Adin Ross looks at nostalgic photos with xQc and tries to rekindle bond with him

It’s one of the questions which has fascinated scientists for hundreds of years, but how did the dinosaurs really go extinct? Well, new research might have just solved the mystery once and for all. Of course, most people are familiar with the fact that an asteroid struck the Earth around 66 million years ago, but fewer people might know that the object measured a whopping 10 to 15 kilometres wide and landed in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Fewer people still might know that while it sparked all sorts of devastation, including earthquakes and megatsunamis, and now experts have revealed that what might have really proved fatal for the dinosaurs was the dust that it caused. We’re not talking a little bit of dust, either. Trillions of tons of the stuff was released into the atmosphere when then asteroid struck. The damage done by this dust is explored in the new report published by Nature Geoscience. So much was released, in fact, that it caused a “global winter”, with huge clouds of silicate dust and sulphur causing temperatures to drop by 15C. The lack of light would have caused entire ecosystems to collapse, causing 75 per cent of species to be rendered extinct. The effects of the dust could have blocked out sunlight for as long as two years, which according to the Belgium researchers who led the study is what would have killed off dinosaurs gradually – rather than being killed off straight away by the asteroid. It is, however, what eventually led to other life forms emerging and ultimately the development of the human race. "Dinos dominated Earth and were doing just fine when the meteorite hit," co-author of the study and planetary scientist Philippe Claeys said. "Without the impact, my guess is that mammals - including us - had little chance to become the dominant organisms on this planet." Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings

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For centuries we’ve been told that the Moon is made of cheese but now, it turns out, the Earth is more like butter. Or, at least, its inner core is. A new study led by experts at the University of Texas (UT) and collaborators in China found that iron atoms at the very centre of our world move around much more than previously thought, and the implications could be huge. Scientists have long sought to dissect the insides of our planet but it isn’t easy, given that we have no way of directly exploring its core. The deepest hole humans have ever dug – branded the "entrance to hell" – extended an impressive 12,263m (40,230ft) down, but even that doesn’t come close to breaking through the crust to the layers beneath. Still, thanks to techniques like seismic tomography – which analyses how waves of energy travel through different materials during earthquakes – we’ve been able to map out the world’s interior. Now, researchers have used lab experiments and AI algorithms to shed a striking new light on the heart of the planet. "Seismologists have found that the centre of the Earth, called the inner core, is surprisingly soft, kind of like how butter is soft in your kitchen," Youjun Zhang, a Sichuan University professor who co-led the investigation, said in a statement shared with Phys.org. "The big discovery that we've found is that solid iron becomes surprisingly soft deep inside the Earth because its atoms can move much more than we ever imagined. This increased movement makes the inner core less rigid, weaker against shear forces." The findings are significant because they could help explain the role that the inner core plays in generating the world’s magnetic field. They could also help us understand a number of the inner core’s key properties, which have long flummoxed experts. "Now, we know about the fundamental mechanism that will help us with understanding the dynamic processes and evolution of the Earth's inner core," Jung-Fu Lin, one of the study's lead authors, explained. Given that it is impossible for scientists to directly extract specimens from the inner core, Lin and his colleagues recreated it in miniature. They took a small iron plate, shot it with a fast-moving projectile, and collected the resulting temperature, pressure and velocity data, which they then fed into an AI computer model. Using this machine learning system, they were able to scale up the sample iron atoms configuration to mimic the atomic environment within the inner core. At this beefed-up scale, the researchers observed groups of atoms moving about while still maintaining their overall structure. Inner Core iron atom motion model University of Texas This movement could explain why seismic measurements of the inner core reveal an environment that's softer and more malleable than would be expected at such pressures, Prof Zhang explained. Around half of the energy that goes into generating the Earth's magnetic field can be attributed to the inner core, with the rest coming from the outer core, according to the UT team. Thanks to Zhang, Lin and their colleagues, we now have a clearer understanding of the inner core’s machinations at an atomic level, which could help inform how energy and heat are generated at the heart of the planet. This could also shed light on how the inner and outer core work together to generate the Earth’s magnetic field – a key ingredient in making a planet habitable. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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