Asteroid impact may have helped thaw Earth out of ice age

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'Looking at our planet from space, it would have looked very different,” said isotope geology professor Chris Kirkland of Curtin University in Australia, one of the researchers in the study published in the journal Nature Communications.'

Washington — Scientists have identified Earth’s oldest-known impact crater, and in doing so may have solved a mystery about how our planet emerged from one of its most dire periods.

"Looking at our planet from space, it would have looked very different,” said isotope geology professor Chris Kirkland of Curtin University in Australia, one of the researchers in the study published in the journal Nature Communications."You would see a white ball not our familiar blue marble.” The researchers are wondering whether this thaw helped shepherd Earth into a climate more favorable for the simple microbes that inhabited the planet at the time to thrive and evolve, possibly making it a pivotal event in the history of life on Earth.

"During the time of the Yarrabubba impact, life was more simple but did contain organisms like stromatolites, algal mounds that are still in existence today,” said study lead author Timmons Erickson, a Nasa research scientist at the Johnson Space Center's Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science division.

 

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