The solar system’s greatest hits

After gravity managed to make some decent sized planets, they started getting smashed together with almost planet sized bits and pieces. These impacts may be responsible for our oceans, and perhaps even for life on our planet, but it was not an easy ride. Join us for a look at some of the biggest collisions in our inner solar system, and the huge scars that were left behind.

While talking about the biggest things that have been knocking around, we also talk about some of the smallest things that have hit the earth. Here are a few articles on traces of radioactive iron60—a hard to find fingerprint from relatively nearby supernova.

Supernovae showered Earth with radioactive iron

Stardust in the Antarctic snow: Iron-60 discovery in the Antarctic provides information on the environment of solar system

Supernova left its mark in ancient bacteria

Here’s an article about one of the ways we can figure out what has hit the earth, even when the impact crater has long since eroded away.

Tiny 'spherules' reveal details about Earth's asteroid impacts

Here’s some info about Mercury's Caloris Basin.

Mercury's Caloris Basin

Here are a couple of articles about a large mass under our moon’s largest impact basin.

There’s An Enormous, Mysterious Mass Under the Moon’s Largest Crater

An 'Anomaly' the Size of Hawaii Is Buried Beneath the Moon's Biggest Crater

And here’s a bit about how Mars became the two faced planet.

Giant Asteroid Collision May Have Radically Transformed Mars