Dino Doomsday Asteroid Baked Earth For 100,000 Years

A 9-mile-wide asteroid smashed into a shallow sea off Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago. Some 75 percent of life on Earth died in the aftermath (Credit: Mark Garlick) Some 66 million years ago, a city-sized asteroid set fire to the planet and began what was likely the worst day in history. Decades of research have helped illuminate the actual impact. But scientists are still figuring out what happened over the years that followed. Based on studies of the impact site, it’s likely that sulfur vaporized from the crater would have choked our atmosphere and blocked the sun for years or decades. So Earth likely cooled into a kind of nuclear winter, with land temps plummeting as much as 28 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit). And after that debris settled, the lingering carbon dioxide probably pushed our planet into an epic period of global warming. But most of the ...