Researchers find more about the Impactor that ended the Dinosaurs

[sheeny]

Researchers have found a hole in the asteroid belt, and computer modelling suggests it is a remnant of a collision that resulted in the impact on earth that ended the dinosaurs. More here:

http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070903/full/070903-9.html

Al.

[NQLD_Newby]

Sounds like a great article, but would appear you need to be a subscriber to access it.

[Doug]

Interesting that the article seems not to be being carried anywhere else.

[iceman]

The latest episode of ABC StarStuff podcast explained it, so have a listen to that.
Seems a bit of a stretch especially since there's no real evidence yet, but an interesting proposition.

[higginsdj]

I can't access the news item but it does appear to be related tot he article in Nature by Bottke, Vokrouhlicky and Nesvorny (I do some observational work for the latter 2 in the area of YORP) titled "An asteroid breakup 160Myr ago as the probable source of the K/T impactor".

It's an interesting read and my first reaction was 'pure speculation' but reading the article it is really more about solar system dynamics and modelling of YORP/Yarkovsky effects and identifying the members of the Baptistina Minor Planet family/group.

In a nutshell, they believe the progenitor of Baptistina and its family was a 170km diameter asteroid located in the inner main belt that got a direct hit by some other object with the break-up generating many thousands of > 1km size objects that pelted the inner solar system over a period of ~100Myr.

They have formulated techniques that have successfully identified likely Baptistina family members out of the quagmire of prominent Flora and Vesta family members then run the numbers backward to get 160Myr +30Myr/-20Myr.

Cheers