A geological study that analyzed rock samples in the Barberton Greenstone Belt, South Africa, and concluded that the impact of a meteorite that fell to Earth 3.26 billion years ago and was more than four times the size of Mount Everest could have favored the beginning of life on the planet.
The team led by Nadja Drabon, a professor at Harvard University, studied the S2 meteorite (between 30 and 60 kilometers), which would be 200 times larger than the one that wiped out the dinosaurs and caused a tsunami that shook the ocean and transported terrestrial remains. . for coastal areas. And the heat from the collision caused the upper layer of the sea to evaporate and the atmosphere to heat up. A thick cloud of dust covered everything, obscuring the planet and interrupting any photosynthetic activity that was taking place.
If this impact could suggest that the Earth would be devastated and reduced to ashes, Nadja Drabon explained that this was an impulse: “Until recently, impacts were considered disastrous for evolution. However, this way of thinking is changing and it is now believed that life was not only resilient, but may have benefited from these violent events.”
[Já saiu o quarto episódio de “A Grande Provocadora”, o novo podcast Plus do Observador que conta a história de Vera Lagoa, a mulher que afrontou Salazar, desafiou os militares de Abril e ridicularizou os que se achavam donos do país. Pode ouvir aqui, no Observador, e também na Apple Podcasts e no Spotify. E pode ouvir aqui o primeiro episódio, aqui o segundo e aqui o terceiro.]
The impact of the meteorite hitting the Earth was so great that experts can trace it to this day. According to an investigation in the scientific journal PNAS, the meteorite did not end the life that was beginning to awaken in the form of unicellular beings, on the contrary, it only strengthened it.
The study in question concluded that bacterial life recovered quickly, allowing a sharp increase in populations of single-celled organisms. Basically, as an example, it is explained that even bacteria need to feed and the meteorite ended up working as a perfect recipe.
And if it is believed that the meteorite even had a negative effect, initially, on life forms on land and in shallow waters, the study considers that after the first hit there was a rapid recovery. Drabon explains that Earth’s first oceans were supposed to be “biological deserts for lack of nutrients” and that the meteorite fall “released essential nutrients on a global scale.” It was like a “fertilizer bomb,” summarized one of the students who participated in the research in question.
Source: Observadora
