NASA scientists plunged to the bottom of the ocean, in the heart of the world’s oldest impact crater Chicxulub, which, as suggested by most of the scientific community, left from the impact of a huge meteorite 66 million years ago destroyed the dinosaurs.
Today, scientists have published the results of the first drilling expedition to Chicxulub, an ancient impact crater on the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. It is believed that this crater was formed from the fall of a huge meteorite that led to irreversible climate change that killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.
The discovery by researchers has confirmed what granite boulders from the depths of the earth’s crust and are really on top of sedimentary rocks, this means that the hypothesis of the formation of radial craters have been finally confirmed. Let on earth, Chicxulub is the only remnants of craters of this type on the other planets of the Solar system very, very much. For example, last month NASA scientists using the suggested that the peak ring within the impact basin, Orientale on the moon is probably formed in the same way.
A team of researchers delved into the bowels of the earth to explore the epicenter of one of the most significant world disasters. To get to the heart of the crater, scientists had to go on 670 on the rock, lying beneath the seafloor, for which the team drew on the work of the drilling platform. Samples at this depth contain fragments of those indigenous granite rocks, which have burst out of the Earth from the impact of a huge asteroid. Before you dive into the deep sea, they have tested the technology of drilling on land. But this is the first case when the researchers immersed inside the so-called “Queen of the ring” — radial stone ridge inside the impact crater. Similar craters have been discovered on the moon, Mars and even mercury, but on Earth, such studies are carried out for the first time.
A careful study of the peak ring of rocks will enable scientists to test a model of the crater formation and to determine whether it was one of the first after hitting appeared microscopic fauna. The very peak ring is formed in only a few minutes. Immediately after impact, the molten mantle rises to a height of about 10 km, and then crashing down, forming the same radial crest. Something similar you can see, if you throw in the water large rock. After that the rock cools and forms a peak ring, made from pieces of root breed. And in subsequent hours ocean tsunami brings in a huge crater mass of the sand bottom, followed by limestone deposition, which lasts millions of years.
