In 2016, a team of researchers, led by geologist Sean Gulick, from the University of Texas, and Joanna Morgan, from Imperial College London, drilled the Chicxulub Crater to recover the rocks that formed after the life-changing impact on Earth. Analyzes and computer simulations suggest that the asteroid pierced the earth’s crust at an inclination of up to 60 degrees, which was devastating for the planet. “From 45 to 60 degrees, the impact is very efficient at vaporizing and ejecting debris to high altitudes. If the impact occurs at shallower or much more acute angles, the amount of material that is released into the atmosphere would cause significantly less climate change” , explained Imperial College London geologist and geophysicist Gareth Collins.
Crater 30km deep
Only 13% of the planet’s surface contains the mixture capable of causing what the researchers called “the perfect storm”. When it was thrown into the air after the impact of the asteroid, it mixed with water vapor from the atmosphere and produced a “global winter”, prolonged and intensified by the angle of entry of the asteroid. The memory of this cataclysmic event can be seen on the coast of the port of Chicxulub, on the Yucatán Peninsula, in Mexico. There, half under the sea and half hidden under vegetation cover, is a 200 km wide structure. According to Collins, “it is difficult to understand the scale of the forces that produced it”. The asteroid, about 12 km in diameter, upon reaching the Earth instantly drilled a hole that, it is estimated, was about 30 km deep.
An Everest of molten rock
The fluidized rocks at the base of this crater would eventually create, in minutes, a mountain higher than Everest. This formation receded and formed two asymmetric rings, which gave clues about the angle of the asteroid’s impact. Collins used Distributed Research in Advanced Computing (or DiRAC) at the UK’s High Technology Computing Center (STFC) to simulate the asteroid’s entry into Earth’s atmosphere.
According to him, only an asteroid coming from the northeast and hitting Earth at an angle of 60 degrees would do the damage that killed three quarters of life on the planet. “Models at different impact angles, such as at 30 or 45 degrees, do not correspond to what we observed in Chicxulub. If the impact had been direct, that is, at 90 degrees, the centers would be symmetrically arranged, one on top of the other.”
Sean Gulick, co-author of the study now published in the journal Nature Communications, told the BBC that “a 60-degree angle is one of the worst, as it has the strength to vaporize large volumes of sulfur-rich rocks and eject them into the atmosphere. are critical to understanding the impact of celestial bodies on Earth. ” You may also like.
