Long before the first species of humans began to roam across the Earth’s surface, our planet was dominated by other types of creatures. The dinosaurs lived for millions of years, and even though they were much bigger and imposing than humans, they couldn’t invent the internet or go to the Moon. The dinosaurs were scattered across the Earth’s surface in about 700 species, but they all had to face their impending doom when a huge asteroid paid Earth a devastating visit.
The asteroid hit today’s Yucatan peninsula from Mexico about 66 million years ago. The collision left behind a 110-mile wide hole known as the Chicxulub Crater, huge amounts of ashes and dust that blocked the sunlight for hundreds of years, and many dinosaur corpses.
The collision had the strength of 10 billion atomic bombs like the one landed in Hiroshima
A team of researchers from the Imperial College in London had been using a supercomputer to simulate the event that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. More precisely, they had been using high-performance computing (HPC) facilities that were provided by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. The scientists involved mainly focused their attention on establishing a precise impact angle and trajectory. Along with 3D simulations for impact angles and speeds, the scientists concluded that the impact had an angle of about 60 degrees. Such a collision had the cataclysmic strength of about ten billion atomic bombs like the one threw by the Americans in Hiroshima in WWII.
While billions of tonnes of sulfur blocked the sunlight, what was next for the poor dinosaurs was truly Hell on Earth: firestorms, tsunamis, earthquakes, and other natural disasters.
While we may consider ourselves lucky that such an event didn’t repeat itself, many scientists are worried that it’s only a matter of time until ‘Global Killer 2.0’ comes to visit us without any remorse or apologies. But hopefully, technology will be advanced enough in order to allow us to deal with such a dangerous space rock.
