* Astronomy

Signs of large meteorite impact 4.1 billion years ago

More than 4.1 billion years the Earth may collide with a huge meteorite. This conclusion mineralogist at the University of Bonn, together with British and Danish colleagues in a recent study. The researchers analysed ancient rock samples from Greenland and found evidence of the crash. The impact could have been next to certain chemical elements and water on the earth, and so paved the way to life. This hypothesis is not new, but until now it was assumed that the collision was responsible for more than 3.9 billion years back. Our home planet may have been but was 200 million years earlier habitable, scientists speculate in the journal "Nature Geoscience" (DOI: 10.1038/NGEO1911).