* Astronomy

Blobrana · L

RE: Chicxulub event

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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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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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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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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Ancient asteroid may have triggered global firestorm on Earth

A new look at conditions after a Manhattan-sized asteroid slammed into a region of Mexico in the dinosaur days indicates the event could have triggered a global firestorm that would have burned every twig, bush and tree on Earth and led to the extinction of 80 percent of all Earth's species, says a new University of Colorado Boulder study.
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Dinosaur extinction: Scientists estimate 'most accurate' date

Scientists believe they have determined the most precise date yet for the extinction of dinosaurs.
Researchers from Glasgow University were part of an international team that has been investigating the demise of the dinosaur.
By using dating techniques on rock and ash samples, they established the creatures died out about 66,038,000 years ago - give or take 11,000 years.
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Dinosaur-killing asteroid was a binary asteroid

The infamous space rock that slammed into Earth and helped wipe it clean of large dinosaurs may have been a binary - two asteroids orbiting each other.
The dino-killing asteroid is usually thought of as a single rock with a diameter of 7 to 10 kilometres, but it may really have been two widely separated rocks with that combined diameter.
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Fragment of meteorite 'that killed the dinosaurs' found

A Romanian geologist claims to have discovered a fragment of the meteorite that killed off the dinosaurs. Marius Paniti says the segment of rock could have come from the gigantic meteorite that hit the earth wiping out prehistoric life. Paniti from the University of Timisoara claims to have found a huge fragment of what was the biggest meteorite that has ever fallen on Earth in a cave at Cara's Severin County, in south west Romania.
Source

Blobrana · L

Chicxulub asteroid impact