How big was the impact of the Chicxulub asteroid?

The Chicxulub impact event was an ~100 million megaton blast that devastated the Gulf of Mexico region. The blast generated a core of superheated plasma in excess of 10,000 degrees.

When was Chicxulub impacted?

about 66 million years ago
It was tens of miles wide and forever changed history when it crashed into Earth about 66 million years ago. The Chicxulub impactor, as it’s known, was a plummeting asteroid or comet that left behind a crater off the coast of Mexico that spans 93 miles and goes 12 miles deep.

How high was the wave that killed the dinosaurs?

Close in, tsunami waves reached about 100 m height. Along the Mexican coast, the waves were 30-50 m. Some geologists suggest that the Chicxulub tsunami reached Chicago, Montana, or Canada.

What is the significance of the Chicxulub impact crater?

The discovery of the Chicxulub crater dramatically enhanced the community’s ability to evaluate the environmental effects of an impact at the K-T boundary, because both the geographic location of an impact site and the target rocks involved in an impact can affect the environmental outcome.

Where is the Chicxulub crater?

Yucatán Peninsula
Chicxulub crater on the northern coast of the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, in a computer-generated image synthesized from gravity and magnetic-field data.

Did Chicxulub create a tsunami?

The impact would have caused a megatsunami over 100 meters (330 ft) tall that would have reached all the way to what are now Texas and Florida. The height of the tsunami was limited by the relatively shallow sea in the area of the impact; in deep ocean it would have been 4.6 kilometers (2.9 mi) tall.

What caused the Chicxulub crater to form?

Comparison of 3D numerical simulations of Chicxulub-scale impacts with geophysical observations suggests that the Chicxulub crater was formed by a steeply-inclined (45–60° to horizontal) impact from the northeast; several lines of evidence rule out a low angle (<30°) impact.

What is the impact trajectory of the 66 Ma Chicxulub crater?

The asteroid impact that formed the 66 Ma Chicxulub crater had a profound and catastrophic effect on Earth’s environment, but the impact trajectory is debated. Here we show that impact angle and direction can be diagnosed by asymmetries in the subsurface structure of the Chicxulub crater.

Was the Chicxulub impact vertical or horizontal?

Numerical impact simulations combined with geophysical investigation of subsurface structure have constrained the kinetic energy of the impact under the simplifying assumption of a vertical trajectory 2, 3, 4. The trajectory angle and direction of the Chicxulub impact are not known, but a near-vertical impact is unlikely.

What is the density of a Chicxulub impactor?

The impactor was also modelled as a granite sphere, with a density of 2650 kg/m 3, because of a current limitation of iSALE3D that does not allow for more than one boundary between materials per grid cell. The actual Chicxulub impactor density is not known.