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(298) Baptistina, Extinction

Cause and Effect did in the Dinosaurs

By Joshua S. Hill

Thursday, September 6, 2007

It was some 65 million years ago that the dinosaurs witnessed their last sunrise before they were doomed to extinction. Predominant views have all but concluded that their disappearance is as a result of a massive impact upon earth of a large asteroid. Such an impact would have had devastating planet-wide consequences, reshaping the environment, and subsequently wiping out all vestiges of the dinosaurs that had ruled so dominantly.

However, according to new research done by three researchers from the US and Czech Republic, we can now say with a decent amount of certainty that the impact that did away with the dinosaurs, actually stemmed from an earlier collision between two massive rocks in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter some 100 million years earlier.

(298) Baptistina -- an asteroid from within the main asteroid belt roughly between Mars and Jupiter -- was the clue that set William Bottke, David Vokrouhlicky and David Nesvorny of Southwest Research Institute in Colorado on a mix of time travel, jigsaw making and carbon chemistry to reach their results.

The (298) Baptistina asteroid seemed to have the same orbital track as a group of other smaller rocks. As the trio turned back the clock, they found that all the rocks not only fit together, but had derived from the same massive parent asteroid, which has been some 107 kilometers across. The break up occurred -- as a best guess -- some 160 million years ago, when the asteroid was smacked by a 60 kilometer across asteroid, subsequently sending smaller yet just as deadly asteroids outwards.

It was one of these giant slivers that was sent on a beeline to impact with earth, those 65 million years ago to see an end to the dinosaurs.

Despite what movies would like you to believe though, not all the dinosaurs simply died in the impact of a massive rock crunching in to earth. The resulting dust that was thrown up in to the atmosphere, and the smoke from the inevitable planet wide fires, obscured the sunlight from the planet, and sent the climate freefalling in to an ice period that effectively did what the impact alone could not.

According to the trio, the possibility that it was not one of the Baptistina family of asteroids that collided with earth to end the dinosaurs is only 10%.

However earth was not the only planet to receive bitter treatment from the breakup of the giant asteroid. Mars, Venus and our own moon have all received impacts, the most significant believed to be a 4 kilometer Baptistina asteroid that collided with the moon around 108 million years ago to create the 85 kilometer across crater Tycho.

In fact, many of the asteroids that have made perilously close orbits past our blue planet can owe their existence to the Baptistina break up, but according to the trio, we are nearing the end of that meteor shower with only 20% now once belonging to the massive asteroid.

www.physorg.com/news108218928.html

Other articles by Joshua Hill

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