Nearby, Recent Interplanetary Collision Inferred

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.

Comments

Let me be the first to say it

[TheModelEskimo]

"Just what are you inferring?" *annoyed look*