Impact events Archives

The Lafayette Meteorite -- Purdue University

Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Habitable Zones, Impact events, Mars, Meteorites & Asteroids, Press Release

Meteorite Contains Evidence Of Liquid Water On Mars 742 Million Years Ago

by Keith CowingNovember 24, 2024November 24, 2024

An asteroid struck Mars 11 million years ago and sent pieces of the red planet hurtling through space. One of these chunks of Mars eventually crashed into the Earth somewhere […]

Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Impact events, Status Report

Migration of Bodies to the Earth from Different Distances from the Sun

by Keith CowingNovember 20, 2024November 20, 2024

Migration of bodies under the gravitational influence of almost formed planets was studied, and probabilities of their collisions with the Earth and other terrestrial planets were calculated. Based on the […]

Cartoon illustrating how the provenance of Earth’s building material evolved over time with a particular emphasis on how and when CC material was delivered to the terrestrial planets. a) Initial accretion in the terrestrial planets is of pure-NC material. b) Early giant planet growth/migration scatters a few large CC embryos into the inner disk while CC planetesimals are implanted into the asteroid belt. c) Earth accretes a few CC embryos as it grows, including one late in the accretionary sequence, but Mars does not. d) The Earth suffers one final NC-dominated, Moon-forming impact, after which it acquires ~0.5% of NC-dominated material (the late veneer). Timing given for each panel is not strict and mostly for illustrative purposes. -- astro-ph.EP

Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Impact events, Meteorites & Asteroids, Status Report

Mechanisms and Timing of Carbonaceous Chondrite Delivery to Earth

by Keith CowingNovember 8, 2024November 8, 2024

The nucleosynthetic isotope signatures of meteorites and the bulk silicate Earth (BSE) indicate that Earth consists of a mixture of “carbonaceous” (CC) and “non-carbonaceous” (NC) materials.

Giant Meteorite Impact -- Grok via Astrobiology.com

Astrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Away Teams & Field Reports, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Extinction events, Fossils & Paleontology, Habitable Zones, Impact events, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Meteorites & Asteroids, Status Report

Effect Of A Giant Meteorite Impact On Paleoarchean Surface Environments And Life

by Keith CowingOctober 30, 2024October 30, 2024

Large meteorite impacts must have strongly affected the habitability of the early Earth. Rocks of the Archean Eon record at least 16 major impact events, involving bolides larger than 10 […]

The plume from Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha‘apai behaved like a mega-thunderstorm that rose 58 kilometers (38 miles) into the atmosphere. NASA Earth Observatory images and video by Joshua Stevens, using data courtesy of Kristopher Bedka and Konstantin Khlopenkov/NASA Langley Research Center, and GOES-17 imagery courtesy of NOAA and the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS). Story by Sofie Bates, NASA’s Earth Science News Team, with Mike Carlowicz. Larger image

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Caves, Craters, Mountains, Subsurface, Lava Tubes, Extinction events, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Impact events, Lava / magma ocean / Volcanic Worlds, Status Report, Terraforming & Geoengineering, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

X-Raying Neutral Density Disturbances in the Mesosphere and Lower Thermosphere induced by the 2022 Hunga-Tonga Volcano Eruption-Explosion

by Keith CowingOctober 16, 2024October 16, 2024

We present X-ray observations of the upper atmospheric density disturbance caused by the explosive eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai (HTHH) volcano on 15 January 2022.

Astrogeology, Away Teams & Field Reports, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Caves, Craters, Mountains, Subsurface, Lava Tubes, Extremeophiles and Extreme Environments, Fossils & Paleontology, Impact events, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Meteorites & Asteroids, Microbiology & Virology, Origin & Evolution of Life, Press Release

Saudi Arabia Crater Holds Clues For Extraterrestrial Life

by Keith CowingOctober 15, 2024November 30, 2024

In the search for life in space, scientists have studied life in some of the earth’s most extreme environments.

An iron meteorite from the core of a melted planetesimal (left) and a chondrite meteorite, derived from a ‘primitive’, unmelted planetesimal (right). Credit: Rayssa Martins/Ross Findlay

Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Habitable Zones, Impact events, Meteorites & Asteroids, Origin & Evolution of Life, Press Release

How Did The Building Blocks Of Life Arrive On Earth?

by Keith CowingOctober 14, 2024October 14, 2024

Researchers have used the chemical fingerprints of zinc contained in meteorites to determine the origin of volatile elements on Earth. The results suggest that without ‘unmelted’ asteroids, there may not […]

A surface geology map of the proposed Massive Australian Precambrian-Cambrian Impact Structure. (Provided by Daniel Connelly) Larger image

Astrogeology, Caves, Craters, Mountains, Subsurface, Lava Tubes, Extinction events, Fossils & Paleontology, Impact events, Press Release

Australian Crater Could Offer Fresh Insight Into Earth’s Geological History

by Keith CowingOctober 14, 2024October 14, 2024

VCU’s Arif Sikder of the Center for Environmental Studies is part of the research team that is going back in time – by hundreds of millions of years.

This simulation was run in a uniformly 90% ice crust (Fig. 1a) at the equator and shows total vertical displacement after 1 Gyr of relaxation. The black lines are the initial state of the simulation, and the solid colour shows the final state of the simulation. In this case, the crater has only shallowed by ~70 m from an initial depth of 2,400 m (seen as the solid colour at the centre of the crater slightly offset from the black line), for a relaxation percentage of

Astrogeology, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Caves, Craters, Mountains, Subsurface, Lava Tubes, Ceres, Comets and Asteroids, Cryobiology, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Impact events, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

An Ancient And Impure Frozen Ocean On Ceres Implied By Its Ice-rich Crust

by Keith CowingSeptember 30, 2024September 29, 2024

Ceres is a key object in understanding the evolution of small bodies and is the only dwarf planet to have been orbited by a spacecraft, NASA’s Dawn mission.