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Origins of a Killer Asteroid
MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE SOURCE
EARTH-SHATTERING IMPACT: When the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs slammed into Earth, it created a crater nearly 100 miles wide.
About 66 million years ago, a huge space rock struck Earth, causing massive destruction that wiped out the dinosaurs. Now, a new study shows where this dino-destroying asteroid, called the Chicxulub (CHIK-shoo-loob) impactor, may have come from. It likely originated in the outer portion of our solar system’s asteroid belt.
The asteroid belt is a region between Mars and Jupiter that contains more than a million asteroids. Scientists calculated that an asteroid the size of the Chicxulub impactor gets flung out of the asteroid belt toward Earth once every 250 million years. “This fits in with the timing of the [dinosaur’s] extinction event,” says Bill Bottke, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, who co-authored the study.
Our solar system contains eight planets, plus hundreds of moons and asteroids, all orbiting the sun. Most asteroids are found in the asteroid belt. They range from the size of a pebble to 940 kilometers (580 miles) in diameter. The Chicxulub impactor was about 10 km (6 mi) across.
ILLUSTRATION BY MAGICTORCH