Thursday, September 06, 2007

Farewell To All That


The day when it was all over for the dinosaurs.

This artist's impression is rather good at showing the physical effects of the asteroid strike in the vicinity of the present-day Caribbean, 65 million years ago. A few minutes after initial impact, ejecta has gone boyond middle earth orbit (MEO), and a devastating atmospheric shockwave has passed the 1000 km mark.

In the coming hours, rock, dust and molten slag will fall all over the planet, blacking out the sky and igniting massive fires. On the opposite side of the earth, so much debris will burn up in the atmosphere that the sky will glow like a kiln, and surface temperatures will exceed boiling point.

Read the full story at the Sydney Morning Herald.

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