According to a new study, one of those incidents was a massive asteroid shower that bombarded Earth and the Moon 800 million years ago.
During this monstrous rain, the asteroids that collided with Earth were much larger than the asteroid responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, the researchers believe.
There is also evidence that an asteroid shower that hit Earth 470 million years ago could have caused a drop in sea level, icy conditions and contributed to biodiversity.
Fast forward to 66 million years ago, and the Chicxulub impact crater, below the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico and located offshore near the city of Chicxulub, was formed when a large meteorite between 6.8 and 50.3 miles in diameter hit the Earth.
However, this recently discovered event that occurred 800 million years ago involved an asteroid shower with a total mass between 30 and 60 times greater than that of the asteroid that Chicxulub created.
This impact occurred before the Cryogenien period between 635 million and 720 million years ago, when Earth was covered in frozen deserts. This was an era of major environmental and biological changes, the researchers said.
This suggests “that it is not surprising that an asteroid shower 800 million years ago triggered the ice age, because a total mass flow 800 million years ago is 10 to 100 times greater than that of the Chicxulub impact and / or a 470 meteor shower millions of years ago, “Kentaro Terada, lead author of the study and professor at the University of Osaka in Japan, said in an email.
Moon craters tell a story
Due to the erosion and resurgence that occurs on Earth caused by volcanoes and other geological processes, it is difficult for scientists to study how our planet was impacted in the past by asteroids and the date on which they occurred. The researchers believe that any impact crater on Earth earlier than 600 million years has been erased.
That’s why the moon, which has largely been unchanged by weathering and erosion, has provided a fruitful alternative path for scientists to study the craters and reconstruct the shared history of Earth and the moon.
In this new study, the researchers used data collected by the Kaguya lunar orbiter from the Japanese Space Agency. Of the 59 craters on the moon that the researchers observed to have diameters greater than 12.4 miles or 20 kilometers in diameter, eight of the craters appear to have formed at the same time. This includes the Copernicus Crater, which is 57.8 miles in diameter.
These eight craters probably formed simultaneously when an asteroid 62 miles or 100 kilometers in diameter was interrupted, impacting both Earth and the moon.
The settings for life on Earth?
During the asteroid shower, a large amount of phosphorous was delivered to Earth and “large amounts of volatile elements such as carbon, nitrogen and water were supplied to the surface of the dry moon,” Terada said.
Phosphorus could have acted as a nutritional element to promote increased algae growth on Earth, Terada said. It is also possible that the arrival of elements through asteroids on Earth has “influenced marine biogeochemical cycles, severe disturbances in Earth’s climate system and the emergence of animals,” the authors wrote in the study.
The asteroid Eulalia, a type C asteroid in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, may have caused the asteroid shower, the researchers theorized. Type C asteroids contain carbon and are the most common asteroids in our solar system.
Eulalia may be Ryugu’s main body, an asteroid explored and sampled by the Japanese mission Hayabusa2. The asteroid samples are currently back on Earth. Ryugu is a top-shaped debris pile asteroid. A rubble pile asteroid is a grouping of rocks held together by gravity rather than individual objects.
There are similarities between Eulalia and Ryugu’s surface that have suggested that Ryugu may have been part of Eulalia.
If anything caused Eulalia’s disruption, with fragments that parted and formed Separate asteroids, this may have created an asteroid shower that impacted Earth and the Moon, while creating near-Earth asteroids.
Terada, a member of Ryugu’s first sample characterization team, will help date Ryugu’s returned samples, which could confirm his “father” and determine if he was created during this asteroid disruption event.
“If we have the age of 800 million years of Ryugu sample, I will be very excited, “said Terada.
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