THE THINGS THAT GO BANG

LAST ISSUE WE discussed the Henbury Meteorite Craters, just off the Stuart Highway south of Alice Springs, but these aren’t the only examples of meteorites striking the Earth within the bounds of Australia. In fact, it seems like news reports of an impending passage of a huge chunk of space rock and/or ice zooming close to Earth could be an almost weekly occurrence; close enough for us to need to be concerned.

This awareness of such close passage of these visitors from space is the result of the work of one US space scientist, Eugene Shoemaker. In 1977 geologist Walter Alvarez, working