We all know the story. A giant asteroid hits Earth. Dinosaurs vanish. However, what was the actual picture of the first 24 hours of that disaster? Simulations at higher levels of resolution are showing us an answer that is more horrifying than we ever thought. It is not only the impact that is discovered. It is concerning a wave that literally transformed the planet.
This wasn’t just a bad day. It was a time bomb of a planet.
It is the Digital Journey to Hell and High Water
A complex computer simulation was recently carried out by scientists on the Chicxulub impact. They employed geophysical information of the crater itself. The model took into consideration old coastlines and ocean depths. The results were staggering. The first movement of water generated a wave which was about one mile high. It is five times the One World Trade Center in height.
This body of water was not standing on its hind legs. It went out in all directions at mad velocities.
- The impact generated all the earthquakes and volcano eruptions of our planet, all of which seemed insignificant to say the least, according to Dr. Sean Gulick, the co-author of a study related to it, published in the journal Science Advances.
The strength of the tsunami was nearly unbelievable.
The Global Ripple Effect
You may imagine that the destruction was local. Think again. The simulation gives us the path that the wave takes through the old oceans. In an hour, it engulfed the Gulf of Mexico. It tore through the Pacific and Atlantic waterways ten hours later. This one event had reached nearly the entire coast of the world in 24 hours.
We are dealing with one world event within one day.
The swells as they struck the shores far away were well above 30 feet. Comparatively, that is 3 times higher than the average storm surge due to a major hurricane. The immense power swept the bottom of the sea thousands of miles away. It established a geological mark that we can trace nowadays.
The Cigar in the Mud
Why do we believe that this simulation is true? We possess the materialistic evidence. Geologists drill samples of the gulf of Mexico. They discover a stratum of boulder and sand. This is the boundary of the K-Pg, the extinction layer. The fossil record is lively below it. Above it, it’s silent.
In that layer, however, they discover a particular thing.
- In the sediment off Louisiana we can see the ‘megaripples’ which have wavelengths of hundreds of meters. Their point of orientation faces directly to the Chicxulub crater, says a geophysicist of the University of Texas.
These ripple effects are an archived record of the movement of the tsunami. They are the last refuge of the tsunami and they are in stone. This physical evidence connects the virtual image to the violent, real-life ground. It is the cold case that is being finally solved.
A grim Reckoning in Our Present World
Let’s bring this home. This prehistoric finding has been a reflection to our current climate crisis. Although we are not experiencing a space rock, we are also producing a planetary disruption of our own. These processes are dissimilar, yet the moral is similar. The systems on earth are highly intertwined and may be taken to extremes.
Think of the 2011 Japan tsunami.
Japan tsunami was a very real-life example of the power of water which could not be stopped. It surpassed huge sea-walls. It resulted in the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Suppose now there were a wave more than fifty times taller. The Chicxulub event demonstrates to us the ultimate destructive power of our own planet environment.
Storms and sea level are increasing due to the climate crisis we are facing. This is composing the components of the increasingly common and powerful coastal catastrophes. We are in some manner gradually turning up the dial of a world-threat.
A Final Thought From the Abyss
The stars are known to give us existential threats. And we should. The dinosaur-killing tsunami reminds us though, that the real threat is usually the reaction of our planet to trauma. The asteroid was the trigger. The planet was merely its own mechanisms going wrong in the form of the waves, the fires, and the darkness.
My strong opinion? We just are acting as that asteroid
Using our emissions, we are providing a slow-moving blow to the world climate. The shocks that are the consequence, sea-level rise, superstorms and ecosystem collapse are our human-made mega-tsunami of the present day. The dinosaurs did not possess a telescope and a warning. Our climate models and this dark geologic history. It is not ignorance to make it go away, but rather to nullify disaster.