Our planet is tougher than you’d think – but humans aren’t.
After dominating the Earth for more than 160 million years, the dinosaurs finally met their doom thanks to a visitor from space. Around 66 million years ago, an asteroid measuring at least 6 miles across dealt the dinosaurs' world a devastating blow, triggering earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and climate catastrophes that soon rendered 75% of all living creatures extinct.
Toon is referring to the giant impact hypothesis — a scientific theory that suggests a Mars-size planet named Theia collided with Earth 4.5 billion years ago, launching a salvo of rocky debris into space that eventually coalesced into our moon. . A collision with a larger rock, measuring at least 0.6 miles wide , would"probably trigger the end of civilization" by unleashing global climate disasters, Gerrit L. Verschuur, an astrophysicist at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, told Scientific American. And if an impactor the size of the dino-killing asteroid arrived today, it would probably render humans extinct.
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