Several thousand meteorites land on the Earth's surface every year. Space rocks come from
Meteorites contain a small proportion of the mineral,chromium oxide, which is very resistant to decomposition. Microscopic grains of chromium oxide were sifted out in the laboratory and serve as a kind of “time capsule”, providing scientists with an abundance of information.
To conduct the study, researchers fromAstrogeobiology Laboratories at Lund University dissolved nearly ten tons of sediment from the ancient seabed in strong acids. The fact is that the sediment contains the remnants of meteorites, and their chemical composition can be determined when they fall to Earth.
In total, they extracted chromium oxide from nearly 10,000 different meteorites that have fallen to Earth over the past 500 million years.
The results of the study refuted the existing theories. Thus, the researchers determined that large collisions in the asteroid belt, as a rule, do not greatly affect the number of collisions with the Earth.
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