Impacts on Earth - Large and Small
This talk is about the damage impacts can cause. Areas covered include:
| What sorts of dangerous bodies are out there | Asteroids and comets |
| Likelihood of a major impact | Initial bombardment, the "Grand Tack", the Nice model |
| Large impact basins and craters in the solar system | Theia, Mars, the Moon, Marcury, Venus |
| Large craters on Earth | Vredefont, Sudbury, Manicouagan, Chicxulub |
| Effect of impactors 1 m to 100 km diameter | Managua, Chelyabinsk, Barringer, Tunguska, 1 km, Chicxulub, Deccan traps, 100 km object |
| 10 km object's impact in detail | Crustal damage, oceanic impact, temperature, acid rain, long term temperature effects |
| Extinction events | The 5 big ones, plate tectonics, oxygen levels, the "Boring Billion" |
| Detecting potential hazards | Wake up call, Spaceguard, WISE, B612 |
| What can we do? | Nuke it, sunlight reflectors, ion rockets, laser beams, ballast tether, paint it, mass drivers |