Evidence of a “planet-killing” asteroid discovered on Mars that caused a “mega-tsunami.”

SCIENTISTS have discovered the site of a massive asteroid impact on Mars that led to a ‘mega-tsunami’.

About 3.4 billion years ago, a giant asteroid struck Mars, causing an 800-foot-high tsunami.

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And now a team of planetary scientists think they may have pinpointed the exact location of the impact.

The impact crater, named Pohl, is 68 miles wide and about 394 feet below sea level at this time.

Researchers outlined this incredible find in a new one to learn published in the journal Scientific Reports.

The team compared the massive crash to the asteroid Chicxulub that destroyed dinosaurs on Earth.

Using computer simulations, the team was able to recreate the impact and approximate the details of both the asteroid and the tsunami.

what we know

Pohl was likely traveling at about 24,000 miles per hour when it struck the Martian surface.

It was also likely between 1.9 and 5.6 miles wide and released up to 13 million megatons of TNT energy.

By now, the waves may have reached as high as 820 feet and are about 932 miles from the crater.

The asteroid could trigger a megatsunami because the red planet was covered by oceans at the time.

“If we were standing here and this impact happened, we would have literally been thrown tens or hundreds of meters into the air,” the study’s lead author, Alexis Rodriguez, said in a call motherboard.

“It’s basically like jumping on a trampoline,” he added, before addressing the importance of sea craters.

“Ocean craters on Mars are obviously very important because they basically have an impact that forms into an ocean,” he said.

“They have hydrothermal systems that would have formed after impact that affect habitability and the paleoenvironment.”

This discovery could help researchers better understand the surrounding regions as the search for extraterrestrial or microbial life continues.

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The oceans of Mars

Recently, scientists discovered evidence that billions of years ago, Mars was a water world.

In fact, the Red Planet may have had enough water to cover its entire surface in a global ocean as deep as 1,000 feet.

Published in the magazine scientific advancesresearch suggests that the first life in our solar system may have occurred on Mars.

“At that time, Mars was being bombarded with ice-filled asteroids. It happened in the first 100 million years of the planet’s evolution,” said Professor Martin Bizzarro of the Center for Star and Planet Formation.

“Another interesting aspect is that the asteroids also carried organic molecules that are biologically important for life.”

These biologically relevant molecules include amino acids, which help form DNA and RNA.