Without the asteroid strike, the dinosaurs probably would have continued evolving into new and varied forms as climates changed. One evolutionary path might have led to a reptile with grasping hands and a large brain, filling the niche in which we humans have evolved.
So, if the asteroid had never killed the dinosaurs, the chances are that untold future versions of the Velociraptor and co. (with or without human-standard brains) would still be roaming the wilds of Earth today – unless the planet presented an alternative means of extinction.
They would still probably be small, scrawny, and very generalized. But instead, the mammals were able to evolve and diversify and, well, ultimately, millions of years later, become some humans. So perhaps we would not have been here if it weren't for this extinction event 65 million years ago.
The average time between impacts by objects with diameters of around 1,000 feet (300 m) is around 70,000 years, while asteroids with diameters of around 2,000 feet (600 m) are predicted to hit the planet roughly once every 200,000 years.
Technically, a nuclear bomb could obliterate a smaller asteroid, but it's not these smaller entities that pose a threat to Earth's safety. The asteroids that would be really worrisome -- those larger than 1,312 feet (400 meters) -- wouldn't be easily wiped out by such a bomb.
Their experiments showed that blowing up a 200-meter asteroid would require a bomb 200 times as powerful as the one that exploded over Hiroshima in 1945. They also said it would be most effective to drill into the asteroid, bury the bomb, then blow it up—just like in the movie Armageddon.
Sixty-six-million years ago, a nearly nine-mile-wide asteroid collided with Earth, sparking a mass extinction that wiped out most dinosaurs and three-quarters of the planet's plant and animal species. Now we're learning that the Chicxulub asteroid also generated a massive “megatsunami” with waves more than a mile high.
Scientists have predicted that Earth will get warmer by the year 2027 compared to the 19th century and this may change the weather conditions of the world.
An asteroid, named "2019 PDC", was discovered that will come dangerously close to the earth 8 years from now, on April 29, 2027. The space rock is between 330 and 1000 feet in size, somewhere in between the length of 6.5 school buses to the height of two Washington Monuments stacked on top of each other.
Montage of our solar system. Asteroid 1997 XF11 will pass well beyond the Moon's distance from Earth in October 2028 with a zero probability of impacting the planet, according to astronomers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA.
More reproduction followed, and more mistakes, the process repeating over billions of generations. Finally, Homo sapiens appeared. But we aren't the end of that story. Evolution won't stop with us, and we might even be evolving faster than ever.
Could we clone a dinosaur? DNA breaks down over time. The dinosaurs went extinct around 66 million years ago and with so much time having passed it is very unlikely that any dinosaur DNA would remain today. While dinosaur bones can survive for millions of years, dinosaur DNA almost certainly does not.
Not a dinosaur, like a Tyrannosaurus Rex? It's not possible. The limit of DNA survival, which we'd need for de-extinction, is probably around one million years or less. Dinosaurs had been gone for a very long time by then.
The impact creates a large crater in water because most of the energy of the impact goes into vaporizing the meteor and the sea water. This crater is filled in by in-rushing water which then meets in the middle and causes a central jet to push upwards just as can be seen when dropping pebbles into a pond.
Any fragment of an asteroid that survives landing on Earth becomes known as a meteorite. The Alvarez hypothesis was initially controversial, but it is now the most widely accepted theory for the mass extinction at the end of the Mesozoic Era.
The truth behind the demise of the dinosaurs may never be fully resolved, but a growing body of evidence has convinced many scientists that at least one of the culprits was a seven-mile-wide asteroid that hit Earth 65 million years ago near what is now the Yucatan peninsula.
Orbit and Rotation
As a result of its close encounter with Earth in 2029, the asteroid's orbit will be widened to become slightly larger than the width of Earth's orbit. At this point, it will be reclassified from the Aten group to the "Apollo" group (the group of Earth-crossing asteroids with orbits wider than 1 AU).
An asteroid in space has been identified as having a value of approximately $700 quintillion. If NASA were to capture the asteroid and distribute its resources among people, each individual would receive around $93 billion!
By 2050, due to the lack of greenery, concrete forests will be made in its place. At this time there will be such a shortage of land that many big buildings will be cultivated to meet the needs of food and drink. According to a US report, the sea level will increase by 2050.
The earth would become warmer, the average temperature will increase. There will be several new weather patterns and the sea levels would rise. Eventually humans would die out. If the insect population continues to decline, all birds that depend on insect for food will become extinct.
Earth is likely to cross a critical threshold for global warming within the next decade, and nations will need to make an immediate and drastic shift away from fossil fuels to prevent the planet from overheating dangerously beyond that level, according to a major new report released on Monday.
After the dinosaurs died out, nearly 65 million years passed before people appeared on Earth. However, small mammals (including shrew-sized primates) were alive at the time of the dinosaurs.
Not all dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago. Avian dinosaurs–in other words, birds–survived and flourished. Museum scientists estimate that there are more than 18,000 bird species alive today. A variety of other species also survived on land, including frogs, snakes, lizards and mammals.
Scientists estimate the waves reached an unfathomable 2.5 miles high as they crashed into the land masses of the day — particularly what would have roughly been considered the Gulf Coast. The catastrophe is considered 30,000 times larger than any other recorded event.