Early Earth Struck By Texas Sized Asteroids Says Research, Boiled Oceans Away

A new terrestrial bombardment model developed by an international group of scientists led by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) indicates that Earth’s surface was heavily reprocessed — or melted, mixed and buried — as a result of giant asteroid impacts more than four billion years ago. The model, calibrated using existing lunar and terrestrial data, sheds light on the role asteroid collisions played in the geological evolution of the uppermost layers of Earth during the geologic eon call the “Hadean,” or first geologic eon, approximately four to 4.5 billion years ago. The team, which also included academic and government researchers, published its findings in a paper, “Widespread Mixing and Burial of Earth’s Hadean Crust by Asteroid Impacts,” in the July 31, 2014, issue of the journal Nature. An artistic conception of the early Earth, showing a surface pummeled by large impacts, resulting in extrusion of deep-seated magma onto the surface.



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