Some cosmic impacts are loud, fiery, and leave unmistakable craters. Others are quieter in geological terms, yet no less destructive. These “touchdown airbursts” occur when a comet or asteroid ...

For most of human history, the story of cosmic catastrophe has been told in craters: scars like Chicxulub that mark where asteroids slammed into the planet and rewrote the rules of life. A growing ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Touchdown airbursts — a type of cosmic impact that may be more common than the crater-forming, dinosaur-killing kind — remain somewhat less understood. UC Santa Barbara Earth ...

Earth’s surface bears the scars of obvious catastrophes, from dinosaur-killing craters to lava fields, but a growing body of research suggests a quieter class of cosmic assault has been largely ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Researchers continue to build on a body of evidence for a fragmented comet that is thought to have exploded over the Earth almost 13,000 years ago, which may have had a role ...

Researchers believe a fragmented comet that is thought to have exploded above Earth almost 13,000 years ago may have had a role in the disappearance of mammoths, mastodons, and most other megafauna ...

Milestone results released by the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) on November 16 have solved a decades-old mystery about the cosmic ray energy spectrum—which shows a sharp decrease ...