Giant Meteor Struck 3.5 Billion Years Ago

Jay Moore writes "According to this article on CNN, scientists believe a giant meteor 12 kilometers across struck the earth some 3.5 billion years ago making it the oldest known meteorite to have hit the earth."

This got me thinking

[BlackCobra43]

Maybe the lowering of global temperature this caused led the bacteria to evolve into more advanced life forms to survive?Maybe it made *possible* the developpment of plants,and the bacterias decided "Hey cool we could become that!Let's do so" I know its nowhere as near as siple as that,but just my 2 cents

Re:This got me thinking

[Treeluvinhippy]

I know its nowhere as near as siple as that,but just my 2 cents

Keep your money, you'll need it.

Ah, the typical meteorite impact picture

[therealmoose]

Why does every news story involving meteorite have to have this [cnn.net] picture? Where is it from? Is it a secret messages to terrorists?!

Re:Ah, the typical meteorite impact picture

[!splut]

Well, judging from the little "NASA" on the side of the image, I'd say it's from NASA. Whether it's more or less comforting to know that NASA is spending free time depicting the total annihilation of the Earth, rather than sending messages to terrorists, I don't know.

Re:Ah, the typical meteorite impact picture

[cryptor3]

That sounds like something I said yesterday... [slashdot.org]

Measurement Systems...

[ztc]

The summary of the article should read either 20 kilometers or 12 miles (not 12 kilometers) as the article mentions.

Re:Measurement Systems...

[one9nine]

The submitter must work for NASA.

Re:Measurement Systems...

[Scrameustache]

Actually, the people at Nasa don't have any problems wih it, they use the international unit system. Its the subcontracters that still use the old english imperial units and mess things up.

Ya know, for a country so bent up on not being subjects of the crown...people do hang on to the old ways quite a bit.

12 miles is peanuts

[Tablizer]

It is theorized that a Mars-sized object smacked into the Earth to create our moon some time a bit earlier than this one.

12 miles is a pebble in comparison to Mars. It is like the difference between being hit by a bicycle and by a Mac truck.

Get With the Times

[Sentry21]

Seriously, I know Slashdot isn't a real news site, but it's pretty sad when something that happened 3.5 billion years ago is considered news. It's over dudes, it's old news, let's try and keep up to date, shall we?

--Dan

interesting

[fredopalus]

I don't seem to remember any meteor hitting the earth at that time. Maybe I was asleep.

Um..

[droyad]

As opposed to all the NEW Giant Meteors we have been getting lately?