Rare Celestial Event Explains Earth’s Comets, Cratons and Continent Creation

In the past scientists have hypothesised that comets may have contributed to the establishment of Earth’s landforms. However, geochronologist Chris Kirkland and his team of associated looked to cratons, some of the oldest rocks on Earth, which are remnants of early continental crust. They could ascertain that “every 200 million years, we see a pattern of more crust production” using samples from billions of year-old cratons in Greenland and Australia.

Fascinatingly, there is another celestial event that takes place at the same frequency- the rate at which the Milky Way’s spiral arms pass the Earth. The theory stands that the arms contain larger quantities of material such as dust, gas, and stars which Earth may have been impacted by.

This makes a convincing hypothesis considering the galaxies’ arms have a more intense gravitational pull compared to the rest of the Milky Way. Comets would have been able to enter the region of rocky planets and the asteroid belt, meaning they were able to make impact with Earth.

When the comets enter Earth, they bring with them a huge amount of energy and release shockwaves, enough to seriously alter the oceanic crust which covered the majority of the planet during the time of the Pangaea. This insane injection of energy may also explain how the mantle was able to melt. The magma from the now melted mantle would have separated into a lighter liquid (now seen as continental crust) and a thicker, denser material (oceanic crust).

Jesse Reimink, a third-party geoscientist flagged up the theory’s drawbacks, mentioning that “There’s very few diagnostics of impacts.” Furthermore, it is unknown as to whether they had actually happened, and even if they did, if that could have caused magma to be released.

Moving forward, Kirkland and his coworkers intend to examine rocks from our closest celestial body, the moon. They will be looking to identify if there is the same crustal formation pattern since in theory “you’d predict it’d also be subject to these periodic impact events.”

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