Asteroid strikes are bad news for all living things.
Earth and the Moon are connected, especially when it comes to the threat of an asteroid attack. The new study found that creating relatively large craters strikes occurred equally often in both worlds. To be more precise, they appeared about 290 million years ago.
In outer space, the Moon and the Earth are moving almost at the same level. That is, both objects should receive approximately the same number of impacts from meteorites. But it is widely believed that terrestrial erosion, which is absent on the moon, erases remarkable craters and eliminates all small ones.
The researchers decided to carefully study the craters on the moon and determine the frequency for 10-kilometer specimens, comparing with the terrestrial situation.
Moon and its large craters Scientists have found a striking coincidence in both worlds, arguing that erosion may not be as devastating to craters as previously thought. Moreover, it was possible to encounter a surprise. About 290 million years ago, the frequency of impacts that created large craters increased by about 2.6 times compared with the previous 700 million years.
What does this mean? There is an assumption that one of the large objects in the asteroid belt has collapsed, sending rain of fragments into the inner solar system. This flow could greatly affect earthly life. Perhaps it even touched upon an event that caused dinosaurs to die 65 million years ago. It is difficult to say that it was this stream that caused the mass extinction, but it had to somehow affect our planet. Further research will provide more information.
