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Scar on the Earth Scars like this are rare on Earth's face. Our home planet constantly resurfaces itself, eventually wiping clean the evidence that, over the aeons, it has been struck repeatedly by Objects from space. Meteor Crater in Arizona, pictured here, was once thought to be the remains of a volcanic eruption. A young planetary scientist named Eugene Shoemaker was the first to demonstrate that this crater was blasted out by an impacting asteroid. Shoemaker went on to illuminate the role of asteroids and comets in the history of our solar system. U.S. Geological Survey