The Moon was Pummeled by Asteroids at the Same Time the Dinosaurs Died. Coincidence?
It only takes a quick look at the Moon to see its impact-beaten surface. There are craters everywhere. Some of those impact sites apparently date back to the same time some very large asteroids were whacking Earth. One of them formed Chixculub Crater under the Yucatan Peninsula. That impact set in motion catastrophic events that wiped out much of life on Earth, including the dinosaurs.
Moon
Did some of the craters on the Moon form from the same asteroid swarm that impacted Earth and precipitated the demise of the dinosaurs? Chang’e 5 samples from specific craters on the Moon seem to show that this could well have happened.
That’s the conclusion a group of Australian scientists came to after studying glass beads from the Moon. They outlined their findings in a paper about the science they performed on samples picked up from the Moon by the Chang’e 5 Lunar mission. The beads were created by the heat and pressure caused by meteoritic impacts on the Moon. The lead author of the paper, Professor Alexander Nemchin, from Curtin University’s Space Science and Technology Centre (SSTC) in the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said the findings imply that the timing and frequency of asteroid impacts on the Moon may have been mirrored on Earth. If so then the find tells us more about the history of the evolution of our own planet.
“We combined a wide range of microscopic analytical techniques, numerical modeling, and geological surveys to determine how these microscopic glass beads from the Moon were formed and when,” Professor Nemchin said. “We found that some of the age groups of the lunar glass beads coincide precisely with the ages of some of the largest terrestrial impact crater events, including the Chicxulub impact crater responsible for the dinosaur extinction event.”
Glass beads collected by the Chang’e 5 mission date back some 66 million years and
could have formed from impacts. Courtesy Beijing SHRIMP Center, Institute of
Geology, CAGS
Looking at the Earth/Moon Asteroid Bombardment Coincidence
The team looked at the idea that large impacts, such as the Chixculub event, were accompanied by smaller impacts. The event that led to Chixculub’s formation happened about 66 million years ago. If the “big one” aimed at Chixculub had company, then it’s a good idea to look at the Moon, too. The ages and frequencies of impacts on the Moon around the same time might give clues to bombardments on Earth and the other inner solar system planets.
More:
https://www.universetoday.com/157858/the-moon-was-pummeled-by-asteroids-at-the-same-time-the-dinosaurs-died-coincidence/
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