Extinction of the dinosaurs: Asteroid impact was followed by a kilometer-high global tsunami

Created: 2022-10-21 06:15

The asteroid that wiped out dinosaurs and numerous other animals and plants 66 million years ago apparently hit earth at a particularly deadly angle (icon image).

© picture alliance/ dpa

66 million years ago an asteroid hit Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs.

Scientists have now discovered that the impact triggered a mile-high global tsunami.

Michigan - The dinosaurs became extinct when an asteroid collided with Earth 66 million years ago.

Now scientists have found that this collision was followed by a mile-high tsunami.

The waves were 30,000 times more energetic than, say, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that claimed more than 200,000 lives.

Chicxulub asteroid caused mile-high global tsunami

Experts agree that the Chicxulub-named asteroid alone was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs.

According to this, the oceans were so acidic after the impact that, for example, organisms that made their shells from lime could not survive.

75 percent of the animal species living on earth at that time died out - including the dinosaurs.

The steep impact angle of the asteroid apparently also played a role.

At that time, the "projectile" hit the ground at a 60-degree angle of inclination and a speed of 43,200 kilometers per hour.

In a study published in 2020, researchers from Imperial College London, the USA and Germany said that particularly large amounts of dust and particles were thrown into the atmosphere.

Particles blocked the sun's rays and thereby quickly changed the global climate.

However, other scientists, such as Darrell Robertson of the Nasa Ames Research Center, consider an impact angle of 45 degrees to be the most likely.

Researchers from the USA have now found that the Chicxulub asteroid triggered a kilometer-high tsunami after its impact.

The astronomical small body hit in shallow water and caused an enormous tidal wave.

"It was a global tsunami," study leader Molly Range, a researcher at the University of Michigan, told the

.

"The whole world saw that."

Global tsunami rushes across oceans as fast as a commercial airliner

After the impact, the sea level rose extremely in two phases: first there was the so-called edge wave and then the subsequent tsunami waves.

"When you drop a rock in a puddle, there's an initial splash, that's the edge wave," the

researcher explained .

This could have reached a height of up to 1.6 kilometers, the scientists wrote in the study.

After about ten minutes, the ensuing tsunami waves began hurtling across the oceans at the speed of an airplane.

The waves hit the coasts of the North Atlantic and South Pacific with heights of more than ten meters.

Researchers have now found that the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs also triggered a mile-high tsunami.

Pictured: waves in the Portuguese town of Nazaré, which are among the highest in the world.

© IMAGO/Moritz Mueller

Using a so-called Hydrocode computer program, the researchers were able to calculate a model of the first ten minutes after the impact.

This is unique as it was the first global simulation of the Chicxulub impact.

Previous methods could not be used because tsunamis are usually caused by earthquakes that do not create craters.

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Study: "The Chicxulub Impact Produced a Powerful Global Tsunami"

Authors: Molly M. Area, Brian K. Arbic, Brandon C. Johnson, Theodore C. Moore, Vasily Titow, Alistair J. Adcroft, Joseph K. Lied, Christopher J. Hollis, Jeroen Ritsema, Christopher R. Scotese, Er Wang .

Published on October 4, 2022 in the journal AGU Advances

Link to the study

NASA Sees 'Turning Point' In Protecting Humanity From Asteroid Impact

The war in Ukraine, the energy crisis and the corona pandemic are currently keeping the world in suspense.

But is there also danger from outside?

In 2020, the US space agency NASA warned of the asteroid 2009JF1,l approaching Earth.

It could hit in May 2022, it was said at the time.

However, the chances of this were only 1:4000 - after all, much more realistic than winning the lottery.

The European space agency Esa keeps a risk list of objects for which the probability of an impact is greater than zero.

1439 objects (as of October 20, 2022) are currently on the list.

NASA takes the risk of an asteroid impact quite seriously.

For the first time in space history, an asteroid was pushed out of its orbit in mid-October.

A soda machine-sized probe crashed into an asteroid the size of a football stadium.

This is a "watershed moment" in protecting humanity from an asteroid impact, said Space Agency chief Bill Nelson.

According to the current state of knowledge, however, no asteroid will be racing directly towards Earth in the foreseeable future.

However, researchers have identified around 27,000 asteroids near our planet, around 10,000 of them with a diameter of more than 140 meters