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(Photo: noticieros.televisa.com)
For the first time, a timeline reveals what happened in the minutes and hours following the crash of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.
NASA, September 2019:
- A huge asteroid hit the current Mexico 66 million years ago. The impact contributed to the extinction of dinosaurs and 75% of life on Earth at the time.
- By analyzing the rocks from the bottom of the asteroid crater, the scientists were able to replenish what happened the day after the impact.
- The samples revealed that the fall of the asteroid had caused a tsunami, forest fires and the release of billions of tons of sulfur, which absorbed the sun and resulted in the cooling of the planet.
- While many dinosaurs died near the site of the impact, the creatures probably disappeared overall due to the resulting temperature changes.
Scientists have long admitted that an asteroid that had struck Earth 66 million years ago had contributed to the extinction of dinosaurs.
But there is a myriad of theories about what exactly happened to our planet and its prehistoric inhabitants after the impact. Some explanations of the disappearance of the dinosaurs show clouds of debris and soot that have erased the sun and cooled the planet, while others say it was harmful gases from volcanic eruptions around the world, even a great plague.
According to a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, global cooling would be the cause.
Upon impact, the researchers found that the asteroid Chicxulub – which was more than six kilometers wide – caused forest fires that stretched for hundreds of kilometers, caused a tsunami, and projected billions of kilometers. tons of sulfur in the atmosphere. This gaseous mist blocked the sun, cooling the Earth and condemning the dinosaurs.
The dinosaurs fried then froze, said Sean Gulick, lead author of the study, in a press release.
Examine the crater of Chicxulub
To better understand what happened on that fateful day in the history of our planet, the scientists responsible for the new study conducted a thorough examination of the crater's impact Chicxulub – a difficult feat , as the crater extends 12 miles into the depths of the Gulf of Mexico.
Gulick and his colleague Joanna Morgan collected rock samples in 2016 in a crater area in which rocks and debris were deposited just after the impact of the asteroid. No stone from this region had been mined before.
Gulick and Morgan then spent the next three years analyzing the samples to geologically reconstruct a calendar of what happened after the impact.
The University of Texas at the Austin Jackson School of Geosciences
"It's a complete record of the events we were able to recover from scratch," Gulick said.
The asteroid reaches the power of 10 billion atomic bombs
Here's what their timeline showed:
Less than a minute after the impact, the asteroid had drilled a hole nearly 100 miles wide in the seabed, creating a bubbling pit of molten rocks and very hot gases . The contents of this burning cauldron exploded, creating a high mountain plume.
The plume collapsed in minutes and solidified into undulating peaks of lava and rocky material. These peaks were then covered by more rocks, traces of burnt soil and charcoal transported by ocean waves.
The researchers stated that the presence of charcoal was evidence that forest fires were reported after the impact; some of the fires probably started hundreds of kilometers from the crater.
The authors estimated that the power of the asteroid amounted to 10 billion atomic bombs used during the Second World War.
The space rock would have vaporized the surrounding lands and sent the site's seawater impact at the speed of a jet plane, Gulick said. This water formed a tsunami, reaching hundreds of meters high, which could have gone as far as the current Illinois before retiring.
Gulick told Newsweek that space rock would have gone faster than 12 miles per second. Even dinosaurs 1,000 miles away from the impact probably would not live very long before the heat reaches them.
"Yes, within 1,500 kilometers, you would have seen very little before being cremated," he said.
The impact has released billions of tons of sulfur into the atmosphere
Dinosaurs are not the only creatures to have died out after the shock of Chicxulub. Flying pterosaurs and marine predators such as mosasaurs and plesiosaurs have also disappeared, as well as 75% of life on the planet.
Of course, many creatures have died close to zero, but the mass extinction associated with the asteroid was probably a consequence of what happened in the atmosphere after the accident. ;impact.
According to Gulick's team, the impact vaporized sulfur-rich rocks, releasing a mist of sulfur gas into the air that swept the sun and cooled the planet.
Scientists came to this conclusion because the samples they found contained a lot of sandstone, limestone and granite, but did not contain any rocks rich in sulfur, even though the rocks near the site of the site were found in the area. impact should be filled with sulfur. They estimated that at least 357 billion tonnes (325 billion tonnes) of sulfur gas entered the atmosphere.
Source: https://www.yahoo.com
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