London, Sept 23 : Moon’s gentle surface could be the best place to find earliest evidence of life on Earth, according to a new study by a University of London researcher.

Ian Crawford of Birkbeck has said that conditions on the moon are much more gentle than those on Earth, so meteorites that blasted off our planet billions of years ago could well still be lying around on the moon.

Though it is unknown whether rocks would have likely survived the impact, he believes terrestrial meteorites that hit the moon at relatively low velocities, would have a good chance of survival.

As part of their study, Crawford and colleague Emily Baldwin used a method of simulating impacts called a hydrocode and calculated the outcome of meteors hitting the moon at a range of impact angles at up to five kilometres per second.

The study appears in the New Scientist magazine. (With inputs from ANI)