Big, big news in the world of science today! Scientists are getting ready to drill into the crater from the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, Chicxulub. The project is sponsored by the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP).
The asteroid struck around 66 million years ago killing causing mass extinctions around the planet. The scientists hope that the rocks retrieved might give insight into how life came back after the dinosaurs were killed. There is also the possibility of microbial life that might have flourished in the crater.
They are drilling into a ridge in the 180 kilometer (111 mile) wide crater near the Gulf of Mexico. The vessel conducting the project will take off from Mexico at the end of the month. The will start drilling in early April. They will take samples every three kilometers as they drill.
As they get deeper in the rocks, they will look for changes in the rock types as well as micro-fossils. Micro-fossils are fossils that can only be seen under a microscope. They will show evidence of microscopic life that may have thrived in the crater after impact.
The impact was huge; it may have been about 100 times the impact of an atomic bomb in terms of force. The theory is that the asteroid’s impact caused massive tsunamis and earthquakes that killed so much of the life on the planet. The debris from it can be found all over the globe.
The crater was discovered in 1978 by geophysicists Glen Penfield and Antonia Camargo who worked with the Mexican oil company, Pernex. The discovery didn’t get much attention because they had a bunch of data, but no rock samples.
There are alternative theories around this event. This paper theorizes that the asteroid wasn’t what killed the dinosaurs. This paper argues that the asteroid struck around 300,000 years before the extinction of the dinosaurs. So, they think the asteroid isn’t what caused the extinction.
Hopefully, this drilling project will lead to new discoveries about our history and our planet itself.
Featured image by Dementia via flickr.com, available under Creative Commons 2.0 license.
