Exactly 15 years after the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed into Jupiter, something else has smacked the solar system's biggest planet. NASA used its Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii to confirm the impact Monday, after receiving a tip from an amateur astronomer about a dark "scar" suddenly appearing on the gas giant's outer surface.
The infrared image (right) shows the spot where something maybe a comet, maybe not smashed through Jupiter's atmosphere. The 1994 Shoemaker Levy collision boosted Jupiter's profile as a "comet cleaner,
absorbing the cosmic missiles before they can hit Earth. The importance of that role was highlighted by an unrelated study this week,
as researchers found that a comet explosion over North America 13,000 years ago caused widespread extinctions that wiped out the Clovis people, mastodons, ground sloths and other megafauna.
The infrared image (right) shows the spot where something maybe a comet, maybe not smashed through Jupiter's atmosphere. The 1994 Shoemaker Levy collision boosted Jupiter's profile as a "comet cleaner,
absorbing the cosmic missiles before they can hit Earth. The importance of that role was highlighted by an unrelated study this week,
as researchers found that a comet explosion over North America 13,000 years ago caused widespread extinctions that wiped out the Clovis people, mastodons, ground sloths and other megafauna.
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