* Astronomy

Blobrana · L

RE: Chicxulub event

Blobrana · L

Dartmouth Researchers Say a Comet Killed the Dinosaurs

In a geological moment about 66 million years ago, something killed off almost all the dinosaurs and some 70 percent of all other species living on Earth. Only those dinosaurs related to birds appear to have survived. Most scientists agree that the culprit in this extinction was extraterrestrial, and the prevailing opinion has been that the party crasher was an asteroid.
Not so, say two Dartmouth researchers. Professors Jason Moore and Mukul Sharma of the Department of Earth Sciences favour another explanation, asserting that a high-velocity comet led to the demise of the dinosaurs.
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Blobrana · L

Chicxulub 'dinosaur crater' investigation begins in earnest

Scientists have obtained remarkable new insights into the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.
They have been examining rocks from the crater that the 15km-wide space object dug out of what is now the Gulf of Mexico some 66 million years ago.
The team says it can see evidence in these materials for how life returned to the scene soon after the calamity.
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Blobrana · L

Asteroid strike made 'instant Himalayas'

Scientists say they can now describe in detail how the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs produced its huge crater.
The reconstruction of the event 66 million years ago was made possible by drilling into the remnant bowl and analysing its rocks.
These show how the space impactor made the hard surface of the planet slosh back and forth like a fluid.
At one stage, a mountain higher than Everest was thrown up before collapsing back into a smaller range of peaks.
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Blobrana · L

Dinosaur crater's clue to origin of life

The crater made by the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs is revealing clues to the origins of life on Earth.
Scientists have drilled into the 200km-wide Chicxulub crater now buried under the Gulf of Mexico.
They say its rocks show evidence of having been home to a large "hydrothermal system", where hot fluids flowed through cracks and fissures.
Similar systems, generated by impacts on the early Earth, could have helped kickstart the first lifeforms.
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Blobrana · L

Dinosaur asteroid hit 'worst possible place'

Scientists who drilled into the impact crater associated with the demise of the dinosaurs summarise their findings so far in a BBC Two documentary on Monday.
The researchers recovered rocks from under the Gulf of Mexico that were hit by an asteroid 66 million years ago.
The shallow sea covering the target site meant colossal volumes of sulphur (from the mineral gypsum) were injected into the atmosphere, extending the "global winter" period that followed the immediate firestorm.
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