Space
Scientists Reconstruct Ancient, Catastrophic Impact Larger Than Dinosaur Extinction Blast
Staff Reporter
First Posted: Apr 11, 2014 08:20 AM EDT
Millions of years ago, a massive asteroid slammed into Earth, setting off a chain of events that changed life forever. Now, scientists have reconstructed that impact, revealing how catastrophic event this truly was.
Scientists have previously hypothesized enormous ancient impacts. In fact, one of these impacts may have helped wipe out the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago. New research, though, shows that the power and scale of an event about 3.26 billion years ago may have been so massive that it created geological features found in a South African region known as the Barberton greenstone belt.
The asteroid was between 23 to 36 miles wide, and collided with the Earth at about 12 miles per second. This jolt was larger than a 10.8 magnitude earthquake and propelled seismic waves that hurtled beneath our planet's surface. It set off other earthquakes in addition to tsunamis.
"We knew it was big, but we didn't know how big," said Donald Lowe, one of the researchers, in a news release. "We can't go to the impact sites. In order to better understand how big it was and its effect we need studies like this."
So what did happen? The scientists estimate that the impact would have caused the sky to become red hot. The atmosphere would have been filled with dust and the tops of the ocean would have boiled. This would have meant that life on Earth would have been drastically impacted at the time. In fact, it's estimated that a smaller asteroid like this is what helped push the dinosaurs to extinction.
That's not all that this impact may have done. It could have also been responsible for a major shift in tectonics. There's evidence for the rock formations and crustal fractures found at the Barberton greenstone belt.
That said, more research needs to be conducted before any conclusions are drawn. Yet this latest study reveals the forces that may have been at work when it came to shaping our early earth.
The findings are published in the journal Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems.
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First Posted: Apr 11, 2014 08:20 AM EDT
Millions of years ago, a massive asteroid slammed into Earth, setting off a chain of events that changed life forever. Now, scientists have reconstructed that impact, revealing how catastrophic event this truly was.
Scientists have previously hypothesized enormous ancient impacts. In fact, one of these impacts may have helped wipe out the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago. New research, though, shows that the power and scale of an event about 3.26 billion years ago may have been so massive that it created geological features found in a South African region known as the Barberton greenstone belt.
The asteroid was between 23 to 36 miles wide, and collided with the Earth at about 12 miles per second. This jolt was larger than a 10.8 magnitude earthquake and propelled seismic waves that hurtled beneath our planet's surface. It set off other earthquakes in addition to tsunamis.
"We knew it was big, but we didn't know how big," said Donald Lowe, one of the researchers, in a news release. "We can't go to the impact sites. In order to better understand how big it was and its effect we need studies like this."
So what did happen? The scientists estimate that the impact would have caused the sky to become red hot. The atmosphere would have been filled with dust and the tops of the ocean would have boiled. This would have meant that life on Earth would have been drastically impacted at the time. In fact, it's estimated that a smaller asteroid like this is what helped push the dinosaurs to extinction.
That's not all that this impact may have done. It could have also been responsible for a major shift in tectonics. There's evidence for the rock formations and crustal fractures found at the Barberton greenstone belt.
That said, more research needs to be conducted before any conclusions are drawn. Yet this latest study reveals the forces that may have been at work when it came to shaping our early earth.
The findings are published in the journal Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone