Effect of a giant meteorite impact on Paleoarchean environment and life
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Effect of a giant meteorite impact on Paleoarchean environment and life
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Re: Effect of a giant meteorite impact on Paleoarchean environment and life
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Re: Effect of a giant meteorite impact on Paleoarchean environment and life
#3[flagged]
> Drabon and her colleagues went in search of evidence of ancient major impacts in a remote area south of Kruger National Park in South Africa. There they sought out rocky outcrops containing a layer of spherules – molten droplets formed following a major meteorite impact that rained down over huge swathes of the planet. There are eight such spherule bands in this area, each preserving an ancient impact event.
> While the impact crater itself is long gone, analysis of rocks from 3.26 billion years ago tells a tale of planetary devastation. The layer of spherules from this huge impact was 15 to 20cm thick in places, compared with less than a centimetre for the famed dinosaur-killing meteorite, says Drabon.
Re: Effect of a giant meteorite impact on Paleoarchean environment and life
#4[flagged]
Publications are institutionally incapable of publishing an article (and readers incapable of appreciating) that says, A Paper Investigates How Early Archean Impacts Might Have Possibly Affected The Development of Nascent Life
Re: Effect of a giant meteorite impact on Paleoarchean environment and life
#5[flagged]
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Re: Effect of a giant meteorite impact on Paleoarchean environment and life
#6I love this type of articles where we can reconstruct what happened so long ago just based on careful observations.
Some other instances I've come across:
* The K-Pg extinction event that wiped off dinosaurs had the impact it did because the asteroid happened to impact a shallow water region. This kicked up a lot of sulfur (in gypsum) that further affected global climate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater#Effects
* Earth likely had rings ~466M years ago. We deduced this by looking at impact craters from that time period, and seeing that they all lie near the equator (accounting for continental drift): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X2...
* Earth's rotation period was probably frozen at 21h, ~600M years ago, likely due to interaction between lunar and solar tides. This resonance could have been broken by ice ages (!!!). Amazing to think that global climate affects earth's rotation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_rotation#Resonant_st...
Re: Effect of a giant meteorite impact on Paleoarchean environment and life
#7Re: Effect of a giant meteorite impact on Paleoarchean environment and life
#8The paper also mentions that, at the time, "dinosaur killer"-sized objects hit the Earth every 15 million years on average, which must have been sort of disruptive.
Re: Effect of a giant meteorite impact on Paleoarchean environment and life
#9The paper also mentions that, at the time, "dinosaur killer"-sized objects hit the Earth every 15 million years on average, which must have been sort of disruptive.
Likely due to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Heavy_Bombardment
Re: Effect of a giant meteorite impact on Paleoarchean environment and life
#10[flagged]
The purpose of scientific papers is to explain that, starting with observations.