Meteorite impact tagged posts

The minerology of the rocks that a meteorite hits, rather than the size of the impact, determines how deadly an impact it will have. A new University of Liverpool study has found that the minerology of the rocks that a meteorite hits, rather than the size of the impact, determines how deadly an impact it will have.

The earth has been bombarded by meteorites throughout its long history. Meteorite impacts generate atmospheric dust and cover the Earth’s surface with debris and have long been considered as a trigger of mass extinctions through Earth’s history.

A multidisciplinary research team from the University of Liverpool and the Instituto Tecnológico y de Energías Renovables, Tenerife with expertise in palaeontology, asteroid stratigraphy, mineralogy, cloud microphysics and cli...

This highly shocked zircon, from the Vredefort Dome in South Africa, shows thin, red bands that are a hallmark of meteorite impact. Photo: Aaron Cavosie

A study of zircons from a gigantic meteorite impact in South Africa casts doubt on the methods used to date lunar impacts. Durable crystals zircons are used to date some of the earliest and most dramatic cataclysms of the solar system. One is the super-duty collision that ejected material from Earth to form the moon roughly 50 million years after Earth formed. Another is the late heavy bombardment, a wave of impacts that may have created hellish surface conditions on the young Earth, about 4 billion years ago.

Both events are widely accepted but unproven, so geoscientists are eager for more details and better dates...