04.08. / 15:00

"Das Ende der Dinosaurier": Adlershofer Planetenseminar

Veranstalter:	DLR, Institut für Planetenforschung
Ort:	Rutherfordstraße 2, 12489 Berlin
Raum:	Rotunde
Referent:	Dr. Vishnu Reddy (University of North Dakota)

Titel: “What didn't kill the dinosaurs? Asteroid 298 Baptistina and K-T impactor” Abstrakt: Catastrophic events have strongly affected the course of evolution of life on planet Earth. Giant asteroidal and cometary impacts in the geologic past are probable causes of at least some mass extinction events. The most recent event took place 65 million years ago (the geologic boundary of the Cretaceous/Tertiary periods) when a ~10 km diameter object impacted off the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. This led to or was a significant contributory factor for the extinction of dinosaurs. In 2007, Bottke et al. (2007) suggested that the catastrophic disruption of a ~170 km body in the innermost region of the main asteroid belt was the source of the K/T impactor. They identified the Baptistina Asteroid Family (BAF) as the probable source of the K/T impactor using a range of observational data and numerical modeling work (e.g., the orbital and absolute magnitude distribution of the observed family, asteroid color data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and the existing spectroscopy of two large Baptistina family members, collisional and dynamical modeling work). However, more recent compositional and albedo studies of BAF by Reddy et al. (2010) suggest otherwise weakening the link to K-T impactor. The talk will summarize the work of Bottke et al. (2007) and discuss the implications of the new spectral studies of BAF on the K/T impactor link.

Contact
Judit Jänchen Judit Jänchen Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) e.V. Institut für Planetenforschung
Rutherfordstraße 2, 12489 Berlin
Phone.: +49-30-67055-462
Mobile: +49-163-436-5771