New research reveals that oxygen-sucking asteroids that hit the Earth have changed the Earth’s chemical composition. While this occurred about four billion years ago, here’s how it changes things.
How did the oxygen-sucking asteroids affect Earth?
About four billion years ago, few oxygen-sucking asteroids used our planet as a punching bad. According to this new study published in Nature Geoscience, this may have sucked the Earth’s oxygen from the atmosphere. ”Current bombardment models underestimate the number of late Archean spherule layers. This suggests the impactor flux at that time was up to 10 times higher than previously thought,” said Simone Marchi, a planetary geoscientist.
When large objects such as asteroids hit Earth at an early age, the energy that is released melts and vaporizes rocky materials on the crust. These small molten drops of rocks condense and solidify before they fall back to Earth. this creates small size particles that are round and distributed globally. Additionally, they are glassy and impact the Earth’s crust, and can be anywhere between 2.4 to 3.5 billion years old. They are markers of ancient collisions.
More on the Earth’s atmosphere
”In recent years, a number of new spherule layers have been identified in drill cores and outcrops, increasing the total number of known impact events during the early Earth,” said Dr. Nadja Drabon. Dr. Drabon is the co-author of the study and a professor at Harvard University. The study also revealed that due to the balance of removal process and production, the earth’s atmosphere has excess oxygen.
The new study correlates with a geological record that shows variation in the atmosphere. Additionally, impacts by an asteroid larger than six miles can lead to oxygen scarcity. Additionally, this can also explain the limited oxygen in the early atmosphere of the earth. Moreover, chemical variation due to impact vapors can further add to it.