NASA Image Shows the Mayhem That Created Life on Earth [Astronomy]
About 4.1 billion years ago, our solar system was a huge cluster of comets bombarding every planet orbiting the Sun and crashing into each other. That period of chaos is known as the Late Heavy Bombardment , and astronomers believe it was key to the formation of life in our planet. For the first time ever, scientists using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have found a star system in which this is happening right now —just around the corner. It is called Eta Corvi. Located just 59 light years away from us, it's 40 percent more massive than the Sun but much younger. The star is surrounded by two debris disks. In the outer disk—which is orbiting around 150 astronomical units from the solar system's center—comets keep crashing onto each other and into rocky bodies in a seemingly never ending dance of planetary mayhem. The collisions break these objects into smaller pieces, which will keep striking each other until they turn to dust. Spitzer's infrared detectors got evidence ...