2005-04-24
A thought while watching TV...
Watching a show on the History Channel about meteors, and of Dr. Gene Shoemaker is featured heavily. He was the biggest proponent of catastrophic collisions as a regular event in a period when nobody really believed in it. Dr. Shoemaker identified hundreds of craters on Earth, made the shocking claim that the Hellas Basin on Mars was the result of a massive, very recent impact, and of course was co-discoverer of Shoemaker-Levy 9, the comet that proved his theories correct.
He was killed in 1997, a car accident in Australia. Part of me wonders if he had the time to savor the irony of the foremost expert in cosmic collisions dying in a head-on collision.
He was killed in 1997, a car accident in Australia. Part of me wonders if he had the time to savor the irony of the foremost expert in cosmic collisions dying in a head-on collision.