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What happened here 49,000 years ago? Let Dr. David J. Roddy, a . Geological Survey scientist emeritus who has studied the crater for decades, describe the scene: "Say you decide to take a drive out here in the country. You park your car. You look around. At 49,000 years plus 10 seconds, you would look toward the east and notice a pin-point of light. At 49,000 years plus 5 seconds, that light would have grown to the intensity of the headlight of a semi truck. At 49,000 years plus 1 second, you might get the impression that maybe you shouldn't have driven out here." And then? As Dr. Roddy puts it, "At 49,000 years, POW!"

Today when you visit Meteor Crater, you walk with one of the tour guides to view that "POW!"--the result of more than 300,000 tons of iron-nickel meteorite, its likely origin the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars, smashing into Arizona at more than 40,000 miles per hour. "The collision released energy equal to 20 million tons of TNT," the guide tells me in the tone of someone who has recited this statistic often but still finds it thrilling. "The crater is as deep as a 60-story building."

Meteor Crater is owned by descendents of Daniel Barringer, a mining engineer who acquired the site in 1902. Earlier geologists theorized that the crater was of volcanic origin, but Barringer was convinced it had been formed by a meteorite--and that if he could locate the meteorite, he could make a fortune mining its iron. Barringer lost a great deal of money trying to find the space rock, which we now know was largely vaporized. But he was eventually proven right. In the 1960s, Dr. Eugene Shoemaker, extrapolating from data produced at Nevada nuclear test sites, proved the crater was formed by a visitor from elsewhere in the solar system.

"Our Earth is one big gravitational vacuum cleaner," Dr. Roddy says. Meteorites rain down on us with some regularity. There are nearly 200 known impact craters--the largest of them is Chicxulub, off the Yucatan peninsula, produced by the object that likely killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Despite the evidence of repeated Earth-meteorite collisions, Dr. Roddy believes that humankind doesn't take the threat seriously enough. He would like to see an ambitious program of tracking--and if possible, destroying--objects that get too close. "It's not a question of if the Earth will be impacted in the future. It's a question of when."

I walk back to the visitor center, where there are displays on meteors, comets, and the crater's role in preparing Apollo astronauts for moon landings. I linger at a computer simulation designed by Leonard Wikberg III and Dr. Roddy, that lets you create your own meteor and crater. Depending on your meteor's size, speed, and density, impacts can range from a 50-kilometer crater to--as the game's music swells ominously--the total destruction of the Earth.

I send meteorites spinning into North America until the 10-year-old waiting behind me indicates it is his turn. I go back outside to look at the real crater. In cold winter light it looks weirdly cheerful. I try to figure out why, despite Dr. Roddy's warnings, I feel weirdly cheerful too. The thing about Meteor Crater is that it puts things in perspective. Overdrawn checking account? Suspicious mole on your left calf? They pale in significance against a 300,000-ton satellite shooting out of the heavens to smack us. The Earth as giant vacuum cleaner, the universe as high-stakes billiard game: It's out of our hands. I look toward the east, scanning the bright blue sky, just in case.

BARRINGER METEOR CRATER. $10. Off I-40, 40 miles east of Flagstaff, AZ; (520) 289-2362 or .com.