Scientists: Asteroid Strike Creates Life, Will Take It
By JIM PURCELL
About 65 or 66 million years ago, depending upon whom is asked, the earth experienced the impact of a giant asteroid, so powerful that all life was extinguished. This included the mammoth dinosaurs that inhabited every area of the world. Leading scientists, such as Dr. Stephen Hawking, have expressed their concern about the possibility that such an event could happen again.
The asteroid tore open a 60-mile wide hole. Rock from miles beneath the earth's surface hurtled upward to twice the height of Mount Everest, and then landed and created the great mountain ranges of the new world created in the wake of the asteroid strike.
The geography of the entire world changed in the space of no more than 10 minutes, according to Sean Gulick, a geophysicist at the University of Texas in Austin. Notably, Prof. Gulick assisted a team of researchers drill for geological samples of the mountain region near the Chicxulub crater, which is located off the coast of Mexico. His studies took place during 2016, so the findings are very recent.
Prof. Gulick said that the findings of the research were undeniable: "So things collapse in from the sides, fairly shallow, and in that model this ring of peaks (in the Chicxulub mountain region) were created by shallow material kind of moving toward the center and being uplifted."
Prof. Gulick compared the process to a rock being thrown in a pond; even though rock behaved like a liquid during the strike, it remained a solid.
However, pink granite that emerged from six miles beneath the earth's surface gives scientists a hint about how life was restored to the world in the wake of this cataclysm. Prof. Gulick and his fellow researchers believe the fluid-like impact is probably the best way to think about such asteroid strikes. In conclusion, he stated that, if mankind is seeking the possibility of life on other planets, one of the best places to start would be craters left by asteroid strikes.
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