Late Heavy Bombardment

High school (ages 12+)
Space & Astronomy

Name:

Date:

Step 1 · Read the article

Open the article and read it at the level above. Then answer the questions below in your own words.

https://smallwhale.org/articles/late-heavy-bombardment

Write what each word means, using the article.

Do not copy the article. Write two things you learned, the way you would explain them to a friend.

Answers below are taken from the article’s stored facts, so they match what the student read.

1. What is the primary terrestrial bodies affected?Mercury, Venus, Earth, Moon, and Mars
2. What is the core observational evidence?Clustering of isotopic ages of lunar impact melt breccias
3. When did the Late Heavy Bombardment happen?It happened roughly between 4.1 and 3.8 billion years ago, during the Neohadean and Eoarchean eras.
4. Why do scientists think the Moon has many craters from that time?Scientists studied rocks from the Moon that were melted by impacts. The ages of those rocks cluster around the same time, showing many impacts happened in a short period instead of spread out.

Neohadean and Eoarchean Eras: The earliest geological eons of Earth's history, preceding the formation of most continents.
Impact Melt Breccia: A rock formed from fragments that were melted and fused together by the heat of a meteorite impact.
Eccentric Orbits: Orbits that are not perfectly circular, deviating significantly from a round path.