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About the exhibition
From a beautiful meteor shower to the devastation of a giant asteroid impact, Earth is constantly bombarded by debris from space. These cosmic collisions can carve out huge craters and trigger mass extinctions of plants and animals. They also give us vital clues about the way the Earth and other planets in our solar system were formed, even shedding light on the origins of life itself. Read more
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Online gallery
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The formation of planets is an extremely violent process involving impacts between pieces of rock and ice, the building blocks of the planets.
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Material left over from the formation of the solar system still collides with planets and moons, peppering them with impact craters. -
Studying impact craters gives scientists valuable information about the history of the solar system and the nature and origin of its planets. -
Many objects have collided with the Earth over the past 4600 million years. These impacts have strongly influenced the origin and evolution of life... -
It is very expensive to send spacecraft out to study the universe. Sometimes pieces of the solar system come to us, however. -
Most meteors burn up harmlessly, but those that reach the ground are called meteorites and offer scientists a chance to study material from space.
Finding out about meteorites
If you think you may have found a meteorite you can contact the Natural History Museum’s Identification Enquiries team.