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New Scientist: Two of the largest asteroids to strike Earth since the one that killed the dinosaurs actually struck in relatively quick succession, just 20 000 years apart some 36 million years ago. Although scientists at first thought the two were fragments of a single asteroid, debris from the impacts indicates otherwise. The one that struck near Popigai in Siberia is rich in iron, while the other, which struck in what is now the Chesapeake Bay, is not. So far it is the only multi-type asteroid shower known to have occurred on Earth. A number of proposals have attempted to explain it, such as gravity disturbances in the solar system or a change in Earth’s orbit. Either astronomical event could have been a trigger for the ice age that occurred about 35 million years ago.
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Cosmic disturbances may have caused ice age on Earth
18 June 2015