Murder By Space Rock Research Paper

Scientists gear up to drill into ‘ground zero’ of the impact that killed the dinosaurs

Scientist Estimates the diameter of the impact crater110 miles wide, so the meteor that caused such a massive impact had to be going attest 40,000-45,000 miles per hour heading straight for earth, An asteroid of that size striking the Earth would have had devastating consequences, including hundreds of earthquakes, worldwide wildfires, tsunamis, and "raining" of hot rock that was blasted into space reentering the atmosphere.

Then in 1991, a massive meteor crater 110 miles in diameter was discovered on the edge of the Yucatán Peninsula, extending into the Gulf of Mexico. The Chicxulub Crater, as it was dubbed, was named for a nearby village. Scientists believe the bolide that formed it was roughly 6 miles in diameter, struck the earth at 40,000 miles per hour and released 2 million times more

Explore and observe the objects in the solar system to understand how they formed and evolve

Space exploration is one of the most important and essential technologies in our astronomical history. In the recent 70 years human have started using rocket science and other specialties to bring probes and humans into extra-terrestrial space, as to make detail observations and explorations of other planets and celestial

The impact hypothesis, believes that an asteroid hit the earth that killed all the dinosaurs. This not only killed non avian dinosaurs, but flying reptiles, marine reptiles, reef and plankton. By an asteroid hitting the earth, it changed the atmospheric levels. Evidence shows, high levels of iridium that’s a rare metal to earth covered layers of rocks. This support the theory that a large mountain sized rock hit earths’ surface. The results of the asteroid hitting the earth caused a crater on the earth’s surface because of the force of the rock causing the surface to move and create a wave like structures. The impact and the different levels of iridium killed off the dinosaurs because they were able to live with the different atmospheric levels.

However, this happened around 50,000 years ago, resulting in a crater 1 mile across, 2.4 miles in circumference and more than 700 feet deep. The impact of the meteor had energy of more than 20-million tons of TNT, and shook the southwestern plain for miles. The meteor left little evidence of its origin behind, it vaporized on impact with the earth. Moreover, erosion has done little to change the original crater.

Many people often assume the asteroid completely wiped off the land and marine species with just the impact of the asteroid, but was rather the tipping point of what came next. In fact Choi stated that “ "We have shown that these events are synchronous to within a gnat's eyebrow, and therefore, the impact clearly played a major role in extinctions, but it probably wasn't just the impact.” ( Choi). The ultimate reasons for the dinosaurs and other species extinction was the blockage of sunlight which initially darkened and chilled to earth to extreme temperatures ( Jones). At this point many animals and even plants started to die off because of the chilling conditions, but that wasn't the only reason for the extinction of these species. Soon after the dust had settled and the earth was able to receive light, the planet initiated a greenhouse affect. Which not only put the remaining species at high temperatures, but their food also became inhabitable (Choi). The evidence of an asteroid theory is supported by the impact crater, rare metal, melted rock, fractured crystals, and the fossil record (Jones). The impact crater is actually one the main key examples of why the asteroid may have been responsible for the cretaceous mass extinction. It showed the asteroid landing on the Yucatan peninsula, and traveling at 30 kilometers per second (Jones). Not

The Cretaceous mass extinction is the most well-known case of meteorite impact on the earth, but it certainly is not the only one. It is merely the most well-known. Due to the impact, debris entered earth's atmosphere and caused the plant life of the time to die off due to the lack of sunlight to survive. This made food much more scarce for the species that were dominant at the time. The competition was simply too much for them, and as the plant life died out, so did the herbivores and then the carnivores died out as well. Not only the land was impacted, however, the sea life was affected heavily by this impact as well. The lack of sunlight caused the oceans to become colder, causing the habitats of many marine animals to be drastically altered

Asteroids left unchecked can be very dangerous to Earth. According to the Crater Data Chart, some craters have a diameter of “300 km”. That would cause so much destruction if it landed in a place where people live! Also, in the Tunguska Meteor Impact, it says some asteroids (like Tunguska) release “energy equivalent to about 185 Hiroshima bombs”. One Hiroshima bomb was absolutely catastrophic. Imagine how much damage one hundred and eighty five of those bombs could do!

The human race must develop an effective planetary defense to prevent the very real danger of a catastrophic asteroid impact to Earth .Any planetary defense created by the human race must start with an excellent detection and tracking system. The second layer of defense involves deflecting truly dangerous asteroids away from orbits intercepting Earth. Research has identified many options to mitigate the danger of asteroid impact. The options for asteroid defense are widely varied and can provide customizable missions to deflect any realistic scenario for an asteroid impact. But, before humanity can deflect anything, a detection system must find it.

Scientists have never proven this to be 100 % true, but it is one of the beliefs on how the dinosaurs became extinct. Both scientists and paleontologists, feel that a meteor must of hit Earth, a few million years ago, killing the dinosaurs. The meteor that might of wiped out the dinosaurs also could have brought about the ice age, because of the huge dust cloud that was thrown into the air. Also, even though this meteor strike never hit Earth, the world watched in awe as thousands of meteors hit the planet Jupiter two years ago. For about one week, many meteors collided into Jupiter causing huge craters on it’s surface.

Armageddon was not created as a whimsical fantasy of Hollywood masterminds. In fact, its basic premise stems from a distinct historical event. In 1994, for the first time in the history of humankind, scientists were able to witness in detail the collision of two solar system bodies. Having circled Jupiter in an enclosing elliptical pattern for what scientists speculate to be hundreds of years, comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 was wrenched out of its orbit by Jupiter’s gravity and into a collision course with the planet’s dense atmosphere. This collision produced "bubble[s] of superheated gas that blazed with 50 times the infrared luminosity of the entire planet, briefly blinding some telescopes." Comet fragments pounded Jupiter at an estimated speed of 60 kilometers per second (134,000 miles an hour), and although the largest fragments measured no more

Gerta Keller, professor of geosciences at Princeton University, has recently conducted research on the Chicxulub asteroid in which she analyzed new core samples taken from the asteroid site (Botzer 2004). These samples indicate that the impact that occurred at Chicxulub actually predated the mass extinction of the dinosaurs, which occurred at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary about sixty-five million years ago. Keller claims that the Chicxulub impact occurred approximately 300,000 years before the extinction (Keller 2004). Although previous researchers estimated that the Chicxulub asteroid was the cause of the extinctions, there had always been doubts about the exact age and size of the crater, and about the origin of the “mega tsunami deposits” that were located within the crater (Keller 2004). The focus of Keller’s recent research was on finding some answers to these questions. To do so she analyzed Cretaceous limestone, dolomite, and anhydrite deposits as the site of the Chicxulub crater (Keller 2004).

Space can be excellent. The planets, stars, systems and nebulae make effortless and vivid shapes noticeable to our telescopes.