Late Heavy Bombardment facts for kids

Artist's impression of the moon during the Late Heavy Bombardment (Lunar Cataclysm) and today

The Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB) or lunar cataclysm, is a period of time about 4.1 to 3.8 billion years ago. During this time, a large number of impact craters formed on the Moon. By inference the same thing happened on Earth, Mercury, Venus, and Mars as well.

The evidence for this event comes from the dating of lunar samples, which indicates that most impact melt rocks formed at that time. Many hypotheses have been suggested to explain how asteroidal or cometary material got into the inner solar system, but no consensus yet exists. One popular theory is that the gas giant planets migrated in orbit at this time, causing objects in the asteroid belt and/or Kuiper belt to be forced into orbits which reached the terrestrial planets.

Some think that the apparent clustering of impact melt ages near this time is an artifact of sampling.

Related pages

• Life timeline
• Nature timeline

Images for kids

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  Simulation showing outer planets and planetesimal belt: (a) Early configuration, before Jupiter (green) and Saturn (orange) reach 2:1 resonance; (b) Scattering of planetesimals into the inner Solar System after the orbital shift of Neptune (dark blue) and Uranus (light blue); (c) After ejection of planetesimals by planets.

See also

In Spanish: Bombardeo intenso tardío para niños