I want to bring you a story that looks to rewrite a bit of our world’s history.
Researchers studying the geology of an Australian feature called the North Pole Dome, despite being located in Western Australia, found evidence that the feature is associated with a 3.5 billion year old impact.
The object that stuck was more than 100 kilometers across and hit at more than 36,000 km/hr. This massive impact turned the local minerals into what are called shatter cones – a kind of fractured rock only found where impacts have occurred. This impact is more than a billion years older than the next oldest known impact and tells us that other ancient craters may be present and masquerading as just part of the landscape.
This is your friendly reminder that our world has been shaped by many different forces over it’s 4.5 billion year history, and some of those forces are truly out of this world.