Catastrophic Coincidence: Second Ever Example Of Contemporaneous Meteorite Impact And Flood Volcanism Discovered

ScienceDaily (Jan. 7, 2009) — Scientists have discovered only the second example of a meteorite impact that occurred at the same time as massive volcanic activity, in research published in the Journal of the Geological Society the week of Jan 12. The first time such a coincidence was observed, at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, was the catastrophic event thought to be responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago.

Did Earth's Twin Cores Spark Plate Tectonics?

Michael Reilly, Discovery News

Jan. 6, 2009 -- It's a classic image from every youngster's science textbook: a cutaway image of Earth's interior. The brown crust is paper-thin; the warm mantle orange, the seething liquid of the outer core yellow, and at the center the core, a ball of solid, red-hot iron.

Now a new theory aims to rewrite it all by proposing the seemingly impossible: Earth has not one but two inner cores.

The idea stems from an ancient, cataclysmic collision that scientists believe occurred when a Mars-sized object hit Earth about 4.45 billion years ago. The young Earth was still so hot that it was mostly molten, and debris flung from the impact is thought to have formed the moon.

Haluk Cetin and Fugen Ozkirim of Murray State University think the core of the Mars-sized object may have been left behind inside Earth, and that it sank down near the original inner core. There the two may still remain, either separate or as conjoined twins, locked in a tight orbit.