Science
Asteroid Impact Created Nuclear Winter Lasting Up to Decade
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The mass extinction that accidentally created the dinosaurs | Steve Brusatte
"The soot from those fires, the dust and the dirt and the grime from the collision of asteroid hitting earth, all that stuff went up into the atmosphere. And there's currents in the atmosphere just like in the ocean, and that stuff spread all around the world, and it cloaked the earth in darkness. It was a nuclear winter, a global winter that lasted for maybe a few years, maybe up to a decade or so. The earth went dark and cold and silent. Plants did not have sunlight to photosynthesize to make their own food, so over a quite short period of time plants died, forests collapsed."
The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago created a global winter lasting years to a decade by filling the atmosphere with debris that blocked sunlight. This caused ecosystems to collapse like houses of cards as plants died, then herbivores, then carnivores. Everything bigger than a husky dog on land died out, with only small feathered dinosaurs—birds—surviving among dinosaurs.
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