Strange minerals reveal the day the Earth became 'hell' because of asteroids

The pieces of coal, strange rocks, stones and sulfur from hell have helped scientists recreate the earth's day of disaster equivalent to 10 billion atomic bombs.

The team from the University of Texas (USA) and Imperial College London (University of London, UK), have taken the core material 1,300 meters deep from the crater 66 million years old Chicxulub - where the asteroid killed Dinosaurs have "landed" - and discovered many surprises.

Scientists are working with sample tubes taken from the bottom of the impact pit - (photo: TEXAS UNIVERSITY).

They found granite, sandstone, limestone, coal, rock and sulfur . in what they described as "from hell". Because, when analyzed, the minerals revealed that they had been hit, pinned to the ground at an extremely fast speed , many small pieces of rock are part of the big rocks melted. It all helped the team rewrite the minute-by-minute scenario of the disaster on Earth.

The minerals are quickly pinned to the bottom of the pit, revealing a lot of information - (photo: IODP).

Professor Sean Gulick (University of Texas) said things like an "extended record" of events where he and his colleagues could recover data to once again look at the end of the times. dinosaurs.

Destiny asteroids, estimated to be 10-15km wide have crashed into Earth at a speed of 70,000km / h, with the power of the collision equivalent to 10 billion atomic bombs."The impact that shook the Earth, caused a widespread hell" - the authors describe.

Thousands of miles of trees caught fire in an instant, and a huge 91m tsunami was born from the impact site, swept minerals and partially pinned down the impact crater like what we found. . In just the first day, 130m thick material was deposited in the impact crater.

A large number of rocks were evaporated, throwing about 325 billion tons of gas into the air, creating dense clouds of sulfur that prevented the sun from shining on the ground, causing the Earth to sink in flames again. quickening "ice hell".

Graphic image depicting disaster 66 million years ago - (photo: Don Davis / NASA).

All terrestrial creatures have suffered the suffering the authors describe as "frying them and then freezing them". According to Professor Gulick, many dinosaurs died in the first day of the disaster. They are burned alive or starved to death. The longer-lived ones suffer from long cold days and starvation due to the mass extinction and destroy many other plants and animals.

While the collision, wildfire, and tsunami kill the creatures around the disaster area, the sulfur clouds that render the Earth no longer receiving sunlight are actually causing a global extinction.

The most obvious trace of the disaster is the Chicxulub crater off the Yucatan peninsula (Mexico), 185km wide and 32km deep. Half of the pit is under water, the other half is covered by tropical rain forests.

The research has just been published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS).