A new article, published on the official news site of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, reports that since its formation, in about 4.5 billion years, our planet may have lost its atmosphere at least twice. In other words, the earthly atmosphere today is not at all what it was in the early days of our homeworld.
For a long time, scientists have been racking their brains trying to figure out why such colossal and dramatic changes have taken place in the history of our Earth. And according to a study by scientists from MIT, very frequent space bombardment could be the main reason for these changes.
In the published article, scientists report that after analyzing a large amount of material, they came to the conclusion that our good old planet was losing its primeval atmosphere as a result of the bombardment of tens of thousands of cosmic stones. And this happened at about the same period when the natural satellite of the Earth - the Moon - was formed.
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Some scientists believe that for the Earth to lose almost all of its primary atmosphere, it had to collide with a cosmic body about the size of Mars. However, if such a collision really happened at some point in the history of the Earth, then on its surface there would definitely be "scars".
Rejecting this theory, MIT scientists claim that the Earth has been bombarded by tens of thousands of cosmic boulders, often up to 25 kilometers in diameter. During the fall, a gigantic volume of gas clouds rose. As a result, so much gas has accumulated that these clouds literally pushed the planet's atmosphere into space.
Scientists believe that, despite the fact that such a theory of the development of events may seem insane to many, it really could have happened. Scientists focus on the fact that according to the collected and analyzed information, space rocks were common in the solar system billions of years ago. She was practically filled with them. Researchers have even suggested that Venus and Mars might have lost their atmosphere as a result of similar scenarios.
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Scientists also suggest that as a result of this bombing, new gases appeared on the planet, which in turn made possible the emergence of life on Earth.