New research led by Curtin University and QUT (Queensland University of Technology) has revealed repeated asteroid impacts may have been the dominant force shaping the early Earth, delivering vast amounts of heat into the planet\u2019s interior and delaying the formation of stable continents.
The study suggests that during the Hadean \u2014 more than four billion years ago \u2014 Earth was struck far more frequently than today, with each impact injecting energy deep into the planet.
Rather than a relatively stable early planet, the findings point to a much hotter, weaker and more unstable Earth, closer to the extreme conditions long proposed by scientists.
Lead author Professor Tim Johnson, from the Curtin Frontier Institute for Geoscience Solutions within the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said the research challenged the idea large impacts were simply brief surface events.
\u201cThere is a temptation to think of large impacts as short-lived events that scar a planet\u2019s surface and then pass,\u201d Professor Johnson said.
\u201cBut the early Solar System was full of collisions, and the Moon preserves that history in plain sight. Those impacts carried enormous amounts of energy, and that energy had to go somewhere.
\u201cThe extra heat from impacts would have kept much of the early crust weak and partially molten, making it difficult for rocks to survive.
\u201cAt the same time, those conditions would have helped produce more silica-rich crust, which later became the foundation of the continents.\u201d
Co-lead author Professor Craig O\u2019Neill, from QUT, said the team\u2019s modelling showed the effects of impacts extended far beyond the moment of collision.
\u201cOn the early Earth, much of that energy would have been transferred into Earth\u2019s mantle, the thick layer immediately beneath the crust, as heat,\u201d Professor O\u2019Neill said.
\u201cThat would have caused mantle beneath and around the impact site to rise and melt, producing large volumes of magma.
\u201cOur results suggest the early crust was thin and unstable for much of the Hadean, not a world with strong plates behaving in a familiar modern way.
\u201cInstead, impacts would have helped keep the crust hot, weak and mobile, while driving melting and recycling on a planetary scale for tens to hundreds of millions of years after the initial collision.\u201d
The findings also help explain why almost no rocks survive from the first 500 million years of Earth\u2019s history and why long-lived continents appear to have formed only after the intensity of impacts declined.
Professor Johnson said the timing of this shift was striking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt is apparent from the Moon that, by around 3.9 billion years ago, the global effect of impact heating becomes much less important, which is also around the time Earth begins to preserve continental crust. That seems unlikely to be a coincidence,\u201d Professor Johnson said.
Macquarie University also contributed to the study, titled \u2018Impact heating and the hidden Hadean\u2019, and published in Science, and found online here: https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1126\/science.aeb5402<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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