Jakarta, CNN Indonesia —
Researchers from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Texas managed to trace the origins of asteroid that crashed into Earth 60 million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs.
They traced the origin of the asteroid millions of years ago using a combination of geological and computer simulations.
The combination of the two allows the SwRI research team to solve archaeological and astronomical mysteries that have been going on for millions of years. One of them tracked the trail of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.
About 66 million years ago, a large asteroid about 10 kilometers in size crashed into Earth near Mexico. This impact left the Chicxulub crater, 180 kilometers in diameter on the Yucatan peninsula, Mexico.
The event caused a mass extinction that wiped out nearly 75 percent of all plant and animal species including non-avian dinosaurs.
Now using computer modeling studies of asteroid evolution and data from known asteroids, the US team has investigated where the asteroids came from.
They could also estimate how often these “Chicxulub events” occurred. Currently, most researchers are starting to agree that an asteroid collision was the cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs. The results of the study were published last month in Icarus.
“We decided to find out where the sister of the asteroid that hit Chicxulub might be hiding,” said David Nesvorný, lead author of the study.
The researchers then studied the main asteroid belt, which lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. According to NASA, the belt is estimated to contain between 1.1 and 1.9 million asteroids more than 1 kilometer in diameter, as well as millions of smaller asteroids.
Using computer models, they studied how the space object could escape its orbit in the asteroid belt.
How Asteroids Came to Earth and Possible Origins from Outside the Solar System
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