00:00Kaboom! One huge asteroid could be enough to wipe out all dinosaurs that ever roam the Earth,
00:07leaving behind nothing but a huge crater.
00:10Yeah, we're in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, and underneath there's Chicxulub, a massive crater.
00:17Now, if there's this immense hole, there must be a meteor too, right?
00:21Well, weirdly, no one has ever seen the actual remnants of the space rock itself.
00:27It's a bit weird, especially considering how important it is.
00:32After all, many think the same meteor that created the crater is the one that wiped out dinosaurs.
00:38Now, it might have vaporized on impact, creating a massive explosion.
00:43Most of the meteor could have turned into gas or tiny fragments scattered across the atmosphere.
00:49Or it might still be here, on Earth, you know, just hiding.
00:53And scientists have finally discovered where to look for it.
00:57But it's not easy to reach.
01:00Around 66 million years ago, a giant asteroid went down and marked the end of the Cretaceous period.
01:08It slammed into what's now called Mexico, just north of Central America.
01:13The explosion from the impact triggered a global heat wave, which was followed by years of winter.
01:19It threw Earth into total chaos.
01:21The consequences of this catastrophe led to the extinction of more than 60% of life on Earth,
01:28including all the non-avian dinosaurs like T. rex and Triceratops.
01:33It also took down flying reptiles, pterosaurs, and sea creatures like mosasaurs.
01:40Long story short, it was the end of the dinosaurs' era.
01:43But don't be too sad about it, because it paved the way for the rise of mammals and you and me.
01:49Anyway, scientists have recently figured out where the infamous asteroid came from, and where it ended up.
01:57The thing wasn't just wandering around Earth's neighborhood.
02:01This massive rock might have formed beyond Jupiter and headed straight for our planet.
02:06But we'll talk about that a bit later.
02:08First, let's look more closely at the collision that created the Chicxulub crater.
02:13When the asteroid slammed into Earth, rocks from deep within the planet's crust were thrown up to 15.5 miles into the sky.
02:22It also created mountains taller than the Himalayas around the crater's edge.
02:26The asteroid itself, called the Chicxulub impactor, was about 6 to 9 miles in diameter.
02:33It hit Earth at a speed of around 12 miles per second, coming in at a 60-degree angle.
02:39I know, we're not in a geometry class.
02:42But the angle is important here, since it was exactly right to send the maximum amount of vaporized rock into the atmosphere.
02:50As a result, massive plumes of sulfur gases and fine dust shot up, blocking out the sun and causing what's known as an impact winter, which lasted about 15 years.
03:02At the time, dinosaurs reigned on Earth.
03:06They'd been around for nearly 200 million years before the catastrophe led to their disappearance.
03:12The meteor theory seems all plausible, and all the facts add up.
03:16But even now, not everyone agrees with that.
03:19Some believe that dinosaurs were already on the brink of extinction before the asteroid impact.
03:25And the collision might have just sped up the process.
03:28Anyway, most dinosaurs were wiped out.
03:32But if scientists are right, then those who somehow managed to survive were the ancestors of modern-day birds.
03:40So, we have an idea of what might have happened, but it took years of studies.
03:45The crater was first identified by scientists working for Pemex, a Mexican oil company, in the 1970s.
03:52And some time later, scientists finally realized the mass extinction event that ended the Cretaceous period was because of the Chicxulub.
04:02One piece of evidence that pointed to the asteroid were the local fish back then.
04:07You see, when the asteroid struck, the immense force of the impact reshaped the planet's surface.
04:14For example, it turned rocks into glass-like spherules.
04:17Now, spherules are like small spherical particles that can form from the rapid cooling of molten silica droplets.
04:25And some of these spherules ended up in the gills of fish that were wiped out by the impact.
04:31So, when during another research, scientists studied these fossils,
04:35it became obvious to them that the asteroid strike had happened during springtime in the Northern Hemisphere.
04:42They figured this out by studying the lines of growth in the fish's bones.
04:46Yep, those can be read just like tree rings.
04:50Of course, throughout many years, researchers continued exploring the impact site,
04:55hoping to find new data about the catastrophe.
04:59Their best bet was to turn to the chemical record left behind by the asteroid,
05:04the debris of which is hiding under all those layers of rock and sediment under the Yucatan Peninsula.
05:10So, they studied the chemical signatures in rocks from the end of the Cretaceous period
05:16and found that the asteroid came from beyond Jupiter.
05:20And it wasn't just any asteroid.
05:22No!
05:23It was a carbonaceous chondrite, one of the oldest types of asteroids in the solar system.
05:29It most likely formed billions of years ago.
05:32These types of asteroids only come from the region beyond Jupiter.
05:36So, the asteroid that caused the extinction event must have originated there.
05:42One of the main clues was ruthenium.
05:44It's a rare element in Earth's rocks, but much more common in asteroids.
05:50Scientists detected tiny amounts of ruthenium in the rocks,
05:53which helped them confirm that the asteroid came from outer space,
05:58not from a comet or volcanic eruptions.
06:00In 2016, scientists also published the first results from a drilling expedition into the Chicxulub crater.
06:09The team managed to drill more than 4,000 feet beneath the seafloor,
06:13getting their hands on core samples containing pieces of the original granite bedrock
06:18that was struck by the asteroid.
06:21These rocks are deeply shocked and placed out of order on top of sedimentary layers.
06:26It supports the theory that the peak ring of the Chicxulub crater formed through a dynamic collapse process.
06:34Now, about that peak ring.
06:37Scientists specifically targeted it in their exploration.
06:41The so-called ring is a circular ridge inside the crater rim.
06:45Similar peak rings can be found in the largest impact craters in our solar system,
06:50on the Moon, Mars, and Mercury.
06:53But on Earth, Chicxulub is the only well-preserved crater with a peak ring.
06:59This discovery also aligns with recent findings from NASA's lunar mission.
07:04It showed that the peak rings within the Orientaleg impact basin on the Moon
07:08had formed in an equivalent way to those at Chicxulub.
07:12The team is so eager to study the peak ring
07:15because they want to test their models of crater formation.
07:18Plus, they hope to find out whether this area could have been
07:22one of the first habitats for microbial life
07:25after the asteroid impact that wiped out dinosaurs.
07:29The peak ring formed just minutes after the impact.
07:33The deep granite bedrock, initially flowing like a liquid,
07:36rebounded into a central tower as tall as 6 miles
07:40before collapsing into the ridge we see today.
07:43This was followed by a layer of breccia.
07:46That's a jumble of rocks and impact melt.
07:49And after that, ocean tsunamis brought massive amounts of sandy sediment into the crater.
07:56Another find from 2016 was a 10-foot-long core,
08:00which revealed bits of granite and minerals from hot, fluid-filled cracks.
08:05That was a sign that they had finally entered the peak ring.
08:09Geophysicists from the University of Texas explained that they had expected the peak ring
08:14to be a large hydrothermal system, and they were drilling to confirm this.
08:19The team eventually reached deeper layers, drilling down to 4,380 feet.
08:26The team was able to collect most of the core samples they hoped to get,
08:30and the samples they got were in great shape.
08:33They also gathered lots of useful data from the early Paleocene period
08:37and completed a successful scan of the drill hole.
08:42Now, scientists from around the world will need some time
08:45to fully study and understand what these findings mean.
08:49But they're sure that this mission will help answer some big questions.
08:53Like, what exactly happened when the asteroid hit?
08:57How it wiped out the dinosaurs?
08:59And how impacts like that affect life deep underground?
09:03That's it for today!
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