To examine the four craters, Garvin and his team analyzed data from several Earth-observing satellites and identified large rings around the sites, reports DailyMail. They found that previous work had made a mistake in reading their results. If the new data is correct, these collisions in history were equivalent to an explosion 10 times more powerful than the largest atomic bomb, resulting in massive devastation.
3D mapping from high-resolution images
Garvin presented these results last week at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. The team has done this study under Planetary Defense Research but it reveals more than they expected. Using new high-resolution photographs of four craters that formed over the past million years, Garvin did a 3D mapping of them. These sites include Pantesma in Nicaragua, Bosumatvi in Ghana, Iturralde in Bolivia and Zhamanshin in Kazakhstan.
Asteroids were bigger than expected
New data predicts that a giant asteroid or comet hits Earth every 6 to 7 million years. If the new study is correct, it means that four celestial bodies have collided with our planet in the last one million years. Experts re-analyzed four craters created by asteroid collisions over the past million years and found that they were not only bigger but also more powerful.