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Impacts of Large Planetesimals on the Early Earth

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Abstract

We considered the impacts of very large cosmic bodies (with radii in the range 100–200 to 1000–2000 km) on the early Earth, whose mass, radius and density distribution are close to the current values. The impacts of such bodies were possible during the first hundreds of million years after the formation of the Earth and the Moon. We present and analyze the results of a numerical simulation of the impact of a planetesimal, the size of which is equal to that of the contemporary Moon (1700 km). In three-dimensional computations, the velocity (15 and 30 km/s) and the angle (45°, 60°, and 90°) of the impact are varied. We determined the mass losses and traced the evolution of the shape of the Earth's surface, taking into account the self-consistent gravitational forces that arise in the ejected and remaining materials in accordance with the real, time-dependent mass distribution. Shock waves reflected from the core are shown to propagate from the impact site deep into the Earth. The core undergoes strong, gradually damped oscillations. Although motions in the Earth's mantle gradually decline, they have enough time to put the Earth in a rotational motion. As a result, a wave travels over the Earth's surface, whose amplitude, in the case of an oblique impact, depends on the direction of the wave propagation. The maximum height of this wave is tremendous—it attains several hundred kilometers. Some portion of the ejected material (up to 40% of the impactor mass) falls back onto Earth under the action of gravity. This portion is equivalent to the layer of a condensed material with a thickness on the order of ten kilometers. The appearance of this hot layer should result in a global melting of near-surface layers, which can limit the age of terrestrial rocks by the time of the impact under consideration. For lesser-sized impactors, say, for impactors with radii of about 160 km, the qualitative picture resembles that described above but the amplitude of disturbances is considerably smaller. This amplitude, however, is sufficient to cause a crustal disruption (if such a crust has already formed) and intense volcanic activity.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Belarussian State University, Leningradskaya ul. 14, Minsk, 220080, Belarus

    A. V. Teterev & L. V. Rudak

  2. Institute of Geosphere Dynamics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Leninskii pr. 38-6, Moscow, 117334, Russia

    I. V. Nemtchinov

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  1. A. V. Teterev
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  2. I. V. Nemtchinov
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  3. L. V. Rudak
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Teterev, A.V., Nemtchinov, I.V. & Rudak, L.V. Impacts of Large Planetesimals on the Early Earth. Solar System Research 38, 39–48 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:SOLS.0000015154.11106.99

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