That width is less than the distance I drive from my house to the grocery store. Why was that size of an asteroid able to cause such catastrophic damage?
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Size isn’t the only part of the equation that matters though. A bullet is very tiny. However, if the bullet is moving very fast, it will have a lot of force when it hits your body.
In this case, the combination of the speed and size of the meteor was enough to blast tons of dirt and dust into the air. It basically covered the world in darkness, because not as much light could get through this dusty smoke that was covering the entire planet. And most of the plants on the planet died because they couldn’t get enough sunlight anymore. And the very large dinosaurs starved to death because they needed tons and tons and tons of food to survive, while smaller animals were able to survive because there were still enough plants that they could find what they needed to eat.
Our estimates are that the dust cloud created by the meteor impact would have lingered in the sky for over a year. Long enough, that many plants just died, and even more animals that were depending on those plants died too.
The dinosaurs being so big was sort of what doomed them.
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