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Scientists To Drill Into 'Ground Zero' of the Impact That Killed the Dinosaurs (sciencemag.org)
sciencehabit writes: This month, a drilling platform will rise in the Gulf of Mexico, but it won't be aiming for oil. Scientists will try to sink a diamond-tipped bit into the heart of Chicxulub crater — the buried remnant of the asteroid impact 66 million years ago that killed off the dinosaurs, along with most other life on the planet. They hope that the retrieved rock cores will contain clues to how life came back in the wake of the cataclysm, and whether the crater itself could have been a home for novel microbial life. And by drilling into a circular ridge inside the 180-kilometer-wide crater rim, scientists hope to settle ideas about how such 'peak rings,' hallmarks of the largest impact craters, take shape.
Alien extemophile virus?
There might be signs of one around but after all this time, it would be a natural part of the evolutionary ecosystem (panspermia) by now. Anyways, the amount of energy involved in this blast site likely means anything hitching a ride down would have been taken out at the time of landing.
But it would be interesting to see something with raw DNA that somewhat matches strings within existing DNA. It could show a direct link to a panspermia event.