{"id":470649,"date":"2026-06-10T18:35:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T18:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/470649\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T18:35:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T18:35:10","slug":"lunar-meteorite-preserves-evidence-of-colossal-asteroid-strike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/470649\/","title":{"rendered":"Lunar Meteorite Preserves Evidence of Colossal Asteroid Strike"},"content":{"rendered":"

Planetary scientists analyzing a lunar meteorite known as Northwest Africa (NWA) 12593<\/a> have uncovered evidence of an asteroid impact that occurred 3.5 billion years ago on the Moon, helping to reconstruct a period of intense bombardment that left lasting marks across the inner Solar System.<\/p>\n

\"XRF<\/a><\/p>\n

XRF map of 7.53 g slice of NWA 12593: calcium (Ca) and iron (Fe) illustrate the location and diversity of clasts; sulfur (S) highlights the location of cracks and terrestrial weathering. Image credit: Crow et al., doi: 10.1130\/G54386.1.<\/p>\n

The first few billion years of Earth\u2019s history saw the rise of life, the atmosphere, and the oceans.<\/p>\n

Still, that time is shrouded in mystery: not many rocks remain that preserve a record of those early iterations of our modern world.<\/p>\n

Dynamic geologic processes like erosion, subduction, and burial mean the surface is constantly being reshaped, and older rocks aren\u2019t very common.<\/p>\n

But that time period is critical to understanding our own origins and how catastrophic events like asteroid impacts might have affected early life on the planet.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn Earth, the first fossil evidence of life shows up around 3.5 billion years ago, meaning that life is emerging and evolving before then,\u201d said Dr. Carolyn Crow, a planetary scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe question that we often have, even going back further, is what was the impact record when life was emerging?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is important for understanding how life is taking hold, how life is emerging. The cadence of these catastrophic events is an important part of the equation.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an analysis of the NWA 12593 meteorite, Dr. Crow and colleagues found evidence of three different impact events.<\/p>\n

The first, which radiometric dating reveals occurred about 3.5 billion years ago, was massive \u2014 large enough to turn the surface of the Moon into a sheet of molten material resembling a lava flow and generate a mineral called cubic zirconia<\/a> that only forms at super-high temperatures.<\/p>\n

\u201cCubic zirconia is commonly manufactured for jewelry, but when the mineral\u2019s cooling isn\u2019t highly controlled in a lab, it doesn\u2019t survive to low temperatures found on the surface of Earth or the Moon,\u201d the researchers said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, we were able to discern traces of the mineral, called cubic zirconia phase heritage, in the samples.\u201d<\/p>\n

The second impact event was recorded by the meteorite itself.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a type of rock called a breccia, which formed after a smaller impact that broke up the melt sheet of the first impact.<\/p>\n

\u201cBreccias are similar to what you would see if you went and chipped out a chunk of concrete,\u201d Dr. Crow said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou would see all these little rocks, and then it\u2019s fused together by the cement.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the meteorite is fused together by the impact process.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou get all these chunks of different kinds of rocks that the impact hit into.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThese all get mixed up, and then it gets fused together like your concrete sidewalk.\u201d<\/p>\n

The evidence of the third impact is the meteorite\u2019s presence on Earth.<\/p>\n

A more recent collision must have knocked the chunk of breccia off the Moon and on a course toward our planet.<\/p>\n

The timing of the first big impact recorded in NWA 12593 lines up with known impacts on Earth and Vesta, the fourth largest asteroid in the asteroid belt.<\/p>\n

Finding similarly aged impact events recorded on three celestial bodies is uncommon and the new discovery provides a key link at a time when the Solar System was transitioning from constant collisions during planet formation to more sporadic impacts from the breakup of asteroids.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not very common, which is why we\u2019re very excited about it,\u201d Dr. Crow said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s pretty rare to have all three records line up like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

The results<\/a> were published May 12, 2026 in the journal Geology.<\/p>\n

_____<\/p>\n

Carolyn A. Crow et al. Three-body evidence of ca. 3.7 Ga to 3.2 Ga bombardment across the inner Solar System. Geology, published online May 12, 2026; doi: 10.1130\/G54386.1<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Planetary scientists analyzing a lunar meteorite known as Northwest Africa (NWA) 12593 have uncovered evidence of an asteroid…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":470650,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[7871,26769,237924,29587,237925,17850,3146,29588,146742,20942,8036,111,139,237926,69,19794,147,3145,13939,188850,237927],"class_list":["post-470649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-asteroid","tag-asteroid-belt","tag-breccia","tag-crater","tag-cubic-zirconia","tag-early-solar-system","tag-earth","tag-impact-crater","tag-late-heavy-bombardment","tag-meteorite","tag-moon","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nwa-12593","tag-nz","tag-planet","tag-science","tag-solar-system","tag-temperature","tag-vesta","tag-zirconia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/470650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}