Meteorites impact a key in understanding origin of life on Earth: Researchers

According to a study published in Astrobiology, space agencies like National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and European Space Agency (ESA) should study craters in great detail. The study suggests that there can be locations for seeking habitats for extraterrestrial life. Till date, 200 impact craters have been investigated and their existence has been confirmed on Earth using tools like fieldwork, geophysics, satellite data, and various laboratory analysis techniques.

Study of the meteorites

Director of Western's Institute for Earth and Space Exploration, Gordon Osinski said, "There are a lot of hypotheses for where life started on Earth and where we should look for life on Mars, but we are actually overlooking a major geological force and a key habitat in understanding the origin of life and that's meteorite impacts and their resulting craters". Osinski led a team of experts from the University of Edinburgh, Georgetown University, and the University of Southern California.

Read: 2011 ES4 Asteroid Had Its Closest Approach To Earth's Surface On September 1

Talking about the objective of the study Osinski said, "If you ask anyone to imagine what happens when you have kilometre-size chunks of rock hitting the Earth, it's typically destructive. It's an extinction event like the one that killed the dinosaurs". He added, "What we are trying to do here is turn that idea up on its head and say yes, the impact is initially destructive, but it also delivers the building blocks for life and creates new habitats for life. They essentially create an oasis for life".

The study emphasizes on the need of researching on how meteorite impact craters. Osinski and his partners put forth that keeping in mind the imapct and the increased frequency during the first 500 million years of Solar System history, it was concluded that the impact may represent the sites where life originated on earth. Talking about the sites, Osinski said "I put my money on meteorite impacts as the place where life could have originated on Earth, but we will never know. Unfortunately, due to billions of years of erosion, plate tectonics, and volcanism, we've lost the vast majority of the ancient rock record on Earth. So we're never going to know exactly where or even when, to be honest, life originated on Earth". 

Read: 2011 ES4 Asteroid To Skim Past Earth On Sept 1 At A Distance Of 120000 Km, The Closest Yet

According to Osinki, there is hope for Mars too. As a part of the study, he explored mars using Perseverance and ExoMars. He concluded that scientists might be able to figure out the origin of life as long as they are looking in the right place. He said, "There are other impact craters on Mars that may have been better to explore with these ideas in mind," said Osinski. "But Perseverance is going to land in Jezero Crater and there is evidence of minerals such as clays formed through hydrothermal activity. It's a good place to start to explore the role of meteorite impacts in the origin of life, as long as they look out for the habitats, nutrients, and building blocks for life that we outlined in our study".

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Also Read: Mars Made Its Closest Approach To Earth On This Day In 2003; Read More

(Image Credits: Unsplash)