Fall of the asteroid: Antarctica, Mexico ...

The fall of the asteroid to Earth is a global cataclysm. It always led to changes in the climate of our planet, because of which a huge number of species of living organisms died out. According to one of the most reliable hypotheses, it was the fall of the asteroid that caused the mass Permian extinction about two hundred and fifty million years ago. Permian extinction, although not widely known to the general public, was far more tragic than the famous extinction of the dinosaurs seventy million years ago. In the first case, up to 96% of the species of marine organisms (both plants and animals) died out. On land, things were not much better: seventy percent of terrestrial vertebrate species and eighty three percent of insect species died. Such a mass extinction of insects in nature no longer existed, since these arthropods are extremely easy to adapt to changes in the environment.

The second catastrophe was much less destructive, although then the biological dominant also changed, leading to the emergence and development of mammals. Hypothesis number one is also the fall of the asteroid. In the first case, scientists point to the crater of Wilkes Land in Antarctica, which, in their opinion, was formed from the fall of this asteroid, in the second - to Chicxulub Crater in Mexico.

The crater of the Wilkes Land has a diameter of five hundred kilometers. It is completely hidden under the ice shell of Antarctica, so it is impossible to study it yet. But in 2009, his radar survey was carried out, and it turned out that it has the shape characteristic of shock craters formed at the site of the fall of an asteroid or a large meteorite. Crater Chicxulub is much smaller and has a diameter of one hundred and eighty kilometers. That is, the size of the fallen asteroid directly depends on the scale of extinction of terrestrial organisms.

Astronomers do not have a common opinion about what an impact event is - the fall of an asteroid, and what - the fall of a meteorite, a comet or something else. Explorers of the sky can not in any way decide which celestial bodies should be referred to as asteroids, and which ones to meteorites and even to planets. Seven years ago, the pundits decided to single out a new class of celestial bodies. It was recorded by several large asteroids and degraded from the title of the real planets of Pluto. The class decided to call "dwarf planets." Innovation is not universally accepted, as many astronomers challenge the desirability of a new classification.

The event that took place in the middle of February stirred Russia, and in particular - the Urals. Meteorite, which fell in the vicinity of Chelyabinsk, experts from NASA consider the largest of the observed mankind after the Tunguska. On the memory of people it was a meteorite, which caused most of the destruction and injuries. Although he fell apart, not having reached the Earth, he had done a lot of mischief, destroying even the shop of one of the Chelyabinsk plants. In the press there were reports that this meteorite is a harbinger of an asteroid that will fly near the Earth, and there is a possibility that it will fall into the field of gravity of our planet.

It is interesting that meteorites in the Urals become something almost familiar, their own, their own. Comparatively small in area, the Chelyabinsk region (less than ninety thousand square kilometers) for the last seventy-five years becomes for the third time the center of attraction of visitors from space. In 1941 and 1949, meteorites also fell in the towns of Katav-Ivanovsk and Kunashak, located in the north of the region, although they were much smaller in size. All three places of fall can be connected by an almost straight line no more than two hundred and fifty kilometers in length. Such a concentration of meteorites in a limited area in such a short period of time is not found anywhere in the world. Well, just a mystic!

The occurrence in the Urals has shown that we are defenseless before bombardment from space. In Russia, the development of a ten-year program to protect against space threats began.