80672918 With Baptistiny removed the guilt for the death of the dinosaurs
Astronomers removed from the asteroid Baptistina guilty in death of the dinosaurs. Article scientists will appear in The Astrophysical Journal, and its summary is provided in a press release on the site's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. According to the most common theory of the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction 65 million years ago, which led, inter alia, to the almost complete extinction of the dinosaurs, occurred due to a fall to Earth of a large meteorite. The diameter of a celestial body of some 10 kilometers and the place of his fall Chicxulub crater. In 2007 Nature published an article which argued that an asteroid the killer belonged to a family Baptistina in the asteroid belt – a group of celestial bodies formed, thought to be after a collision with an asteroid Baptistina unnamed colleague. In theory almost immediately there were opponents, but as part of a new study scientists have found new evidence of its inadequacy. Thus, according to 2007 results, the collision occurred about 160 million years ago. In the new work astrophysicists used the data collected by an infrared space telescope WISE (total machine time to watch the thousands of asteroids, 157 and 33 000 to open new facilities) of the 1056 members of the family Baptistina. As a result, they were able to establish that the destruction of the parent asteroid was about 80 million years ago. According to the researchers, the remaining 15 million years was certainly not enough to piece got to the point of resonance – one of the places in the solar system, where the gravitational influence of Jupiter and Saturn can "push " the asteroid into a new orbit. The hypothesis of the extinction of dinosaurs as a result of a meteorite – the only one. For example, many scientists believe that the mass deaths of several factors to blame. Some blame the high tectonic activity.
