The Earth has been hit by a massive asteroid bombardment, but a new analysis shows that the number of impacts
The new study also looks at how asteroids may have influenced Earth's evolving surface chemistry.
The authors of the work note that asteroids hadsignificant impact on the chemistry of the earth's surface and the ability to support life, for example, one such collision led to the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Impact craters from such collisions can beseen on the Moon and other rocky planets, but atmospheric weathering and plate tectonics tend to mask any direct evidence of such events.
However, their evidence can be traced toancient rocks, in particular by the presence of spherules: strong impacts ejected molten particles and vapors, which then cooled and fell to Earth, where they turned into spherical glassy particles. The stronger the impact, the more of these particles would spread out from the impact site.
Using this approach, the authors note, they found that current models greatly underestimate the number of known asteroid impacts.
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