Blurs

66 million years ago, an asteroid approximately 10 kilometres across struck what is now the Yucatán Peninsula. The consequences were global. The impact created the enormous Chicxulub crater. Dust, sulphate aerosols and other material were thrown into the atmosphere. Temperatures changed, photosynthesis was disrupted and food chains collapsed. Around three-quarters of Earth's species disappeared, including the non-avian dinosaurs. It is one of the most catastrophic events known in Earth's history. But beneath the devastation, something very different may have been happening. The impact did not merely destroy an ecosystem. It may also have created one. Deep beneath the crater, the asteroid strike transformed enormous volumes of rock, generated intense heat, fractured the Earth's crust and drove hot water through newly created networks of pores and fractures. Those conditions produced a vast hydrothermal system. And according to research published in 2026, that system may have...