Transcript (en)

65 million years ago, an asteroid slammed into Earth. The moment of impact, the entire planet shook. The asteroid crashed into the shallow waters off Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula at over 43,000 miles per hour. The energy released equaled 10 billion Hiroshima bombs exploding at once. The seawater at impact zero instantly vaporized, didn't slowly boil, just straight up vanished. The Earth's crust got ripped apart like tofu. Rock melted into magma under extreme heat, then got hurled 100 miles into the sky by the shockwave. A total of 79,000 cubic miles of crust got blasted away. These rock fragments would rain back down like fire over the next several hours. Five seconds after impact, all life within 900 miles instantly turned to ash. not burned to death, vaporized on the spot, not even bones left behind. These dinosaurs were the luckiest They didn even have time to feel pain Two minutes after impact the shockwave spread outward at supersonic speed How terrifying was this force It could literally peel skin right off bodies 30-ton dinosaurs got tossed into the air like toys. Trees snapped in half at the waist, then burst into flames instantly. The air itself became scorching fire. 30 minutes after impact, hundreds of billions of tons of rock fragments flew into space. They orbited Earth once, then came back down white hot. The entire Earth got pelted with flaming rocks. This rain lasted for days. The fires on the ground couldn't be put out, because the fuel kept falling from the sky. 45 minutes after impact, Mongolia was 8,000 miles from impact zero. The dinosaurs here thought they were safe, but they were wrong. The heat was closing in at visible speed. Surface temperature jumped from 86 degrees to 122, then 158, then 194. Above 194 degrees, life could only be measured in seconds. 90 minutes later Mongolia surface temperature hit 300 degrees Some dinosaurs hit in caves The microclimates formed by rock kept them temporarily cool Two hours after impact the ejecta clouds started overheating and igniting Powerful thermal winds spawned super firestorms. Air pressure in valleys plummeted, creating a vacuum. Flames got sucked in. Dry vegetation ignited like a powder keg. Walls of fire swept across the land at 9 miles per hour. North America, a dinosaur paradise just hours before, had become hell on Earth. Five hours after impact, temperatures finally started dropping, something even more terrifying was brewing. The dust kicked up by the impact hung like a thick curtain, completely blocking out the sky, the sun disappeared. Scientists estimate this dust circulated in the atmosphere for at least 20 years. Earth went from furnace to freezer, temperatures plunged below zero. Without sunlight, plants couldn't photosynthesize. Ferns and conifers on land slowly withered. Algae in the ocean died in massive numbers. The impact produced two trillion tons of silicate dust This dust prevented plants on Earth from photosynthesizing for nearly two years after impact Earth entered nuclear winter surface temperatures dropped by 27 degrees the food chain collapsed from the bottom up. One week after impact, food resources on Earth were severely depleted. Herbivorous dinosaurs were the first to buckle. These giant herbivores needed to eat hundreds of pounds of plants daily just to stay alive. Now everywhere they looked was scorched earth. They migrated in herds, searching everywhere for green plants. Every path led to death. Hunger weakened them day by day, their pace getting slower and slower. One by one they collapsed by the roadside, becoming the last meals for surviving carnivorous dinosaurs. T-Rex, once king of the land, could only starve to death. The oceans weren't peaceful either. After the algae disappeared, oxygen in the seawater dropped dramatically. Ancient ocean giants that once ruled the seas suffocated one by one, their bodies floating on the surface drifting with the waves. Creatures that had dominated for hundreds of millions of years during the age of dinosaurs disappeared in waves like this. Some life survived.