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Natural Hazards: Impacts of Catastrophic Collisions
“I have grown, looking at sky and stars.” Many people can say this, including me. We loved to watch stars in night. We enjoyed the Sunrise and Sunsets. And offcourse, millions of people loves NASA’s Astronomy Pic Of the Day and they like to add APOD as their wallpapers. There are many more beautiful phenomena in the universe, like Solar Eclipse, Eagle Nebula, Aurora etc. We feel safe, cheer and enjoy our life. However, it does not mean that a smaller strike of any tragedy cannot happen even as you are reading this blog. For a horrible example, who was knowing about the latest Tsunami in Japan, before the date it occured?
The theory of gravity is not enough developed that you can exactly state the motion of a planet or star or any other material in the space. Some bodies, like dwarf planets, sattelites, meteoroids, have random motions. The most fearful motion is of meteoroids, the rock like structures. Usually these are found in between Mars and Jupiter as a belt. But when a meteoroid leaves the belt, the gravitational attraction of the earth, nearest planet to mars, can pull that into it. When a meteoroid enters the atmosphere, friction causes it to heat up and glow. Then we call it a shooting star or a meteor. Small meteors burn up completely as they pass through the atmosphere. Larger ones end up on earth as meteoroid. Impact craters are formed when a large meteoroid or comet crashes into a planet. One such massive natural hazard happened in past, which destroyed all the Dinosaurs.