Neil deGrasse Tyson: Cosmic Collisions

This evening was my first time seeing rock-star astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, and I have to say, he held forth on his topic of the evening, "Cosmic Collisions", for over two hours straight and the time flew by. Even the children were completely engaged. I know because I was sitting next to some. Of course talking about the myriad ways that objects in space can collide gives ample opportunity for cool lessons and for videos with eye-popping sights and thunderous sounds. (Yes, I know, there is no sound in space. But there is sound when large meteors land on earth and shatter windows in buildings.) And in between the explosions, I actually learned a few things I didn't know, such as why sometimes several craters are all lined up (broken up meteor pieces hitting the same point at different times as the planet spins), or why the craters on the Moon are all perfectly round even though probably caused by an angled impact (caused by explosion on impact, whose blast radius is equidistant in all directions). Fun stuff!