An artistic rendering of an early, large collision on Venus. New modeling results suggest that high-speed impacts such as this could have remelted Venus' mantle, altering its planetary evolution. Credit: Southwest Research Institute/Simone Marchi.
An example of a smoothed particle hydrodynamics impact simulation of a large planetesimal striking a Venus-like planet. The middle and right panels show Venus 1 hour and 11 hours after impact. Colors indicate temperature. Credit: Southwest Research Institute/Simone Marchi & Raluca Rufu.
"These collisions were responsible for shaping the Solar System. It's not a stretch of the imagination to say that lacking these processes, we would live in a completely different environment, and perhaps we wouldn't be here," Marchi said. "We need to ask how much of the planet we live on today was shaped by these early, violent events."
