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Giant tsunami from dino-killing asteroid impact revealed in fossilized ripples
- pmoriarty 5y agoFor a stunning simulation of what a large asteroid impact might look like, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PENT_hnyO-o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PENT_hnyO-o
- fabiospampinato 5y agoI enjoyed the video, although they say multiple times that an impact like that would kill every living thing, but we now that some living things survived, so I don't know how accurate that actually was. Edit: They are using a much larger asteroid in their simulation, makes sense.
- parhamn 5y agoHeres a Kurzgesagt video with a few more details and a bit less dramatic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFCbJmgeHmA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFCbJmgeHmA
- lamontcg 5y agoThose impacts in the early evolution of the Earth sterilized everything, life had to start over again from zero once the surface cooled. Actually might be wrong about that: "Three-dimensional computer models developed in May 2009 by a team at the University of Colorado at Boulder postulate that much of Earth's crust, and the microbes living in it, could have survived the bombardment. Their models suggest that although the surface of the Earth would have been sterilized, hydrothermal vents below the Earth's surface could have incubated life by providing a sanctuary for heat-loving microbes." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Heavy_Bombardment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Heavy_Bombardment Crazy. But that's only the most basic of microbes that would survive something like that.
- SllX 5y agoHere’s a version with just the impact and some music to enjoy it with. Used to leave this video running on various Macintoshes at the Apple Store on my way out. https://youtu.be/bU1QPtOZQZU https://youtu.be/bU1QPtOZQZU
- invisiblerobot 5y agoAt least the asteroid destroyed that horrible song
- serf 5y agobut thankfully the doric (?) columns and big ben shrugged it off alright, just a bit warmer than usual.
- phist_mcgee 5y agoUnderrated comment
- talentedcoin 5y agoWhat?? That’s Pink Floyd’s “Great Gig In The Sky”! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gig_in_the_Sky https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gig_in_the_Sky I always thought the story was that Roger Waters asked the vocalist to think about death, but perhaps that’s apocryphal. At the very least it’s appropriate for this video!
- invisiblerobot 5y agoHilarious. Had I known that I wouldn't have commented like the puppet I am. I remember when the Killers song Somebody Told Me was all over the radio. I HATED that f'ing song. But I came to love the killers as a side note. When I found out later that was their song I couldnt help liking it more and myself less.
- talentedcoin 5y agoLol so it goes right? There was a time when I didn’t even like Pink Floyd myself, and that just makes me smile now :) To improve is to change . . .
- tunnuz 5y agoI hope it can hug my daughter when this happens.
- robotresearcher 5y agoYou wouldn't rather hug her yourself?
- yongjik 5y agoAww all the poor asteroid wanted was a hug.
- watertom 5y agoand the only way global warming will get derailed, well, there are also super volcanoes....
- holler 5y agoThat video creeped me out! I mean, we'd be screwed. Luckily there are no known astroids, let alone moon-sized ones, heading towards Earth that we know of. But if we discovered one, even with ample lead time, what could we do?
- Retric 5y agoDepends on the lead time. We have mapped out most possible asteroids for 100 years which presents something of a reasonable upper limit on lead time. Deflecting a 500 mile wide asteroid ~10,000 miles on those timescales might be vaguely possible. Trying to abandon earth or build some kind of ultra deep bunkers given 100 years seems doomed to fail, but it’s not like a lot of other options exist.
- caf 5y agoDon't read about Gamma Ray Bursts, then...
- gus_massa 5y agoNote that this is a simulation of an asteroid with a diameter of 500 km. The asteroid that killed the (big) dinosaurs had only 10 km. That's 50^3 times smaller.
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoThat's more like "small planet" or "very respectable moon" than an asteroid.
- asah 5y ago"it is thought that this happened 6 times in earth's history... all living creatures were wiped out... only to begin again..." interesting. If true, doesn't this have implications for Sagan's Equation? i.e. if life is wiped out and it (somehow) starts again, that implies that any planet like Earth will develop complex life forms given enough time? (or am I missing something...)
- MarcScott 5y agoI would have thought that the estimated 6 impacts, if they were on this scale, all occurred before life began evolving on Earth. Such impacts apparently formed the Earth-Moon system and the oceans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_event#Earth_impacts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_event#Earth_impacts
- CalChris 5y agoWhy is the asteroid molten?
- dtgriscom 5y agoI have to ask: why is the astroid glowing red through various cracks, other than to make it look more scary?
- dredmorbius 5y agoI'm inclined to think that's artistic embellishment. There might be some disruption of the asteroid during its final approach due to tidal forces from the Earth. Whether or not that would result in significant heating of the asteroid's interior is another question. Early in the history of the solar system, it's possible that many bodies were still hot from latent heat of formation (effectively: the conversion of gravitational potential energy to heat, plus whatever contribution comes from radioactive materials in the body). Note that the heat of Earth's interior is just this, still leaking slowly into space after 4.5 billion years. Large objects take time to cool, and the vacuum of space eliminates conductive and convective cooling, leaving only blackbody radiation. Thermal management is a major issue for satellites and space probes, particularly if they have a significant energy demand.
- MAGZine 5y agoOld Discovery Channel was a national treasure. Even if they juiced the limits of science for television, it was much better/curiosity inspiring than the reality television rabble they put on today. The producers and sponsors of discovery channel 90s-00s should be immensely proud of themselves.
- pixiemaster 5y agoRIP Dinosaurs. Welcome fuel!
- eloff 5y agoBuried hydrocarbons are not really dinosaurs. They're prehistoric plant and microscopic life for the most part. Algae, plankton, etc. I believe a lot of coal harkens back to the great forests of the carboniferous (sp?) Period, which is special because it took millions of years for life to learn how to digest the cellulose in trees. So you can imagine millions of years of buried forests that could burn, but not decompose. Forest fires in those days must have been truly terrifying. That was a one off event in Earth's history, and has not been repeated. I believe it's partially responsible for why modern CO2 levels are much lower than historical levels. It was a massive natural carbon sequestration program. At least until us humans in our short sightedness dig it up and burn it.
- btilly 5y agoThe Carboniferous was roughly 60 million years long. And oxygen levels were much higher than today. This showed up in large insects. For example they had dragonflies over 2 feet wide - that's over 6x as large as the largest today.
- klyrs 5y agoMaybe I'm reading too far into this, but are you suggesting that higher oxygen concentration is responsible for larger insects? If true, I'd love to understand why
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- morpheos137 5y agoMore oxygen works better with less efficient breathing systems.
- 5y ago
- willmadden 5y agoI don't think we should assume it was an asteroid. It could have been a magnetic pole reversal and shift in the earth's rotation.
- Voloskaya 5y agoHow would that create a mega tsunami exactly?
- GravitasFailure 5y agoA magnetic pole reversal wouldn't do it, but a sufficiently large change in the rotation would. Of course, to get such a big shift would take an asteroid hitting us...
- shrubble 5y agoSoil liquefaction on a grand scale, is the theory that I have heard.
- willmadden 5y agoHere is the "crackpot theory" that will earn me many downvotes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataclysmic_pole_shift_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataclysmic_pole_shift_hypothe... There is a heaping pile of physical evidence that the earth's rotation changed at the same time the sun had an ELE scale micronova as recently as 12,000 years ago. The theory is that, exactly like solar maxima and minima are on a predictable cycle, these micronovas are as well, about every 12,000 years. We found flash frozen waves, instantly frozen animals, and all other manner of things that can only be caused by a sudden drop in the earth's temperature. The theory is that the earth and sun's magnetic fields are interlinked (they are), and pole reversals in the earth are tied to the sun. The sun micronovas at the same time, which causes half the earth to freeze and the other half to cook. At the same time, the earth's rotation flips, causing massive tsunami's. There's evidence of the massive tsunamis if you look at the continental shelves on google earth. There are fission tracks on the moon and on earth that prove a solar event, although that information is closely guarded by NASA. It's a fun theory. I don't rule it out at all. Check out suspicious0bservers.org and select videos from the Diehold Foundation (skip the religious videos).
- c7DJTLrn 5y agoI hope when the next Chicxulub-scale asteroid approaches Earth that humanity will be ready to tackle it. If that's even possible. Armageddon style?
- lamontcg 5y agoProbably just repeatedly smack rockets into it, not very Armageddon style. https://futurism.com/the-byte/smash-satellites-killer-asteroid https://futurism.com/the-byte/smash-satellites-killer-astero...
- eloff 5y agoIf you detect it far enough away you can just spray paint it. Change the albedo on one side and let the solar radiation pressure push it away enough that it misses by a safe margin.
- imglorp 5y agoAfter last few years, between our handling of the epidemic, global politics, resource management, warming, and the near impossibility of ever obtaining consensus about any given fact, I'm kinda worried. Some would deny an asteroid was coming, clinging to their profits or parties or deities by FUDing the astronomers and engineers. Some would say let's put all all our effort to get some people off planet, at least into long term orbit (Stephenson's Seveneves), to save the gene pools. Begin debating who goes. Some would say don't waste any resources on the orbit plan: put everything we have into deflecting the asteroid so it misses Earth altogether. We should start now, today, learning how to build a planetary consensus about everyday things before we're faced with an urgent extinctor. We already ushered in the long term one.
- koheripbal 5y agoDemocracy is the empowerment of humanity's average intelligence.
- Gibbon1 5y agoAt this point I'd believe faced with an asteroid impact the US would try and nudge it to hit China. Fuck it up due to a english to metric conversion and do self own.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Rd6n6 5y agoHow did burrowing mammals fare so well after such an incident? Wouldn’t their holes be flooded?
- danparsonson 5y agoThe wave didn't cover the entire world
- duemti 5y agoAlso may prove that earth was covered with water sometime ago, like Bible and many other legends around the world say.