A new study estimates that the asteroid or comet that collided with Mexico 66 million years ago and ended the age of the dinosaurs caused a tsunami with an initial height of 1.5 kilometers, which swept within hours all the oceans of the planet.
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The international research team publishes in the journal ancestor AGU Estimates based on a new computational model, fed with geological and oceanographic data from nearly 100 regions on Earth.
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The diameter of the object that fell in the present-day Mexican Yucatan Peninsula is estimated to be between 10 and 14 kilometers. It collided at a speed of 12 kilometers per second and opened a crater with a diameter of about 100 kilometers, which today lies under the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.
After two and a half minutes of impact, event modeling shows, the first monster wave rose to a height of 4.5 kilometers but quickly retreated. Ten minutes after the collision, a tsunami 1.5 km high began to sweep the ocean in all directions.
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After an hour of impact, it is estimated that the tsunami had already spread out of the Gulf of Mexico toward the North Atlantic. Four hours later, the waves, moving at a speed of 20 centimeters per second, reached the Pacific Ocean, and after 24 hours they entered the Indian Ocean on both sides.
The waves took about 48 hours to reach almost all the coasts of the planet. However, according to the study, the Mediterranean avoided a relatively closed day, the strongest of the consequences.
Researchers estimate that the initial energy of the wave was 30,000 times greater than the energy of the deadly and devastating tsunami that struck the Indian Ocean in 2004 and killed more than 230,000 people.
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