Asteroids are hitting Earth much more often than previously thought

The authors of a controversial new study suggest that the Earth may have been hit by large

space rocks are more common than expectedpreviously. This increases the risk of extinction of life on the planet as a result of a collision with an asteroid. The scientists' findings were presented at the annual conference on lunar and planetary sciences in Texas, USA.

Experts focused on the largestknown impact craters that appeared over the last million years. After analyzing new high-resolution images, the study's authors concluded that the asteroid impact tracks were originally much larger than they appear now. If they're right, space rocks larger than a kilometer have collided with Earth up to 12 times in the last million years alone. This is much higher than previous estimates—once every 600,000–700,000 years.

However, other scientists remain unconvincedis that the landscape features that scientists report are actually part of old craters. “I’m skeptical,” said Bill Bottke, a planetary dynamics specialist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

Unlike Mars or the Moon, impact cratersLands are disappearing relatively quickly due to erosion caused by water and wind. Scientists estimate the risk of space impacts based on the history of impacts with asteroids and by monitoring near-Earth objects.

But the authors of the new study usednew high-resolution satellite data and lidar imagery to study the remains of craters on the Earth. Researchers have discovered at least four impact craters, the outer edges of which are much larger than previously measured. For example, it was previously thought that the diameter of the Pantasma crater in Nicaragua was 14 km, but scientists discovered an outer ring with a diameter of 35.2 km. The diameter of the lake-filled Bosumtwi crater in Ghana is estimated to be about 10.5 km, but researchers have identified a ring-shaped ridge with a diameter of 26.8 km. According to new data, the diameter of the Zhamanshin crater in Kazakhstan is 30.4 km, and not 14 km, as previously thought.

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Cover photo: Shane Thorgerson