Scientists discover strange truth about gigantic asteroid that hit the US

An unexpected truth about a gigantic asteroid that hit Earth around 35 million years ago has been discovered by scientists.

The impact of the asteroid reshaped the physical landscape in the local area, with the impact creating a huge crater spanning 25 miles in Northampton County, Virginia in the US.

But despite this enormous impact, the long term effect is somewhat surprising given the size of the asteroid.

Authors of a study have discovered that this huge asteroid was only slightly smaller in size to the one that killed the dinosaurs.

Flickr/Hubble ESA

However, its impact was completely incomparable – and, in fact, the Earth was able to carry on as if little had happened after the impact.

Not only that, but researchers also found that another asteroid had hit Russia around 25,000 years before that and also had a negligible effect on the climate when compared to other major impacts in the long term.

The immediate impact would have been devastating, of course, but the lack of longer term devastation is almost inconceivable, given that the asteroid which wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago caused such a devastating change to the planet’s climate.

Study co-author Bridget Wade with University College London (UCL) said that “our planet seemed to carry on as usual” with no measurable changes to the climate caused by them in the 150,000 years that followed.

Wade said: “However, our study would not have picked up shorter-term changes over tens or hundreds of years, as the samples were every 11,000 years. Over a human time scale, these asteroid impacts would be a disaster. They would create a massive shockwave and tsunami, there would be widespread fires, and large amounts of dust would be sent into the air, blocking out sunlight.”

The research was published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.

Meanwhile, while most people are completely oblivious to it, our planet often has close encounters with massive asteroids large enough to destroy entire cities. In fact, Earth’s upcoming close encounter with an asteroid could cause an “asteroidquake” to occur.

Most will pass Earth and cause no trouble to us. But, in 2029, we will pass the hazardous asteroid 99942 Apophis so closely that it could reshape the asteroid’s surface.

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