New research finds soot from global fires ignited by an asteroid impact could have blocked sunlight long enough to drive the mass extinction that killed most life on Earth, including the dinosaurs, 66 million years ago.
Earth Sciences
Mar 20, 2020
1
285
Sixty-six million years ago, in the emerged lands of Laurasia—now the northern hemisphere—a primitive land tortoise, measuring about 60 cm, managed to survive the event that killed the dinosaurs. It was the only one to ...
Archaeology
Feb 3, 2020
0
768
New evidence gleaned from Antarctic seashells confirms that Earth was already unstable before the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.
Earth Sciences
Dec 11, 2019
16
5065
Asteroid 2006 QV89, a small object 20 to 50 metres in diameter, was in the news lately because of a very small, one-in-7000 chance of impact with Earth on 9 September 2019.
Astronomy
Jul 17, 2019
0
588
Every single day, many tons of tiny rocks—smaller than pebbles—hit the Earth's atmosphere and disintegrate. Between frequent shooting stars we wish on in the night sky and the massive extinction-level asteroids that we ...
Space Exploration
Jun 27, 2019
1
3
The heavy bombardment of terrestrial planets by asteroids from space has contributed to the formation of the early evolved crust on Earth.
Earth Sciences
Jan 31, 2019
0
20
Evidence that catastrophic geological events could have created evolutionary bottlenecks that changed the course of life on Earth may be buried within ancient rocks beneath our feet.
Astronomy
Oct 16, 2018
0
216
A Japanese probe has reached an asteroid 300 million kilometres away to collect information about the birth of the solar system and the origin of life after a more than three-year voyage through deep space.
Space Exploration
Jun 27, 2018
16
3084
If an asteroid struck Earth, which of its effects—scorching heat, flying debris, towering tsunamis—would claim the most lives? A new study has the answer: violent winds and shock waves are the most dangerous effects produced ...
Earth Sciences
Apr 19, 2017
0
240
The Cretaceous–Paleogene mass extinction 66m years ago was the most recent of five similar crises to have devastated life on Earth over the last 540m years. It rapidly killed off an estimated 76% of species around the globe, ...
Earth Sciences
Jun 2, 2016
0
387
