A giant impact explains why Mars’s two hemispheres are so different (Illustration: Jeff Andrews-Hanna) Five minutes after Mars was hit by an asteroid travelling at 40 times the speed of sound, pieces of the planet’s crust (orange blobs) are flung into space, while a shock wave propagates into the planet’s molten core (yellow) (Illustration: Francis Nimmo) A suspected crater in the planet’s northern hemisphere forms a kidney shape (blue region at left), but when researchers studied the variations in the strength of gravity above the region, they found the crater was actually a near-perfect ellipse (right) that had been partially covered over by lava (Illustration: J…
Space
Almighty smash left record crater on Mars
By David Shiga
25 June 2008
