An impact event is a collision between astronomical objects causing measurable effects. Impact events have physical consequences and have been found to regularly occur in planetary systems, though the most frequent involve asteroids, comets or meteoroids and have minimal effect. When large objects impact terrestrial planets such as the Earth, there can be significant physical and biospheric consequences, though atmospheres mitigate many surface impacts through atmospheric entry. Impact craters and structures are dominant landforms on many of the Solar System's solid objects and present the strongest empirical evidence for their frequency and scale.
Deep Impact is a 1998 American science-fiction disaster film directed by Mimi Leder, written by Bruce Joel Rubin and Michael Tolkin, and starring Robert Duvall, Téa Leoni, Elijah Wood, Vanessa Redgrave, Maximilian Schell, and Morgan Freeman. Steven Spielberg served as an executive producer of this film. It was released by Paramount Pictures in North America and by DreamWorks Pictures internationally on May 8, 1998. The film depicts the attempts to prepare for and destroy a 7-mile (11 km) wide comet set to collide with Earth and cause a mass extinction.
The Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) was the first-ever space telescope to perform a survey of the entire night sky at infrared wavelengths.
The Late, Great Planet Earth is a best-selling 1970 book by Hal Lindsey with Carole C. Carlson, and first published by Zondervan. The New York Times declared it to be the bestselling nonfiction book of the 1970s. The book was first featured on a primetime television special featuring Hal Lindsey in 1974 to 1975 with an audience of 17,000,000 and produced by Alan Hauge of GMT Productions. Years later, it was adapted by Rolf Forsberg and Robert Amram during 1976 into a film narrated by Orson Welles and released by Pacific International Enterprises. It was originally ghost-written by Carlson, whom later printings credited as co-author. Lindsey and Carlson later published several sequels, including Satan Is Alive and Well on Planet Earth and The 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon.
The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) is a spacecraft built by a European industrial consortium led by Matra Marconi Space that was launched on a Lockheed Martin Atlas II AS launch vehicle on December 2, 1995, to study the Sun. It has also discovered over 4,000 comets. It began normal operations in May 1996. It is a joint project between the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA. Originally planned as a two-year mission, SOHO continues to operate after over 25 years in space; the mission has been extended until the end of 2020 with a likely extension until 2022.
The Science of Discworld is a 1999 book by novelist Terry Pratchett and popular science writers Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen. Three sequels, The Science of Discworld II: The Globe, The Science of Discworld III: Darwin's Watch, and The Science of Discworld IV: Judgement Day, have been written by the same authors.
Lucifer's Hammer is a science fiction post-apocalypse-survival novel by American writers Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle that was first published in 1977. It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1978. Two issues of a planned six-part comic book adaptation were published by Innovation Comics in 1993.
Meteor is a 1979 science fiction disaster film directed by Ronald Neame, and starring Sean Connery and Natalie Wood. The film's premise, which follows a group of scientists struggling with Cold War politics after an asteroid is detected to be on a collision course with Earth, was inspired by a 1967 MIT report Project Icarus. The screenplay was written by Oscar winner Edmund H. North and Stanley Mann.
The Nibiru cataclysm is a supposed disastrous encounter between the Earth and a large planetary object that certain groups believed would take place in the early 21st century. Believers in this doomsday event usually refer to this object as Nibiru or Planet X. The idea was first put forward in 1995 by Nancy Lieder, founder of the website ZetaTalk. Lieder describes herself as a contactee with the ability to receive messages from extraterrestrials from the Zeta Reticuli star system through an implant in her brain. She states that she was chosen to warn mankind that the object would sweep through the inner Solar System in May 2003 causing Earth to undergo a physical pole shift that would destroy most of humanity.
Read All About It! is a Canadian educational television series that was produced from 1979 to 1981 by TVOntario. It starred David Craig Collard as Chris, Lydia Zajc as Lynne, Stacey Arnold as Samantha, and Sean Hewitt as Duneedon, ruler of the galaxy Trialviron. In the second season Michael Dwyer joined the cast as Alex. The main goal of the show was to educate viewers in reading, writing and history. Each episode ran for approximately 15 minutes. Eric Robertson composed the music for the show being filmed in Brampton, Ontario.
Thunderstone is an Australian children's science fiction television series produced by Jonathan M. Shiff Productions set in a post-apocalyptic world after Earth is hit by a comet. The main character Noah is played by Jeffrey Walker. Other actors who appear in the series are Gerard Kennedy, Christopher Elliott, Emily Browning, and Daniel Daperis.
45P/Honda–Mrkos–Pajdušáková is a short-period comet discovered by Minoru Honda December 3, 1948. It is named after Minoru Honda, Antonín Mrkos, and Ľudmila Pajdušáková. The object revolves around the Sun on an elliptical orbit with a period of 5.25 years. The nucleus is 1.3 kilometers in diameter. On August 19 and 20, 2011, it became the fifteenth comet detected by ground radar telescope.
A strangelet is a hypothetical particle consisting of a bound state of roughly equal numbers of up, down, and strange quarks. An equivalent description is that a strangelet is a small fragment of strange matter, small enough to be considered a particle. The size of an object composed of strange matter could, theoretically, range from a few femtometers across to arbitrarily large. Once the size becomes macroscopic, such an object is usually called a strange star. The term "strangelet" originates with Edward Farhi and Robert Jaffe in 1984. Strangelets can convert matter to strange matter on contact. Strangelets have been suggested as a dark matter candidate.
Comets have, through the centuries, appeared in numerous works of fiction. In earliest times they were seen as portents, either of disaster or of some great historical change. As knowledge of comets increased, comets came to be imagined not just as symbols, but as powerful forces in their own right, capable of causing disaster. More recently, comets have been described as destinations for space travelers.
Impact is a 2009 Canadian action disaster miniseries directed by Mike Rohl, written by Michael Vickerman and distributed by Tandem Communications, starring David James Elliott, Natasha Henstridge, Benjamin Sadler, Steven Culp, James Cromwell and Florentine Lahme as the story shows about a meteor shower which eventually sends the Moon on a collision course with Earth. The two-part mini-series premiered February 14 and 15, 2009 on the Canadian premium television channel Super Channel and was also shown on ABC on June 21 and 28, 2009 and on Alpha TV in September 2011.
Meteor Apocalypse is a 2010 American science fiction film directed by Micho Rutare.
Meteor Storm is a 2010 American disaster television film. It aired on Sci-Fi Channel on January 30, 2010. The film was directed by Tibor Takács, produced by Tracey Jeffrey and Written by Peter Mohan. It stars Michael Trucco and Kari Matchett. The plot describes the attempts to save San Francisco from a barrage of meteor strikes; how devastating if those meteors touch the earth's crust or ground and burning almost completely everything to ashes.
Clarke Griffin is a fictional character from the American post-apocalyptic young adult science fiction novel series The 100 by Kass Morgan, and the television series of the same name on The CW. She is the lead character in both the novels and the television series, where she is portrayed by Eliza Taylor. She first appears in Morgan's first novel, The 100, and later in the pilot episode of the television series, as a prisoner on a space colony charged with treason. Clarke was one of the original hundred delinquents sent down to Earth to test if it was habitable again after a nuclear apocalypse destroyed it almost a century prior.
David Meade is the pen name of an American end-times conspiracy theorist and book author who has yet to disclose his real name. Meade, who describes himself as a "Christian numerologist", claims to have attended the University of Louisville, where he "studied astronomy, among other subjects", but, because his real name is unknown, The Washington Post reported that the university could not confirm whether he had ever been a student there. He is also a writer, researcher and investigator who has written and self-published at least 13 books. He made appearances and interviews on Coast to Coast AM, The Washington Post, Glenn Beck Program, YouTube with pastor Paul Begley, and the Daily Express. He is best known for making numerous failed predictions, which have passed, regarding the end times, including that a hidden planet named Nibiru would destroy the Earth.
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