The end of the dinosaur era
Sixty-six million years ago, this was the last day of the Mesozoic era. In the Yucatan Peninsula in eastern Mexico, the sun is shining through the tall conifer forest to reach this swampy land. This is the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Life in this jungle, buzzing with the sounds of big insects and dinosaurs, doesn't know what's going to happen today.
A six-mile-wide rock on the earth is moving at more than 40,000 miles per hour. When it reached the air, it became hot due to its friction and then a huge explosion. A huge collision that was like an explosion of one trillion tons of ammunition.
This mountain-sized rock sank for miles, and the collision created a pit miles deep and 115 miles wide. Many square miles of rocks turned to smoke.
The wound on the ground is the glacier crater of the Gulf of Mexico. What happened next? Research teams from Purdue University and Imperial College London have developed a more detailed model.
The resulting blastwave ended life in a matter of a thousand kilometers in a matter of seconds. The thermal radiation from it set fire to grass, trees and bushes and in nine seconds killed large animals in the area.
Flood after this fire. The tsunami wave rose a thousand feet. And an earthquake of more than ten on the Richter scale. The magnitude of this earthquake was so great that it was equal to the magnitude of earthquakes that came for a hundred and fifty years.
After eight minutes, the ashes began to fall and the burning ground was covered with the ashes. Where the collision took place, there was now hundreds of feet of debris around it.
Forty-five minutes later, a powerful storm, at a speed of six hundred miles per hour, blew away the debris and knocked down every standing object.
Those who were not directly affected by it and were far away from it, now see the sky getting darker and like the rain of falling stars. This is the wreckage that was blown away by the collision and is now returning to Earth.
But it is different from broken stars. Like red lines. The sky is getting darker because of the ash, flying rocks, dust and debris.
It was pitch dark for a few hours and then a light spread. For the next few weeks and months, it's like a very cloudy day.
The early hours of the collision claimed the lives of nearby animals, but the environmental impact was long lasting. Clouds of ash dimmed the ground, causing photosynthesis to stop and plants to die, as well as their predators. When it rained, it turned into acidic mud. The fire destroyed the toxic material and for some time severely damaged the ozone layer.
An additional one trillion tons of carbon dioxide, one trillion tons of carbon monoxide and one trillion tons of methane were its environmental impact.
First nuclear cold and then global warming. Many years later, by the time its effects were sixth, 80% of life on Earth had come to an end. There was no living thing on earth bigger than a rabbit.
This was the end of dinosaurs' domination of the earth for 165 million years.
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