![]() ![]() So now let’s ramp up the intensity a little. Unsurprisingly, this led to a tremendous loss of life on the planet and the eventual extinction of at least 75% of all species (but it did allow mammals to take precedence and thus permit the evolution of man – swings and roundabouts I suppose!). Meanwhile, the immense shockwaves created would trigger global earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, as evidenced by the Deccan Traps flood basalts. Aside from heating up its local surroundings to hellish temperatures, this would have excavated a large amount of material from the Earth and propelled fragments of the asteroid out of the Earth’s atmosphere, which would then re-enter, heating up further and creating wildfires all over the planet. This produced a crater 20 km deep and 150 km in diameter, and would have exerted the energy of over a billion times that of an atomic bomb. As you likely already know, there is strong evidence to suggest that 66 million years ago our distant ancestors experienced quite how devastating these events can be when a 10-15 km diameter asteroid hurtled into Earth at approximately 20 km/s, or around 20 times the speed of a rifle bullet. It’s not just humans that have tried their hands at the art of collisions however, the natural world is rather experienced to say the least. 50 caliber bullet penetrating through a thick piece of glass after letting YouTube dictate your entertainment for a little too long? In any case, we have all been fascinated by the simple act of crashing objects into each other at high speeds at some instance of our lives, and why not, it’s an awe-inspiring display of energy conversion after all. Ever day-dreamed about the immense destruction of the cannons on castles or warships of days gone by? Or maybe you’ve found yourself captivated by a slow motion video of a. ![]()
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