Our Research Shows Giant Asteroids Battered Early Earth: More than four billion years ago the surface of Earth was heavily reprocessed - or melted, mixed, and buried - as a result of giant asteroid impacts. A new terrestrial bombardment model, calibrated using existing lunar and terrestrial data, sheds light on the role asteroid collisions played in the evolution of the uppermost layers of the early Earth during the geologic eon called the "Hadean" (approximately 4 to 4.5 billion years ago). An artistic conception of the early Earth, showing a surface pummeled by large impact, resulting in extrusion of deep seated magma onto the surface. At the same time, distal portion of the surface could have retained liquid water.
Image Credit: Simone Marchi
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