A Journey To The Beginning Of Time

see this structure looks scary and devoid of any possibility of life but this is our home the earth at the beginning of its existence 4.6 billion years ago and its formation and the formation of the moon remains a mystery but today we'll tell you about the theories that scientists suggested you'll learn how planets so different from each other form from the same material what planet crashed into the earth in the past how much water there is on our planet and where it came from and finally we'll tell you how old the oldest organism on earth is we prepared the story of our planet from a clump of dust and gas a few miles in diameter to the appearance of life when the sun was created gases and other materials around it started colliding with each other and forming small bodies called planetesimals and as the gravitational forces were growing more material was pulled together and these seeds of planets grew larger until they became true planets the solar systems gas giants jupiter and saturn uranus and neptune were born much earlier than the four known terrestrial planets mercury venus earth and mars but how exactly was our home planet born [Music] the earth story started about 4.6 billion years ago in a disc shaped cloud of dust and gas rotating around the early sun and we know it was that long ago because of the fossil record one of the most simple methods to determine the age of our planet scientists were able to find zircon crystals that are roughly 4.3 billion years old so far these crystals are the oldest materials found on our planet but how exactly our planet was formed remains a scientific mystery however there are two leading theories on planetary formation the core accretion model is the first one and most widely accepted about 4.6 billion years ago there was a solar nebula consisting of spinning gas and dust particles from which our sun was born then as the remaining material of different sizes orbited our star at slightly different speeds it started to collide and stick together under the effect of gravity smaller particles grew into larger particles that ranged from miles to hundreds of miles in diameter the solar wind would then sweep away lighter elements such as hydrogen and helium so that just rocky materials would stay closer and turn into terrestrial worlds the process continues until these space objects reach thousands of miles in diameter but far away from the star the sun's constant stream of charged particles doesn't have a very strong impact on lighter elements as a result these elements combine and transform into gas giants what's exciting is that nasa believes that this is the way planetary formation works small rocky worlds like the earth are a lot more common throughout the universe than gas giants the thing with this theory is that it works well to explain the formation of terrestrial planets but has problems explaining the creation of giant worlds this is because scientists believe the gas disk around our sun only lasted about four to five million years and simulations based on the core accretion model show such planets form longer than that however the second theory or the disc instability model resolves this issue this newer idea suggests that chunks of dust and gas clump together early in the existence of the solar system and over time these chunks slowly turn into a gas planet but the difference is that this way planets can form much faster than those explained by the core accretion model in fact according to this theory it could happen within as little as 1 000 years a planetary formation this fast makes it possible for such worlds to trap the rapidly vanishing lighter gases a recent study suggests that proto-earth was formed within about five million years and on a cosmic scale it's nothing if we converted the solar system's estimated 4.6 billion years of existence into a 24-hour period these 5 million years would be equal to just about 1.5 minutes if scientists are right about this water could be just a byproduct of the formation of a planet similar to our home this would mean that we're a lot more likely to discover the ingredients of our life outside our solar system and what about our satellite what's the story of the moon [Music] astronomers have proposed many hypotheses for the origin of our satellite and some of them are quite bizarre the fishing theory suggests that the moon was once part of our planet when the earth was still a hot ball of spinning lava it may have ejected the material our satellite is made of now while most scientists remained skeptical because of how fast our planet must have been spinning to make this happen it would have been a breathtaking phenomenon to observe the capture theory is yet another interesting idea suggesting that the moon could have been captured from a different part of the solar system we already know that some worlds have gained their moons in such a way perhaps before it was attracted by our planet's gravitational pull the moon was orbiting venus still this wouldn't answer the question of why the earth and the moon have almost identical oxygen and isotope ratios but the next theory could some astronomers think our satellite was created side by side with the earth the idea is that both were formed at about the same time from the same gas and dust and at the same part of our solar system's protoplanetary disk the theory is called co-formation and it fits because of the isotopic similarities between the two space objects but at the same time it cannot explain the difference in the size of their iron cores the leading and perhaps the most mind-blowing theory is that the moon was born as a result of a giant impact with a different celestial body there's a chance that earth wasn't the only planet that was forming 150 million kilometers from the sun earth's creation may have been accompanied by another planet dubbed thayer this strange world must have been smaller than our planet just about the size and mass of mars at first it could have had a stable orbit but as earth increased its mass by gathering more material thayer's orbit was destabilized and so it swung back and forth towards our planet until eventually the two protoplanets collided the speed of collision was low so the earth wasn't destroyed however the impact must have created a disk of debris of molten rock and hot gas that became the building blocks of the moon both thayer and the earth could have been composed of a combination of materials and more of the lower density splatter would eventually transform into the moon if this is the case it explains why our planet has a higher density and thicker core than our satellite and why the earth and the moon spin the way they do around each other but let's get back to earth throughout the next half a billion years the earth resembled a ball of a molten surface volcanism and asteroid impacts and several things made it extremely hot gravitational compression radioactive decay and asteroid impacts a big amount of this initial heat is still there deep inside our planet but as it cooled minerals started to crystallize and because of the different densities of materials the crust mantle and core were formed so how did water appear on a hot rock floating through space [Music] oceans cover more than 70 percent of the earth's surface this is 1.386 billion cubic kilometers of surface water or ice but the fact that there's more liquid water on our planet than any other known rocky world in our solar system isn't fully understood and as with the earth and moon there are several hypotheses as to how water appeared here one likely reason is extra planetary sources such as comets trans-neptunian objects or even proto-planets there's actually a lot of water in our solar system two-thirds of uranus and neptune for example are made of ice so if our planet was born hot and dry then water must have come from somewhere else brought by icy comets and asteroids comets are made of dust and ice with most of that ice being frozen water so they might be the clue but measurements show that comet water has a lot more deuterium in it compared to that found on earth what about asteroids because their ratio of deuterium to normal hydrogen water is closer to that which we have on our planet they're even a better candidate also asteroids are 20 water but due to their small size there must have been a colossal number of impacts to explain all the water on our planet to fill the planet with 1.386 million cubic kilometers of water might seem like a lot to compare this much water would have been enough to cover the contiguous united states to a depth of roughly 145 kilometers but this still isn't a lot in fact water amounts to only about 0.02 of our planet's mass and since earth experienced periods of heavy bombardment in the past this is actually a possible scenario researchers also think that when our planet formed huge amounts of hydrogen were captured in its rocks and minerals and because of the mantle's heat hydrogen and oxygen-rich minerals started to melt this made it possible for water to spew out from the earth's crust according to scientists estimates about 10 oceans of water could exist within the mantle up to this date probably the most astonishing of all is the volcanic outgassing hypothesis according to this idea water may have come from volcanism in other words it was always there in the form of minerals with oxygen and hydrogen hidden beneath the crust of our planet and volcanoes only helped it break freya's vapor it originated in volcanic eruptions then condensed and fell as rain scientists think that all volcanic eruptions contain some water vapor and that it may have been enough to account for the earth's surface water this still remains an open question but whatever the case with water there often comes life life most likely began during the late hadiyan or early archaean eon that lasted from 4.0 to 2.5 billion years ago there's evidence of life in at least 3.8 billion year old rocks from akila island greenland and the oldest form of life discovered by scientists a tiny hematite tubes estimated to be 4.28 billion years old hypotheses include a chemical origin of life in the early atmosphere hydrothermal vents deep seas oceans and even comets that came here from somewhere in space it's highly possible that life began from the chemical environment of the early atmosphere and oceans but they were nothing like we have today the atmosphere was oxygen free but was abundant in methane carbon dioxide sulfur and nitrogen compounds and some space objects in our solar system are known to have an atmosphere like this in one experiment scientists simulated our planet's early atmosphere and lightning with a sealed vessel they found that after igniting sparks amino acids or the fundamental building blocks of proteins were formed life that could have started on the deep ocean floor may have also been able to survive without photosynthesis due to another biological process called chemosynthesis instead of using energy from the sun primitive life gained energy from the heat that was coming from the earth's interior still there's always a possibility that life initially originated in space and was then carried here by comets or other celestial bodies researchers have already found amino acids within meteorites and comets what's exciting about this idea is that it means a high likelihood of life exists somewhere in space [Music] the earth has changed so many times and transformed heavily from when it first formed how life came from non-life is still a big scientific mystery however we do have a current best guess for the beginning of life on earth which we think is around 3.8 billion years ago but before we get into that let's start from the beginning and take a trip back in time the earth didn't always exist and it wasn't always hospitable for life approximately 4.6 billion years ago our solar system was just a cloud of dust and gas known as a solar nebula and around four and a half billion years ago the solar system settled into its current layout earth's rocky core formed first with heavy elements colliding and binding together dense material sank to the proto-planet's center and lighter material built up the crust the earth suffered a huge impact sometime during its formation that catapulted pieces of the young planet into space and formed the moon which took up orbit around the young planet this was known as the paleo-archaean era when the moon was still very close to earth and likely caused huge tides of more than 300 meters high hurricane force wind blasted through the planet and the evolutionary process began the new earth was a hellish place during this time the flow of the mantle beneath the crust caused the movement of large plates of rock on the planet's surface collisions of these plates created huge mountains and volcanoes that continually erupted shooting out huge amounts of lava and gases and the reefs were created in the oceans at this time the proto-planet barely had an atmosphere but as the planet cooled gravity captured those gases from the volcanoes water was deposited on earth by collisions of many comets and asteroids one other key thing for life to emerge on our planet aside from water is where it lies from its star the sun earth sits in what's called the goldilocks zone which puts it close enough to the sun to allow liquid water to exist on the earth's surface before life even began or had a chance on earth radiation from our star was the primary source of energy on our planet just as it is today the early earth had very little oxygen if any at all and it's theorized that solar energy provided the jump start that transformed simple organic molecules into more complex ones transforming them into the building blocks of biology and life life likely developed in undersea alkaline vents and was probably based on ribonucleic acid a nucleic acid which is present in all living cells rather than deoxyribonucleic acid an organic chemical containing genetic information and instructions for protein synthesis at some point during this time a common ancestor gave rise to two main groups of life bacteria and archaea although exactly how this happened is still uncertain for billions of years tiny microbes and single celled organisms evolved and began feeding on methane around 3.6 billion years ago and at the 3 billion year mark evidence of viruses were found however some argue that viruses could be as old as life itself sometime during earth's early history the planet took a turn towards habitability when a group of microbes known as cyanobacteria evolved with the ability to turn light and water into energy and released oxygen in the process dissolved oxygen caused iron in the oceans to rust and sink to the sea floor which formed striking red banded iron formations but between 2.4 and 2.1 billion years ago something incredibly remarkable and disastrous took place in this early cycle of life the poisonous waste produced by these evolved photosynthetic cyanobacteria oxygen built up in the atmosphere causing anaerobic bacteria to die off leading to the earth's first mass extinction which some call the great oxidation event how can oxygen be toxic you might be asking oxygen became toxic because of the high levels and overwhelmed the natural antioxidant defense system of any living microbe or bacteria at the time basically these cyanobacteria in the form of algae ate themselves to death and caused a global extinction but the worst was about to come around 2.3 billion years ago the earth froze over as the possible result of the great oxidation event and volcanic activity on the planet slowed down over time the ice melted which resulted in more oxygen being indirectly released into the atmosphere this gave way to the neoprotozoic era where protozoans such as paramecium amoebas and melanocyrium evolved the first animal cells were different from plants and these cells began feeding on plants and became the first herbivores but during this era the earth froze again at least two more times which stunted evolutionary development however life finds a way and during this time fungi worms and other small bilaterally symmetrical animals survived and evolved fast forward to the paleozoic era complex life forms began to develop including fish arthropods mollusks and echinoderms plants started to show up on the surface of the earth and air-breathing animals started to walk crawl and slither on land meanwhile sharks horseshoe crabs and starfish began to fill the oceans at the beginning of the devonian period insects started to take form and ferns were the common land plant a prehistoric jawless fish with bony armor called the cephalaspis and crabs large sharks hagfish and ratfish evolved this gave way to the carboniferous period where the climate on earth was thought to be tropical with little change during the seasons and gave rise to a new wave of strange creatures plants covered the earth during this time and the organic deposits of plant debris formed the world's first coal deposits which humans are still burning today the growth of these forests increased oxygen levels in the atmosphere which peaked to around 35 percent compared to the 21 percent it is today this alone might explain the size of the giant creepy crawlies that emerged some animals and insects may have developed in water and grew bigger as a way to protect themselves against the high levels of oxygen at the time one of those were giant insects called mega neuropsis which closely resemble modern day dragonflies had wingspans of 63 to 68 centimeters and could be seen in the skies during this period one incredibly detailed fossil of a huge dragonfly that died 320 million years ago was discovered to have a wingspan of 0.75 meters deadly poisonous centipedes 2 meters long crawled around with mammoth cockroaches and scorpions as big as one meter long amphibians began to diversify and reptiles evolved into forms much like modern day lizards with a backbone allowing them to live and move on land these amphibians were also huge and some species were predatory resembling modern day crocodiles armed with sharp teeth and reaching lengths of almost six metres long and like modern day crocodiles and alligators some evolved to have a thicker scaly skin which solved the problem of their bodies drying out if they were out of the water too long and for the first time amphibians evolved to lay amniotic or air-breathing eggs on land and that changed everything since these animals could now live out of and away from water sources the carboniferous period gave way to the permian period that began approximately 300 million years ago just 50 million years before the dinosaurs all the continents during this period existed as one large landmass called pangaea the first large plant-eating and meat-eating animals evolved during this time some of these creatures could be mistaken for dinosaurs but they were actually more closely related to mammals and reptiles one of these bizarre creatures was diplocerapsis it looked a little like a salamander that averaged around one meter long but its head was shaped like a boomerang another new reptile on the planet was the iconic dimetrodon which grew to about five meters long and had a large sail on its back which is likely used to regulate its body temperature during the permian period mammals were increasing in dominance the biggest of these were creatures classified as gorgonopsians which were a class of giant bear-like animals that all had different teeth that were specialized for different functions these animals could be either herbivores or carnivores and vary in size from less than a kilogram to more than a ton one group of these creatures were known as cyanodonts their name means dog-like teeth and these animals had social behavior and there is some fossil evidence that shows they hunted in packs in the oceans fish with true bony skeletons evolved sharks and rays flourished as well as sponges and coral on land insects evolved with adapted mouthparts that allowed them to pierce and suck but around 252 million years ago the permian era came to an abrupt end by a cataclysmic event that caused mass extinction in 2001 scientists made a chilling discovery a massive comet or asteroid similar to the one that put an end to the dinosaurs wiped out the giant reptile predecessors 200 million years earlier but how did scientists come to this conclusion molecules of helium and argon gas were found locked in carbon in high proportions that could have only come from space it's estimated that the asteroid or comet was between 6 and 12 kilometers wide in diameter researchers say the strike would have released the energy one million times greater than the biggest earthquake of the last century aside from this discovery there's some evidence that current day siberia and china experienced volcanic eruptions on an unimaginably massive scale and those eruptions created dust and ash clouds that blocked out sunlight not only that but over one million years three million cubic kilometers of lava poured out of the ground covering the entire planet in a layer 10 meters thick the asteroid impact combined with volcanic activity was the proverbial blast from a double-barreled shotgun the earth was once again a very unhappy place the combination of these two events resulted in what's called the great dying 90 of all marine animals and 70 of all land animals that were alive during this time perished 252 million years ago ancient life on earth suffered a serious blow from a deadly combination of heat and low oxygen 95 of all marine species perished and two-thirds of terrestrial species vanished it was a cataclysm so severe that it looked like the end of all life on planet earth but as the saying goes life finds a way and the most well-known prehistoric creatures would rise on earth the dinosaurs if you love dinosaurs then get ready to see your favorites how they evolved and how they would rule the earth for millions of years the extinction event of the permian triassic era 252 million years ago marked the beginning of the mesozoic era of the triassic jurassic and cretaceous period which lasted 186 million years during the triassic era there was one vast supercontinent called pangaea which was mostly vast deserts with a hot and dry climate surrounded by a huge ocean called panthalassa dinosaurs would begin to evolve during the mid to late triassic period when we talk about dinosaurs we immediately imagine towering and thundering animals like tyrannosaurus rex but new research shows that the dinosaurs and their pterosaur relatives evolved from extremely small ancestors proof of this theory was discovered in madagascar when a newly discovered reptile species was found named congonophon kelly or tiny bug slayer it lived some 237 million years ago and stood just 10 centimeters tall it's one of the first small animals found from the root of the ornithodora family tree and is an important discovery the miniaturization event in which it lived served as a survival strategy for early ornith orderings and wear on its teeth showed the tiny creature preyed on insects this eliminated the need for them to compete with their relatives for meat furthermore researchers of this tiny dinosaur relative showed that feathers and other fuzzy skin coverings found on the later true dinosaurs and pterosaurs likely originated to protect the tiny dino ancestors from the extreme climate of the mid to late triassic period when the first dinosaurs evolved the triassic marked the rise of the reptiles mainly the archosaurs or ruling lizards and thoraxids or mammal-like reptiles for reasons unknown the archosaurs had an evolutionary edge muscling out their mammal-like cousins and evolving by the mid-to-late triassic into the first true dinosaurs such as eoraptor and herrerasaurus dinosaurs were divided into two main branches sariskian which means lizard hipped and ornithiskian or bird-hipped dinosaurs eoraptor was at the root of the sariskian family tree it was only 91 centimeters long and weighed about 11 kilograms it had long legs that allowed it to run fast and its front pores had sharp claws that helped it to grab prey herrerasaurus was more advanced in evolution than the ear wrap door because it had a joint in its lower jaw it had a large skull and its jaws were armed with the sharp teeth of a carnivore it averaged in length from three to six meters and had five fingers on each paw with blunt claws starikosaurus was another early true dinosaur that was about 2 meters long with a large skull as long as its femur and there were 13 to 14 sharp teeth in its upper and lower jaws it has short front paws with five fingers it had long hind legs that allowed it to run fast storage asaurus was a predator that weighed about 30 kilograms and although this dinosaur was kind of small it probably had no trouble dealing with larger prey eoraptor herrerasaurus and staricosaurus are prime examples of the rapid evolution of predatory dinosaurs 225 million years ago but at the same time the first plant-eating dinosaurs appeared in the fossil record pysanosaurus was a one metre dinosaur that weighed two to nine kilograms and had closely spaced teeth forming a continuous edge for grinding plant matter by the late triassic period there were at least 15 different dinosaurs during the jurassic period earth's climate changed from hot and dry to a much more humid and sub-tropical climate forests of ferns cycads and conifers began to cover the planet and the air was warm moist with tropical breezes during the beginning of this period the breakup of the supercontinent pangaea continued and accelerated lorasia the northern half of the continent broke up into north america and eurasia the southern half called gondwana began to break up during the mid-jurassic the eastern parts antarctica madagascar india and australia split off from the western half of africa and south america new oceans flooded the spaces in between huge mountains rose on the sea floor and pushed sea levels higher onto the continents it was all this water that created the humid and subtropical climate deserts began to turn green palm tree-like cycads and conifer trees such as the araucaria and pine were abundant the oceans became full of diverse and abundant life and at the top of the ocean food chain were the marine reptiles the plesiosaurs with their long necks and paddle-finned flippers among them were giant marine crocodiles sharks and rays ichthyosaurs squid-like cephalopods coil-shelled ammonites sponges snails and mollusks were abundant in the ancient oceans coral reefs grew and expanded quickly in the warm waters and microscopic plankton increased rapidly to the point that they may have turned parts of the ocean red the earliest known bird archaeopteryx took to the skies in the late jurassic likely evolved from an early cellusarian dinosaur archaeopteryx had to compete for airspace with pterosaurs flying reptiles that had been buzzing the sky since the late triassic meanwhile insects such as leaf hoppers and beetles were abundant as many of earth's earliest mammals scurried around the feet of dinosaurs it was at this time that the dinosaurs began making their mark in a huge way literally small quadrupedal plant-eating dinosaurs gradually evolved into multi-ton giants the plant-eating sauropod named brachiosaurus was 16 meters tall and stretched out to around 26 meters long and could weigh as much as 25 tons another herbivorous sauropod giant named diplodocus was 27 meters long and weighed between 30 to 50 tons the sheer size of these dinosaur giants may have stopped the attacks of a bulky meat-eating dinosaur that walked on two powerful legs who also lived during this time the ominous allosaurus this huge carnivore ranged in size from seven to twelve meters long weighed nearly two tons and had 16 sharp teeth in its upper and lower jaw and like many predatory dinosaurs of the mesozoic era allosaurus constantly grew shed and replaced its three to four inch teeth and this dinosaur was fast models suggest that allosaurus could run up to 34 kilometers per hour fossil evidence shows that allosaurus preyed on stegosaurus and the plant-eating dinosaur fought back punching holes right through allosaurus's bones with its spiky club's tail it could be why stegosaurus had a pretty long run and survived all the way up to the late cretaceous but there were new predators that would come along that were as equally terrifying as the allosaurus the north american tyrannosaurus rex could grow 12.5 meters long and weighed up to 8 to 10 tons although now some say it might have weighed half of these estimates but the t-rex wasn't alone in the meat-eating dinosaur category in fact it was either outclassed or equal to two other sharp toothed monsters the south american giganontasaurus which had the same type of build and weighed nine tons and the ten tonne northern african spinosaurus still the t-rex was a mean and nasty predator if not downright unhygienic experts believe that shards of rotten bacteria-laden meat was constantly lodged in its closely packed teeth which gave the animal a septic bite that would eventually be fatal to its wounded prey of course this process would have taken at least several days or weeks and another t-rex would probably reap the rewards scientists examining the t-rex skull determined it had the bite force of between 1500 to 5 000 pounds per square inch and could take bites of flesh in the 225 kilogram range but tyrannosaurus rex like allosaurus had problems with prey itself it lived in the same region and time period as some armored plant-eating dinosaurs one of the most iconic dinosaurs next to t-rex has to be triceratops which means three-horned face all triceratops had three horned skulls two massive horns were above the eye socket and one smaller horn was over the nose weighing around 6.5 to 13 tons the biggest triceratops was nine meters long from nose to tail the tips of their shoulders were three meters off the ground triceratops had teeth arranged in dental batteries and each individual tooth was stacked in a vertical column of three to five teeth these formed rows with 36 to 40 tooth loaded columns this means that a single triceratops could have 800 teeth at its disposal it had a narrow beak and powerful jaws that allowed it to grind down tough vegetation and trees it's one of the last non-avian dinosaurs to evolve at the end of the cretaceous ankylosaurus is another of the most famous armored dinosaurs it was the largest ankylosaurid and the last of its kind it's thought to have lived right up to the end of the cretaceous period the body of ankylosaurus was covered in bony plates it had a beak and teeth and four horns that projected backwards from its head its tail ended in a club which provided protection from predators this would have been useful since ankylosaurus lived alongside tyrannosaurus rex and other meat-eating predators at some point during the middle of the cretaceous period dinosaurs from the ornithopod family evolved into the popular hadrosaur or duck-billed dinosaurs they were large oddly shaped low-slung vegetation eaters with tough beaks on their snouts which were used for shredding vegetation these dinosaurs are believed to have lived in herds and were capable of walking on two legs sauropods became even bigger by the late cretaceous period you may have thought that brachiosaurus and diplodocus were big but by the time the late cretaceous period rolled around there was another dinosaur that existed which could possibly be the biggest land animal that's ever walked the earth argentinosaurus this behemoth could be 30 to 40 meters in length and weighed between 50 and 100 tons it was a member of the titanosauria the dominant group during the cretaceous period and was a herbivore like its earlier sauropod cousins there was also a strange new breed of dinosaur that lived 20 million years before they all went extinct they were called pachycephalosaurus or bone-headed dinosaurs and have a bizarre looking skull with horns on the snout and around the base of the skull these could have been used to fight off the last of the big predators or even to show dominance over their own species of course there are more than 700 different dinosaurs that have been found so far but not enough time to cover them all in one video there are some dinosaurs that lived in the colder regions when they were further south and within the antarctic circle during the cretaceous during this time there could have been some snow and ice and temperatures as low as -10 degrees celsius during the three-month long dark winters there were a variety of different dinosaurs living in this polar zone in 2014 a skull section and upper and lower jaw bones were found of a miniature t-rex called naniksaurus hoglandi it's believed that many dinosaurs had feathers to protect them from the elements and this tiny t-rex cousin was about six meters long it's now believed that all species of tyrannosaurus rex had feathers to protect them from the elements and nanaksaurus was no different other dinosaurs like the horned and duck-billed dinosaurs along with other small feathery predators parrot-like oviraptors and a small herbivore named leela nessora lived in the polar region as well but their time would soon come to an end everyone talks about how dramatically the dinosaurs went extinct but judging by the whopping 165 million years they survived they might just be the most successful vertebrate animals to ever exist on planet earth in fact some dinosaur relatives are still around on the planet today modern day birds are in fact descendants of feathered dinosaurs and you might be surprised to learn that crocodiles are the closest living relatives to birds as they shared a common ancestor the two groups are the only known survivors of the archosaurs [Music] everyone knows that a giant rock from outer space hit the planet millions of years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs now with advanced technology researchers have been able to put together a new timeline showing what really happened and not only this they think they know where the giant asteroid came from is earth the target for another huge space rock and would we be able to survive you'll be surprised and probably shocked at what nasa astronomers recently discovered so now get ready to experience the disaster that almost wiped out life completely on earth the giant asteroids impact into shallow waters in the gulf of mexico 65 million years ago was bad enough but then an amalgam of additional disasters ensued rocks fell from the sky wildfires ignited and tsunamis in undated distant shorelines the researchers found that the first day of the cenozoic was peppered with cataclysms and released a new record of this day of chaos in proceedings of the national academy of sciences their timeline was developed using high resolution photography microscopy computed tomography imaging and magnetic measurements of hundreds of feet of sedimentary rock recently recovered from chixolube one of the largest impact craters on earth and it all began like this imagine you were somewhere in north america about 65 million years ago when dinosaurs ruled the earth and you were looking up at the night sky you would have probably seen what appeared to be a bright star shining off into the distance but if you watch this peculiar light for an hour or two the object would seem to grow in brightness but barely move what you would be looking at is not a star but a huge asteroid somewhere between 11 to 80 kilometers wide on a direct intercept course with the earth at 72 420 kilometers per hour hours later the asteroid plows through earth's atmosphere heading straight for where the yucatan peninsula is today at impacts of that speed earth's atmosphere acts like water smaller space rocks called meteors hit the atmosphere like pebbles thrown into a pond and decelerate rapidly at high altitudes burning away from the friction of the atmosphere while some bigger pieces of rock survive and fall to earth but the mountain-sized chick-salube asteroid hits our atmosphere like throwing a boulder into a puddle it maintained its velocity and plunged through the entire 60 miles of atmosphere in just three seconds the asteroid shrieks over central america emitting the mother of all sonic booms that would shatter eardrums across all the continents the dinosaurs were likely terrified and running in all directions having no idea what was just about to happen but if any animal was close enough to see the asteroid they would have been instantly vaporized within minutes in fact except for sea turtles and crocodiles no four-legged animal larger than 25 kilograms would survive the mountain-sized space rock falls so quickly that the air itself cannot escape under intense compression the air heats to thousands of degrees almost instantly before the asteroid even hits compressed superheated air vaporizes much of the shallow sea that covers the yucatan milliseconds later the rock plunges through what's left and slams into bedrock in that moment a chain reaction of events occurs the impacting asteroid exerts so much pressure on the earth that soil and rock flow like fluids the flowing up and down movement of the earth is like the double splash of someone doing a cannonball in a swimming pool the initial splash in all directions is followed by a delayed vertical splash when the cavity created by the asteroid rebounds to the surface the first wall of earth gouged outward at the moment of impact is more than 32 kilometers high the impact hole nearly breaches earth's mantle and when the cavity rebounds to form the delayed vertical splash the earth rises at over one thousand six hundred kilometers per hour to heights taller than mount everest within minutes this mountain of debris almost entirely collapses in a series of secondary explosions leaving behind a smaller mound called a crater's peak ring at the same moment the asteroid strikes the yucatan and applies its pressure to the bedrock it converts the kinetic energy of a 7.5 billion tonne rock travelling 16 kilometers per second into searing heat in an instant the chiksalub impactor delivers approximately one septillion 300 sextillion kilojoules of energy more energy than 1 billion hiroshima atomic bombs the kinetic energy transferred by the asteroid to the soil rock and air excites the molecules to temperatures far hotter than the surface of the sun the heat rips electrons from atoms ionizing the air into an expanding fireball of plasma in excess of 10 000 degrees turbocharged with vaporized rock that's blasted out at hypersonic speeds the heated rapidly expanding air and near instantaneous conversion of earth to gas combined with the impact shockwave itself forms a massive blast wave of pressure expanding outward at more than 1 600 kilometers per hour if this asteroid hit the same spot today the blast wave would vaporize you in texas deafen you in new york and blow out glass windows in buenos aires the chiksalub impactor rings earth like a bell waves in earth's crust radiate away from the impact zone at four kilometers per second the waves then trigger fault slipping earthquakes across the continents if you're on the other side of the world you would feel the ground shaking 30 minutes after impact the impact triggers tsunamis as high as skyscrapers the first of them hit gulf coast lines within the hour waves ranging from 600 feet to perhaps as tall as 1000 feet smash into what is now mexico and the southern united states and flood tens of miles inland the waves temporarily reverse the flow of rivers rushing up riverbeds like 30-foot tidal bores tsunamis smash into the eastern coast of the united states and six hours after impact max out at 600 foot high walls of water that slam into europe africa and the mediterranean coasts within 15 hours of impact waves arrive on every coastline on the planet depending on local topography the ocean sweeps away anything in its path and sucks it back to the sea when the waters finally retreat it already sounds like armageddon but even more disasters are on their way when the big rock strikes its splash accounts for 25 trillion tons of earth that it launches on ballistic trajectories some at speeds that exceeds earth's escape velocity these rocks excited earth gravitational pull to either orbit the sun and some of this material probably reach the moon but the majority of ejected debris returned back to earth within the hour these glass-like chunks called tektites some as large as buses but most the size of marbles pelt the earth at speeds ranging from 160 to 320 kilometers per hour in lethal quantities regardless of where any remaining dinosaurs were on earth they were hit with this fiery hailstorm but these glass bullets didn't need to hit the dinosaurs to be fatal as these tektites fall their friction with the atmosphere emits enough thermal radiation to set fires across the planet by some estimates the combined heat of the returning embers heats the planet to the equivalent of an oven set to broil most of the world's trees burn which is perhaps why the only bird species that survive the impact are those that nest on the ground of the few larger land animals to avoid extinction nearly all have had some means of escaping the heat they either could burrow like small mammals snakes and lizards or escape into water like crocodiles or turtles even if the poor dinosaurs were on the other side of the world they would have needed to find protection from the initial heat blast in a final piece of terrible luck for the dinosaurs chick salub happens to strike an area rich in oil and sulfur the impact ejects 100 billion tons of vaporized sulfur and 30 000 quadrillion gallons of water into the atmosphere which then condenses into massive storm clouds and falls back as torrents of acid rain that acidified the oceans in the higher latitudes continental-wide snow storms deposit tens of feet of snow per day but the global deluge doesn't last long because in addition to water chicks lube vaporizes and explosively ejects 150 football stadiums worth of oil from the yucatan bedrock this oil condenses in the stratosphere as a black layer covering the earth like a coat of black paint unlike the sulfur and wildfire smoke the carbon circulates high above the cloud layer stopping it from raining back down and that becomes another big problem the soot layer remains in the atmosphere reducing the amount of sunlight that reaches earth's surface by 90 percent for at least two to three years the initial oven-like heat brought on by the returning tech tights is followed by a deep and long-lasting freeze global temperatures drop by an average of almost 50 degrees the only place on earth to avoid this deep freeze a madagascar india and indonesia which were tropical islands during this time in the global chill evaporation almost ceases dropping rainfall by 80 percent nearly every spot on earth outside of these tropical islands dries into a desert where did this giant rock come from and is there another one out there headed for us researchers using a supercomputer studied asteroid evolution using data from known asteroids the two-member team of avilab and amir siraj suggested that the chicksaloop asteroid likely originated from the urt cloud a sphere of debris at the edge of the solar system it could have been a much larger comet that was pushed off course by jupiter's gravitational field and sent close to the sun where it broke into several pieces these fragments can cross the earth's orbit and hit the planet once every 250 to 730 million years judging from this study it's not a matter of if we could be hit by another giant rock from outer space but when on saturday december the 11th 2021 nasa revealed that a 330 meter long asteroid named 4660 nerius screamed past earth around 3.8 million kilometers at a speed of 6.5 kilometers per second while you might not think this is very close any slight deviation in its orbit could put it on a direct course with us and smash into the earth in the future astronomers are tracking this potentially hazardous rock and say it'll come within 1.1 million kilometers of earth on valentine's day in 2016. buy your flowers and get those proposals done early just in case keep in mind the asteroid that caused the chileabinsk explosion in russia in 2013 was just 20 meters in size the bad thing is that we don't have any known way to defend the earth from a giant space rock however nasa's dart mission or double asteroid redirection test will try to see if a spacecraft can autonomously navigate to a target asteroid and intentionally collide with it causing a kinetic impact that could push the asteroid off a collision course with the earth dart's target is dimorphos an asteroid moonlet which orbits a larger asteroid named didimos the spacecraft is set to arrive in late september 2022 when the didimas system is 11 million kilometers from earth however it's estimated that the collision will change the speed of the moonlet by a fraction of one percent stopping a 10 kilometer wide or bigger asteroid hurtling towards the planet at more than 72 000 kilometers per second will take a lot more than a small spacecraft impacting it perhaps the world would need to try nuclear weapons like in the movie armageddon maybe you have an idea how we could stop a world ending asteroid and you'll become famous let us know what you think and make sure to stay tuned here for more exciting stuff happening in our universe thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: Destiny

Views: 842,554

Keywords: Earth, dinosaurs, what was the prehistoric earth like, earth before dinosaurs, earth with dinosaurs, earth before humans, global extinctions, planet, life, mankind, humanity, dinosaurs perished, prehistoric animals, prehistoric plants, continents, supercontinent pangeia, apocalypse, first humans, life in water, life on land, science, popular science, film, video, global cooling, ancient human, first dinosaurs, evolution, how life came to be, calamities, cataclysms, destiny

Id: iOjmy8zkDGQ

Length: 51min 42sec (3102 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 06 2022