Speaker 0:  for sixty six million years, we blame the dinosaur killing asteroid partly for chemicals it brought with us. now nickel atoms preserved in a paper thin layer of clay suggest the asteroid was unusually dry, which means the deadliest ingredients may already have been waiting in the ground where it landed. the dinosaurs did not merely lose in the asteroid lottery. they lost the asteroid location and atmosphere chemistry of the lottery simultaneously. the new chemical forensics suggest the object was a rare cosmic oddball, and the yucatan peninsula may have turned into a planet scale weapon. so scientists have reopened the earth's most famous cold case, and the new star witness is nickel. the asteroid still did it, but the chemical accomplice may have been in the ground beneath mexico this whole time. what do you think about this, john?

Speaker 1:  i think this is cool because this kind of will, give us more insight as to if an asteroid ever hits us. so, so what we thought originally. right? or what scientists believed extinction primarily resulted from was dust and soot entered the atmosphere, sunlight disappeared, photosynthesis stopped, plants died, herbivores starved, carnivores starved starved. so it's still correct, but it's a lot more complex than that. and so one of the biggest findings in this, in this article and what they found was concerns sulfur rich rocks beneath the impact site. and so, the chiksekalb asteroid, whatever it's called, struck limestone in gypsum deposit rich in sulfur. and so the impact vaporized enormous quantities of sulfur into the upper atmosphere. so sulfur dioxide converts into sulfate aerosols. and these aerosols reflect sunlight, cool earth's surface, they remain suspended for years, they reduce photosynthesis, and they alter rainfall patterns. so rather than just the dust alone causing global cooling, it's the sulfur aerosols that may have been responsible for much of the prolonged impact winter. and so recent climate simulations have indicated that sulfur may have reduced global temperatures by 10 to 20 degrees celsius. and for those of you in, freedom units, 18 to 36 degrees fahrenheit for several years, creating more severe and prolonged echo ecological stress than just the dust alone. so, it makes sense that we're we're discovering that the extinction was more complex than just dust in the air. it's also maybe useful for us to, to try to find solutions in case an asteroid ever does impact earth. but to, yeah, just to kind of put things into, into perspective, the asteroid itself struck earth at approximately 20 kilometers per second, which is about 45,000 miles per hour, which is equivalent to roughly 10,000,000,000 hiroshima bombs and releasing more than 100,000,000 megatons of tnt, which i didn't know that that's that was the impact that it made back then. but, this is cool. what do you think about this research?

Speaker 0:  well, scientists have not discovered what killed the dinosaurs, but they obtained a better forensic description of the murder weapon, and that changes how the crime may have unfolded. tiny isotope differences preserved in ancient clay can identify the family of an object that vaporized sixty six billion years ago, which is incredible. and the severity of an impact depends on more than the asteroid size. composition, speed, angle, and landing site all interact, and the chixal blub struck rock containing climate altering material. so i originally thought that, the climate altering materials came from the chixel lube booboo. it actually looks like it came or it was already here and just got distributed by the impact.

Speaker 1:  yeah. yeah. earth and they discovered that earth is surprisingly resilient. surprise, surprise. so although roughly 75% of species disappeared, life itself recovered within a few million years. so within a few million years, mammals diversified, birds expanded, flowering plants flourished, new ecosystems emerged. so, evolution doesn't stop after a catastrophe like this. it essentially accelerates.

Speaker 0:  yeah. think of this as, like, investigating a car crash after the vehicle was completely incinerated. investigators cannot inspect the car, but microscopic metal fragments embedded in the road reveal what family of vehicle it probably was. then the road surface tells them why the crash became, unusually destructive. so these nickel isotopes act like, manufacturing traces. meteorite families have distinguishable chemical fingerprints, and the impact site contributed its own destructive material. so researchers are reconstructing an event from a heavily mixed residue. it's very interesting when we go back and we rewrite what we thought happened and how, things occurred because it changes, what we think about physics in the future and, you know, the universe as we know it. it's always cool.

Speaker 1:  yeah.

Speaker 0:  so this study does not change and kill the dinosaurs. it gives scientists a sharper picture of the weapon and raises new questions about which part of the impact delivered the fatal environmental blow. the asteroid started the disaster, but the place it landed may have, written the ending. do you think planetary defense should prioritize learning what an asteroid is made of, or is finding and deflecting it early the only thing that really matters? let us know your thoughts in the comments below.