Death from the Skies! Read Online Free
Author: Ph. D. Philip Plait
plume shot up miles into the sky, bright and hot as the Sun. The impact itself generated a huge ground shock wave, dwarfing any mere terrestrial seismic event and killing everything for hundreds of miles around the impact site.
Following the ground shock was an air shock, an epic sonic boom. Any creatures within a thousand miles that survived the initial impact were quite deaf once the thunderclap reached them.
But if they were anywhere near the Gulf of Mexico, they wouldn’t have lasted long anyway. When the asteroid hit the water, it displaced vast amounts of the ocean, both because of the shock wave and through simple vaporization due to heat. What it created was a tsunami, but one on a huge scale.
In December 2004, an earthquake caused a tsunami a few yards high that moved slower than a car, yet killed a quarter of a million people. The tsunami generated by the asteroid impact was hundreds of yards high, and moved at 600 miles per hour.
Within minutes a roaring mountain of billions of tons of seawater slammed into the Texas coast, scouring it clean of any life. The tsunami marched inland for miles, killing everything in its path with a fierce devastation no tornado, hurricane, or earthquake could ever hope to match.
And yet this impact still had more death to deal. When the asteroid hit, it punched a hole in the Earth right through the crust. The energy of the impact sent molten rock hurtling into the air at speeds of several miles per second. At those speeds, the debris would actually go up and out of the atmosphere on ballistic trajectories, like intercontinental missiles. As they fell back down, these ejecta would heat up and burn, replicating the original event on a miniature scale, but billions of times over. Flaming rock would fall from the sky like a cloudburst for thousands of miles around the impact point, igniting forest fires across the globe that would rage out of control and fill the Earth’s atmosphere with thick black smoke.
Essentially, the whole planet caught fire.
Back at ground zero, the impact point itself would have been like nowhere else on Earth. A crater two hundred miles across and twenty miles deep was chewed into the crust, its temperature soaring to 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Inrushing water instantly vaporized, creating more devastation, if such a thing was even possible.
No place on Earth was left untouched. Fires blazed everywhere. As the world burned, the atmosphere darkened, letting very little sunlight through. Over time, the Earth cooled dramatically, eventually causing an ice age that would kill even the incredibly tough plants and animals that survived the initial onslaught.
Through sheer happenstance, the asteroid hit a spot on Earth that was rich in limestone and other minerals. The shock wave from the impact (and from ejected rock reentering the atmosphere) created nitrates from this material that then formed nitric acid in the air that rained down over the planet. Moreover, chlorine and other chemicals in the asteroid itself were released upon impact; catapulted into the upper atmosphere, they were sufficient to destroy the ozone layer thousands of times over. This killed not just plant life, but aquatic life as well. The food chain was disrupted at its most fundamental level on the whole planet, and when the fires finally died down, as much as 75 percent of all life on Earth was extinguished.
Eventually, the crater cooled, the fires went out, and the natural cycles of the Earth buried the evidence. Life remaining on the planet had it pretty tough for a long time, but with that much devastation there were many environmental niches to be filled. Life did as it always does—it found its path, and the Earth was repopulated.
Fast-forward sixty-five million years. Archaeologists digging through rock layers see a dramatic change in composition and color between two strata. Below this change are rocks and fossils from the Cretaceous period, and materials above it are from the
Following the ground shock was an air shock, an epic sonic boom. Any creatures within a thousand miles that survived the initial impact were quite deaf once the thunderclap reached them.
But if they were anywhere near the Gulf of Mexico, they wouldn’t have lasted long anyway. When the asteroid hit the water, it displaced vast amounts of the ocean, both because of the shock wave and through simple vaporization due to heat. What it created was a tsunami, but one on a huge scale.
In December 2004, an earthquake caused a tsunami a few yards high that moved slower than a car, yet killed a quarter of a million people. The tsunami generated by the asteroid impact was hundreds of yards high, and moved at 600 miles per hour.
Within minutes a roaring mountain of billions of tons of seawater slammed into the Texas coast, scouring it clean of any life. The tsunami marched inland for miles, killing everything in its path with a fierce devastation no tornado, hurricane, or earthquake could ever hope to match.
And yet this impact still had more death to deal. When the asteroid hit, it punched a hole in the Earth right through the crust. The energy of the impact sent molten rock hurtling into the air at speeds of several miles per second. At those speeds, the debris would actually go up and out of the atmosphere on ballistic trajectories, like intercontinental missiles. As they fell back down, these ejecta would heat up and burn, replicating the original event on a miniature scale, but billions of times over. Flaming rock would fall from the sky like a cloudburst for thousands of miles around the impact point, igniting forest fires across the globe that would rage out of control and fill the Earth’s atmosphere with thick black smoke.
Essentially, the whole planet caught fire.
Back at ground zero, the impact point itself would have been like nowhere else on Earth. A crater two hundred miles across and twenty miles deep was chewed into the crust, its temperature soaring to 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Inrushing water instantly vaporized, creating more devastation, if such a thing was even possible.
No place on Earth was left untouched. Fires blazed everywhere. As the world burned, the atmosphere darkened, letting very little sunlight through. Over time, the Earth cooled dramatically, eventually causing an ice age that would kill even the incredibly tough plants and animals that survived the initial onslaught.
Through sheer happenstance, the asteroid hit a spot on Earth that was rich in limestone and other minerals. The shock wave from the impact (and from ejected rock reentering the atmosphere) created nitrates from this material that then formed nitric acid in the air that rained down over the planet. Moreover, chlorine and other chemicals in the asteroid itself were released upon impact; catapulted into the upper atmosphere, they were sufficient to destroy the ozone layer thousands of times over. This killed not just plant life, but aquatic life as well. The food chain was disrupted at its most fundamental level on the whole planet, and when the fires finally died down, as much as 75 percent of all life on Earth was extinguished.
Eventually, the crater cooled, the fires went out, and the natural cycles of the Earth buried the evidence. Life remaining on the planet had it pretty tough for a long time, but with that much devastation there were many environmental niches to be filled. Life did as it always does—it found its path, and the Earth was repopulated.
Fast-forward sixty-five million years. Archaeologists digging through rock layers see a dramatic change in composition and color between two strata. Below this change are rocks and fossils from the Cretaceous period, and materials above it are from the
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