(ORDO NEWS) — According to a new study, volcanic activity or other terrestrial factors were not the cause of the ice age: asteroids provoked a significant cooling.
Professor from the Japanese University of Osaka Kentaro Terada is sure that the climate of our planet in one day underwent significant changes due to cosmic influence. The multitude of asteroids falling to the ground caused a significant cooling. It happened 800 million years ago.
The scientist is sure that the number of asteroids exceeded that of 66 million years ago, when the dinosaurs died. Also 800 million years ago, space blocks were larger.
Scientists were able to find evidence that it was the asteroid rain that led to a significant cooling, which was especially acute 470 million years ago. The sea level fell, glaciers formed, the biological environment changed.
Permanent tectonic shifts lead to the fact that ancient depressions from asteroids are being erased. However, scientists found a way out: they studied the moon using the orbiter of the Japanese space agency Kaguya. As it turned out, 59 craters have a diameter of more than 20 km, eight of them were definitely created at the same time. The asteroid rain most likely formed the Copernicus crater with a diameter of 93 km.
The 1969 mission to the moon allowed NASA to collect samples from our natural satellite. All of them were attributed to the period 800 million years ago. The fall of asteroids brought to Earth a lot of phosphorus and volatile compounds: carbon, nitrogen. Perhaps it was phosphorus that later gave impetus to the appearance and growth of algae on the planet.
Interestingly, the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was about 50 km in size, while the lump that changed the climate was much larger (up to 100 km).
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