November 1

Destruction from Space!

In November of 1979 people around the world first heard of a stunning new theory explaining the extinction of the dinosaurs. Nobel-prize-winning Hispanic scientist Luis Alvarez, his son Walter, and their research group presented evidence that a large asteroid, possibly 9.7 kilometers in diameter, crashed into the Earth 65 million years ago.

The asteroid would have ignited fires and sent up a huge cloud of dust and smoke thick enough to blot out the sun. The Earth would have gotten very cold. Without sunlight the plants would have died, as would have the animals that ate those plants. In the late 1980s scientists found a crater in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula that is the right size and age to confirm the Alvarezs' theory.