Friday December 24, 2021 01:30 AM
According to the British Daily Mail, a team from the California Academy of Sciences was moving at a speed of 27,000 miles per hour when the 7.5-mile-wide asteroid now collided in the Gulf of Mexico.
The asteroid impact eventually led to the extinction of 75% of all life on Earth, and scientists have long been studying the aftermath of this collision.
The U.S. team found that clouds of ash and soot particles circulating in the atmosphere were the main cause of the catastrophe, and that these clouds could last for up to two years and make it difficult for anything to grow or survive, leaving much of the Earth in the dark.
Lives in the area around the impact were killed immediately, but much damage was done in the years following the impact.
These include tidal waves, floods and massive environmental changes, the emission of particles into the atmosphere and their global spread.
Researchers say that when the earth is dark, the photosynthesis that plants use to grow is inactive.
In an interview with LiveScience, the team explained that this could lead to the collapse of the ecosystem and that the decline of photosynthesis would continue for decades, even after the return of sunlight.
This atmospheric darkness caused the impact of crushed rock and sulfuric acid to form clouds in the sky, lowering global temperatures and creating acid rain, which led to wildfires.
The team explored the impact of this long dark period by reconstructing the ecological communities that existed when the asteroid struck, selecting 300 species from the fossil record known as the Hell Creek Formation, which is made up of shale and sandstone. North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming and Montana.
Create simulations that reveal communities for periods of darkness ranging from 100 to 700 days, and see which period of darkness will lead to a state of extinction among vertebrate species.
Source: Technology: Study: A deadly asteroid caused two years of darkness on Earth
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