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DEEP IMPACT
Earth hit by double asteroids 458 million years ago
by Staff Writers
Paris (AFP) Oct 23, 2014


'Eau de comet' is a bit of a stinker
Paris (AFP) Oct 23, 2014 - Rotten eggs, horse pee, alcohol and bitter almonds: this is the bouquet of odours you would smell if a comet in deep space could be brought back to Earth, European scientists said on Thursday.

An instrument aboard the probe Rosetta has detected some intriguing chemical signatures from Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko since their rendezvous in deep space in August, they said.

Molecules include ammonia, methane, hydrogen sulphide, hydrogen cyanide and formaldehyde.

"If you could smell the comet, you probably wish that you hadn't," the team said wryly in a blog posted on the European Space Agency (ESA) website.

The device, called Rosina-DFMS, is a mass spectrometer -- it has been analysing the signature of gas given off by the "coma," the comet's head, as the distance closes with the Sun.

"The perfume of 67P/C-G is quite strong, with the odour of rotten eggs (hydrogen sulphide), horse stable (ammonia) and the pungent, suffocating odour of formaldehyde," said Kathrin Altwegg, Rosina's chief scientist.

"This is mixed with the faint, bitter, almond-like aroma of hydrogen cyanide.

"Add some whiff of alcohol (methanol) to this mixutre, paired with the vinegar-like aroma of sulphur dioxide and a hint of the sweet aromatic scent of carbon disulphide, and you arrive at the 'perfume' of our comet."

The detection of so many different molecules at this stage has been a surprise, ESA said.

The Rosina team believed only the most volatile molecules -- carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide -- would be released as the comet's icy surface started slowly to warm.

On a 6.5-year orbit, 67P/C-G is the target of an ambitious mission to shed light on the origins of comets, ancient travellers of the Solar System.

Rosetta caught up with it after a six-billion-kilometre (3.75-billion-mile) trek that required four flybys of Earth and Mars, using the planets' gravity as a slingshot to build up speed.

It is now in close orbit around the comet at a distance of around 400 million kilometres from the Sun. The scout will send down a robot lander, Philae, on November 12 to carry out on-the-spot scientific tests.

On August 13 next year, the comet and Rosetta will be 185 million kilometres from the Sun, their closest approach to our star.

Some 458 million years ago, Earth was whacked in a double asteroid strike, leaving craters visible in Sweden today, space scientists reported on Thursday.

The event, they said, can be traced to "one of the largest cosmic catastrophes" in the history of the Solar System -- a mighty collision in the asteroid belt around 12 million years earlier.

That smashup caused a 200-kilometre- (120-mile-) asteroid to break up, scattering large chunks of rock, some of which later crossed Earth's orbit.

Two of these pieces slammed into shallow seas that covered modern-day Scandinavia, according to the study.

With uplift of the Earth's crust, the signature of that event lies in central Sweden -- the 7.5-km Lockne crater, located around 20 kms south of the city of Oestersund, and a 700-metre (yard) crater at nearby Malingen.

The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, backs long-standing suspicions that these craters, just 16 kms apart, were caused by a "doublet", an extremely rare double whammy caused by asteroids travelling in pairs.

The team, led by Jens Ormoe of the Centre for Astrobiology in Madrid, Spain, carried out drilling into the craters, looking for traces of sediment altered by impact shock.

They also mapped the halo of ejecta -- a ring of debris hurled up by the smash, which landed up to tens of kilometres away from the inner crater.

The Lockne impact was created by an object about 600 metres long, while the Malingen impactor was about 150 m long, the experts said.

They were so-called "rubble pile" asteroids, or fragments travelling in a cluster.

"Doublets" are a debated area of astrophysics.

Modelling of asteroids that come close to Earth suggest that about 16 percent of these objects travel in pairs.

But of the 188 known craters on Earth, only 10 -- in Canada, Russia, Germany, Finland and Brazil -- are considered to be serious candidates as doublets.

The twin impact 458 million years ago would be part of a "shower" of meteors that pummelled Earth after the big breakup in the main asteroid belt.

Some experts theorise that this had dramatic consequences for Earth's climate and ecosystems, encouraging an explosion in species called Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event.


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