Planet Smash-Up Sends Vaporized Rock, Hot Lava Flying
Wednesday, August 12, 2009 - 07:15
in Astronomy & Space
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has found evidence of a high-speed collision between two burgeoning planets around a young star. Astronomers say that two rocky bodies, one as least as big as our moon and the other at least as big as Mercury, slammed into each other within the last few thousand years or so -- not long ago by cosmic standards. The impact destroyed the smaller body, vaporizing huge amounts of rock and flinging massive plumes of hot lava into space.