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Chicxulub Impact Might Have Spread Life-Bearing Rocks Through the Solar System

KentuckyFC writes "Some 65 million years ago, an asteroid the size of a small city hit the Yucatan Peninsula in what is now Mexico, devastating Earth and triggering the sequence of events that wiped out the dinosaurs. This impact ejected 70 billion kg of Earth rock into space. To carry life around the Solar System, astrobiologists say these rocks must have stayed cool, less than 100 degrees C, and must also be big, more than 3 metres in diameter to protect organisms from radiation in space. Now they have calculated that 20,000 kilograms of this Earth ejecta must have reached Europa, including at least one or two potentially life-bearing rocks. And they say similar amounts must have reached other water-rich moons such as Callisto and Titan. Their conclusion is that if we find life on the moons around Saturn and Jupiter, it could well date from the time of the dinosaurs (or indeed from other similar impacts)."

2 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. Re:And Vise-Versa by SJHillman · · Score: 5, Funny

    There are those who believe...that life out there began here, far across the Solar System...with tribes of dinosaurs...who may have been the forefathers of the Europans...or the Callistians...or the Titans...

    Some believe that there may yet be descendants of microbes...who even now fight to survive—somewhere beyond the heavens!

  2. seems extremely unlikely by epyT-R · · Score: 5, Interesting

    At the point of impact, aren't we're talking millions of degrees of heat energy? Wouldn't this sterilize anything ejected from the planet?. This whole premise sounds more like a bad scifi movie than a real hypothesis.