For decades, the main idea for the extinction of dinosaurs was that an asteroid from the belt between Mars and Jupiter was entering the planet, causing cataclysmic destruction that wiped out most of life on Earth. the planet.
But new research out of Harvard University confirms that what caused Armageddon came from far beyond what he originally believed.
According to this new theory, the destruction came not from a relatively nearby asteroid, but from a kind of long-distance comet that came from the edge of the solar system, in an area called the Oort cloud.
The pressure from Jupiter pulled the comet into the solar system. At that point, according to Amir Siraj, a Harvard student who co-authored the paper with Professor Avi Loeb, “Jupiter works like some kind of pinball machine.”
The theory goes: Jupiter’s gravity burned the incoming comet into an orbit that brought it very close to the sun, and its tidal forces caused the comet to disintegrate. Some of the comet fragments entered Earth’s orbit, and one – 50 miles across, about the size of Boston – entered the coast of Mexico.
So far, dinosaurs.
The theory also argues that large impact filters, such as the Crater Chicxulub caused by this effect, are more likely to be made of “carbonaceous chondrite” – a reversible primitive material. to the beginning of the solar system. Only about 10% of asteroids in the zone are made of carbonaceous chondrite, the researchers said.
“Our hypothesis explains the composition of the largest proven impact pit in Earth’s history as well as the largest within the last million years,” the report wrote. the authors.
While Siraj and Loeb’s novel theory has caught the eye among the scientific community, it has also been criticized. “I believe their work has a number of sexual problems,” Bill Bottke, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., Told The New York Times.
For example, Bottke says, the proposed model overestimates how often long-distance comets pull them out of the sun. “There’s still wiggle room if someone really wants to be a comet,” he said. “I just think doing that is a very difficult thing to do.”
