It was 66 million years ago when dinosaurs became extinct after an asteroid, that was larger than the size of Mt. Everest, hit the Earth. It is estimated that the asteroid that wiped out the prehistoric creaturs was as powerful as 10-billion atomic bombs built during World War II.
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But is it possible that the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs could have also flipped them into outer space? Recently, Twitter has been flooded with a new claim according to which, as the asteroid touched the atmosphere, it punched a hole in the outer vacuum, allowing an enormous volume of Earth to expel into space. And the debris could have also included the dinosaurs’ remains, which might have been placed on the Moon.
This claim comes from Peter Brannen’s 2017 book “The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth’s Past Mass Extinctions.”
Brannen is an award-winning science journalist, whose work has been published in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Wired, Washington Post, and others.
A Twitter user named Matt Austin shared a piece of information written in that book:
This description of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs is probably the best piece of writing I’ve read in a while. That was beautiful. pic.twitter.com/13iLrLrMe2
— Matt Austin (@BitsHammer) January 2, 2019
“The meteorite itself was so massive that it didn’t notice any atmosphere whatsoever, said Rebolledo. ‘It was traveling 20 to 40 kilometers per second, 10 kilometers – probably 14 kilometers – wide, and building such incredible pressure.”
He writes that the space rock, bigger than Mount Everest, traveling 20 times faster than a bullet, hit the Earth. It was so fast that it covered the distance between Earth’s surface and cruising altitude 747 (35,105 ft) in 0.3 seconds. The asteroid itself was so massive that when it hit the Earth, it would have a mile above cruising altitude. While descending, the asteroid compressed the air below it so hard that it became hotter than Sun for a while.
The atmosphere in front of the asteroid was so strong that it created a crater even before the rock hit.
He writes further: “Then when the meteorite touched ground zero, it was totally intact. It was so massive that the atmosphere didn’t even make a scratch on it.”
As the asteroid collided with the earth, the rock punched a hole of outer space vacuum in the atmosphere in the sky above it, where there should have been air.
“As the heavens rushed in to close this hole, enormous volumes of earth were expelled into orbit and beyond — all within a second or two of impact.”
“So there’s probably little bits of dinosaur bone on the moon,” Brannen wonders.
And Rebolledo replies: “Yea, probably.”
There is still no evidence to confirm Brannen’s claim that was written in his book. But according to researcher Sean Gulick, not all dinosaurs died that day, and after the catastrophic collapse, Earth was in global cooling for a long time.
Note: It is believed that dinosaurs’ killer asteroid, with a diameter of up to 10 kilometers, fell on the Mexican Yucatan Peninsula, forming a Chicxulub impact crater 20 kilometers deep and 180 kilometers in diameter.
Besides, according to the 2019 study, dinosaurs had already been struggling to survive prior to the asteroid hit. Massive volcanic eruptions made the atmosphere so toxic that distinctly elevated Mercury concentrations.
“For the first time, we can provide insights into the distinct climatic and environmental impacts of Deccan Traps volcanism by analyzing a single material,” said Kyle Meyer, lead author of the new study.”
A higher level of Mercury can cause severe health issues for humans, fish, and other animals. Meyer said that Mercury poisoning could have also been the main factor behind dinosaurs’ death, as their fossilized shells contained Mercury.