Introduction What do you know about space? And, what’s more important, what do you know about impact cratering? What is it? How did it influence the Earth? Why is it important?
Impact cratering has been recognized as an important process for only the last few decades. In fact, at the beginning of the 20th century no one even believed in impact cratering on the Earth. But though not much spoken about, it’s an important process both for the Earth formation, evolution of all living beings (both now and in the past) and development of human culture
It’s widely speculated for the last decades that Solar System has been created via high velocity impacts and planetary landscapes are primarily defined by ancient giant impacts. It is a well known theory (though still debated) that dinosaurs became extinct due to an impact of a large body onto the Earth. Enigmatic Tunguska explosion in 1908 inspired thousands of people to look for extraterrestrial guests in Russian Siberia. And all those theories and speculations only prove, that Earth-asteroid interaction made a deep impact on the evolution and human culture. However, the process itself didn’t gain much publicity. It is still considered a kind of scientific mystery. Let’s look behind the shadows!