Scientists have found the first evidence that a devastating meteor impact in the Middle East might have triggered the mysterious collapse of civilisations more than 4,000 years ago.
Earth's biggest mass extinction 251 million years ago was triggered by a collision with a comet or asteroid, say US scientists. They have reached this conclusion by looking at atoms from a star trapped inside molecular cages of carbon.
Exploding meteors bombarding the Earth from space could be mistaken for nuclear bomb tests, say seismologists of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute. This could present problems for monitoring the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which aims to halt the testing of all nuclear weapons.
Using massively parallel computing techniques, scientists at Sandia National Labs have created a simulation of what an asteroid impact on the East Coast would look like. The simulation is available as a QuickTime file. Worth the download time.