This is not a NASA Website. You might learn something. It's YOUR space agency. Get involved. Take it back. Make it work - for YOU.
Space & Planetary Science

Today's Video: Colliding Planets

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
August 10, 2009

Extrasolar Planet Collision Sends Vaporized Rock and Hot Lava Flying (with video)
“NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has found evidence of a high-speed collision between two burgeoning planets around a young star. Astronomers say that two rocky bodies, one as least as big as our moon and the other at least as big as Mercury, slammed into each other within the last few thousand years or so — not long ago by cosmic standards. The impact destroyed the smaller body, vaporizing huge amounts of rock and flinging massive plumes of hot lava into space. Spitzer’s infrared detectors were able to pick up the signatures of the vaporized rock, along with pieces of refrozen lava, called tektites.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.