Origin and Timing of Late Heavy Bombardment
TNRTB Archive – Retained for reference information
An international team of astronomers has uncovered additional evidence for the supernatural design of the late heavy bombardment (LHB: the severe bombardment of Earth and other inner solar system bodies by a shower of large comets and asteroids between 3.9 and 3.8 billion years ago). In performing the most detailed computer simulations to date on the dynamics of the early solar system, they solved the paradox of the late timing for the LHB. They confirmed an earlier result of their work that established that the LHB was caused by Jupiter and Saturn crossing their 1:2 resonance (that point where as Jupiter migrates inward and Saturn migrates outward in response to their interaction with Kuiper Belt objects, Jupiter orbits the Sun exactly twice for every single orbit of Saturn). They showed that the timing of that crossing critically depends on 1) the initial distances of Jupiter and Saturn from the locations of the 1:2 resonance, 2) the density of the primordial Kuiper Belt of comets and asteroids at its inner edge, and 3) the distance of the inner edge of the primordial Kuiper Belt relative to Saturn’s primordial distance from the Sun. If any one of these factors were even slightly altered, the LHB would have been either too early and too intense or too late and too weak to transform Earth’s inner core into the just right dynamo that makes advanced life possible.
- R. Gomes et al., “Origin of the Cataclysmic Late Heavy Bombardment Period of the Terrestrial Planets,” Nature 435 (2005): 466-69.
- https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v435/n7041/abs/nature03676.html
- Joe Hahn, “When Giants Roamed,” Nature 435 (2005): 432-33.
- Related Resource
- Product Spotlights
- Journey Toward Creation, 2nd ed., with Hugh Ross