Free Astronomy Magazine January-February 2021

30 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2021 ASTRO PUBLISHING teroid bombardment may have ac- tually created potential crucibles for prebiotic chemistry, as well as habi- tats for the evolution of primeval life. Perhaps not incidentally, the end of the Late Heavy Bombard- ment coincides with what is cur- rently the most ancient evidence of life on Earth. A series of subsequent studies carried out in the first decade of this century in the Chicx- ulub crater confirmed, mainly thanks to the core drilling of two of its areas between the outer rim and the peak ring, that a vast hydrother- mal system was created following the impact that is similar to those typical of underwater volcanic areas. To explore the crater in even more detail, two major research programs (the International Continental Scien- tific Drilling Program and the Inter- national Ocean Discovery Program) funded the 2016 drilling of a section of the Chicxulub peak ring, where thermal evolution models placed a high rate of hydrothermal activity. The operation brought to the sur- face 15 tons of rock from under the ocean floor, excavated between 600 and 1300 meters deep. A three-dimensional cross-section of the hydrothermal system in the Chicxu- lub impact crater and its seafloor vents. The system has the potential for harboring microbial life. [Victor O. Leshyk, Lunar and Planetary Institute] L ocation of the Chicxulub crater relative to the Yu- catán Peninsula. The white dots in- dicate the drilling sites of various scientific expedi- tions. The one marked M0077 in- dicates the 2016 drilling, which made it possible to discover traces of microbial activ- ity in the hydro- thermal system formed by the asteroid impact. [Astrobiology magazine] pact origin of life (or “impact-ori- gin”) hypothesis by studying the Chicxulub crater. This approximately 180 km-diameter structure, buried partly beneath the Gulf of Mexico and partly under the present Yu- catán Peninsula, is the best-pre- served peak ring impact basin on Earth. In the early 1990s, Kring and his colleague William Boynton were studying rock samples extracted from the crater to correlate that structure to the mass extinction event that involved the dinosaurs. In addition to confirming that link, the analysis of some minerals sug- gested the possible existence of a hydrothermal system associated with the crater that was generated following the impact. In subsequent years, other similar studies conducted by several re- searchers on other impact craters have highlighted how hydrothermal activity could be a common conse- quence of impact heating in hydrous planetary crust. Thus, the fateful as-