Astroids and the Earth: An Overview

The article under review is titled "Repeated Blows: Did Extraterrestrial Collisions Capable of Causing Widespread Extinctions Pound the Earth Not Once, But Twice Or Even Several Times." It was published in the March 2002 issue of the Scientific American. In this article, Becker described and discussed the validity of the recent research efforts to determine whether the collisions between gigantic asteroid rocks and the Earth could have triggered dramatic biological crises that transformed the planet and led to the extinction of living species. Essentially, this article focuses on how researchers have sought to find physical evidence to prove that asteroid impacts caused the great catastrophes including the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago and the Great Dying in which 90 percent of the planet's species became extinct approximately 250 million years ago during the Permian period.

According to Becker, researchers studying craters and shattered rocks have accumulated both direct and indirect physical evidence that link them to asteroid impacts.

Category: Science - A