Previously, we talked about how scientists discovered the asteroid that brought down the dinosaurs.

But what exactly happened when a rock twice the size of Manhattan smashed into our planet— with the force of 10 billion atomic bombs?

It punched a hole in Earth’s crust 50 miles wide and 20 miles deep, causing nearly a million cubic miles of solid rock to behave like liquid.

Like when a rock lands in a pond, the sides of the crater splashed outward, up, then collapsed. The center of the crater rebounded, rocketing up higher than Mount Everest; then it, too, collapsed.

Earth’s crust rippled like the surface of water. A ring of ridges spread out from the impact site.

This giant “splash” on Earth’s surface happened in a matter of minutes. Then, the rocks froze into their new positions and were protected from erosion by layers of marine sediment.

A 2016 mission drilled into the ridges circling the crater floor. The explorers found large sections of melted rock.

Below that, they found granites so badly pulverized that they were less dense than normal granite.

And, as often happens in science, one insight leads to another.

A recent space mission had discovered that the moon’s crust is less dense than it should be, and scientists wondered why.

The crater on Earth suggests it’s due to 4 billion of years of impacts on the moon’s famously cratered surface.