66 million years ago, an asteroid hit Earth

  Approximately 66 million years ago, an asteroid hit Earth and hit it square in the face.

A large, submerged pit off the coast of Guinea, West Africa, was described by scientists on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances as resembling an impact crater created by a meteor. It features a distinctive centre rocky peak that is typically created by the flow of rock that briefly resembled melted butter, a depression that is much broader than it is deep, some of its rocks that have been forcefully fractured apart, and its depression is composed primarily of rocks.

The authors of the study have given this hypothetical crater, which they have called Nadir, an undetermined age. It may have formed shortly before or after Chicxulub, the 100-mile-wide chasm under the Gulf of Mexico excavated by a six-mile-long asteroid that caused global devastation and brought an end to the age of the dinosaurs. This is based on its apparent position in Earth's geologic layer cake.

This underwater scar may have a lot to teach scientists. It could provide insight into a devastating period in Earth's history by demonstrating how the planet withstood assault from space during a global ecological regime transition.

Impact craters are frequently challenging to locate due to Earth's propensity to frequently purge or bury its surface through erosion, eruptions, and plate tectonics. One of the study's authors, Uisdean Nicholson, a geologist at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland, discovered Nadir by chance. He was looking at maps of the area created by the energy sector using seismic surveys.

When he discovered the object, Dr. Nicholson says, "I thought, 'That's weird.'"

According to him and his colleagues, the object that slammed into the ocean off the west coast of Africa was a rocky asteroid that was 1,300 feet long and travelling at a speed of 12 miles per second. Its impact released an explosion 100 times more powerful than the most powerful nuclear weapon ever.

According to Veronica Bray, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona and one of the study's authors, any animals along the beach would "see another sun." A wind gust of 2,000 miles per hour would batter anything in its path, "strong enough to fold a car around a lamppost," according to Dr. Bray.

At 900 miles per hour, a tower-high wall of water would rumble in the direction of the coast. The water that the impact would have forced out of the ocean would then cascade back into the crater that was still building, rush into the centre, and splash 6,500 feet into the air before collapsing to produce another enormous wave.