Giant meteorites tend to hit Earth more often

A new study claims that giant meteorites are hitting Earth much more often than expected. This sparks controversy in the scientific community.

This controversial new study suggests that Earth may have been bombarded by large meteorites more frequently than expected, increasing the risk that the impacts of species extinctions may have occurred earlier than expected.

This research was presented last week at the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas, USA. The research focused on the largest known impact craters over the past million years.

Meteor crater in Arizona

The Arizona Impact Crater is one of the best preserved impact craters on Earth, with an estimated age of approximately 50,000 years. A new study of larger, less pristine craters raises new questions about how many major impacts Earth experiences in a given time period.

Using new high-resolution images, the authors say these craters were originally much larger than they are today. If they were right, asteroids or comets larger than 1 km would have hit Earth dozens of times in the last million years alone. This is a much higher rate than previous estimates, every 600,000 to 700,000 years.

Impact craters on Earth are rapidly disappearing

Unlike Mars or the Moon, Impact craters on Earth disappear relatively quickly due to water and wind erosion.

Garvin and his colleagues used new high-resolution satellite data to examine the remains of Earth’s craters.

Using this method, the researchers discovered at least four impact craters whose outer rims were much larger than previously measured.

Specifically, Pantasma Crater in Nicaragua, was previously estimated to be 14 km in diameter, but Garvin and his colleagues discovered an outer ring 35.2 km in diameter. Bosumtwi Crater in Ghana its diameter is estimated to be around 10.5 km, but new research shows a ring-shaped ridge with a diameter of 26.8 km. And Jamanshin Crater In Kazakhstan, 13.6 km wide can actually have a diameter of 30.4 km. Also Iturralde Crater In Bolivia there is a belt 30.4 km wide.

Garvin and his team said the impacts that created the crater would have released the equivalent of 400,000 to 730,000 megatons of TNT, enough to blast part of Earth’s atmosphere into space and throw impact debris across the globe.

Article source: Tien Phong