Basics of Impact Cratering and Geological, Geophysical, Geochemical, Environmental Studies of Impact Craters
MIT's Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences department offers this short course on impact cratering, taught during the Independent Activities Period, MIT's four-week January term. It covers the basic physics of impact events and surveys the roughly 170 identified impact craters on Earth, from the well documented Meteor Crater onward. Lectures introduce analytical tools used to study these structures and walk through case studies drawing on mineralogy, petrology, geochemistry, and environmental geology, including work touching on marine biology near marine impact sites. The course materials, published through MIT OpenCourseWare, are free to access under a Creative Commons license and include lecture notes outlining the interdisciplinary methods researchers use to identify and characterize impact structures. It suits students wanting a compact introduction to planetary impact geology rather than a full semester treatment.