65 million years ago, the asteroid "Heavenly Hammer", the official name of which at its location is "Chixulub", struck the Earth, causing a global environmental catastrophe, and tore out a page called "Dinosaurs" from the history of the planet. Today, the latest scientific data make it possible with a high probability to draw up a protocol of that “judgment day”. Death came without warning, literally falling on your head from a clear sky...

A colossal stone fragment ten kilometers across came from the icy depths of space. At a speed of 150 thousand kilometers per hour, he escaped from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, where for billions of years he peacefully moved in an elliptical orbit around the Sun. When the asteroid crossed the orbit of the blue planet, which was at that moment in fatal proximity, it was captured by its gravitational field, slowed down and changed its trajectory...

The solar wind licked and rounded the surface of a giant stone with cosmic dust and frozen gases that had boiled over on long journeys. Evaporating, they stretched out in a long train, and now the alien was already visible in the sky even during the day, frozen there as a harmless luminous comma. However, accelerated by the gravity of the planet, he swallowed the last 400 thousand kilometers in an instant. From smaller guests, the Earth was reliably kept by a dense humid atmosphere, where they sometimes burned out, sometimes crushed into a small meteor shower, without having time to cause much damage. But for an asteroid of that size, it didn't matter if there was atmospheric shielding...

Leaving a blinding plasma trail in the clear sky, the “Heavenly Hammer” at a speed of 72 thousand kilometers per hour, or 20 kilometers per second, crashed into the earth with an infernal roar. The fatal geometry of the collision - at an acute angle to the surface - exacerbated the already severe consequences of the impact. The earth's crust, especially thick under the continents, withstood the onslaught and even sprung a little, throwing the asteroid back.

But in these thousandths of a second, its entire mass, which is two thousand billion tons of stone, has already turned into energy equal to the simultaneous explosion of five billion atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima. Matter has turned into a mess of atoms - plasma, a ball of energy released at one point; a flash brighter than the sun illuminated even near space. In the colossal temperature of the explosion (> 10,000 ° C), billions of tons of earth rock also evaporated; the infernal prominence broke through the atmosphere of the doomed planet and stopped only about halfway to the moon.

From the flash, within a radius of several thousand kilometers from the epicenter, it almost instantly disappeared, all organic matter and part of the inorganic matter evaporated.

... the first hours

The shock wave at a speed of 7000 kilometers per hour rushed in different directions from the explosion site and circled the globe many times. The wall of incredibly thick dust whipped up by it scattered in concentric circles for thousands of kilometers, suffocating all living things.

At the site of the collision, the so-called "astroblem" or "star wound" arose - an impact crater with a diameter of 200 kilometers and a depth of 40 kilometers. Its vertical walls, which had risen for several minutes, collapsed again into the magma boiling below. The fall of multibillion-dollar masses of rock caused a colossal pressure explosion of five gigapascals, as if water were splashed on a white-hot frying pan. A hot prominence was thrown high into the atmosphere, containing, in addition to liquid and gaseous stone, megatons of evaporated sea salt and millions of cubic kilometers of water in the form of superheated steam, because half of the crater fell on the Atlantic Ocean.

When the upward movement stopped, the incandescent materials of the explosion fell onto the surface of the planet within a radius of 7000 kilometers from the epicenter, covering North and South America; a fiery downpour ignited vast areas of virgin forests, and the atmosphere began to fill with impenetrable smoke, which the world had not yet known.

As a result of the asteroid impact, oscillations arose in the molten semi-liquid core of the planet, which generated in the oceans a tsunami with a height of more than one kilometer, which, at a speed of 1000 kilometers per hour, dispersed from the epicenter in all directions, broke through hundreds of kilometers deep into the continents, crushed and washed away all coastal regions.

Parallel to this, fluctuations in the bowels of the planet launched a deadly scenario on land: super-strong earthquakes (or rather, “planet quakes”) with a force of at least thirteen points shook the globe, bringing down and smashing everything to dust. Such earthquakes are unknown to us today. Shocks of such force were guaranteed to knock down even 80-ton brontosaurus-type colossi (otherwise very stable creatures); they fell off into cracks that opened everywhere and perished under collapsing rocks, which is now being discovered during excavations.

... first days

There was no escape from "quick death" in the first moments and hours after the impact, even in the most remote corner of the globe. It turned out that this was only the beginning of an all-planetary hell, life at large distances simply received a reprieve. The survivor was doomed to perish in the fire of endless forest fires, thickening the smoke screen of an already impenetrable smog. The “Heavenly Hammer” struck a kilometer-thick layer of limestone and dolomite, a huge mass of these rocks evaporated, and a terrible poisonous cocktail of a mixture of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide was brewed in the atmosphere, as in a huge retort.

... first weeks ... months ... years ...

The cataclysm has entered its "slow" phase. A few days later, the entire sky above the planet was covered with a funeral shroud - a black cloud (however, it would be seen as black only from below). When passing through the atmosphere, the asteroid blew a colossal “hole” in it, in which a vacuum arose for several minutes. According to the principle of draft in the chimney, millions of tons of products of the first explosion rushed into this hole, "sucked" by a giant pump to a height of 40 kilometers.

The hole in space by this moment had already been tightened, and everything remained in the atmosphere. The second explosion after the collapse of the crater created a second layer of pollution. Everything gradually dispersed around the globe, water turned into ice crystals, filling the stratosphere at different levels. From the outside, the planet seemed to be wrapped in a thick cotton blanket, impervious to sunlight; a completely dark night reigned on the surface without the slightest hint of a change in the time of day. Today this phenomenon is called "nuclear winter", which would be the result of a global nuclear war.

After a brief temperature spike due to an asteroid explosion, planetary fires, and magma eruptions to the surface, temperatures everywhere quickly fell at least 20°C below normal. The surviving plants, including the microalgae of the ocean, stopped growing, the process of photosynthesis was interrupted, oxygen was no longer supplied to the atmosphere. As a result of a sharp reduction in evaporation, precipitation almost ceased; occasional rains became a poisonous shower that added to the agony of the survivors.

The first to die were the heaviest of the survivors - herbivorous lizards. The predators got a little respite, but for them, too, the short time of abundance, the "feast in the dark" quickly ended, because soon there was no one to eat. Due to the rapid mixing of the ocean, the upper layers of water, rich in oxygen and life, were absorbed by the "dead" water of great depths; all the “little things” died out, the food chain collapsed, the sea giants left the historical arena forever.

Almost all who survived this phase of the catastrophe died of hunger and cold during the following months, because the black cloud did not disappear, as rain clouds do after a downpour; it remained in the atmosphere for years, decades, maybe even centuries! The Great Dying was long.

Yucatan Sky Hammer Anvil

Today, the place of that terrible event is called the beautiful Spanish-Creole name "Yucatan". It is known for its wonderful beaches, palm groves, exotic color, it is washed by the gentle waves of the Atlantic Ocean - and there are no visible traces of the tragedy. The shift of continental platforms has long healed the wound inflicted by the asteroid on the Earth, now this place is covered with a layer of rocks of a kilometer thickness. Is this really the grave of the Lizard Planet?

The hypothesis of the disappearance of the colossi of antiquity with the participation of a space object is only one of eighty existing theories. It is confirmed by the unusually high concentration of iridium found in the Italian Apennines, a rare earth element found only in the Earth's mantle. It is present almost everywhere on Earth in that layer of clay, which corresponds to the time of the death of dinosaurs.

The theory is also supported by the small oval granules of black glass found almost everywhere - tektites, which are a product of the fusion of microportions of sand under the influence of very high temperatures. In layers of clay with a high content of iridium, there are up to twenty thousand pieces per cubic centimeter! This could only happen as a result of a gigantic ejection of deep matter high into the atmosphere, from where they returned to the earth in the form of precipitation.

Their global distribution confirms that the cataclysm that killed the dinosaurs was not a local emergency, but a worldwide event that hit the entire planet. These two finds - iridium and tektites - became the basis of the theory of the American scientist, Nobel Prize winner Luis Alvarez, which caused a furor in scientific circles in the 80s: dinosaurs died out due to an asteroid impact that provoked hyperactive volcanic activity on the planet.

A little later, a curious case brought evidence of this hypothesis. In 1981, the Mexican geologist Antonio Camargo, on the instructions of the Pemex oil concern, undertook geological measurements to localize probable underground deposits. He did not find oil, however, he discovered a strange anomaly of the Earth's magnetic field on a circular underground formation invisible from the surface. It was an astrobleme, a colossal crater.

The geologist came to the only correct conclusion: we are talking about the place where the celestial body fell about 65 million years ago. He reported his discovery at a scientific congress in Los Angeles and... shook a storm of indignation! "Scientific luminaries", who are often ossified bureaucrats and opponents of everything that does not coincide with their opinion, immediately rejected the point of view of the "non-specialist"; Pemex even threatened him with dismissal, so that he would be looking for specific oil, and not mythical lizards.

Fortunately, the report was carefully listened to and recorded by a Texas journalist. In his newspaper article, he recalled the hypothesis of another scientist, Luis Alvarez. The story received publicity and aroused the interest of the scientific world. So the individual pebbles formed a completely realistic picture of the event. The impact site of the asteroid was unequivocally established: Chicxulub crater, Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico.

Latest Research

In order to put together the Big Impact mosaic as accurately as possible, scientists intend to seriously tackle the crater. To that end, a group of geophysicists, geologists, paleontologists, and "impact" specialists embarked on a challenging project a few months ago. Among other things, wells are being drilled up to a depth of 1800 meters; the extracted drill columns are expected to be deciphered using modern methods.

Today's possibilities allow with a high probability to reconstruct what exactly and how happened that day. However, all this will take years, according to the minerologists of the Potsdam Center for Earth Geology (Germany), which is responsible for a comprehensive analysis of the crater.

It took millions of years for life on Earth to recover from that knockout. Scientists suggest that at that time two-thirds of the inhabitants of the earth died, only creatures weighing no more than twenty kilograms managed to survive, who could still find enough food to gain time. Mosses and ferns were the first to return to the devastated regions, followed by other plants, insects and animals.

Advantages were for those who adapted to a new phenomenon, the cold, having, say, wool. This is exactly what the "weaklings" of that era had - today we call them mammals. The first of them appeared about 200 million years ago, were the size of a mouse, and in the world of giant lizards they were content with the role of general prey, forced to hide and adapt. The new conditions were the beginning of "their era."

How big is the danger of a new collision of the Earth with an asteroid? According to experts, it is only a matter of time. Scientists have calculated that today a much smaller asteroid would cause such a chain of oscillations in the bowels of the Earth that the resulting tsunamis within a few hours would completely wash away the coastal, usually densely populated regions of the planet.

A meteorite that hit fifteen million years ago between present-day Munich and Stuttgart, and left a 25-kilometer crater, was only one kilometer across, but even this “baby” completely destroyed what was then Europe, changing the very geographical outlines of the continent. A space object of the caliber of a Yucatan guest would completely destroy today's civilization.

Asteroids of the "Big Five"

There is such a version that the source of constant meteorite danger for the Earth is the alleged invisible satellite of our luminary "Nemesis". This absolutely black star moves in an orbit passing along the outer perimeter of the solar system, and from time to time captures cosmic bodies that are in dangerous proximity with its colossal gravitational field, throws them into our system, where they then collide with one or another planet.

Today, experts agree that the development of life on Earth was decisively influenced by five proven collisions of the Earth with space objects, each of which radically changed the conditions of existence on the planet every time: 65, 200, 240, 360 and 440 million years ago.

So what is known about the mysterious planet "Nemesis"?

Nemesis (Nibiru) is a dark cosmic body: a protostar, in the depths of which thermonuclear reactions have not begun, and by now it has already cooled down, or vice versa, a star that has quickly used up its supply of thermonuclear fuel and has also cooled down by now.

One of the reasons for the hypothesis of the existence of Nemesis was the Stone Age cave paintings depicting two suns.

According to the theory actively discussed in the 1970s and 1980s, the star Nemesis revolves around the Sun in a wide orbit. Approaching the solar system, Nemesis must create gravitational perturbations in the orbits of the planets, the Earth's magnetic field, and even bring down icy planetoids from the so-called Oort cloud onto the Earth.

It is interesting that the Nemesis hypothesis and its “fatal” name were required initially in order to explain the cyclical periods of mass death of almost all life on our planet. This means that another evidence of the existence of Nemesis in reality can have extremely important consequences for our understanding not only of the history of the Earth, but also of our own destinies in the future.

The newly discovered brown dwarf is reportedly only 60 AU (astronomical units) (1 AU = distance from the Sun to Earth) away and is currently heading towards the constellation Sagittarius. Due to periodic gravitational disturbances in the Oort Cloud, a Spanish team of astronomers calculated that G1.9 was traveling in an elliptical orbit as it approached the Sun.

You may ask why astronomers have never discovered this object before. In fact, they discovered it a long time ago. G1.9 was first identified as a "supernova remnant" in 1984 by Dave Green of the University of Cambridge, then after closer examination with the NRAO Very Large Array Telescope in 1985, it was found to be unusually small for a supernova.

In 2007, X-ray observations from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory showed that the object was much larger than it was last seen! It has increased in size by 16%. Perplexed by this observation, the Very Large Array repeated its observations 23 years ago and found that it had grown in size. Knowing that a supernova doesn't expand as fast unless it just exploded, they explained that G1.9 must be a "very young" supernova - no more than 150 years old. But no information about visible supernova has been found corresponding to this historical period (during the American Civil War).

The Spanish astronomers tracked this object with great interest because they expected it to appear. Gravitational anomalies have been appearing in the Oort Cloud for some time, suggesting that the perturbations were caused by a number of objects with significant mass. It is fixed that G1.9 has increased in size even more. This is exactly what they expected, and it proves that the object (Planet X, Nibiru, Nemesis) has come close to Earth.

Object G1.9 [upper right] is currently in the direction of our Galaxy's center, Sagittarius, which glows brightly in this infrared spectrum image. Due to the bright background, G1.9 is not visible in normal wavelengths of light.

The image [above] shows evidence that the object has grown in size over the course of 23 years. On the left, a blue spherical object was detected in the radio band in 1985 by the Very Large Array. The image on the right shows the same observation point taken in 2008. Obviously the object is larger.

In this image [above] we see the original 1985 photo of radio emission from the VLA compared to the 2007 photo, this X-ray image taken by the Chandra Observatory.

The image above was provided by the Starviewer team. It shows G1.9 on the left and the famous brown dwarf, Gilese 229A on the right. We're looking for microwave emissions (says Starviewer) that indicate the radiated heat from each source. The dark red area is the hottest. Note that the G1.9 has a solid heat dissipation similar to the Gilese 229A. The Starviewer team says this suggests that if G1.9 is indeed a supernova, as previously thought, we might expect the spherical region to be larger, as the hot gas and emissions from the exploding star would be concentrated in the surrounding corpus. .

An example of an infrared scan of the Cygnus-Loop supernova emissions is below.

There is scientific evidence that the G1.9 brown dwarf is the real cause of climate change. Back in July 2010, Dr. Paul Clark published articles on the subject on Science.com, and almost 700 scientists signed a report on climate change.

The Star Viewer team published the results of her research back in 2009 in a number of journals, as well as on your website.. The collected evidence met with an extremely negative reaction in astronomical circles, which in every possible way prevented the acceptance of the discovery and demanded more evidence.

In a statement, Starviewer wrote that NASA would never allow this information to be released to the public. NASA is fooling people by distracting their attention with all sorts of nonsense while a small group of scientists are trying to tell the world what is happening and the reason for it.

In their article, Spanish astronomers openly accused NASA scientists of withholding information that there is another massive object in our solar system (twice the size of Jupiter) - a brown dwarf star (official name G1.9), which affects orbits of known planets. That is, in fact, our solar system is binary. Spanish astronomers claim that all this has long been known to NASA, which simply leads everyone by the nose, hiding this information from ordinary people.

He fell in the 'worst' place, scientists say

Most modern paleontologists agree that the main reason for the death of dinosaurs was the fall of a meteorite. A new study by an international team of experts has added a curious detail to this theory: according to scientists, the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event and the accompanying climate changes did indeed occur due to a meteorite, but not its size, but the location, played a key role in this. upon which he fell.

Experts studied the stones found during excavations in the Gulf of Mexico. About 66 million years ago, a meteorite fell in these places, which is recognized as the "prime suspect" in the mass extinction. As it turned out, in these places the rocks contained a large amount of gypsum, which means that the fall of the meteorite should have caused a huge amount of sulfur to enter the atmosphere. It, in turn, led to the fact that less sunlight began to fall on the Earth, which affected plants, and then, in a chain, herbivores and predatory animals.

Thus, scientists argue that the fall of the asteroid led to catastrophic consequences, in the first place, not because of its size, explosion during a collision or other factors, but precisely because it fell in "the most unfortunate place." If the asteroid had approached the Earth a fraction of a second earlier or later, it would have crashed into another part of it, and the situation could have turned out completely differently, the authors of the study say.

In the past, another group of specialists representing the Potsdam Institute came to the conclusion that it was the ingress of a large amount of sulfur into the atmosphere that could have killed the dinosaurs. However, some other researchers tend to believe that extinction, in the first place, may not be associated with the fall of the meteorite and not even with its consequences. For example, last year, scientists from Oregon State University suggested that ancient blood-sucking insects that carried an ancient form of malaria could have killed the dinosaurs. Prior to this, some other paleontologists stated that the natural fluctuations in climate that led to the mass extinction were observed even before the meteorite fell.

Many researchers are of the opinion that dinosaurs died as a result of the fall of a large meteorite almost 66 million years ago. True, there are experts who assure that he simply finished off the ancient lizards, which are a space "aliens". Nevertheless, the very fact of the fall of a meteorite by scientists, of course, is not disputed. Moreover, some experts are carefully studying the impact crater near the Yucatan Peninsula, which is somehow associated with the extinction of dinosaurs.

The impact crater is called Chicxulub (Mayan for "tick demon"). Last spring, an international team of researchers drilled a well in one of the parts of the Chicxulub crater - to a depth of 506 to 1335 meters under the seabed (the crater is partially submerged under the waters of the Gulf of Mexico). And thanks to this, not so long ago, scientists were able to determine.

Now, experts have recovered rock samples from under the Gulf of Mexico, which were hit by that same meteorite. This material helped scientists to get the most important details that allow us to better understand the long-standing event. It turned out that a giant asteroid could not find a worse place to land on our planet.

The shallow sea covers the "target", which means that as a result of the fall of the space "aliens" huge volumes of sulfur released from the mineral gypsum were thrown into the atmosphere. And following the immediate firestorm that occurred after the fall of the meteorite, an extended period of "global winter" began.

The researchers say that if the intruder had fallen in a different place, a completely different result could have been obtained.

"The irony of the story is that it wasn't the size of the meteorite or the scale of the explosion that caused the disaster, but the place it fell into," says Ben Garrod, co-host of The Day the Dinosaurs Died. Day The Dinosaurs Died with Alice Roberts), in which the findings of scientists were presented.

In particular, experts say, if an asteroid, the size of which was supposedly 15 kilometers across, had reached the Earth a few seconds earlier or later, it would have landed not in coastal shallow water, but in the deep ocean. A fall in the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean would have vaporized far fewer rocks—including deadly calcium sulfate. The clouds would be less dense, so that the sun's rays could break through to the surface of the Earth. Accordingly, the consequences that occurred could have been avoided.

“In that cold and dark world, food in the ocean ended within one week, and after a short time on land. Without a source of food, the mighty dinosaurs had little chance of survival,” notes Garrod.

It is noted that the core (rock sample) was extracted from depths of up to 1300 meters while drilling in the crater area. The deepest parts of the rock were mined in the so-called. Analyzing the properties of this material, the authors of the work hope to reconstruct in more detail the picture of the fall of the asteroid and the subsequent changes.

About 66 million years ago, a huge asteroid hit the Earth. He landed directly on the North American continent, leaving behind a large crater on the Yucatan Peninsula in the Gulf of Mexico. Today, almost all scientists agree that it was this “greeting from space” that killed the dinosaurs - the most majestic and largest creatures that have ever walked our planet. And he gave impetus to the development of mammals and other animal species that still own the Earth. But what happened in the first days, months, years after the asteroid swept through the sky in a bright stroke?

A fire the size of a planet

When a 10-kilometer block crashed into the Earth at great speed, it caused tsunamis, earthquakes and even volcanic eruptions. The blow turned out to be fatal for many terrestrial dinosaurs, but did not lead to the instant death of all species, especially those living in water, underground or having the ability to quickly hide: there was still quite a lot of time before their complete extinction.

According to a recent study by scientists, in which they simulated the consequences of an asteroid impact, the impact force lifted into the air small particles of frozen rocks - the so-called spherules with a diameter of 1-2 mm. When this suspension again fell to the ground, the particles were heated up enough to start global forest fires. A thin layer of such particles today can be found almost anywhere on the planet.

The strongest forest fires led to the fact that about 15 million tons of ash rose into the air. The model showed that the ash, heated by the sun, rose higher and higher into the atmosphere, eventually forming a powerful barrier that blocked a huge portion of the sunlight that reached the Earth's surface. During this period, the planet was constantly dark, like on a moonlit night.

Two years without photosynthesis

When the sky became even a little brighter, photosynthesis on Earth was not possible for more than a year and a half, follows from the simulations. Since many plants on land have already been burned in fires, the darkness has probably affected the phytoplankton that are at the base of the ocean food chain the most. The disappearance of these tiny organisms has shaken the entire ecosystem of the ocean, destroying many species of marine life. The loss of sunlight also caused a sharp decrease in average temperatures on the Earth's surface - by 28°C on land and 11°C over the oceans.

While the surface of the Earth cooled, the ash that blocked the sunlight, on the contrary, absorbed its rays, heating the stratosphere. High temperatures caused the destruction of the ozone layer, which intensified after the interaction of water vapor with hydrogen compounds. As a result, after the soot layer disappeared, destructive doses of ultraviolet radiation poured onto the Earth, which the ozone layer could no longer contain.

Despite the latest data that was used for the simulation, this simulation is still not completely accurate. First, they took a model of the modern Earth for it, and not the one that existed 66 million years ago - with a different degree of concentration of gases, including a higher level of carbon dioxide.

Also in the simulation, the consequences of volcanic eruptions and sulfur, which was released from the earth's crust after a collision with an asteroid, were taken into account. In theory, this would lead to an increase in reflective sulfate aerosols in the atmosphere, that is, it would also affect the level of illumination and temperature of the planet.

Not so long ago, scientists embarked on a groundbreaking study in which they are drilling a shelf in the very center of the crater left by an asteroid that is to blame for the death of dinosaurs. So far, they have gone 700 meters deep and made their first breakthrough.

Cause of mass extinction

The mystery of the death of flightless dinosaurs was revealed only about 38 years ago. Many probable causes of the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period 66 million years ago have been proposed. However, the discovery of a partially submerged, incredibly symmetrical arc off the coast of Mexico in 1978 was the first piece of the puzzle scientists were trying to solve.

This crater, 180 km in diameter and 20 km deep, was left by an asteroid whose dimensions did not exceed 10 km in diameter. Currently, scientists have been able to obtain the first sample from the crater.

Ring of Spades

An international team working on the coast of Yucatan Island under the auspices of the Ocean Discovery program was able to get rock samples from a depth of 670 meters under the seabed. This rocky core contains chunks of bedrock granite that broke off on impact, as well as fluid-filled cracks created by exposure to extremely high temperatures.

This core, called the peak ring, can be used to estimate how much energy was generated when an asteroid hit. While there has been some recent debate about whether or not to drill into the crater, this is no longer in doubt.

Now scientists are in a peak ring, said Joanna Morgan, one of the expedition's lead researchers and professor of geophysics at Imperial College London. It will take some time before the results of the study are interpreted, she said, and for now the task of scientists is to continue drilling. The team will continue to work until June 6th. During this time, they must drill a hole 1.5 kilometers deep.

Research scientists

The Chicxulub crater is known to have been created by an asteroid impact with the force of 920 million atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima. The asteroid melted the landscape, created a tsunami the size of a continent, and created massive amounts of ash that darkened the sky and caused temperatures to drop. By a fatal coincidence, the asteroid fell on soft rock, causing its core to rise up. Sometimes such a collapse leads to the formation of a single elevation, but in this case several central peaks were formed.

Previously, scientists have already carried out excavations on land to discover the remains of an asteroid, but there is an assumption that its most important fragments lie under water. The purpose of this project is to find these remains and determine how devastating the fall was. Looking at the center of the peak ring, one can estimate how much the asteroid has melted the earth's crust.
Peak crater impact rings have been seen on planets throughout the solar system, from Mars to Mercury, and on many moons of Saturn and Jupiter. However, due to climatic conditions on Earth, the peak rings, along with the original craters, are in most cases buried under soil or eroded away over time. The peak ring of Chicxulub remains relatively untouched.