The DOI matches its Crossref record; 92 of the 98 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Illusory Late Heavy Bombardments
Open accessAbstract
Significance: The vast majority of evidence marshaled for the Late Heavy Bombardment comes from 40 Ar/ 39 Ar age spectra of Apollo samples, interpreted through “plateau” ages, which show an apparent cluster at ∼3.9 Ga. Whether such data can be uniquely inverted to constrain impact histories in the Earth−Moon system has never been tested. We show that diffusive loss of 40 Ar from a monotonically declining impactor flux coupled with the early and episodic nature of lunar crust formation tends to create clustered distributions of apparent 40 Ar/ 39 Ar ages at ca. 3.9 Ga. Instead, these 40 Ar/ 39 Ar data can be reconciled with a continuously decreasing bollide flux. Thus, impacts may have played a minimal role in terrestrial habitability, early Earth dynamics, and the formation of Hadean zircons.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The check wasn’t confident either way, so it gives no verdict — never disputed.
In the citing paper
“In recent times, the role of proteins in the origin of ribosomes is gaining currency, implying that the ribosome may have first originated in a peptide/RNA world, where both amino acids and a variety of enzymes were available [9,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,92].”
From The Origin of Prebiotic Information System in the Peptide/RNA World: A Simulation Model of the Evolution of Translation and the Genetic Code (2019) · cites this paper as [14]
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredIn the citing paper
“Recent work suggesting that the early Earth was more temperate (Valley et al. 2002;Hren et al. 2009), and the flux of impactors smaller and less damaging than previously thought (Boehnke and Harrison 2016;Abramov and Mojzsis 2009) predicts that, as a whole, the early Earth could have provided a range of environmental niches stable for millions of years.”
From Environmental Adaptation from the Origin of Life to the Last Universal Common Ancestor (2018) · cites this paper as Boehnke and Harrison 2016
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Carslaw, H. S., & Jaeger, J. C. (1947) · International Linear Collider · Cited by 19,877
Tranter, C. J. (1959) · Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids · doi:10.1016/0022-5096(59)90029-8 · Cited by 18,518
Composition of the Continental Crust
Rudnick, R. L., & Gao, S. (2003) · Elsevier eBooks · doi:10.1016/b0-08-043751-6/03016-4 · Cited by 9,624
Composition of the Continental Crust
Rudnick, R. L., & Gao, S. (2014) · Treatise on Geochemistry · doi:10.1016/b978-0-08-095975-7.00301-6 · Cited by 5,691
(2004) · Choice Reviews Online · doi:10.5860/choice.42-0322 · Cited by 4,580
Jaynes, E. T. (1968) · IEEE Transactions on Systems Science and Cybernetics · doi:10.1109/tssc.1968.300117 · Cited by 1,858
Wilde, S. A., Valley, J. W., Peck, W. H., & Graham, C. M. (2001) · Nature · doi:10.1038/35051550 · Cited by 1,744
Origin of the cataclysmic Late Heavy Bombardment period of the terrestrial planets
Gomes, R., Levison, H. F., Tsiganis, K., & Morbidelli, A. (2005) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature03676 · Cited by 1,737
Evidence for life on Earth before 3,800 million years ago
Mojzsis, S. J., Arrhenius, G., McKeegan, K. D., Harrison, T. M., Nutman, A. P., & Friend, C. R. L. (1996) · Nature · doi:10.1038/384055a0 · Cited by 1,370
Self-citationOxygen-isotope evidence from ancient zircons for liquid water at the Earth's surface 4,300 Myr ago
Mojzsis, S. J., Harrison, T. M., & Pidgeon, R. T. (2001) · Nature · doi:10.1038/35051557 · Cited by 863
Self-citation
Research works printed but not linked: 7
- P Boehnke, MT Heizler, TM Harrison, OM Lovera, PH Warren, Avoiding interpretative pitfalls in analysis of 40Ar/39Ar step-heating data from thermally disturbed meteoritic and lunar samples. Proc Lunar Planet Sci Conf 45, 2545 (2014).
- DA Minton, AP Jackson, E Asphaug, CI Fassett, JE Richardson, Debris from borealis basin formation as the primary impactor population of Late Heavy Bombardment. Workshop on Early Solar System Impact Bombardment III (Solar Syst Explor Res Virtual Inst, Moffett Field, CA), pp. 3033 (2015).
- EC Alexander, SB Kahl, 40Ar-39Ar studies of lunar breccias. Proc Lunar Planet Sci Conf 5, 1353–1373 (1974).
- OA Schaeffer, GA Schaeffer, 39Ar-40Ar ages of lunar rocks. Proc Lunar Planet Sci Conf 8, 840–842 (1977).
- G Turner, PH Cadogan, The history of lunar bombardment inferred from 40Ar-39Ar dating of highland rocks. Proc Lunar Planet Sci Conf 6, 1509–1538 (1975b).
- G Turner, PH Cadogan, CJ Yonge, Argon selenochronology. Proc Lunar Planet Sci Conf 4, 1889–1914 (1973).
- D York, WJ Kenyon, RJ Doyle, 40Ar-39Ar ages of Apollo 14 and 15 samples. Proc Lunar Planet Sci Conf 3, 1613–1622 (1972).
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Bottke, W. F., & Norman, M. D. (2017) · Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences · doi:10.1146/annurev-earth-063016-020131 · Cited by 271
The timeline of the lunar bombardment: Revisited
Morbidelli, A., Nesvorný, D., Laurenz, V., Marchi, S., Rubie, D. C., Elkins-Tanton, L. T., Wieczorek, M. A., & Jacobson, S. A. (2018) · Icarus · doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2017.12.046 · Cited by 277
The nature of the last universal common ancestor and its impact on the early Earth system
Moody, E. R. R., Álvarez-Carretero, S., Mahendrarajah, T., Clark, J., Betts, H. C., Dombrowski, N., Szánthó, L. L., Boyle, R. A., Daines, S. J., Chen, X., et al. (2024) · Nature Ecology & Evolution · doi:10.1038/s41559-024-02461-1 · Cited by 285
The Importance of Water for Life
Westall, F., & Brack, A. (2018) · Space Science Reviews · doi:10.1007/s11214-018-0476-7 · Cited by 208
Way, M. J., & C, A. D. D. G. (2020) · Journal of Geophysical Research Planets · doi:10.1029/2019je006276 · Cited by 199
Metadata
- Authors
- Boehnke, P., & Harrison, T. M.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Los Angeles (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2016-09-12
- Volume
- 113
- Issue
- 39
- Pages
- 10802-10806
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC5047187
- OpenAlex
- W2519355055
- Cited by
- 138
- References
- 98
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 12 · 2024: 15 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 22 · 2019: 20 · 2018: 13 · 2017: 13
- FWCI
- 7.11
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (EAR-0948724, EAR-1339051)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Space and Planetary Science › Astro and Planetary Science
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Geochemistry and Petrology › Geological and Geochemical Analysis
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Space and Planetary Science › Planetary Science and Exploration
- Keywords
- Late Heavy Bombardment, plateau ages, argon diffusion, lunar impact history, Apollo samples, lunar magmatism
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
