Did A Comet Kill The Dinosaurs?

"Walter Alvarez and his father Luis W. Alvarez are most widely known for their discovery (with Frank Asaro and Helen Michel) that a clay layer occurring right at the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary was highly enriched in the element iridium." -wikipedia
I hate when writers don't give credit to the scientists who worked so hard to prove their theory and bring about a scientific paradigm shift - as was done by the Alvarezes.

O.K., So how do you deflect a comet?

S Monkey

@African Rover. By firing monkeys at it, thousands of them. No seriously, there are a few ways it can be done, but like the evolution of weapons and gunpowder, they need exploring in design and method and actual testing too, it's no good waiting for the one that could potentially cause the extinction of mankind.

On Topic

Yes it probably did, perhaps it won the lottery and hit the super volcano jackpot triggering a giant fart..

S Monkey

A really fast bullet type comet with the jackpot could have been sufficient to trigger the fart...

Comet C2013/A1 freaks me out. Not because it's going to hit Earth but that it very well could hit Mars on October 19th, 2014. It's orbit has been calculated and recalculated numerous times in the last month and it's gone from a near miss of 67,000 miles to 33,000 miles and back to 73,000 miles currently. But that's before we know what is going to happen with it's mass when it swings around the sun and gases change it's orbit slightly as does the change in mass. So we won't know if will impact for another year or so and then it will be too late to do anything about it if it's going to hit Mars.

Why worry? Because it's 30 miles wide and traveling at 128,000 mph at impact which is 1800 times more energetic than the dino killer here. That's right. 1800 more times energetic.

Energetic enough to blast billions of tons of rocks into space and some obviously will impact Earth. Some might be big too. Much bigger than the Russian Comet recently.

So that's a worry as there is probably nothing we can do about it. There just won't be enough time with the alignment of the planets at the time.

S Monkey

It is quite possible that perhaps, where the Bermuda triangle is was once a super volcano, the Yukatan peninsula was nearer the then hotspot, like those of yellow stone these are strong points of magnetism. Someone said Iridium? If like todays rainforest that specific area was once dense woodland in comparison to other parts of the planet + the methane release that would almost certainly be sufficient to kill a lot -of everything. Isn't one of the explanations for the Bermuda something to do with Methane?

We see the cause of the dinosaur’s extinction, and Neanderthals even today by Migratory diseases. The migratory birds filled the gaps of birds killed by the meteor. They could travel farther to find food to survive the harsh new conditions. This connected species of birds from all continents that showered dinosaurs with flu and other viruses. Killing off small dinosaurs in holes in the ground, and dinosaurs on the oceans as well as the big ones in our museums. This also prevented them from ever coming back too.
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We see it in Neanderthal when the boat was invented, the evidence of shells being traded from one human community to another. Shells from distant locations were not only traded with each other, but disease, and genetic immunity was too. However, the Neanderthal did not get that pace of genetic exchange and died out.
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It is also seen in written times of the Black Death as it followed trading routes, or the American Indians sent to demographic oblivion.
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In time this will be seen as a more conservative argument and may even be proven by finding DNA of disease in the teeth of the late period Neanderthals.
Asteroids and even comets are not selective enough. Extinction is a process an eco-biological process.

a little off topic, but did large (non-mammal) sea life die off because of the comet/asteroid also?

Interesting, that comets carry a lot of water too. I wonder how much water was dropped on our planet from that comet. How much earth spin may have been lost due to the impact as well? So many other factors that play into the types of energy, and direction of impact, for this story. Also, how much extra gas was infused into our atmostphere from this comet? We know that both meteors and asteroids have an abundance of natural resources on them, comets usually with more water and gas and meteors/asteroids with more metals. If this was indeed a large comet, what were the rest of marks it left?

I know that a lot of the Earths spin, and tectonics, has previously been thought to been a result of gravity shaping the planet into a more perfect sphere, but indeed some of it could have been due a very energetic impact slowing down rotation as well. Anyone know of good research done on this hypoth?

"Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth. There is no spoon."

Also, on a side note, it wasn't the impact that killed the dinosaurs... it was the release of Methane Hydrate that caused the death of vegitation that, technically, finished them off. Their shear size was beleieved to be a result of the immense amounts of oxygen available in the atmosphere during their reign.

"Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth. There is no spoon."

What never got mentioned was that at the K-Pg boundary dinosaurs were pretty well gone--T rex, Triceratops--and a few others--but nothing like what once was--so that still leaves the question--"What killed the dinosaurs?"
Stan