A giant star once boiled the oceans. It also did the unexpected.

Chaos once reigned on Earth.

Large asteroids or fragments of ancient objects once hit the planets of the unknown solar system, and previously scientists found evidence that a terrible object attacked our planet about 3.26 billion years ago. It was 50 to 200 times the size of a dinosaur-killing asteroid. It boiled the oceans, fueled the darkness of the earth for years and decades, and destroyed unimaginable tsunamis (thousands of meters deep) shattering the ocean floor.

But still, new research shows that ancient life found a way to thrive.

“We think impact events are life-threatening,” Nadja Drabon, an earth and planetary scientist at Harvard University who led the study, said in a statement. “But what this study highlights is that these effects could have health benefits, especially early on, and these effects could allow health to flourish.”

A study on this amazing event, known as the “S2” meteorite impact, was recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Scientists suspect that the impact left behind a huge crater 297 miles (487 kilometers) in diameter, and created rocks that are still exposed today in South Africa – with telltale signs of an ancient collision. For this study, Drabon and his team examined the layers of this ancient rock, collecting more than 200 samples from 5 meters (16 feet) below the return layer (debris returning to Earth) and up to 8 meters (26 feet) above it. . impact blanket.

Sadly, the post-impact layers showed “significant changes” in their composition and composition, the authors wrote, including a significant increase in iron- and iron-rich minerals called “siderites.” Siderites tend to form in places where microbes cycle around iron for energy, meaning they represent places where microbes are likely to thrive – even many primitive creatures that needed sunlight met their demise.

“These effects may allow life to flourish”

“Tsunami, atmospheric warming, and darkness would likely have eliminated phototrophic bacteria in the shallow water column,” the authors wrote. “However, it is possible that the biosphere recovered quickly, and, in the medium term, the increase in nutrients and iron likely facilitated microbial blooms, especially iron-dependent bacteria.”

The figure below shows how a large tsunami struck the steel in the hot ocean, allowing it to spin upwards. Iron-eating bacteria take advantage of this money.

A: It shows the early impact of Earth’s environment, with photosynthetic green life on land and iron (Fe2+) in the deep ocean.

B: The world’s oceans are agitated shortly after the collision, with metal coalescing over the water column as large tsunamis pass through the water.

C: Boiling seas experience evaporation, and nutrients from the land generated by the tsunami flow into the sea.

D: Iron in the ocean (from ocean movement, from the impactor itself, and erosion), and nutrients (such as phosphorus) from the soil create a lot of microbial activity in the water column, and possibly large blooms on the ocean surface, too.

E: Eventually, the environment, perhaps thousands of years later, returns to its original state.

Earth scientists will continue to move away from Earth – and sometimes violently – from a rocky area in South Africa, called the Barberton Greenstone Belt.

The sky that hit Earth about 3.26 billion years ago was several times larger than Mount Everest.
Credit: AGU

Asteroid impact hazards today

Fortunately, large or catastrophic impacts from space rocks are rare on Earth. Here are some common modern day hazards from asteroids or comets both small and large. Importantly, even small rocks are still a threat, as a 56-foot (17-meter) rock that erupted over Russia blew out people’s windows in 2013.

• Every single day about 100 tons of dust and sand-sized particles fall into the Earth’s atmosphere and burn quickly.

• Every year, on average, a “car-sized asteroid” descends from the sky and explodes, NASA explains.

• Impacts around 460 feet (140 meters in diameter) in diameter occur every 10,000 to 20,000 years.

• A “dinosaur killing” impact from a rock maybe half a mile across or more occurs on timescales of 100 million years.