Two years in the darkness of the Earth after the asteroid disaster

The Earth seems to be covered by endless darkness along with the deaths of many plants and animals after a giant asteroid hit.

US scientists concluded that the Earth was dark for two years after being hit by an asteroid 65 million years ago, Phys.org reported yesterday. It is also the asteroid that destroys the dinosaurs after 165 million years of domination of the Earth.

More than three-quarters of all species on Earth become extinct after asteroids crash into the planet 65 million years ago.(Photo: iStock).

With the support of the US Aeronautics Agency (NASA) and the University of Colorado Boulder, the team of scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) uses computers to model landscapes on the Left. The land at the end of the Cretaceous period since the large asteroid hit the area today is the Yucatán Peninsula in the Gulf of Mexico, causing earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions everywhere.

Computer models help the team understand why more than three-quarters of the species on the planet perish at the time, while others still survive.

"The extinction of many large animal species on the mainland may be due to the direct impact of the collision, but the species that live in the ocean or underground burrows temporarily survive. We want to consider the systems. The long-term effect of the huge amount of soot produced from the collision with surviving animals , " said Charles Bardeen, NCAR scientist.

According to the simulation results, 15,000 million tons of soot sprayed into the atmosphere when the asteroid crashed, forming a barrier between Earth and sunlight . "At first, the sky will be as dark as on a moonlit night , " said Owen Toon, co-author of research at Colorado Boulder University.

Simulating the day of the dinosaurs of destruction.(Video: BBC).

Gradually, the soot layer dissipated and the sky became bright again, but photosynthesis could not take place for more than 18 months because asteroids destroyed most of the trees on Earth and the phytoplankton suffered badly. masonry because of lack of sunlight.

Even if the assumptions are not correct and only one-third of the amount of launches is injected into the atmosphere compared to estimates, photosynthesis cannot take place within a year. The lack of sunlight causes the Earth's temperature to drop to 28 degrees Celsius on land and 11 degrees Celsius in the ocean. In the upper atmosphere layers, soot causes the atmosphere to warm up, steam reacts with the stratosphere, producing hydrogen that destroys the ozone layer.