Shattered Inkwell: Impact Downpour 800 Million Years Ago ✦
Original: "An 800-Million-Year-Old Impact Shower on the Terrestrial Planets from the Breakup of the Eulalia Parent Body"
When the giant asteroid inkwell broke, dark fragments streamed onto Earth, Moon, and Mars, rewriting their appearance.
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800 million years ago, a giant inkwell shattered in the asteroid belt. Dark carbonaceous splashes flooded Earth, Moon, and Mars, punching out scar-craters. The impact downpour shook up the carbon cycle and possibly altered the course of the biosphere. Today we hunt for these cosmic inks to read the chronicle of catastrophes and prepare for new storms.
🎯 The Copernicus crater — one of the most noticeable on the Moon — was possibly created by a fragment of the same parent body as asteroid Bennu, from which OSIRIS-REx delivered soil.
🎬 ‘Don't Look Up’ compresses a catastrophe into months — we stretch it over millions of years to discern the inevitability of the cosmic threat.
a^* = 0.89(g-r) + 0.45(r-i) - 0.57
This index combines magnitude differences in various filters, highlighting primitive C-type bodies among the multitude of asteroids.