past 5-10 years. The book offers information on pressing topics in this field such as how an impact event may be responsible for the major crustal dichotomy on Mars, how impact melting may have created the oldest known rocks on Earth, or how impact craters can be used to date planetary surfaces throughout the Solar System. This volume places a singular emphasis on comparing impact cratering processes on all relevant Solar System bodies, and with the explicit objective of providing a systems-level understanding of this widespread phenomenon, this book is ideal for students, academics, and researchers in the fields of planetary science, geology and astronomy, and those who study planetary impacts such as geophysicists, seismologists, and structural geologists. Includes an introduction that places the book in the context of the larger Comparative Planetology series Compares impact cratering processes on all relevant Solar System bodies, providing a systems-level understanding of this widespread phenomenon that shapes and drives the evolution of planets, moons and smaller bodies Offers additional online content, including figures, animations, videos and interviews with contributing authors

The exploration of our Solar System is rapidly growing in importance as a scientific discipline. During the last decades, great progress has been achieved as the result of space missions to planets and small bodies - as teroids and comets - and improved remote-sensing methods, as well as due to refined techniques of laboratory measurements and a rapid progress in theoretical studies, involving the development of various astrophysical and geophysical models. These models are based, in particular, on the approach of comparative planetology becoming a powerful tool in revealing evolu tionary processes which have been shaping the planets since their origin. Comets and asteroids, being identified as remnants of planetary formation, serve as a clue to the reconstruction of Solar System history because they encapsulated the primordial material from which the planets were built up. At the same time, these interplanetary carriers of original matter and mes sengers from the past, being triggered by dynamical processes well outside our neighboring space, were responsible for numerous catastrophic events when impacting on the planets and thus causing dramatic changes of their natural conditions. In the crossroads of astronomy and geophysics, recent years have seen a growing understanding of the importance of collisional processes through out the history of the Solar System and, therefore, the necessity to get more insight into the problem of interactions of planets and small bodies.

Craters have been found on planets and moons throughout the solar system, caused when asteroids or meteors have collided with them. Our Earth has not escaped these impacts, and nearly 200 craters are known on Earth today. Some are easily visited, others are in locations few would ever want to get near. This book details all the known terrestrial impact craters, telling their age, size, and other details, as well as highlighting those easily visited. One has an annual “Craterfest” to attract tourists, while it is possible to swim in lakes that have filled others.

This comprehensive atlas explains the genesis and evolution of impact known craters on Earth, presenting a wealth of radar images from the Italian COSMO-SkyMed satellites that were acquired at the same frequency, spatial resolution, operating mode, and illumination, allowing excellent comparison of different impact structures. It also discusses in detail the processes that have hidden or erased terrestrial impact craters, and clearly explains the basic principles of remote sensing and the COSMO-SkyMed system and radar instruments. Also, the optical satellite remote sensing technique used to produce the optical images is described. The main section documents each of the exposed craters officially recognized as caused by meteoritic impact, presenting a table with the COSMO-SkyMed radar image and, where available, a Sentinel optical image and a photograph taken in situ. A short accompanying text reports the location, context, geographical coordinates, and other ancillary information to support future researches.

When in 1981 Louis and Walter Alvarez, the father and son team, unearthed a tell-tale Iridium-rich sedimentary horizon at the 65 million years-old Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary at Gubbio, Italy, their find heralded a paradigm shift in the study of terrestrial evolution. Since the 1980s the discovery and study of asteroid impact ejecta in the oldest well-preserved terrains of Western Australia and South Africa, by Don Lowe, Gary Byerly, Bruce Simonson, Scott Hassler, the author and others, and the documentation of new exposed and buried impact structures in several continents, have led to a resurgence of the idea of the catastrophism theory of Cuvier, previously largely supplanted by the uniformitarian theory of Hutton and Lyell. Several mass extinction of species events are known to have occurred in temporal proximity to large asteroid impacts, global volcanic eruptions and continental splitting. Likely links are observed between asteroid clusters and the 580 Ma acritarch radiation, end-Devonian extinction, end-Triassic extinction and end-Jurassic extinction. New discoveries of ~3.5 – 3.2 Ga-old impact fallout units in South Africa have led Don Lowe and Gary Byerly to propose a protracted prolongation of the Late Heavy Bombardment (~3.95-3.85 Ga) in the Earth-Moon system. Given the difficulty in identifying asteroid impact ejecta units and buried impact structures, it is likely new discoveries of impact signatures are in store, which would further profoundly alter models of terrestrial evolution. .

Impact cratering is arguably the most ubiquitous geological process in the Solar System. It has played an important role in Earth’s history, shaping the geological landscape, affecting the evolution of life, and generating economic resources. However, it was only in the latter half of the 20th century that the importance of impact cratering as a geological process was recognized and only during the past couple of decades that the study of meteorite impact structures has moved into the mainstream. This book seeks to fill a critical gap in the literature by providing an overview text covering broad aspects of the impact cratering process and aimed at graduate students, professionals and researchers alike. It introduces readers to the threat and nature of impactors, the impact cratering process, the products, and the effects – both destructive and beneficial. A series of chapters on the various techniques used to study impact craters provide a foundation for anyone studying impact craters for the first time.