Choose a place. Find its story.
Turn Marie Tharp’s globe and visit four connected places, with Mike’s recording, the book passage and its illustration.
Explore the Globe ↗A BOOK BY MICHAEL & RAMON MADDENAntarctic
Antarctic
Impact.
How a Giant Comet
Split the Continents Apart
Watch a comet approach Earth. Follow the authors’ account of a world transformed. Then explore the complete story in Antarctic Impact by Michael and Ramon Madden.
- Seven Vision Edition chapters online
- 150 narrated mini-sections
- 69 book plates in 3D
Start with the experience. Explore the book in 3D. Bring the story home.
EXPLORE · WATCH · FOLLOWOne world.
One world.
Three ways to explore.
Watch the encounter unfold.
A 3:12 narrated impact sequence follows the book’s hypothesis in one forward journey, then opens onto Marie Tharp’s maps.
Play The Main Event ▶Follow the whole book.
Listen to all 150 mini-sections in manuscript order across seven chapters, with the 3D globe beside the story.
Open the Book Tour ↗Follow a world. Find its story.
Real landscapes, fossils, ancient sites and spacecraft views lead into the book. The photographs retain their original context and credits.
Antarctica
Ice, exposed rock and the world beneath.
Michael Studinger / NASA Operation IceBridge · Source · NASA editorial use
Dinosaurs & fossils
Follow the chapter on burial and preservation.
National Park Service / NPS Photo · Source · Public domain
The ancient world
Archaeological sites and human memory.
Radosław Botev / Fundacja Nomos · Source · CC BY 3.0 Poland · Display crop.jpg){kind=link}
Other worlds
Travel from Mars to the outer solar system.
NASA/JPL · Source · Editorial reuse permitted with creditREAD & RESEARCH
Choose an edition.
Vision Edition · Seven chapters with recreated diagrams and the guided 3D walk.
Online chapter reader · Read the updated edition, with recreated diagrams and chapter references.
Research Library · Maps, source imagery, references and the research program.
YOUR COMPANION TO THE BOOK
Three ways to explore.
READ
Start with the chapters.
Seven chapters, in the book’s order, with the full Vision Edition text and recreated diagrams.
Find your chapterEXPERIENCE
Follow the story in 3D.
All seven chapters and 150 narrated mini-sections, following the written book in order.
Meet the guided journeyRESEARCH
Return to the maps.
Keep Marie Tharp’s ocean floor and the published PALEOMAP reference globes close as you read.
Explore both referencesTHE BOOK BEGINS WITH THE MAPSStart with
Start with
the ocean floor.
Marie Tharp’s maps sparked the authors’ inquiry. Explore the ridges and basins, watch the linear Main Event, or follow the complete book with Mike in the Book Tour.
- 150 mini-sections in book order
- Walk at your own pace
- Passages, diagrams and research images
Explore the ocean-floor map, then continue into the book’s journey.
Start the Book TourINSIDE THE BOOKSeven chapters.
Seven chapters.
One connected story.
Read all seven Vision Edition chapters, with recreated diagrams.
- 01
The Main Event
Begin at Antarctica: Wilkes Land, the world before the strike and the day the book places at the center of its story.
ANTARCTICA · THE STARTING WORLD - 02
Extending the Comet Hypothesis
Follow the nitrogen-ice comet into the land wave, the opening oceans, Greenland’s wedge and India’s collision with Eurasia.
THE COMET · FRACTURES · MOVING LAND - 03
Other Worlds, Other Impacts
The book widens its lens to Mars, the Moon, Mercury, Pluto and Triton, connecting planetary scars and nitrogen ice to a proposed comet swarm.
PLANETARY COMPARISONS - 04
The Dinosaurs and the Oil
A tour through fossil sites in Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Australia and China, followed by the book’s account of burial, heat, oil and gas.
FOSSIL BEDS · BURIAL · CHEMISTRY - 05
The Antarctic Impact and the Human Memory
From drowned coastlines to flood and sky-fire traditions, the authors examine the human traces they associate with the catastrophe.
DROWNED LANDSCAPES · HUMAN MEMORY - 06
The Origins of the Comet Swarm
The story moves outward to cometary ice, orbital inclinations and the proposed role of Planet Nine in disturbing a distant population of bodies.
THE OUTER SOLAR SYSTEM - 07
The Resurrection
The closing chapter returns to Earth: life before the impact, survival, dispersal and the symbols of renewal carried into the world afterward.
SURVIVAL · RENEWAL
About this edition
Chapter pages reproduce the text of Antarctic Impact — How a Giant Comet Split the Continents Apart, Vision Edition, by Michael Madden and Ramon Madden. The homepage offers brief chapter summaries; open any chapter for its full text and recreated diagrams.
THE RESEARCH LIBRARYTwo maps.
Two maps.
One place to return to.
Explore the ocean floor today and a scientific reconstruction of Pangea around 250 million years ago. Keep both maps close as you read.
01 / THE OCEAN FLOOR TODAY
Marie Tharp in 3D
Explore the original map on our globe, then inspect numerical depths and the source artwork.
Explore Tharp in 3D ↗Original map & numerical depth profiles →Map details & sources →World Ocean Floor, 1977 · Heezen–Tharp–Berann · Columbia / Lamont
02 / THE PUBLISHED PALEOMAP REFERENCE
The GPlates maps in 3D
The same published images, paired with the authors’ reconstructed terrain on our dedicated reference globe. Start at 250 Ma and explore 109 source maps.
Explore PALEOMAP in 3D ↗Map details & sources →Scotese & Wright, 2018 · GPlates reference imagery · CC BY 4.0
OUR MODEL / SEPARATE STUDY
Open our reconstruction →Follow published coastlines and ocean depths from Pangea to today, with clearly identified transitions between dated maps.
Open the full research library →Map guides, original sources and references for later reading.
01 / ANTARCTIC ENVIRONMENTSCHAPTER ONE
A forest near the South Pole
Preserved roots, pollen and spores document a formerly warm, vegetated Antarctic environment. The research team dates the forest to about 90 million years ago.
What it supports: a warm Antarctic past. It does not establish the book’s recent impact date or little-to-no axial tilt.
Research team’s account · Imperial, 2020 ↗02 / NITROGEN ICECHAPTERS TWO & THREE
Pluto’s active nitrogen glacier
NASA’s August 2026 account describes patterns consistent with liquid nitrogen emerging from beneath Sputnik Planitia, based on analysis of New Horizons imagery.
What it supports: the study of large nitrogen-ice reservoirs and their behavior on Pluto. It does not identify an Earth impactor or establish a shared bombardment date.
Read NASA’s report · August 2026 ↗THE BOOK, RECREATED AS DIAGRAMSRead the figure.
Read the figure.
Then explore it.
The book’s figures are presented as clear recreated diagrams. Earth diagrams open their matching globe view; astronomy and chemistry diagrams have their own interactive workspace.
Explore the comet’s breakup in 3D ↗Read the figure in Chapter Two →Open astronomy & chemistry diagrams ↗
The sequence illustrates the authors’ account; diagram sizes and timing are schematic.
OTHER WORLDS / CHAPTER THREEA wider view
A wider view
of the same questions.
The book looks outward to immense basins, frozen plains and unusual moons. Compare those connections with the missions that recorded each world.
Projected color photographic mosaic · published January 2017NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute
Full image record, processing & source ↗
Visit seven worlds →
Mission observations sit beside the authors’ interpretation, with the image processing and limits identified.
Read Chapter Three ↗Michael Studinger / NASA Operation IceBridge · Image record & source ↗
ACTUAL PLACES / SOURCE IMAGESPut the diagrams
Put the diagrams
beside the landscape.
Look at Antarctic rock and ice, Greenland’s glacier fronts, sea ice and ocean-floor lava. Each record explains what the image shows and where it connects with the book.
Explore Earth & geology images →Search the complete image library ↗THE BOOK IS YOUR STARTING POINT
Book & audiobook Keep reading. Keep looking.
Find the online chapters, hear the introduction and see current edition availability in one place.