* Astronomy

An asteroid collision showered the  earth with meteorites for millions of years.
An enormous collision between two asteroids created a meteorite shower that rained down on earth for millions of years.
Meteorites of up to 1.5 kilometres in size impacted with the  earth.
German researchers have now determined the time of the collision, which is still responsible today  for a third of the meteorites that impact the Earth.

The enormous collision between two asteroids, collided 470 million years ago.

"One was at least hundred kilometres largely, other even several hundred kilometres" - Mario Trieloff of mineralogical Institut of the University of Heidelberg.

When the two giants collided, the rock was exposed to a hundred of thousands of  bars of  pressure.
Scientists already had a suspicion that a whole class of meteorites - the so-called l-Chondrite - came from the collision of the two large asteroids. Trieloff and his colleague have used a new method to date the cataclysmic asteroid crash with more accuracy -   It occurred 470 million years ago.
The greatest possible deviation amounts to only six million years, writes the researchers in the January edition of the  technical periodical "Meteoritics and Planetary Science"

Read more (German)