We talked about the asteroid that, 66 million years ago, ended the age of dinosaurs. But what exactly did it do to the planet?

From the point of impact, a blast wave of heat rushed outward at nearly the speed of light, followed by scorching winds that reached 500 miles an hour.

These were followed by a massive earthquake felt around the world that may have caused landslides across the planet.

Shortly after came tsunami waves up to 1,000 ft high, racing across the Gulf of Mexico and traveling many miles inland, up the Mississippi River, covering Caribbean islands and swamping Atlantic coastlines.

Debris from the impact rained across the region, forming deposits up to 1,000 ft thick. The debris was hot enough to ignite massive wildfires across North America that may have burned for months.

And the long-term effects were even worse!

Ash and dust blocked out sunlight, while billions of tons of vaporized rock formed aerosols that blocked the sun’s heat.

In this cold twilight, the surface temperature of Earth fell as much as 40 degrees Fahrenheit and stayed that way for 15 to 20 years.

Mere decades later, once the aerosols settled out, greenhouse gases from the wildfires helped to warm the atmosphere more than 10 degrees higher than pre-impact.

It’s amazing that anything survived this destruction!

But it actually paved the way for… you and me, which we’ll talk about on another EarthDate.