What happened when a meteorite the size of four Everests hit Earth?

by time news

2024-10-21 20:27:00

Updated Monday 21 October 2024 –
10.27pm

Billions of years ago, long before anything resembling life as we know it existed, meteorites frequently hit the planet. One of those space rocks crashed a few years ago. 3.26 billion years and still today reveals secrets about the past on Earth.

What happened when a meteorite the size of four Everests hit Earth? A new study concludes that the impacts of this giant rock have had a positive side of life: They could have allowed him to thrive.

Published this Monday in the magazine Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the work sheds light on how the impact of the “S2” meteorite, of which geological evidence can now be found in the Barberton Greenstone Belt, South Africa.

Through the painstaking work of collecting and examining rock samples from just a few centimeters away and analyzing the sedimentology, geochemistry and carbon isotopic compositions they leave behind, the team Nadja Drabon, from Harvard University, paints in his article “the most compelling picture to date” of what happened on the day the giant meteorite visited Earth.

The S2, whose size is estimated up to 200 times bigger than the one that killed the dinosaurs, It triggered a tsunami that stirred the ocean and swept debris from the land into coastal areas.

The heat from the impact boiled the upper layer of the ocean and warmed the atmosphere. A thick cloud of dust covered everything and paralyzed all photosynthetic activity, reports a statement from Harvard.

But the bacteria are resistant and, according to the team’s analysis, Bacterial life quickly recovered after the impact.

With this, they produced strong increase in populations of unicellular organisms They feed on the elements phosphorus and iron.

It is probable, the authors point out, that the tsunami also dragged the hierro from the depths of the ocean to the shallow waters and that the encounter reached Earth through the meteorite itself and increased erosion on land.

The analysis shows that iron-metabolizing bacteria thrived immediately after the impact. This change in favor of iron bacteria, although short-lived, is a key piece of the puzzle describing the first years of life on Earth.

According to Drabon’s study, however, meteorite impacts They have a reputation for killing everything in their path. (including dinosaurs 66 million years ago), have a bright side to life.

“We think the impacts are disastrous for life,” says Drabon, “but what this study highlights is that these impacts would have benefited life, especially early on. These impacts could have allowed life to thrive.”


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