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Nearby, Recent Interplanetary Collision Inferred

Posted by kdawson on from the when-worlds-collide dept.

The Bad Astronomer writes about a new discovery by the Spitzer Space Telescope, which detected signs of an interplanetary smashup only 100 light-years from here, and only a few thousand years ago. There's a NASA-produced animation of the collision between a Mercury-sized planet and a moon-sized impactor. The collision's aftermath was detected by the presence of what are essentially glass shards in orbit around the star. Here's NASA's writeup.

1 of 88 comments (clear)

  1. Neat video, but not very accurate by olsmeister · · Score: 5, Interesting

    the guy posting the blog states: "the shock wave ring travels around the planet as shown, but when the ring converges on the point opposite the collision point, there would be a huge explosion and a vast plume of material launched into space. No one ever puts that in their animations"

    I thought the same thing when I watched the video - there would be a godawful explosion at the antipode