The Impact of Asteroids on our Planet

The Impact of Asteroids on our Planet

Meteorites (or asteroids, as they’re called in space) have fascinated mankind for centuries. Our knowledge about them has greatly increased over the last several decades. But while almost everyone has some knowledge of the general aspects of meteorites, there is a lot of trivia associated with them that most of us aren’t aware of. In honor of Asteroid Day, this non-technical talk will offer a sampling of some fun facts, giving a better idea about asteroids, how they get to Earth, and what happens when they do – all of which you can use at your next party to sound really geeky!

Be ready to learn about where asteroids originated, their paths through our solar system, how we can get hit by them, and things like impact craters, impactites, and tektites. A number of meteorites and related material will be on display to reinforce some of the concepts described in the talk, including the Museum’s shatter cones from the Idaho/Montana Beaverhead crater.

The Lecturer: Steve Brittenham

Steve's off-beat personality can be attributed to spending his formative educational years at UC Berkeley studying bioelectronics. After graduation in 1977, he and his wife Ruth moved to Boise for a 36-year career at Hewlett Packard, where he did nothing at all related to his degree. Retired for 11 years, Steve now spends a lot of his time peering through surplus microscopes that he's modified to look at meteorites in ways that make real meteoriticists cringe, but that did lead to a discovery or two that was published in a scientific paper with UCLA and the University of Singapore. Steve’s other hobbies include minerals, fossils, and various techie projects; but his wife has told him that either they need a bigger place to house his expanding collections, or he has to significantly cull what he currently has – the latter option being most favored by his son and daughter, as he's getting old and they won't even know what most of it is when they inherit everything!

Host or Publisher Idaho Museum of Mining and Geology