Chicxulub crater is the larger Shiva crater, though the structure's status as an impact crater is contested. The collision of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 with Jupiter in 1994 demonstrated that gravitational interactions can fragment a comet, giving rise to many impacts over a period of a few days if the comet should collide with a planet. Comets undergo gravitational interactions with the gas giants, and similar disruptions and collisions are very likely to have occurred in the past. This scenario may have occurred on Earth at the end of the Cretaceous, though Shiva and the Chicxulub craters might have been formed 300,000 years
Carolyn S. Shoemaker Rittenhouse Medal of the Rittenhouse Astronomical Society in 1988 and the Scientist of the Year Award in 1995. The Hildian asteroid 4446 Carolyn, discovered by college Edward Bowell at Lowell Observatory in 1985, was named in her honor. Carolyn Shoemaker is credited by the Minor Planet Center with the discovery of 377 numbered minor planets made between 1980 and 1994. Carolyn S. Shoemaker Carolyn Jean Spellmann Shoemaker (born June 24, 1929) is an American astronomer and is a co-discoverer of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9. She once held the record for most comets discovered by an individual. Carolyn Jean Spellmann was born