Chinese Journal of Nature ›› 2009, Vol. 31 ›› Issue (6): 315-.

• Invited Special Paper • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Major Catastrophes on the Scales of Celestial Objects:Comet Collision with Jupiter and Extinction of Dinosaurs

Professor, Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200030, China   

  • Received:2009-09-12 Revised:2009-10-12 Online:2009-12-25 Published:2009-10-25

Abstract: In the solar system, collisions of minor celestial objects, such as comets and asteroids, with the Earth and other planets or satellites and even minor planets led to very serious, even catastrophic effects on the Earth and other objects during their evolution histories. So, such catastrophic evens have become one of the very important issues for astronomers, some of which will be briefly introduced in these serial papers, starting from the Comet SL9 Collision with Jupiter in July 1994 and Extinction of Dinosaurs happened some 65 million years ago.

Key words: comet, asteroid, collision, extinction