Chixculub: was it a precise hit on purpose? (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, May 18, 2017, 23:34 (2745 days ago) @ David Turell

New research shows how the meteor hit exactly the right spot to create a cloud that blotted out the sun and caused a huge loss of life, not just the dinos:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/05/18/why-these-researc...

"If the massive asteroid that smashed into present-day Yucatan hit the Atlantic Ocean or somewhere else, the scientists maintain, the rock would have avoided an area made up primarily of limestone and evaporated ocean sediments and rich in carbon dioxide, sulfur and deadly gypsum. Due to the earth's rotation, even a minute or two could have significantly changed the outcome of the impact.

"It was, for all intents and purposes, a kill shot for the giant reptiles roaming the planet.

***

"That analysis — requiring 800 meters of rock being split, tested and photographed — resulted in some extraordinarily detailed insights. The scientists believe they have proved that the asteroid that smashed into the Yucatan Peninsula was moving at 40,000 mph and instantly vaporized upon hitting the water.

"It was, BBC Two notes, the equivalent of a grain of sand slamming into a bowling ball, but the impact was so powerful and hot that it turned the surrounding sea to steam and traveled miles into the earth's crust. The rock that was pushed upward, the scientists found, formed “a tower higher than the Himalayas” before collapsing to “form a strange ring of peaks that exists today,” according to BBC Two.

"Ben Garrod, an evolutionary biologist who appears in the program, said global temperatures plunged more than 50 degrees within days.

“'This is where we get to the great irony of the story — because in the end it wasn’t the size of the asteroid, the scale of blast, or even its global reach that made dinosaurs extinct — it was where the impact happened,” Garrod said.

“'In this cold, dark world, food ran out of the oceans within a week and shortly after on land,” he added. “With nothing to eat anywhere on the planet, the mighty dinosaurs stood little chance of survival.”

"The dinosaurs' sudden ending did have an upside, according to Alice Roberts, a professor of public engagement in science at the University of Birmingham, who appears throughout the documentary.

"Just half a million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs and landscapes around the globe had filled with mammals of all shapes and sizes,” she said. “Chances are, if it wasn’t for that asteroid, we wouldn’t be here to tell the story today.'”

Comment: this is a different theory than the one which reports huge volcanic activity resulted in Siberia which caused the severity of the cloud blockage of the sun. This study tells us all God needed was good aim!