Asteroid impacts are normally associated with danger to life. The end of the dinosaurs' dominion on Earth was caused by a massive collision. As the Chesapeake impact and others have shown, however, not all of the impacts bring global devastation. Researchers have now found evidence that craters can actually provide long-lasting habitable conditions, which could be relevant to the possibility of life on Mars. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

The geological evidence is a first of its kind, with researchers able to track the spread of microbes following an impact. It all started 77.85 million years ago, when an asteroid about 1.6 kilometers (1 mile) in diameter smashed into a territory in modern-day Finland. This created

See Full Page