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The Late Heavy Bombardment

From 3.95 to 3.87 Ga: A Temporarily Uninhabitable Planet?

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Young Sun, Early Earth and the Origins of Life

Abstract

From 3.95 to 3.87 Ga: A Temporarily Uninhabitable Planet?

Between 3.95 and 3.87 billion years (Ga) ago, an extremely intense meteoritic bombardment brought an end to a fairly calm period that had lasted 400 million years.

This event – the marks of which we can still observe on the Moon’s surface – must have substantially modified the surface of the Earth.

Then, the question that arises is to know whether, in the case where life had arisen before 3.95 Ga, it was able to survive this catastrophic episode.

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Correspondence to Muriel Gargaud , Hervé Martin , Thierry Montmerle or Robert Pascal .

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© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Gargaud, M., Martin, H., López-García, P., Montmerle, T., Pascal, R. (2012). The Late Heavy Bombardment. In: Young Sun, Early Earth and the Origins of Life. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-22552-9_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-22552-9_5

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-22551-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-22552-9

  • eBook Packages: Physics and AstronomyPhysics and Astronomy (R0)

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