3265: Asteroid Threat

Asteroid Threat

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Title text: Paleontologists have long worried that the dinosaurs blasted into space 66 million years ago will one day complete their orbits and fall back down.

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Explanation

This is one of 40 incomplete explanations: This page was created by a reentering dinosaur. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

It's generally agreed by scientists that most dinosaurs went extinct as a result of the Chicxulub asteroid impacting the Earth near the Yucatán Peninsula 66 million years ago, either directly or indirectly.(but it wasn’t just the asteroid, as there were several other factors involved in the mass extinction. And the world was already going through a mass extinction event when the asteroid struck, so it just accelerated the mass extinction.) This comic posits that another asteroid is soon going to hit the Earth again. Because the impact location will be on the exact opposite side of the planet (the antipode), the comic takes the absurd notion that because it will act the 'opposite' way, it reverses all the original effects and bringing dinosaurs back from extinction, which is absurd.^{[citation needed]}

The general consensus is that the dinosaurs went extinct as a result of the environmental effects of the impact, those that weren't in the immediate vicinity of the impact itself, but the title text (in a possibly separate treatment) suggests that it actually launched the dinosaurs alive into space, thus circling the Sun in a long orbit that will some day intersect with the Earth again and, absurdly, they will land still alive. Which is ridiculous, as not only would they have to somehow survive the initial impact (apparently strong enough to have knocked them into space), then survive the airless vacuum of space, survived all the way to the present day and then their presumably meteoric return to the Earth's surface - a thoroughly impossible feat. But the comic acts as if they are going to be able to land back on the Earth and take control again.

Because Earth rocks have been found on the Moon, there has been some speculation that microscopic fragments of fossils from the era of dinosaurs or earlier may have landed on the moon, but no such fragments have been collected.

Transcript

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[Two images of Earth are shown. At the top left is a small one, centered on southern West Africa, showing the Atlantic Ocean and the east coast of South America, with a dotted line through the Earth entering at the Yucatán Peninsula and exiting at the east-central Indian Ocean. Taking up most of the rest of the panel is a large Earth image centered on the Indian Ocean and containing a target symbol, comprising a circle and four spokes, aimed at a location in the east-central Indian Ocean.]

[Caption below image:]

Dire news: An asteroid is on course to hit the earth exactly opposite the Yucatán Peninsula, bringing back the dinosaurs.

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Discussion

FIRST! Hah ive always wanted to do that. -Someone From Pluto^{[citation needed]} 129.222.195.118 (talk) 19:20, 29 June 2026 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

SECOND! AmethystSky14 (talk) 20:58, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

Fuck you 2601:249:1B81:C2F0:C8E8:206F:552C:39F5 22:34, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

I must be getting old; when I was a kid, the Chicxulub impact was said to have been only 65 million years ago, and now it's 66?! --Itub (talk) 21:25, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

No! (But these will also make you feel old)(Seriously, though, probably just different estimation.) K9Dragon23, or RainWingSquares (talk) (talk) 21:42, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

Can anyone think of a reason to link this to the What-If comic "Cassini"? And how do we do that on this platform? Oh, wow. Hey, on Cassini-Earth, it looks like the Chicxulub crater (21°24′N 89°30′W) would happen near Tunguska (60°54′11″N 101°54′35″E). Or not. 158.173.67.90 00:10, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

You might link to it with {{what if|10|something like this}}, using the {{what if}} template in lowercase, which looks something like this and sends you to the appropriate bit of the table on this site's catalogue page. Or else {{What If|10|something like that}}, using {{What If}} template in TitleCase, which looks something like that and sends you to the actual what-if site original.

It would all depend on what your preference is. (Going to the former gives you a further jumping-off point to going to the latter, but also to any youtube videos noted to be about it, etc.):I'm not actually convinced that there's any reason to link to what if? 10, in this case, but that's how you would do it, FYI. Knock yourself out, or just remember enough about it to work it out from scratch the next time you really think you ought to. 81.179.200.152 00:51, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks! Anyway, it looks like Cassini's Chicxulub event would happen somewhere on the 1100-km stretch between Tunguska and Norilsk. I haven't figured out the math yet, just compared maps. 158.173.67.61 01:07, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

Only 3 million more years to go! RG (talk) 00:16, 30 June 2026 (UTC)
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