To date, Earth is the only planet we know of that has continents.
Exactly how they formed and evolved is unclear, but we do know – because the edges of continents thousands of miles apartSince that's not what the planet looks like today, something must have triggered that supercontinent to break apart. Now, we have new evidence to suggest that giant meteorite impacts played a significant role.
"Studying the composition of oxygen isotopes in these zircon crystals revealed a 'top-down' process starting with the melting of rocks near the surface and progressing deeper, consistent with the geological effect of giant meteorite impacts,""Our research provides the first solid evidence that the processes that ultimately formed the continents began with giant meteorite impacts, similar to those responsible for the extinction of theThe work was conducted on 26 rock...
The first stage is the formation of a large proportion of zircons consistent with partial melting of the crust. This partial melting, the researchers show, was likely the result of bombardment by meteorites, which heated the planetary crust on impact. The second stage was a period of reworking and stabilization of the crustal nucleus, followed by the third stage – a period of melting and granite formation. This stabilized nucleus would then, much later, evolve to become today's continents, as did the cratons found on other continents around the world.However, many meteorites have pelted Earth in eons past, in numbers much higher than the number of continents.
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