Slashdot Mirror
Hole in Asteroid Belt Reveals Extinction Asteroid
eldavojohn writes "Further evidence for the asteroid mass extinction theory has been discovered as a break in the main asteroid belt of our solar system. From the article, "A joint U.S.-Czech team from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and Charles University in Prague suggests that the parent object of asteroid (298) Baptistina disrupted when it was hit by another large asteroid, creating numerous large fragments that would later create the Chicxulub crater on the Yucatan Peninsula as well as the prominent Tycho crater found on the Moon.""
There's a brick missing from out back. Thats the brick that started global warming.
The idea is that these collisions increase the number of asteroids that cross our orbit and can therefore have a chance of hitting us. It takes a while though. We don't really care about something that might hit us 160 million years from now. We care about something that might hit us say, this century. So we look at the ones that are already whizzing around in our neighborhood.
Speculation, perhaps, though exactly pure. They've got some data to back up their claims.
From the article: "Studies of sediment samples and a meteorite from this time period indicate that the Chicxulub impactor had a carbonaceous chondrite composition much like the well-known primitive meteorite Murchison. This composition is enough to rule out many potential impactors but not those from the Baptistina family. Using this information in their simulations, the team found a 90 percent probability that the object that formed the Chicxulub crater was a refugee from the Baptistina family. " (emphasis added)
They tested the orbits and chemical compositions of a bunch of NEO's. The orbits fit this group, and the chemical composition fit the Yucatan crater.