Slashdot Mirror
Dinosaurs Died Within Hours of Asteroid Impact, says New Study
colonist writes "SPACE.com reports that most dinosaurs were incinerated within hours by the 'heat pulse' of an asteroid impact 65 million years ago. The study 'Survival in the first hours of the Cenozoic' presents a scenario where the only survivors were underground or were underwater in swamps or oceans. All unprotected creatures were 'baked by the equivalent of a global oven set on broil.'"
Everything in science is a theory. The "asteroid impact" idea has a lot to back it up however since there are some realy big craters on this ball of mud we call home. Check out the 170 km one at the Yucatan Peninsula.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Taken from: Wikipedia article on theory:
So, proven for 99.9999% theory of gravity is still a theory.
When in doubt, go to the library. - Ron Weasley in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
The majority of the dinosaurs were instantly fried, like in a nuke blast that wrapped around the globe. I haven't seen a movie lately, that had those kind of cool FX. How about you?
Think about to all the meteor's crashing into earth movies there are, now think about all the FX. Nothing as impressive as ALL THE DINOSAURS getting fried as a heat wave travelled around the globe.
Why can't Hollywood just pay attention to history and science. It's way cooler than the drek they come up with.
But seriously folks, just think of all the Brontoburgers. I bet Fred and Barney boiled off the surface still salivating at the endless plains of dino ribs.
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
So many things survived from that time other than the Dinosaurs. Large trees, many forms of reptiles and mammals that are virtually the same (based on fossil records) to this day.
Not too mention that the fossil records for Dinosaurs don't stop on 1 day.
It seems that the Doomsday theory gets more headlines than other theories suggesting, disease and climate change (a much slower, more boring process) were the cause. Even though the damage of a meteor strike would have been far more devastating and left the planet set back near square one as far as life.
If the earth was baked and then the sun was blocked by smoke and ash, how come so much survived?
*Note IANAS (I Am Not A Scientist), just wondering.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
Is how they ever managed to live in the first place. The strength of muscles is a function of the area of their cross-section. It increases only roughly at a rate of the square of its size. Weight goes up as a cube of its size. Things get heavier much faster than they get stronger.
And just how much stronger could dino muscles have been than modern mammalian muscle? 140% stronger, 170%? That's really stretching it, and it still isn't nearly enough.
Land animals probably can't be much bigger than an elephant.
And no, I'm not a christian scientist. I don't think it's a conspiract, the bones are there, and they show how big the things must have been. I'd just like answers (prefereably those that don't have anything to do with superstitious bible crap).
Too bad the vastly hyper-intelligent dinosaur civilization's NASA counterpart didn't have a Near-Earth Object Program.
What good would it of done, if they couldn't do anything about it? If we found a dinosaur-killer heading our way, could we stop it?
Personally, I'd like for these theories to go through a bit more critical review before they're broadcast to the public. This smacks as sensationalism more than science.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Surprising as it may sound, this is NOT enough to 'destroy' the world.
You're assuming that 9600 warheads detonated together would 'only' amount to 9600 times the results of one warhead detonation. This is by no means a widely accpeted view. It's much more likely that there is a "tipping point" where the damage from a nuclear exchange cascades into a catastrophe for the species (us).
In any event, I prefer not to prove it conclusively, Dr. Strangelove.
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
I don't know about the birds, but this is hardly a fatal objection. Small animals can find many hiding places unavailable to larger ones. I don't think we need be too surprised if a number of smaller dinosaur species survived.
There were no polar ice caps during the Mesozoic.
I'd be shocked to discover that space.com's servers were ever overloaded by /. If you don't want to read the article, then say so. (If you're referring to the original paper, you can only get the abstract without a paid subscription anyway.)
And the brethren went away edified.
Well accepted doesn't make it correct. It's still a theory, and one (I might add) that cannot be proven, unlike a few others you've quoted.
Unlike in some circles, well accepted means no has yet found evidence against it in science. Not, we all beleive it to be true. When someone has evidence against it, it becoem a disproved theory is the evidence is strong enough. However the theory of evolution has had no credible evidence against it, neither has gravity, or thermodynamics. Only small addendums.
I have faith in Christ. I need not refute scientific evidence to support my faith. God is wonderfull, sometime msyterious, and I needn't beleive in fairies ot beleive in God. Why should I beleive in creationist theories when the evolution theory fits my faith just fine.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Gas Mark is just a heat setting for gas ovens / hobs. Basically a measure of the rate of gas being burnt as far as I am aware. It is an older measurement really, before reliable temperature probes - controlling gas input in a recipe is easier than measuring temperature on those old gas ovens.
Gas Mark 9 for example was extremely hot, around 250 degrees C or more. Gas Mark 1 would be "warm up some buns" or something.
Alright, so what do I need to survive the next major asteroid impact of this magnatude? It sounds like most buildings won't be sufficient protection.
Unless you are on the wrong side of the planet (in which case you are f*cked anyway), your building should be the least of your worries.
Global food production will probably take a very deep dive as large areas get drenched/ baked and exposed to a bunch of other nastiness. Maybe the sky will go dark for some days or years also.
We humans being what we are (animals with a strong urge to survive) one can probably expect violence and war for remaining food, and lots of refugees as some parts suck worse than others.
Maybe you should look for a place far inland, a descent house, keep some water and purification equipment, plenty of food, and I'm sad to say, weapons.
Tor
I read the article
Another wild hypothesis without a shred of verifyable evidence.
I couldn't read it THIS time (because the server is slashdotted). But I did read it - or another describing the same theory - when it first became newsworthy some years ago.
There's plenty of evidence for it.
First off, the prediction comes straight out of physical modeling of what happens when a big asteroid hits:
- A bunch of rocks are kicked every which way.
- If the asteroid is big enough a LOT of them go into space.
- A fraction of them have enough energy to get above the atmosphere but not achieve escape velocity.
Once you realize those three things, it's straightforward for a physicist to calculate, for various size impacts on various sites (land, shallow ocean, deep ocean), how MUCH mass goes up, how MUCH of it comes back down, WHERE it comes down, HOW FAST it comes down, and what the results are.
So they calculated that. And came to the conclusion that for impacts of a certain range of sizes the result would be several hours of a rain of sand, all over the Earth, at speeds of up to several miles per second (plus rains of rocks of varying density at different distances from the crater and its antipode). The sky becomes essentially solid meteor trails for hours.
And those are HOT! Hot enough to dry out most of the plants and set them afire. Hot enough to kill any animal life on the surface that can't get underground or under water right away and then stay there for hours.
So if the sky turned into a broiler oven over the whole Earth for several hours all at once, what does this predict? One hemisphere is day and the burrowing nocturnals survive, the other is night and the burrowing diurnals survive. (And in particular regions it got REALLY hot, or REALLY shocked by the primary impact or the secondary rain of rocks, and NOTHING survived).
So they looked at the fossil record and that's what they found. Prediction confirmed - very good evidence for the model. Further, they could now tell WHAT TIME OF DAY the impact occurred and roughly where.
Then they looked in the area where this model predicted the impact should have been and FOUND A CRATER of the correct size (along with plenty of other evidence that this PARTICULAR crater's impact coincided with the extinction event).
Looks solid to me. Unless something new comes up I consider the puzzle of the extinction events solved.
The only question I have is: Why is this news NOW?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The really large asteroids can kick up up billions of tons of sulfur and other materials into the atmosphere. This can cause prolonged darkness for about half a year after the collision. The resulting darkness cause global temperatures to plunge near freezing. The COLD not the HEAT could result in large scale extinctions, including the dinosaurs
According to the abstract fires would have begun wherever there was available fuel. Wouldn't there be a world-wide charcoal layer to go along with the Iridium layer if that were true?