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About 65 million years ago, the age of the dinosaurs came to a dramatic end when an asteroid or comet six miles across brutal on what today is the Yucatan Peninsula. The immediate and long-term furnishings of that impact changed the nature of life on Earth, wiping out dinosaurs and giving our mammalian ancestors a hazard to accept over. The crater left by that impact, known every bit Chicxulub, is remarkably well-preserved, giving scientists a take a chance to test ideas about how these structures form. A new study of the Chicxulub crater reveals how fluid rock leaves its mark post-obit an impact.

People accept long known that touch on craters similar those visible around Earth and on the surface of the moon often take a ring of craggy hills within the rim known every bit the "peak band." The mechanism that causes the peak band has been debated for decades, but the leading theory has been that rock can flow like a liquid immediately following an impact. Rock essentially splashes up like h2o when you drib something into it. In rocks, information technology'southward chosen acoustic fluidization.

The touch 65 meg years ago caused widespread structural changes in the region — that's why there are so many sinkholes or "cenotes" on the Yucatan. To test acoustic fluidization theory, researchers took cadre samples from the Chicxulub crater, the eye of which lies just off the coast of the Yucatan. Still, information technology's under half a mile of rock. Digging downward to become samples of the crater immune the team to build the most accurate model to appointment of how the terrain changed in the moments later touch.

Commencement, the enormous energy of the impact would accept created a bowl-shaped opening threescore miles across and nearly 20 miles deep. The sides would have lost their battle with gravity almost immediately, sinking inward and exploding upward in the centre to reach a higher distance than the Himalayas. As the material collapses, you're left with a height ring between the center and the rim of the crater. When it settles, Chicxulub was 115 miles beyond.

The just way this could work is if rock at the touch site was pulverized until information technology could move similar a fluid. Indeed, that's what the core samples suggested. Most of the textile had been fragmented on the millimeter calibration. It was non melted, but broken by vast vibrational forces from the touch. Eventually, the rocks settle and regain rigidity to course the characteristic crater structure.

Scientists hope that fully agreement craters on Earth will help us brand predictions nearly craters on other planets. World's craters are subject to erosion, simply they're much easier to admission than craters on the moon or Mars.

Now read: Flyby Reveals Phaethon, Our Solar System's Weirdest Asteroid-Comet Hybrid, Interstellar Visitor 'Oumuamua Came From 1 of four Nearby Stars, and Chinese Scientists Want to Capture a Pocket-size Asteroid and Land it on Globe