Free Republic

Asteroids have been hitting the Earth for nearly 1 billion years, but the atmosphere has largely shielded the planet from some catastrophic events. However, some space rocks make their way through — including the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. But a new study notes that, over the past 290 million years, asteroids have been impacting the Earth at triple the rate they were previously and scientists aren't sure why. After looking at 1 billion years' worth of asteroid impacts on both the Earth and Moon, researchers found that dinosaurs' fate was perhaps an inevitability.

Portuguese scientists have found a depression on the Atlantic Ocean floor they think may be an impact crater. The roughly circular, 6km-wide hollow has a broad central dome and has been dubbed the "Fried Egg" because of its distinctive shape. It was detected to the south of the Azores Islands during a survey to map the continental shelf. If the Fried Egg was made by a space impactor, the collision probably took place within the past 17 million years... It lies under 2km of water about 150km from the Azores archipelago. The depressed ring sits roughly 110m below the...

As I climbed the narrow staircase of the gothic church tower in Nördlingen, Germany, the worn stone steps appeared to glimmer in the sunlight, bringing unexpected flashes of light to what should have been a dark, grey climb to the top. “That’s because the entire tower is made out of suevite stone, and enclosed in it are small diamonds,” Horst Lenner, the tower watchman, told me enthusiastically.