Question

The accompanying figure shows the history of large meteorite impacts on both the earth and the moon. What is the graph's major implication for the origin of life on Earth?

1) Huge impacts make it unlikely that life arose and survived on Earth before about 3.8 billion years ago.

2) Meteorites could not have brought the organic molecules that were necessary for life appear.
The moon is considerably older than the Earth.

4) Life must have originated on a different body in the solar system and been brought to Earth.

5) The Oparin-Haldane model of life's origins applies to the moon as well as to the Earth.

Answer 1

The major implication of the graph is that it is unlikely that life arose and survived on Earth before about 3.8 billion years ago. The graph shows that large impacts could have sterilized the planet and destroyed any early life. This implies that life on Earth originated after these impacts and may have been brought from a different body in the solar system.

Step-by-step explanation:

The major implication of the graph showing the history of large meteorite impacts on both the Earth and the Moon is that it makes it unlikely that life arose and survived on Earth before about 3.8 billion years ago (option 1). The major implication of the graph is that it is unlikely that life arose and survived on Earth before about 3.8 billion years ago.

The graph shows that large impacts could have sterilized the planet and destroyed any early life. This implies that life on Earth originated after these impacts and may have been brought from a different body in the solar system. The graph shows that both the Earth and the Moon were subject to large impacts in their early history, which could have sterilized the planets and destroyed any early life that had started.

So, life on Earth must have originated sometime after these impacts. Option 4, which suggests that life originated on a different body in the solar system and was brought to Earth, is also supported by the graph.