* Astronomy

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RE: Chicxulub event

Blobrana · L

1996 (black) and 2005 (red) seismic surveys are shown over the Bouguer gravity anomaly map showing the buried Chicxulub impact crater. The black dots are cenotés, the black star is the crater centre and the white line is the coastline. The black dashed line shows the extent of the Cenozoic Chicxulub basin. Faults in the rings (white) can be traced to the near surface, whereas faults in the terrace zone (grey) are buried by breccia. Radial distances to distinct features, such as the start of the ring faults, vary by up to 20 km. .

Blobrana · L

The meteorite linked to the mass extinction of dinosaurs and other life forms 65 million years ago was four to six kilometres in diameter. Thats the conclusion of a team of Hawaii University researchers who have evolved a mechanism to measure the size of meteorites that have rammed into earth over millennia.
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Imagine the asteroid impact that killed off the dinosaurs and you may also picture a hellish aftermath of global forest fires. However, soot particles from across the globe now suggest that the smoke that shrouded the world after the collision came from immature oil in rocks at the crater site.
Over 20 years ago, researchers found large volumes of soot in the distinctive layer of iridium-rich sediment that marks the impact, 65 million years ago. Theory had it that the rock from the crater was vaporised, and that the soot came from extensive wildfires sparked by the smash. However, charcoal from burnt plant material is absent in some places, suggesting the fires were not global.

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The asteroid presumed to have wiped out the dinosaurs struck the Earth with such force that carbon deep in the Earth's crust liquefied, rocketed skyward, and formed tiny airborne beads that blanketed the planet, say scientists from the U.S., U.K., Italy, and New Zealand in this month's Geology.
The beads, known to geologists as carbon cenospheres, cannot be formed through the combustion of plant matter, contradicting a hypothesis that the cenospheres are the charred remains of an Earth on fire. If confirmed, the discovery suggests environmental circumstances accompanying the 65-million-year-old extinction event were slightly less dramatic than previously thought.

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Call it extraterrestrial bling. Fossilised sea creatures have been found that coated themselves in tiny diamonds created in the asteroid impact that killed off the dinosaurs.
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It's a cratered spheroid, just the kind of object one imagines striking the Earth about 65 million years ago and wiping out 70 per cent of the planet's species -- including the dinosaurs.

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Scientists have developed a new way of determining the size and frequency of meteorites that have collided with Earth. Their work shows that the size of the meteorite that likely plummeted to Earth at the time of the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary 65 million years ago was 2.5 to 4 miles in diameter. The meteorite was the trigger, scientists believe, for the mass extinction of dinosaurs and other life forms.

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Meteor Impact Site

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The Chicxulub crater