We have all heard the prevailing theory that the dinosaurs were killed off by the impact of a colossal meteor slamming into Earth.
It is widely believed that the Chicxulub crater near Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula is the impact site of that meteor hit 65 million years ago.
It is also widely believed that another colossal meteor strike on our planet is a matter of “when” and not “if”.
Scientists have been running computer models to try to determine where this colossal meteorite came from to see if there might be a way to at least predict when or where the next strike will come from.
Their computer models have developed an interesting theory. They say the models show that 160 million years ago, two “mega-asteroids” in the asteroid belt collided, strewing debris across the solar system.
They believe that a fragment from one of these “mega-asteroids” eventually made its way to Earth 95 million years later, creating the impact on the Yucatan peninsula.
The models also show that debris from the same impact created the Tycho crater on our moon.
Scientists said that they worked backwards to reach this conclusion, looking at the masses of asteroids that they believe to have originated when the two “mega-asteroids”, one 37-miles wide and one 106-miles wide, slammed into each other and broke apart.
They applied a more modern theory that sunlight traveling through space can actually effect a small amount of force on an object over time.
With nothing but time, the asteroid debris was moved little by little until it finally came into the path of Earth’s orbit and gravitational pull.
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