Will An Asteroid Hit Your Yard? Charred Plant Remains Analyzed to Validate Asteroid Strike Sites

The Earth has been struck by asteroids more than once in the past billion years, some of which have changed the course of history.

The space rocks, a Hindustan Times report said, are the reasons behind the dinosaurs' extinction.

The new study reveals that analyzing the plants' charred remains can validate the asteroid strikes' locations in the distant past.

Based on approximations of crater-producing asteroid strikes in the past 11,650 years, identified as the Holocene, only about 30 percent of impact sites have been discovered.

Transformed Into Charcoal

Until the present, there has been no way of differentiating between normal land constructions and very tiny asteroid creatures unless pieces of iron meteorites were spotted nearby.

In this latest research, published in the Geology journal, an international team of researchers discovered that charcoal surrounding craters is different from wildlife charcoal; therefore, examining specimens enables researchers to work out the origin of tiny craters.

According to Dr. Ania Losiak, the study's lead author from the Institute of Geological Science, Polish Academy of Sciences, and the University of Exeter, the properties of organisms were transformed into charcoal, reflecting the conditions in which they were destroyed.

Such conditions, like the heat the wood was exposed to, or the heating duration, leave tell-tale indications in the material's structure.

Differentiating Impact Charcoal and Wildfire Charcoal

For instance, she explained, the charcoal from low-energy surface fires, like burning leaves and bushes, has different properties than charcoal from high-intensity wildfires.

She also said that "Impact charcoals are quite strange." They all appear as if they were formed in much lower temperatures than wildfire charcoals, and they are all quite similar to each other, while in a wildfire, it is typical to find strongly charred wood just next to barely affected branches.

Dr. Losiak worked on the research as part of a Marine Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship at the University of Exeter wildFIRE lab, which Professor Claire Belcher led.

The research team excavated channels in the rims of four craters such as Estonia's Kaali Main and Kaali, Canada's Whitecourt, and Poland's Morasko.

Professor Belcher, part of the Global System Institute of Exeter, also said that the differences between impact charcoal and wildfire charcoal proved surprising and dramatic.

The Need to Look at the Recent Past of Earth

Whereas wildfire charcoal is substantially different in reflectivity, a similar Technology Network report said, depending on the local conditions during the fire, affect charcoals exhibited uniform characteristics despite coming from totally different sites and being formed thousands of years apart.

This presents an opportunity for geologists in search of unidentified impact craters. The University of Alberta's Professor Chris Herd said this study enhances the understanding of environmental impacts of small impact crater formation so that in the future, when they find an asteroid a few meters across, "are more coming our way only a couple of weeks before the impact," they will be able to identify the size and type of evacuation zone essential more accurately.

Dr. Losiak also said that since 1900, two effects, in Tunguska and Chelyabinsk, caused damage on a massive scale.

The lead author added that to prepare for future threats, there's a need to understand how frequent collisions occur. And to do that, there's a need to look at Earth's recent past.

Related information about impact craters is shown on i2STEMe's YouTube video below:

Check out more news and information on Space in Science Times.