S2 meteorite: What happened when a rock as big as London hit Earth?

These impacts are similar to what geologists have found about other big meteorite impacts and what was suspected for S2.

But what Prof Drabon and her team found next was surprising. The rock evidence showed that the violent disturbances churned up nutrients like phosphorus and iron that fed simple organisms.

“Life was not only resilient, but actually bounced back really quickly and thrived,” she says.

“It’s like when you brush your teeth in the morning. It kills 99.9% of bacteria, but by the evening they’re all back, right?” she says.

The new findings suggest that the big impacts were like a giant fertiliser, sending essential ingredients for life like phosphorus around the globe.

The tsunami sweeping the planet would also have brought iron-rich water from the depths to the surface, giving early microbes extra energy.

The findings add to a growing view among scientists that early life was actually helped by the violent succession of rocks striking Earth in its early years, Prof Drabon says.

“It seems that life after the impact actually encountered really favourable conditions that allowed it to bloom,” she explains.

The findings are published in the scientific journal PNAS.