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New NASA Maps Show A Bad Day On Earth

Posted by timothy on from the that-is-a-bad-day dept.

Stephen Lau writes "ScienceDaily has an article talking about the new NASA maps that reveal the geography of the North American continent in amazing detail. One of the maps provides strong evidence of a 112 mile wide, 3000 foot deep impact crater which they believe was the comet/asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs and more than 70% of Earth's living species 65 million years ago."

4 of 392 comments (clear)

  1. Dupe by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    From the 7th - NASA Releases New Topographic Map of North America

  2. no nuclear winter by wwest4 · · Score: 5, Informative
    The most important finding as a result of new imaging is that the mass extiction may have been caused by sulfur fumes, and fires started by hot falling debris. Before they thought photosynthesis was halted by solar obstruction from the dust cloud.


    Which means that a similarly-sized asteroid may be slightly less apocalyptic than thought. Sort of comforting, though I wonder how we'd deal with global forest fires when we can't even handle a relatively small number now.

  3. Re:Man, every asteroid kills the poor dinosaurs by $$$$$exyGal · · Score: 5, Informative
    Quote from the article:

    ... the flat limestone plateau of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula

    In this particular case, though, this research is verifying a long held belief that a giant asteroid/comet hit the Yucatan Peninsula. This is not news of a new asteroid.

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  4. Re:Alternate image by mithras+the+prophet · · Score: 5, Informative

    Since this is a dupe from last week, I had already downloaded the TIFF of the North America image, and converted it to a 1600x1200 JPEG.

    You can grab it here.

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