Rocks formed during the Chicxulub asteroid impact reveal fine dust particles were main drivers of the global winter which led to extinction of 75% of Earth's species.
We all know how the story goes: a large asteroid falls to Earth from space, slamming into the Yucatán Peninsula with 100 million megatons of force. The impact spawned tsunami waves best measured in miles and kicked up dust, soot, and sulfur that blotted out the Sun, causing the death of about 75% of Earth’s species, including all dinosaurs but the ancestors of birds.
NASA has been tracking the asteroid for almost 25 years, and projections resulted in slim chances of the asteroid hitting our planet. Click to read more.