This story took place on Earth about 66 million years ago. At that time, the " dinosaur age " had lasted about 165 million years. The earth was warm and comfortable, and most of the land was lush and green, with trees, flowers, and chiropteran plants that were unimaginable in this era. It was covered in dinosaurs and home to trillions of animals.
Dinosaurs lived all over the world, and they came in all kinds of shapes, big and small. The earth is full of life, not only the large dinosaurs 12 to 19 meters long, the Titanosaurus and the familiar tyrannosaurus from "Jurassic Park", but also the largest of the strongosaurids, the dinosaurs . edmont toron .
However, the good times for these dinosaurs came to an abrupt end one day about 66 million years ago. The sign of the end is an ominous glow in the sky that grows in brightness every day.
The light was temporarily hidden in the shadows of the earth during the night and disappeared, but reappeared in the sky the next morning. At the same time, it became the same size as the sun and flew towards the Yucatan peninsula , getting bigger every moment.
This light is an asteroid that is speculated to have caused the mass extinction of the dinosaurs. The asteroid entered the atmosphere at 60 times the speed of sound and crashed into the Earth in just two seconds.
The estimated diameter of this asteroid is about 10 kilometers. 10 kilometers is higher than the height of Mount Everest, the highest peak in the world. Even modern airliners would have trouble flying by the asteroid.
This asteroid collision essentially ended the age of the dinosaurs. Next, every moment of what happened on the day of the asteroid collision is explained individually.
First, it was thought that the asteroid fell into the sea in the Yucatan Peninsula and hit the bedrock on the ocean floor. When an asteroid of this size collides, energy equivalent to billions of tons of nuclear weapons is released into the surroundings, and the asteroid itself vaporizes. The energy emitted flashed into the sky, and an eerie white sphere expanded over the Gulf of Mexico.
The white sphere continues to expand, and the bedrock melts into plasma at a temperature of tens of thousands of degrees. The thermal radiation emitted by the explosion travels at the speed of light, burning everything within a radius of about 1,500 kilometers from the impact point.
In addition, the energy of the collision strongly pushed out the earth's crust, forming a huge crater with a depth of 25 kilometers and a width of 100 kilometers. The sea is pushed back hundreds of kilometers, like a child jumping into a puddle. Immediately afterwards, the earth's crust rotated, and it is thought that a huge mountain with a height of 10 kilometers was temporarily formed at the impact site instead of a crater.
Meanwhile, debris with a mass 60 times the size of the original asteroid is scattered in outer space.
The impact of this collision spread to all regions of the world in just a few minutes. Causing an earthquake of about magnitude 11, the impact is said to have caused volcanic eruptions in the Indian subcontinent that lasted for nearly 30,000 years.
Returning to the point of collision, the explosion violently collided with the atmosphere, resulting in the formation of a shock wave with a speed of up to 1,000 kilometers per hour. Then, all materials including soil, plants and animals from the surrounding area were crushed and scattered to areas thousands of kilometers away.
Subsequently, the temporarily formed peak with a height of 10 kilometers retracted, and the impact at that time caused a 1,000-meter-high tsunami.
Tsunamis were released in all directions from the point of impact, inundating life that lived on the surrounding continental coastlines. The tsunami still maintained a height of about 100 meters 15 hours after it occurred.
Much of the debris released during this period remained in Earth's orbit for thousands of years, and some of it is thought to have collided with the Moon and Mars.
However, the most common is "the fragments return to Earth". Because this debris is launched into the air at high speed, it has reached a high temperature of hundreds of degrees. It is said that due to the large number of debris, the temperature is so high that it even affects the temperature of the atmosphere itself.
There are various theories as to "How much does the temperature rise due to debris?" but the two main theories are "The temperature rises to a few hundred degrees in a few minutes" and "The temperature rises to a few thousand degrees in a minute" . ..In other words, in every theory, the point "it has reached the heat inside an industrial oven" is certainly worth considering.
How much of an impact this rise in temperature would have on the crater is debatable, but creatures unable to dive into the soil or escape into caves would not only be burned to death in an instant, but would also be burned to death by falling debris and could even cause a scene. Fire. There is a theory that massive wildfires broke out across the world, some of which lasted for months, and as a result, the planet turned into a burning inferno.
Vaporized mantle plumes reach the atmosphere and spread across the globe. In addition, soot from large-scale wildfires and aerosols produced during collisions were added, blocking sunlight.
Just like that, the earth sank into darkness, and the earth was filled with burning flames. Plants that miraculously survived in this way also died from lack of sunlight.
Within a few days, temperatures dropped to 25 degrees Celsius and the lack of sunlight killed 90% of ocean plankton. Since plankton is the lowest level organism in the marine food chain, the loss of plankton will eventually lead to the death of large marine reptiles and ammonites.
Ash, mud and sand, dead plants, etc. cover the earth's surface, darkening the sky and lowering the temperature. In such an environment, fungi thrive.
Winters with cold temperatures lasted for decades, and it is believed that 75% of the species on Earth have become extinct by then.
It's all about what happened "the day the age of the dinosaurs ended".
However, some creatures survived. Birds are the direct descendants of dinosaurs, and mammals will eventually become the dominant species on Earth.
If it weren’t for the asteroid that ended the age of the dinosaurs, it’s hard to imagine what the Earth would look like today. If the dinosaurs that dominated the Earth hadn't suddenly gone extinct, humans might not even have had the chance to flourish as they did now. Humans are only about 200,000 years old, which is about 0.1% older than the age of dinosaurs, which were about 165 million years old.
It can be said that human beings have developed at an alarming rate during this period of only 0.1%. However, our future remains uncertain, and if we don't choose our future carefully, it could be extinct in an instant like the dinosaurs. Perhaps the difference between us and the dinosaurs is whether we realize that the future is uncertain.
