An impact event is the collision of a large meteorite, asteroid, comet, or other celestial object with the Earth or another planet. Throughout recorded history, hundreds of minor impact events (and exploding bolides) have been reported, with some occurrences causing deaths, injuries, property damage or other significant localised consequences. There have also been major impact events throughout the Earth's history which severely disrupted the environment and caused mass extinctions.
Impact events have been a plot and background element in science fiction since knowledge of real impacts became established in the scientific mainstream.
Read more about Impact Event: Sizes and Frequencies, Geology of Impacts, Pleistocene Impact Events, Holocene Impact Events, Impact-caused Extinction Events, Non-terrestrial Impacts, End of Civilization
Famous quotes containing the words impact and/or event:
“One can describe a landscape in many different words and sentences, but one would not normally cut up a picture of a landscape and rearrange it in different patterns in order to describe it in different ways. Because a photograph is not composed of discrete units strung out in a linear row of meaningful pieces, we do not understand it by looking at one element after another in a set sequence. The photograph is understood in one act of seeing; it is perceived in a gestalt.”
—Joshua Meyrowitz, U.S. educator, media critic. “The Blurring of Public and Private Behaviors,” No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, Oxford University Press (1985)
“The Republican convention, an event with the intellectual content of a Guns’n’Roses lyric attended by every ofay insurance broker in America who owns a pair of white shoes.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)