Origins of Dinosaur Killing Asteroid

[linuxdoctor]

According to a new theory by American and Czech scientists, the killer asteroid that doomed the dinosaurs sixty-five million years ago was created in a collision between between two much larger asteroids (105 miles and 40 miles wide respectively) in the asteroid belt that occurred about 100 million years ago. The six mile wide fragment was then sent hurtling out into the Solar System and eventually impacted with earth some 45 million years later.

Named asteroid Baptistina, from which the dinosaur killer asteroid was created in that collision one hundred million years ago, was proposed as a possible cause of w whole host of very similar impact craters on another asteroid in the asteroid belt named Gaspara. Gaspara was imaged by the Galileo space craft in 1992 and scientists have been trying to track down its evolution ever since. Scienitsts built a model from calculating the impacts on the asteroid backwards in time to a common origin. When working the model forward in time they arrived at an unexpected result ... a planet killer sized asteroid impacting the earth some 65 million years ago.

Needless to say this was an amazing result. It is also amazing in another way; that research in one area of science can often explain other phenomena. This is yet another amazing fact about how science works.

Of course, this is just a theory. There is no way to prove that it is indeed correct without a lot more data, but the explanation is interesting and compelling it in it's own way and, as a scientist in the Einsteinian mold, elegant.
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[darksfear]

Did you just copy and paste that article or something?
If you didn't, my hats off to you.

A 6 mile wide fragment can cause this much damage? wipe out creatures on the entire planet?

This is really hard to imagine, but i guess who can imagine the magnitude of the fragment when it crashes to earth, i seen somewhere asteroids usually travel at around 50,000 kilometers per second.

Really tired now, so cant be bothered to do the calculations, but i am sure someone could work out the kinetic energy it brings to the earth when it impacts? then convert that force into megatones so it can be compared with nuclear missiles, e.g. that impact was the same as one million nuclear missiles exploding at the same time etc.

Just my two cents, out.

[LP-SolidRaven]

[Necromis]

SR, I don't think he is worrying about the quality of the comparision, just something that we can relatively understand the power of. After all most people have a general idea of the magnitude of a nuclear explosion, but don't have any where near an idea of the magnitude this impact would cause.

[LP-SolidRaven]

Okay, lets assume the asteroid 4 Vesta shoots out of its orbit and continues at that speed towards earth. Its orbiting speed is about 19.3km/s and it's mass is about 2.7×10^20 kg.
Kinetic Energy = (mass * velocity^2 )/2
So (2.7x10^20 kg * (19300 m/s)^2)/2
That's 5.028615 × 10^28 Joules

Now this was a fairly large piece of rock, larger than the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. That one 'only' had about 5×10^23 Joules of energy.

Now the examples to give you an idea of the energy such an event would wield: (from wikipedia)

[ClickFanatic]

[Necromis]

Well it is that compare option. Like explaining the size of an asteroid is the same as the island of manhattan. I know that nuclear explosions are a relivant corolation even though they might be apples and oranges, they still have similar destructive powers. When an asteroid impacts it leaves a crator of X size based on its mass and velocity. I nuclear explosion leaves a crator based on its explosive power. In the end they still both leave a crator. Buses and planes are apples and oranges, but they still end up getting you some where.

[LP-SolidRaven]

[Necromis]

Oh, I am fine with the answer you gave before SR. I was just explaining why it is liked by the masses.

[LP-SolidRaven]

[martinz]

I am not so sure if this could be true but there is a possibility. There are other possibilities too, besides asteroids hitting Earth, it could be viruses, it could be heat from the Sun, or it could be aliens that kill these dinosaurs. I just what is the chance of a 6-mile wide asteroid hitting Earth, and why are we not experiencing that now?

[nepsydaz]

It might have been viruses, heat from the sun or anything else like that but nothing can be proven. So I would like to believe that it's asteroids that destroyed the dinosaurs. Maybe one asteriod is aimed for our doom as well. Who knows.
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[LP-SolidRaven]

[Jim Colyer]

There is no end to the speculation. I still question whether the impact in the Yucatan killed off the dinosaurs.
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Jim Colyer wrote Save The Planet.

[Necromis]

Jim, look at the amount of devistation caused in Russsia from an air bursting meteor, and it was no where near the size of the one that hit. The biggest impact is the ash cloud caused by the impact. Or dust cloud, more acurately. It caused the global cooling that in turn caused the ice age. If Dinosaurs were smaller it might have been different. They were not and their food sources were choked off.