The asteroid that struck Earth and caused the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs caused an earthquake that shook the planet for weeks or even months, according to new research.
A 6-mile-wide (10-kilometre) space rock called the Chicxulub Impactor collided with Earth off the coast of the Gulf of Mexico regarding 66 million years ago. species on Earth and left their mark scattered throughout the geological record, according to the site space.
A new study reports that the impact also caused a “megaquake” that released 10^23-magnitude energy – regarding 50,000 times more energy than the 9.1-magnitude earthquake that struck Indonesia’s Sumatra in 2004.
Hermann Bermudez, a geologist at Montclair State University in New Jersey, assessed the magnitude of the earthquake caused by the Chicxulub effect by visiting mass extinction prominences. K-Pg Located in Texas, Alabama and Mississippi.
He also combined his previous research related to the effects of the asteroid impact with Colombia and Mexico, on the island of Gorgonilla, Colombia, regarding 3,000 kilometers from the Chicxulub impact site, where the geologist found layers of sediment containing deposits of balls.
The globules are small glass beads no larger than a grain of sand (regarding 1 millimeter), which are formed when heat and pressure from a tremendous effect that melts a substance from the earth’s crust and takes it out into the atmosphere, where it cools into glass beads and then returns to the earth, Bermudez was found in the same The deposits are more crust-like tactics and microtactics, which also represent material ejected into the atmosphere during an asteroid impact.
Balls along the coast of Gorgonella Island revealed what happened on the sea floor regarding 1.25 miles (2 km) underwater around the time the asteroid impacted, when the impactor struck Chicxulub Earth-distorted layers of mud and sandstone that reach 33 to 50 feet (10 to 15 meters) below the ocean floor, and Bermúdez believes this distortion, preserved in prominence today, was caused by the impact.
The faults and distortions that are a geological imprint of this vibration persist up to the ball-rich sediment layers, where these layers must have been deposited following the impact, but because it would have taken time for these layers to build up, Bermudez hypothesizes that the impact-induced shaking lasted for weeks or even months.
Bermúdez said: “The section that I discovered on Gorgonilla Island is a great place to study the frontiers of K-Pg Because it is one of the best preserved places and it was located in the depths of the ocean, so it was not affected by the tsunami waves.”
Bermudez also found evidence of a massive earthquake caused by an impact Chicxulub In the geological record in Mexico, he found a liquefaction fingerprint, where strong vibration caused water-saturated sediments to flow like a liquid.
At sites in Mississippi, Alabama and Texas, Bermudez observed faults and fissures that are also likely related to the massive earthquake caused by the Chicxulub impact, as many of the outcrops showed signs of deposits left by massive tsunamis also caused by the massive asteroid impact on Earth.
