An asteroid shower which is thought to have hit the moon and Earth 800 million years ago. (Image credit: Murayama/Osaka Univ.)
Posted on 07/26/2020 5:56:05 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
An asteroid shower thought to have struck the moon and Earth 800 million years ago may have helped trigger Earth's greatest ice ages, a new study finds...
...to learn more about ancient impacts on Earth, scientists investigated the moon, since craters are preserved well in the vacuum of space on the lunar surface. They investigated 59 lunar craters, each about 12 miles (20 km) wide or larger using the Japanese lunar orbiter spacecraft Kaguya.
The researchers analyzed when these craters formed by examining the rings of rock ejected from the impacts which created them. Small meteoroids rain down on the moon at a predictable rate, leaving behind craters ranging from 330 to 3,300 feet (100 to 1,000 meters) wide, and by counting the number of these small craters in the ejecta of the large craters, they could estimate when the large craters formed.
The scientists found that eight of the large craters they studied formed simultaneously, including the Copernicus crater which is 57 miles (93 km) wide, from which Apollo astronauts collected samples. Using radioisotope dating of ejected material from Copernicus and glassy beads formed by meteorite impacts gathered from a number of Apollo landing sites, the researchers estimated these craters were born in the wake of an asteroid shower about 800 million years ago.
Assuming that an asteroid shower that bombarded the moon would have also impacted Earth, the scientists calculated that 40 trillion to 50 trillion metric tons worth of meteoroids would have hit our planet in this shower, 30 to 60 times the mass of the Chicxulub dinosaur-killer.
These cosmic impacts would have struck Earth and the moon immediately before the Cryogenian period 635 million to 720 million years ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
An asteroid shower which is thought to have hit the moon and Earth 800 million years ago. (Image credit: Murayama/Osaka Univ.)
Planet can handle that but not CO2.
A bunch of them landed in Smallville, KS.
;^)
“40-50 trillion metric tons...”
To put that in perspective, that is 40,000,000,000,000 tons, whereas Earth weighs approx. 5,974,200,000,000,000,000,000 tons. So about 1/150,000,000th of the mass of Earth.
I am expecting an earth shattering KA BOOM ....!!
I predict a major paradigm shift for radio isotope dating methods when ‘experts’ finally determine all of these impact zones were created at virtually the same time, on both the Moon and Earth! Pretty bad science when they miss the obvious, the Earth has a very short and limited history, literally 1 ice age.
“The scientists found that eight of the large craters they studied formed simultaneously, including the Copernicus crater which is 57 miles (93 km) wide, from which Apollo astronauts collected samples.”
You don't have to wait, your prediction is dead wrong. Plenty of radiometric dating methods already exist and work fine. The Earth *doesn't* have a very short and limited history.
Lunar Capture keyword:
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