asteroid

Steve Schmidt, a former Republican political consultant and Trump opponent, described the comment as a potential “killer asteroid” moment for the Harris campaign.

The team also found evidence that massive asteroid impacts did not bring only destruction to Earth - they helped early life thrive.

Long after the GOBE, about 66 million years ago, when ecosystems on land were as full of varied living things as the seas, a 6-mile-wide asteroid struck Earth at a place we now call Chicxulub, on the Yucatán Peninsula.

Just this year, planetary scientists identified the asteroid as a carbonaceous chondrite, an iron-heavy chunk of rock left over from our solar system’s formation that was pulled onto a collision course with Earth in the most catastrophic million-to-one shot of all time.

Without that asteroid, we wouldn’t be here or recognize the planet we now call home.