The space rock caused a global firestorm, new study says

Mar 28, 2013 08:31 GMT  ·  By
Asteoid that caused the dinosaurs' demise also set the world on fire, study says
   Asteoid that caused the dinosaurs' demise also set the world on fire, study says

According to an investigation carried out by researchers working with the University of Colorado Boulder, the asteroid blamed for the dinosaurs' demise did more than just create one big crater in the ground. Apparently, this asteroid must also be held responsible for literally setting the world on fire.

The scientists maintain that, shortly after the asteroid collided with our planet, a massive firestorm engulfed virtually all forms of vegetation, regardless of whether they were mere twigs or full-grown trees.

It was this global firestorm that caused roughly 80% of the species inhabiting the Earth at that time to go extinct, the researchers believe.

“Our data show the conditions back then are consistent with widespread fires across the planet. Those conditions resulted in 100 percent extinction rates for about 80 percent of all life on Earth,” argued research scientist Douglas Robertson.

The presumed order of events that eventually led to the planet's being set ablaze is as follows:

As a result of the asteroid's colliding with our planet, whopping amounts of vaporized rock and other material made their way above the atmosphere and spread over considerable distances.

Upon its reentering the atmosphere, all this material caused the upper atmosphere to heat up, and caused a so-called global infrared pulse to occur.

All things considered, it is possible that the reentering material caused the atmosphere to reach temperatures of 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit (roughly 1,482 degrees Celsius).

The researchers further explain that is was this infrared pulse that caused our planet's vegetation to ignite.

“The global debris layer created by the end-Cretaceous impact at Chicxulub contained enough soot to indicate that the entire terrestrial biosphere had burned. Preliminary modeling showed that the reentry of ejecta would have caused a global infrared (IR) pulse sufficient to ignite global fires within a few hours of the Chicxulub impact,” the researchers wrote in their paper.

Furthermore, “This heat pulse and subsequent fires explain the terrestrial survival patterns in the earliest Paleocene, because all the surviving species were plausibly able to take shelter from heat and fire underground or in water.”

A detailed account of this investigation and its findings was published in this week's issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research–Biogeosciences.