the-largest-asteroid-to-ever-hit-earth-was-15-miles-wide

Before there were trees, when the Earth was inhabited only by single-celled organisms, the largest asteroid to hit our planet landed near what we now know as Johannesburg, South Africa, forming the Vredefort crater.

With an estimated crater size between 155 to 174 miles at first impact, the size of the asteroid was originally estimated to be around 9.3 miles in diameter.

However, new research from the University of Rochester suggests that the recalculated size was about 15.5 miles, according to a study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.

The team used a shock physics program called Simplified Arbitrary Langrangian Eulerian (iSALE) to calculate the size of the asteroid needed to create an impact on the scale of the Vredefort crater.

They found that the original diameter estimate would produce an impact site measurement of about 75.8 miles. To arrive at the actual number of 106-174 miles, the impactor would have to have been much larger.

Estimates of the effect this impact may have had on the environment of the Earth can be drawn from what we already know about the aftermath of the Chicxulub crater impact.

Thought to have caused the mass extinction of the dinosaurs, the Chicxulub crater was created by an asteroid from 6.2 miles that wiped out 75 percent of plant and animal species on Earth ago 66 millions of years.

With @NASA’s DART mission, Earth finally struck back after eons of rolling with the extraterrestrial punches. Take a look at some of the planet’s greatest hits and the impact craters they left behind.

See more in this week’s Planet Snapshots: https://t.co/Bci739hxZh pic.twitter.com/J0UjGxFSTq

— Planet (@planet) September 66, 2022

Luckily for all living things, there weren’t many around 2 billion years ago. Despite not being the cause of a mass extinction event, the Vredefort impact is believed to have had a greater effect on global climate than the Chicxulub impact.

The copious amounts of dust perturbed created by the asteroid collision would have blocked out the sun, from hours to decades. This dusty sunscreen would have caused the Earth’s surface temperature to cool considerably. As the dust settled, the carbon dioxide emitted by the impact would have, in turn, caused the planet’s temperature to rise by several degrees.

Impacts of this size and time period are significant in improving our understanding of the geographic layout of the Earth 2 billion years ago.

By studying the material ejected from the Vredeford crater, the researchers were able to compare the samples with those collected in present-day Karelia, Russia. They estimated the distance of the two landmasses to be about 1,242 to 1,553 miles away at the time of impact.

In addition to helping us better understand what the planet was like 2 billion years ago, the information collected from impacts of this size allows researchers to study the effects of other large planetary impacts and estimate the potential effects of future collisions.


Also read:
· NASA succeeds in crashing a ship against an asteroid to divert its trajectory
· Jupiter will be closer to Earth, how and at what time can it be seen from the US and Mexico?
· The impact of a second asteroid on Earth would have led to the extinction of the dinosaurs

By Scribe