Huge space rock rattled Earth 3 billion years ago
The size of the asteroid that may have killed the dinosaurs (Chicxulub) and even Mount Everest look tiny compared to a space rock that may have slammed into Earth 3.26 billion years ago.
AGU
An asteroid almost as wide as Rhode Island may have plowed into Earth 3.26 billion years ago, leaving its mark in South Africa’s Barberton greenstone belt.
Hitting the planet at a speed of 20 kilometers per second, the 37- to 58-kilometer-wide space rock could have jolted Earth with the force of a magnitude 10.8 earthquake and set off tsunamis thousands of meters deep, researchers report in a paper accepted for publication in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems.
It is the first time scientists have been able to calculate the size of the impact and its effect on Earth.
