Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Earth Intel Space Science Technology

Supercomputer Simulates the Impact of the Asteroid That Wiped Out Dinosaurs (zdnet.com) 61

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Some 66 million years ago, an asteroid hit the Earth on the eastern coast of modern Mexico, resulting in up to three quarters of plant and animal species living on the planet going extinct -- including the dinosaurs. Now, a team of researchers equipped with a supercomputer have managed to simulate the entire event, shedding light on the reasons that the impact led to a mass extinction of life. The simulations were carried out by scientists at Imperial College in London, using high performance computing (HPC) facilities provided by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. The research focused on establishing as precise an impact angle and trajectory as possible, which in turn can help determine precisely how the asteroid's hit affected the surrounding environment.

Various impact angles and speeds were considered, and 3D simulations for each were fed into the supercomputer. These simulations were then compared with the geophysical features that have been observed in the 110-mile wide Chicxulub crater, located in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, where the impact happened. The simulations that turned out to be the most consistent with the structure of the Chicxulub crater showed an impact angle of about 60 degrees. Such a strike had the strength of about ten billion Hiroshima bombs, and this particular angle meant that rocks and sediments were ejected almost symmetrically. This, in turn, caused a greater amount of climate-changing gases to be released, including billions of tonnes of sulphur that blocked the sun. The rest is history: firestorms, hurricanes, tsunamis and earthquakes rocked the planet, and most species disappeared from the surface of the Earth.
The 60-degree angle constituted "the worse-case scenario for the lethality of the impact" because it maximized the ejection of rock and therefore, the production of gases, the scientists wrote.

"The researchers carried out almost 300 3D simulations before they were able to reach their conclusions, which was processed by the HPE Apollo 6000 Gen10 supercomputer located at the University of Leicester," adds ZDNet. "The 14,000-cores system, powered by Intel's Skylake chips, is supported by a 6TB server to accommodate large, in-memory calculations."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Supercomputer Simulates the Impact of the Asteroid That Wiped Out Dinosaurs

Comments Filter:
  • many plants and marine species died out too.

    • How do you know, were you there? -Ken Ham
      • How do you know, were you there? -Ken Ham

        I was and it was the biggest oh shit moment I have ever experienced. Next to hearing a shot from the bathroom and realizing the General Ripper was not going to give out the recall codes!

    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      many plants and marine species died out too.

      Pffft, history is made by the big and loud.

      • many plants and marine species died out too.

        Pffft, history is made by the big and loud.

        Yeah, ammonites were famously introverted.

  • by Anonymous Coward
    What's that, about 3 AMD CPUs?
  • Can it emulate the delicious crispy taste of fried giant reptile?

  • by jdoeii ( 468503 ) on Tuesday May 26, 2020 @11:50PM (#60108928)

    Stop spreading fake news. Dinosaurs are alive and well. Where is that fact checking web site? :)

    • Indeed. They are alive and well, but today they are called "Reptilians" and are mistakenly believed by the Illiterati to have come from the Heavens.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I saw an interview with a T-Rex about it, he said "I saw this giant flaming asteroid coming down and thought to myself 'oh shit! The economy!'"

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        I saw an interview with a T-Rex about it, he said "I saw this giant flaming asteroid coming down and thought to myself 'oh shit! The economy!'"

        You appear to think that COVID-19 is an extinction-level event. It's not. It's not even an apocalyptic even.

        A truly fucked up economy, though, is as close to apocalyptic as you can get.

        Letting COVID-19 run wild with absolutely no lockdowns hardly makes a dent in the human population. Having the economy of Zimbabwe makes COVID-19 look like a walk in the park.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          It was just a joke, lighten up.

        • by DrXym ( 126579 )
          The economic cost of doing nothing would have been far worse than a controlled lock down period. The number of people who got sick or died would be a factor higher. One study suggests that the loss of production due to a controlled lockdown is 15% but it would have been 30% if the disease were allowed to run rampant. Oh and 900,000 additional deaths for no damned reason.

          And the economy gets fucked all the time and recovers. This time will be no different. It might take a while to fully recover once things

    • Stop spreading fake news. Dinosaurs are alive and well. Where is that fact checking web site? :)

      Yes, they are alive and well. My dinosaur feeder is packed most days. Everything from sparrows (a small avian dinosaur) to red-headed woodpeckers (a rather larger, but still small, avian dinosaur).

      And don't get me started on the hawks (avian dinosaurs) and corvids (crows, blue jays, etc), which are (again) avian dinosaurs....

  • by deepthought90 ( 937992 ) on Wednesday May 27, 2020 @12:03AM (#60108948)
    If I'm not mistaken, there is a large range of impact angles that produce a circular crater even if the ejecta aren't symmetric. This paper says otherwise, I think. Is there a discrepancy between what we measure with real craters and simulations?
  • Is there a Hiroshima Bombs to Libraries of Congress converter? Anyone got a url? Thanks!
     
    • by Anonymous Coward
      Sure, I'll whip up a close-enough version for you here. It's not too bad.

      Using https://www.bookmobile.com/boo... [bookmobile.com] I have estimated the average weight for a hardcover book at 1.14 kg. That is a 8x11 hardcover book with 400 pages and the lightest weight paper. The Library of Congress has 38 million regular books - we'll just skip all of the other stuff for the estimate. This gives us an estimated book mass of 4.3x10^7 kg. The Hiroshima bomb converted approximately 700 milligrams, 0.7g or 0.0007kg, to e
  • Movies (Score:3, Informative)

    by votsalo ( 5723036 ) on Wednesday May 27, 2020 @02:16AM (#60109134)
    The .MOV files (available through the nature.com article) show impacts at various angles. They are about 10 MB each and they have resolution 7200 x 4050 at 10 FPS. I viewed them in slow motion.
  • IIRC it was 6 miles (10km) in diameter and probably not spherical either. Yet the impactor in this sim appears to be 16/17 km in diameter and spherical making it much larger and heavier. Am I missing something here?

  • 'worse-case', really?

  • ...just drop it from 20,000 feet and look at the crater.

1 1 was a race-horse, 2 2 was 1 2. When 1 1 1 1 race, 2 2 1 1 2.

Working...