Wave height of 4.5 km: it turned out what happened to the oceans of the Earth after an asteroid impact

A new study has found that the asteroid widely hypothesized to have crashed into Earth

66 million years ago and killed the dinosaurs, also caused a giant tsunami. The height of the waves in the Gulf of Mexico was one and a half kilometers and traveled halfway around the world.

Researchers have found evidence of thismonumental tsunami after analyzing cores from more than 100 locations around the world and creating digital models of waves after an asteroid impact on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.

"This tsunami was strong enough todisturb and destroy sediments in ocean basins halfway around the globe, explains lead study author Molly Range, who conducted the modeling for her master's thesis in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Michigan.

Based on previous research,Molly Range's staff simulated an asteroid with a diameter of 14 km that crashed into the Earth at a speed of 43,500 km/h. After the asteroid hit, many life forms died.

To learn more about the tsunami, scientistsanalyzed the Earth's geology, successfully analyzing 120 marine sediments that appeared just before or after the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. Experts said these boundary areas were consistent with their model's predictions of wave height and movement.

Researchers found that the initialThe energy of the impact tsunami was 30,000 times greater than the energy released by the Indian Ocean earthquake in December 2004, which killed more than 230,000 people.

Tsunami modeled change in sea surface height (in meters) four hours after an asteroid impact at the end of the Cretaceous. Image courtesy of Range et al. at AGU Advances, 2022

When the asteroid collided with Earth, it formedThe crater was 100 km wide and raised a dense cloud of dust and soot into the atmosphere. Just 2.5 minutes after the impact, the curtain of ejected material pushed a wall of water outwards, briefly creating a wave 4.5 km high.

A simulated tsunami change in sea surface height (in meters) 24 hours after the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs hit Earth.
Image courtesy of Range et al. at AGU Advances, 2022

At the 10th minute, a tsunami wave 1.5 km highat a distance of about 220 km from the impact site, it swept across the bay in all directions. An hour later, the wall of water left the Gulf of Mexico and rushed into the North Atlantic. Within four hours of impact, the tsunami passed through the Central American Seaway—the passage that at the time separated North and South America—and into the Pacific Ocean.

The maximum amplitude of a tsunami wave (in centimeters) after an asteroid hit the Earth 66 million years ago.
Image courtesy of Range et al. at AGU Advances, 2022

A day after the wave asteroid collisiontraversed most of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, entered the Indian Ocean on both sides, and touched most of the globe's coastlines within 48 hours of the asteroid impact.

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