Pictured: Mars

OK, so this isn’t as much “breaking” as “happened 3.4 billion years ago”, but it is still pretty amazing.

Dr. Rodriguez said that some 3.4 billion years ago a meteor crashed into the ocean triggering a mega-tsunami that plowed into the coast with waves as tall as 400 feet. The meteor left behind a crater about 19 miles across. When the water retreated into the ocean it dropped 30-foot tall rocks that obscured the original shoreline and also left behind channels that provided clues to the ocean’s elevation.

It’s always important to remember that we live in a solar system so vast and in a universe so unimaginable that it can wipe us out- our science and our Shakespeare, our dumb wars and our fierce loves- without even noticing. It would just be a matter of a couple of tiny rocks smacking into each other.

That’s not nihilism. That the sun will one day explode makes every day that it doesn’t- every day that we’re near enough to that gigantic nuclear cataclysm to live but not near enough to melt- a day to celebrate. Just, you know, keep funding Near Earth Objects research. It’s sort of important.