Scientists Discover More Evidence of That Dinosaur-killing Asteroid
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Scientists discover more evidence of that dinosaur-killing asteroid
Scientists at the University of Texas at Austin have found "hard evidence" of the asteroid that killed off dinosaurs. The research, published Monday and reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal, shows the asteroid caused wildfires and tsunamis after hitting with the impact of 10 billion WWII-era atomic bombs.
Inside an impact crater off the Gulf of Mexico were charcoal and soil, which were swept inside by the backflow of the tsunami in the first 24 hours, the research said. This showed how the blast ignited trees and plants thousands of miles away from the impact zone, and triggered a far-reaching inland tsunami across the Americas.
But no sulfur was found in the core of the impact crater -- meaning around 325 billion metric tons of sulfur was released into the atmosphere that day, the scientists said. This destroyed Earth's existing climate, blocking out the sun and causing a global cooling period that caused the "mass extinction" of the dinosaurs.
Scientists Discover New Evidence of the Asteroid That Killed Off the Dinosaurs
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[...] The sediments also offer chemical evidence that the cataclysm blew hundreds of billions of tons of sulfur from pulverized ocean rock into the atmosphere, triggering a global winter in which temperatures world-wide dropped by as much as 30 degrees Fahrenheit for decades, the scientists said.
"It tells us what went on inside the crater on that day of doom that killed the dinosaurs," said Jay Melosh, a geophysicist at Purdue University who studies impact craters and wasn't a member of the drilling team. "All of this mayhem is directly recorded in the core."
The scientists in the drilling consortium, led by geophysicist Sean Gulick at the University of Texas in Austin, who was co-chief of the $10 million project, published their research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The project was sponsored by the International Ocean Discovery Program and the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program.
[...] The scientists worked aboard a drilling ship called Lifeboat Myrtle anchored offshore from the Mexican port of Progreso. In 2016, they drilled into the crater's inner rim for the first time, buried in the seafloor under about 1,500 feet of limestone deposited in the millions of years since the impact.
Geologists study rocks as a record of compressed time, with ticks of the geologic clock typically measured in layers that accumulate over thousands of years. In the Chicxulub crater, though, hundreds of feet of sediments built up rapidly, recording impact effects like a high-speed stop-action camera, the scientists said.
"Here we have 130 meters in a single day," said Dr. Gulick. "We can read it on the scale of minutes and hours, which is amazing."
The asteroid blasted a cavity between 25 and 30 miles deep in the first seconds of impact, creating a boiling cauldron of molten rocks and super-heated steam, according to the scientists' interpretation of the rock. Rebounding from the hammer blow, a plume of molten rock splashed up into a peak higher than Mount Everest.
Within minutes, it collapsed into itself, splashing gigantic waves of lava outward that solidified into a ring of high peaks, the scientists said.
About 20 minutes or so later, sea water surged back over the newly formed peaks, covering them in a blanket of impact rocks, the scientists said. As minutes became hours, waves choked with shards of volcanic glass and splintered rock rippled back and forth, coating the peaks in a layer of impact rock called suevite, the scientists said. As the hours passed, the backwash of waves added more and more finely graded debris.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @06:23PM (1 child)
https://news.utexas.edu/2019/09/09/rocks-at-asteroid-impact-site-record-first-day-of-dinosaur-extinction/ [utexas.edu]
No need for a paywall or someone's interpretation.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ikanreed on Tuesday September 10 2019, @07:33PM
Because that's just the university press release about the actual original source [pnas.org]. I'd include a sci-hub link because of the aformentioned paywall disdain, but sadly, sci-hub seems to be having one of its off days.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @07:43PM (5 children)
Nuclear winter will cancel out global warming.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday September 10 2019, @08:16PM
Too late, and temporarily. We've had a couple of Goldilocks centuries, at the end of a couple of near Goldilocks millennia. Wild climate swings far outside the Goldilocks zone have happened on Earth before, and will happen again, but probably not while simultaneously supporting a human population of 8 Billion+
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @08:21PM (3 children)
Why stop at Iran... nuke all Muslims, make the world a better place.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @08:43PM (2 children)
Why stop at Muslims, make a clean sweep of all religions and be done with it.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @08:52PM
Why stop at religions, kill everyone and be done forever.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday September 10 2019, @09:31PM
Stop with all the nuking.
Religion is the best way to heal a world deeply and violently divided by religion.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @07:44PM (3 children)
..we should book an asteroid to cool things down a bit. That would make 1816, the year with no summer, look like a picnic.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday September 10 2019, @08:19PM (2 children)
Just because the mammals rose after the dinosaurs were knocked out of their familiar climate does not mean that the current crop of mammals will fare as well in the next great climate upset.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @08:27PM
Agreed, but some mammals [realultimatepower.net] will certainly fare better than others.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 11 2019, @02:25PM
it will be the same mammals that made it before: mice and related tiny things.
same as small birds and lizards will make it.
by the way. I keep hearing that only things under 5kg (or 2kg or something small anyway) survived. but alligators/crocodiles are bigger than that... and they've been around since before the dinosaurs. what gives?
(Score: 1) by vu2lid on Tuesday September 10 2019, @09:38PM