I'm lowkey really scared for the world to end. I can tell it'll be after I'm gone (I'm almost 20), but it could be when my great great great great grandchildren have children. If we keep treating our lovely planet how we are now, we'll just pollute it to the point that we can never fix it.
12
This study is very interesting to me. The new research not only shows what happened to the ocean dwellers at the time of the asteroid, it also shows how much damage humans are causing to the world today. The marine life at the time of the asteroid was largely wiped out due to falling sulfur rich rocks that deposited acid rain into the oceans. This flash acidification destroyed many ocean ecosystems.
The scientists discovered the fossils of thousands of tiny marine plankton called foraminifera. These fossils trace boron which indicate the acidity of the ocean. The fossils from the time period of the meteor showed an obvious spike in the boron levels and acidity of the ocean at the time. Scientists say that we will see a similar increase of our ocean’s acidity in the next 100 years. To avoid recreating this awful scenario we must dramatically decrease our carbon dioxide emissions.
10
The only way to save the planet at this point is to have another asteroid hit and wipe out the human population. Then, and only then, will the planet become healthy.
7
@Armo I fear you may be right. Humans as a whole (especially in the past 200 years) have done extraordinary damage Earth. At this point, I doubt there is any way to undo a fraction of the terror humans have caused. I think that nature will eventually take its course as the race of humans die off. Hopefully, after the last humans die, Earth will be able to recover like it already has so many times in history.
In perspective I believe that Earth will be able to recover and that hosting humans is only a relatively short cycle it endured. About 4.5 billion years ago, at the beginning of our planet's formation, Earth was covered in molten lava and fire. Surely these conditions are far more damaging to life and overall health of the planet compared to the damage humans inflict.
2
“And the wind shall say: 'Here were decent Godless people:
Their only monument the asphalt road
And a thousand lost golf balls.” TS Eliot
8
It seems we will destroy the planet ourselves much before another meteorite does it
9
“Acidified” the ocean is misleading: the referenced data show pH levels remained well above 7. “Made the ocean less basic” would be a more accurate though admittedly much less frightening description.
2
We are currently doing a much better job on dinosaurs than the meteorite. Their descendants, all birds, are suffering huge population losses and extinction due to loss of habitat and climate change in what amounts to a flash in the enormity of time.
Canaries in a coal mine?
31
I read that the asteroid collision released the energy equivalent of 10 billion Hiroshima bombs. It’s amazing that anything survived.
5
Like my comment about arguing with trump supporters, you are wasting your time trying to convince someone of anything when where a brain should reside there is a brick. A very dense brick.
The unfortunate thing about technology developed by very intelligent people is that it allows the very stupid to not only survive but flourish. We are devo.
13
Asteroids come in many shapes and sizes. Some originate here on Earth...
3
All should consider that the message of "climate change AKA Global Warming" might be better received:
1. If the data generators have not been repeatedly caught manipulating the data, and outright creating false data in order to drive the narrative. If all of the "facts" are true and this is "settled science", then why the subterfuge?
2. If the cheerleaders for "taking action" were not continually being caught attempting, most successfully, driving the narrative for personal political power and financial gain rather than the well-being of the planet.
3. If the media stopped generating biased reporting, and parroting self-proclaimed "scientists" like Bill Nye (a mechanical engineer who self-labeled himself as a climate expert) who drives a narrative in order to enrich himself.
The USA is not the biggest contributor to carbon emissions, not by a long shot. If you truly believe the theory, then you should be working to get all countries to participate equally (unlike the Paris Climate Accord agreement) to reducing emissions.
People can sense when someone is doing something primarily for their own benefit rather than the benefit of all, and reject the message because of the messenger.
4
@Steve "People can sense when someone is doing something primarily for their own benefit rather than the benefit of all, and reject the message because of the messenger." - Excuse me while I laugh uncontrollably.
18
@rachel Then how do you account for the total rejection of Al Gore, the inventor of the internet and the father of Global Warming who said Miami would be underwater more than a decade ago? He has been totally rejected, except for a few delusional individuals, which you may very well be.
@Steve
What are your sources? The overwhelming scientific consensus is clear. Those people have gone to school and done their research. Your assertion about data manipulation is made up. It's just fake stuff.
Have you actually read up on any of this?
14
Unfortunately we are led by a stable genius who says this is not happening and if it were happening, that mankind has nothing to do with it.
What good is scientific knowledge if our leaders ignore what scientist discover?
Our grand children will pay the price for what we are doing. That is more than sad.
22
Thank you scientists for showing the power of the forces humanity is unleashing in its everyday life around the globe.
76
@Richard Genz The problem being the conspiracy theorists, and those who believe them.
13
@Brian Just wait and see. It might happen in your lifetime, but surely in your children's. If you care for them, start taking climate change seriously.
32
@Brian
Remember, Italians almost hung Galileo for believing and teaching that the Sun was the center of our solar system. 95% of scientist say that humans are causing some form of climate change. The more things change the more they stay the same.
41
Really puts things into perspective. Dinosaurs were the dominant animal life for hundreds of millions of years. Primates, a few hundred thousand? Maybe one million? The planet will not miss homo sapiens at all.
92
@Miss Dovey
Exactly. All this destructive power and still Earth continued to support organisms that evolved into what is around today.
Personally I find that encouraging. In geologic time we are a nanosecond that will be the future anthropologists’ master thesis.
31
@Miss Dovey “ Dinosaurs were the dominant animal life...”
Since life originated on Earth the Earth has been dominated by bacteria. Not by megafauna or smart fauna, but by tiny bacteria. That will continue to be the case unless the Earth is engulfed and completely sterilized by the Sun in its red-giant phase, and it is unknown how large the Sun will become.
14
@Miss Dovey
The planet has not missed any other species already extinct either. Sometimes so many go extinct all together and the passage is so dramatic, it leaves a trace for those interested to find millions of years later. But most of even those traces will be entirely erased by the tectonic forces that continually grind the surface material of that planet into its constituent parts. Impermanence is its nature. It is not what the planet will miss that's important or even relevant. The planet is forever remaking itself from unimaginable destruction. It is what we will miss from a destruction of our own making. One that's burning through everything here on this planet that makes our lives so livable. As George Carlin already said: the planet will slough us off like a bunch of fleas [and move on]. Don't worry about saving the planet, worry about saving yourself.
22
It is obvious that man's time on this planet is finite. We are just one of many possible causes of our demise. We will leave a lot to study for whatever evolves next.
94
@Eric Hedemann Not much will evolve after us. We're in a golden age of solar activity that makes our neck of the woods extremely habitable for a planet like ours. In a few million years there will likely be increased solar activity, according to astrophysics studies, and an increased level of solar flaring.
16
@Eric Hedemann I hope humans have the same good luck as dinos and evolve into something really cool, like birds.
17
@Paul not sure that it will take 3 million years for the planet to repopulate after whatever apocalypse we bring or witness to the planet. Mass extinctions don't eliminate life, they just decrease it greatly allowing for evolution to do its magic and create new life forms.
30
How can the oceans becoming acidic 100 to 1,000 years after the impact be characterized as “practically overnight”?
@Oliver .. maybe they mean in the grand scheme of things lol
@Biz Griz well biz, I’d say that overnight is overnight. Why not just say 100 to 1,000 years and leave it at that? That really doesn’t seem that quick...it was a gigantic asteroid, what took so long?
@Oliver
The idea of "overnight" refers to the ability of the extant life to adapt to the acidification. I believe they are saying that species would have been wiped out wholesale because evolutionary adaptation takes longer than 100 to 1,000 years depending on the absolute magnitude of the acidification shift.
I am curious, you must have heard the term "overnight" used before when it obviously meant "a matter of days or weeks" and not over the course of 24 hours. Thereby you must have concluded that the term was relative. How then did you not apply the idea of relative to geologic time and then realize what kind of time frame the article was using?
8
I really think that for years our planet was very rich in diversity of species; Although the "Chicxulub" meteorite is hit on the earth, all was not lost!, otherwise a new era would not have been created.
Perhaps this impact brought great consequences (as it was: destruction of marine and terrestrial ecosystems, acidification in the water, total destruction of forests, among others), however, some others kept them to bring life back in a different way ; but if we deviate a little from the subject and think a little, it may be that the next destroyer is not a meteorite, but rather "Man."
Millions of years have passed since the great impact and yet the wonders that are discovered do not cease to surprise us, personally this type of information fills me with great curiosity to continue investigating the subject.
8
Because we live for such a short time, geologically speaking, and to us 100 years seems like a very long time, it is easy to fail to realize that the ecological disruptions we are causing are essentially just as abrupt as the changes caused by the cataclysmic meteor strike 65 million years ago.
15
Acidification has been a part of theory for years.
2
@john - especially in making wine (spo-dee-o-dee)!
More stories about Chixculub, please — and longer, in more detail, with illustrations!
I also would love to see a longer story about dinosaur feathers. What percentage of dinosaurs had feathers? Which ones? Do you know anything about the color? Why do so many new children’s books about dinosaurs still illustrate them more like lizards without feathers? How did scientists figure out that they had feathers? How does a feather imprint or actual feather survive for millions of years?
And as for how the dinosaurs died, would love to see more stories about how any species managed to survive. So many things I would love to learn about the dinosaurs and how they died.
16
Read the recent book, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte...excellent book and will answer all of those questions for you. I highly recommend it!
1
@L
There was a nice PBS program on the day the meteor hit and the dinosaurs died. It wiped out life all around for 600 miles... and the dark cloud. Feathers were founding the fossilized remains. We don't know about color-- and there are dinosaurs amongst us that we are trying to exterminate as quickly as possible-- they are called birds!!
@L Look here: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/day-the-dinosaurs-died/
Yet another great update about the Chicxulub crater and the impact that created it. Back in my college days I did some lab work for a professor who had collected mineral samples from Meteor Crater in Arizona. I’ve been fascinated with the topic ever since.
Despite the somewhat over-the-top title, “T. rex and the Crater of Doom” is a great book about the geology field work and lab analysis that shaped the theory linking an impact with the mass extinction, and the eventual discovery of the crater.
Very readable — it’s like a science mystery story.
15
The most serious issue with all these hypothesis is accurate dating. It’s easy to say “This layer is the expression of an event that happened in one day, and that day was the end of the Cretaceous period”. In reality, even the most accurate dating for that time interval, based on planktonic foraminifera biozones, gives us an accuracy of no more than of a few hundred thousand years, and the forams are found only in marine shales, not just in any rock, so they only provide a bracketing age. This is the reason why the controversy is still raging between the proponents of volcanism and meteor impact - both events happened “at the end of the Cretaceous period”, but that involves approximations that journalists don’t like to talk about. No doubt, the meteor sells better.
8
@Micropaleontologist The boundaries are pretty sharp in the rocks, and appear in many locations.
7
@Micropaleontologist It's not days, but a thin layer representing an "instant" in geologic time.
5
@Micropaleontologist
Maybe the asteroid caused the volcanos. Anyway, I think journalists have more currently relevant things to talk about than something that happened 66 million years ago.
What an amazing recovery for Earth in less than 6000 years.
10
@David
Yes and how did all those dinosaurs fit on the ark 5000 years ago?
3
@David
Wasn't totally sure if you were joking, but if a comment makes me laugh I recommend it on principle.
6
@Bob Jeri
They only needed two dinosaurs, and they most likely choose yearlings no bigger than the elephants and rhinos.
3
And I thought it was global warming.
1
No wonder Mexico is rich in natural resources!
I think that it's cool to learn about things that happened millions of years ago. I love to learn about these types of things. The on;y bad part we will never know if it is 100% true.
3
@Inezka -Fossil evidence and rocks don’t lie. A really good book related to this article is “The Eternal Frontier” by Tim Flannery. When you get a chance, visit the Reading Public Museum park and check out the amazing dawn redwoods, some of the dinosaurs’ favorite food. These ancient trees were nearly obliterated when the asteroid hit.
10
@Inezka LIke saying that the entire world is just some being's dream and we are not real. Can't prove that either. You don't need 100% certainty to accept things as being most likely and real.
2
Dinosaurs did not go extinct! Birds are dinosaurs and they are not extinct. I have no argument with the article other than it, like so many others before it, proclaim this extinction myth. Obviously many forms of life survived this mass extinction. The most obvious group are mammals. But arthropods, amphibians, fish, reptiles, and many more survived including plants. Evolution didn't restart from scratch to create all these groups again, many survived and diversified into new species. Birds, no doubt, took advantage of their mobility to find new habitats they could exploit and survive in.
10
@Herpetology Guy Because there were no birds when there were dinosaurs? Nobody labels a bird a dinosaur, even if they have common ancestors. I mean, humans are primates, but we're not descended from chimps, monkeys, apes or the like.
2
You are totally incorrect — birds are now considered to absolutely be dinosaurs. This is mainstream thinking — check Wikipedia, and countless other sources. What you learned growing up is incorrect, and thankfully, it is now being corrected. Alas, this article does not help, as it is spreading the extinction myth.
1
In a recent Netflix documentary, scientists claimed that the asteroid of Yucatan vaporized a layer of gypsum into the atmosphere. The combination of sulphates of the gypsum and water generated smog and long winters in the northern hemisphere.
8
@Why not Globally. Winds distributed it everywhere.
More illustrations!
10
Somehow, with all the troubles in the world, from Trump to Syria, from nukes to the climate crisis, it is good to know that it could all end in a flash, that we’ll be instantly turned into dust, and, in a microsecond, evolution will begin again. Ironically, it feels right: a finite existence moving, as the geomorphologists and cosmologists have always told us, from dust to dust. Maybe, if we get a second chance, we can do a better job of it.
57
@Dave Thomas Nice to see you've got a positive outlook on life.
11
@Dave Thomas Evolution doesn't "begin again." It's been ongoing since the first DNA/proteins were created.
11
@Dave Thomas I happen to think we've done a fine job this first (?) time around. I guess that's the difference between us.
1
It is completely illegitimate to equate the massive sulfuric acid injection by the asteroid and Decca Traps volcanism to CO2 effects on seawater. High School chemistry teaches us about buffers. One of the most important is the carbonic acid buffer, that shunts CO2 (g) into CO3 (s) and back via dissolution in water. This buffering effect, and the massive limestone deposits in contact with rainwater and seawater mean that acidification of the oceans by CO2 is IMPOSSIBLE.
4
@Carol Gebert then explain why the Ph is rising?
7
@Carol Gebert Can you clarify? I feel like you're saying that carbon dioxide in higher concentrations in the atmosphere can't shift the equilibrium of carbonic acid in the ocean. Can you cite your source for that? Also, I agree with MEH, can you confirm why the pH levels in the ocean are currently dropping indicating an acidification of ocean water? Is there evidence for another cause of this acidification?
13
@Julia - Yes, I am saying CO2 cannot shift the pH of sea water. The chemistry is laid out in any high school chemistry text book. Just look up carbonic acid buffers.
There are two reasons for sea water acidity reports:
a) Localized effects of agricultural run-off or industrial waste.
b) Gross misunderstandings among journalists (like this one) who conflate things unrelated and then report "scientist say so."
it is very important to know the chemistry yourself, rather than rely on barely scientific journalists. Time to pick up that high school chem book again!
3
Here's the un-plan. Continue on a the current trajectory of humans injecting increasing amounts of CO2 and other heat trapping gases directly into the atmosphere. Simultaneously, continue to destroy the natural systems that remove these gasses from the atmosphere. Wait for other natural processes that will enhance the addition of more heat trapping gasses and materials like melting permafrost (methane release) and ice sheets (reduced reflectivity) to kick in. Acidification of the oceans devastates the marine biome while ecological niches disappear for land organisms.
We keep our eye off the ball arguing about matters of deep importance like why the President shouldn't be able to hold the next G-7 at his underperforming golf course. Yes, this is the worst part of humanity, its infatuation with itself above all else.
47
Not sure where "India" was relative to Yucatan 65 million years ago, but it seems it would have been nearly on the opposite side of the earth from the impact. I have wondered if impact waves through the earth may have focused forces onto India and helped unleash the Deccan Traps volcanism. Any possibility?
9
@Dave Krueger Other earth-forces are at play. But gasses and ash released by volcanic eruptions -especially over millions of years- can have significant world-wide effects.
2
Consider saying "Non-avian dinosaurs" instead of just "dinosaurs" when writing about the K-T extinction event since avian dinosaur(birds) did survive and are everywhere.
19
An excellent point, but it may be more accurate to say that THE DESCENDENTS of the surviving non-avian dinosaurs are everywhere. Sadly I have not seen a Ichthyornis recently :)
6
does anyone ever think that we are witnessing a race between the creation of true artificial intelligence, and the extinction of humanity? What if all life on this planet was really just some AI's way to create more AI?
10
@alan - The argument for ever-decreasing entropy is solid, so long as the sun remains a friendly star.
4
Why would AI need us to reproduce?
why is the original coastline visible underneath the impact rings?
7
@margaret_h Because it is an artist's rendition meant to make a point, not a photograph or attempt at realism.
21
@margaret_h
Thank you, Margaret.
Like you, I noticed that right away.
Like Dennis, I more or less concluded that depicting the original coastline was artistic license.
5
Unbelievable find and a harrowing kicker to the story.
7
Easy come, easy go.
8
Were humans responsible for the asteroid?
7
@99percent Your point?
5
@99percent
Not that I am aware of.
These results are a new perspective on something that has been known for 30 years. In 1988 I was Co-Chief Scientist on Leg 121 of the Ocean Drilling Program. My Co-Chief was Jeff Wiessel with Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory (part of Columbia). We drilled through a greatly expanded K/T boundary section on Broken Ridge - 1000 miles west of Perth, Aust. The environment there was very highly productive, with high sedimentation rates of calcareous material. Within a few cm of core depth, 90% of the calcareous planktonic and benthic microfauna died out, only a few dwarf variants survived, and then new species arise from those few survivors and radiated into the ecological space created by the acidification event.
40
Considering we are now living in an ice age and the projected depletion of most fossil fuels within a mere 300 to 400 years can anyone forecast the end? How cold is the earth going to get?
6
@Charlie an ice age? Huh?
5
@MEH
The time scale can be confusing, but, yes.
3
Twelve paragraphs on the asteroid and its effect. Final paragraph concludes that mankind is similarly destroying planet. Is that really necessary?
Must the conclusion for every article (local bake sale, leather-making, strategies for playing Hearts, quartzite formations, Tijuana Brass music, etc.) be that mankind-caused climate change is adversely affecting the planet?
21
@NorthernVirginia Yes, every minute, every hour, think of the out-of -control damage we are doing to the biosphere. Why do we study the past? The whole point is to understand the present, and the future. Every time you start your car, every time you flush the toilet, and yes, tanning leather, gathering for a card game, and powering up to listen to the Tijuana Brass has its impact downstream from you--and me.
74
@NorthernVirginia
I'm afraid it must, until we actually do something to change things. If we ever do.
52
@NorthernVirginia Well said.
3
" And that modern acidification, Dr. Planavsky says, is happening at a rate and scale comparable to the asteroid-triggered acidification." Frightening........
45
Love these geologic timescales. We've been 'industrial' for maybe 350 years? Greenland ice sheet may liquify in 100 years? 'We have only twelve years' until XYZ will happen? Ha!
4
@bill
Nature is analog, its variations infinite. Some things, like "ice ages", happen over tens of thousands of years; others, like the disappearance of summer arctic sea ice, can take as little as twelve years. It took millions of years for fossil carbon deposits to form; we've transferred about 5 petatonnes to the atmosphere in just 300 years. It's only humans who draw up geologic timescales, while actual events take just as little or as much time as they do. Surely that isn't hard to understand.
BTW: if you're from Madison, Wisconsin, haven't you noticed Lake Mendota freezing later and thawing earlier as the years go by (globalchange.gov/browse/multimedia/ice-cover-lake-mendota)?
10
@bill Head up to the northern latitudes and take a look at what's happening with the permafrost. In the space of thirty years we've gone from stable arctic environs to extremely high levels of thawing on land and likely in the sea as well. It's not a good sign when seabeds start having methane venting.
113
@Paul Yes, yes, I am quite aware. Now, shall I suggest to you an informative vacation? No, that would be irrelevant.