Gday all, I have not posted on here in a while, so i thought I would.

I have just got given an assignment from uni and I'm looking for some background research and any information people might have- or opinions. (knowing that the majority in here know their stuff)

I have to choose a movie and I have chosen either Deep Impact or Armageddon.

My lecturer then replied to my email saying

Callum
There are several ways you could attack this. You could focus in detail on one particular aspect i.e.
- Near Earth Objects (NEO's)
- Use 65 Ma impact and extinction as an comparison with the movie
- Other impacts in the geological record e.g. Wolf Creek
- dooms day impacts e.g. tsunami, ejector and potential global cooling ("nuclear winter")

If you did go Armageddon the you could talk about composition.

OR you could try to deal with a few of these issues in a more general sense.

This decision I will leave to you. The main thing is that you research what you are interested in and back it up with current scientific knowledge (I will talk about this more in the prac time i.e. how to do the research.

Does anyone want to give me some ideas, it would be highly appreciated!!

Cherz Callum

Google will help  a lot.

I'd suggest you start by reading about Comet Shoemaker/Levy 9 (how it was discovered, how long it took to understand what it was, how long it took after discovery to determine it would impact Jupiter, what role Jupiter played in keeping it out of the inner Solar System, what the actual impact scenarios were like).

Read about the life of Eugene Shoemaker (David Levy has written a great biography of Gene).

Read about how astronauts in the Apollo program were trained (largely by Gene) in geology.

Research the "geology" of asteroids -- find out how we know what we know asteroids.

Read about the NEAR mission and asteroid Eros. Read about Japan's Hayabusa mission.

Read about the real Deep Impact mission that impacted a comet.

Visit the Minor Planet Center Web site to see how asteroid and comet discoveries and orbits are reported and tracked.

Visit the SOHO image gallery and look at some of the images of comets veering around, or impacting, the Sun.

Those should give you some ideas.