The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs caused a global tsunami with an initial height of 1,500 metres.

big asteroid It fell to Earth about 66 million years ago and decisively contributed to the extinction of almost everyone dinosaurs And about three-quarters of all animal and plant species.

This asteroid also caused a towering asteroid tsunami A kilometer and a half (1,500 meters) altitude covered thousands of kilometers in almost all of the world’s oceans, according to estimates by Americans and others Scientists.

Researchers from the United States, New Zealand and Ghana, led by Molly Ring of the University of Michigan, who published the relevant publication in the journal “AGU Advances” of the American Geophysical Union, based their estimates on a new computational model, which they’ve fed with all available geological and oceanographic data from nearly 100 regions. from areas of the earth.

The asteroid, named after ChicxulubIt was estimated to be 10 to 14 kilometers in diameter and collided with our planet at 12 kilometers per second. It fell in the present-day Yucatan region of Mexico in a crust of granite topped with thick layers of sediment and shallow sea water, opened a crater about 100 km in diameter and spewed out Huge amounts of thick clouds of dust and soot in the atmosphere.

The modeling study concluded – based on relevant simulations – that after two and a half minutes of impact, it rose from the point of impact. A towering water wall 4.5 kilometers highwhich fell quickly. But ten minutes after the collision and up to 220 kilometers, a tsunami wave 1.5 kilometers high began to sweep the ocean in all directions.

An hour after the asteroid impact, it is estimated that the tsunami had already spread out of the Gulf of Mexico and into the North Atlantic Ocean. Four hours later, the waves, which were traveling at a speed underwater of 20 centimeters per second, reached The Pacific Oceanwhile after 24 hours they crossed most of the Pacific Ocean from the east and the Atlantic Ocean from the west, they have now entered the Indian Ocean on both sides.

Finally, 48 hours later, a tsunami several meters high struck They hit most of the coasts of the planetdrowning and eroding them. It should be noted that, according to the estimates of the new model, the Mediterranean today, relatively closed, avoided the strongest consequences of the tsunami.

Researchers estimate that the initial energy of the tsunami was 30,000 times greater than the energy of the deadly and destructive tsunami (one of the largest tsunamis in modern history) erupted in December 2004 by an undersea earthquake in the Indian Ocean, killing more than 230,000 people. . People.