Distant space collision meant doom for dinosaurs
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September 18, 2007
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Distant space collision meant doom
for dinosaurs
(Reuters)
Updated: 2007-09-06 14:55
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WASHINGTON -- A collision 160 million years ago of two asteroids
orbiting between Mars and Jupiter sent many big rock chunks
hurtling toward Earth, including the one that zapped the dinosaurs,
scientists said on Wednesday.
Their research offered an
explanation for the cause of one
of the most momentous events
in the history of life on Earth -- a
six-mile-wide (10-km-wide)
meteorite striking Mexico's
Yucatan peninsula 65 million
years ago.
An artist's depiction of a huge
meteorite striking Earth 65 million
years ago, sending the dinosaurs
and many other life forms into
extinction. [Reuters]
many scientists believe.
That catastrophe eliminated the
dinosaurs, which had flourished
for about 165 million years, and
many other life forms, and
paved the way for mammals to
dominate the Earth and the
eventual rise of humankind,
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The impact is thought to have triggered a worldwide environmental
cataclysm, expelling vast quantities of rock and dust into the sky,
unleashing giant tsunamis, sparking global wildfires and leaving
Earth shrouded in darkness for years.
US and Czech researchers used computer simulations to
calculate that there was a 90 percent probability that the collision of
two asteroids -- one about 105 miles wide and one about 40 miles
wide -- was the event that precipitated the Earthly disaster.
The collision occurred in the asteroid belt, a collection of big and
small rocks orbiting the sun about 100 million miles from Earth, the
researchers report in this week's issue of the journal Nature.
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18/09/2007 12:25
Distant space collision meant doom for dinosaurs
http://chinadaily.com.cn/world/2007-09/06/conten...
The asteroid Baptistina and rubble associated with it are thought to
be leftovers, the scientists said.
Some of the debris from the collision escaped the asteroid belt,
tumbled toward the inner solar system and whacked Earth and our
moon, along with probably Mars and Venus, said William Bottke of
the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, one of the
researchers.
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DEADLY COLLISION
The collision is believed to have doubled for a while the number of
impacts occurring in this part of the solar system.
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In fact, while the bombardment of this region of the solar system
due to this shower of debris peaked about 100 million years ago,
the scientists said the tail end of the shower continues to this day.
Bottke said many existing near-Earth asteroids can be traced back
to this collision.
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"Imagine breaking up a big, big boulder on top of a hill and all the
fragments rolling down the hill. And somewhere at the bottom is a
village called Earth," Bottke said in a telephone interview.
The dinosaur-destroying meteorite, thought to have measured 6
miles across, plunged into Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and blasted
out the Chicxulub (pronounced CHIK-shu-loob) crater measuring
about 110 miles wide. The researchers looked at evidence on the
composition of this meteorite and found it consistent with the stony
Baptistina.
The researchers estimated that there also was about a 70 percent
probability that the prominent Tycho crater on the Moon, formed
108 million years ago and measuring about 55 miles across, also
was carved out by a remnant of the earlier asteroid collision.
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Philippe Claeys of Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium, who was
not involved in the research, said by e-mail the findings were "clear
evidence that the solar system is a violent environment and that
collisions taking place in the asteroid belt can have major
repercussions for the evolution of life on Earth."
Bottke emphasized that point. "Dinosaurs were around for a very
long time. So the likelihood is they would still be around if that event
had never taken place," Bottke said.
"Was humanity inevitable? Or is humanity just something that
happened to arise because of this sequence of events that took
place at just the right time. It's hard to say."
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18/09/2007 12:25
Distant space collision meant doom for dinosaurs
http://chinadaily.com.cn/world/2007-09/06/conten...
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