Sudden Impact: The Day the Sky Fell In
On a clear day 66 million years ago, the sky abruptly caved in and 75% of all life became extinct.
SIXTY-SIX MILLION years ago, in one cataclysmic flash, the Earth changed forever. Without warning, a mountain-sized rock pierced through the 480 km of the atmosphere in an instant, and slammed into the deep bedrock of a shallow sea.
When it struck the ground, the energy released was unimaginable — more than 10,000 times the explosive power of all the world’s nuclear weapons igniting in one place, and at one time. A blistering blastwave of all-consuming fire raced through the air for thousands of kilometres, roasting any living thing in its path.
The shockwave shook the planet like a bell, triggering tsunamis, landslides and volcanic eruptions the world over. The sky fell dark and temperatures dropped. In the dark and desperate years that followed, three-quarters of all the species on Earth became extinct. Among them, the dinosaurs, magnificent creatures that had ruled the planet for 160 million years.
The enormous asteroid that hit the Earth on that fateful day was a monster: between 11 and 81 km in diameter. As it punched through the sky over what is today the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, it was travelling at tens of kilometres per second.
