Heavenly collision was genesis of life on Earth - The Times

It is not an event you automatically assume would foster a habitable environment. More than four billion years ago, so the hypothesis goes, a planet the size of Mars collided with the Earth with such ferocity that it created the moon.

In the cataclysmic impact the dense metallic cores of each planet fused, passing through the outer mantles as if they did not exist.

It was violent and devastating but, scientists now argue, it is also the reason we have the building blocks for life today.

“We are all interested in the origin of the elements essential for life,” Rajdeep Dasgupta, from Rice University in Houston, Texas, said. “Carbon, nitrogen and sulphur — other than water these are the most important elements. You can’t form complex…

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