It spreads around the Earth as a rock vapor cloud that eventually condenses and forms droplets that solidify into spherules, which rain back down onto the surface. |
It was horrifying to watch. The front of the house was totally engulfed by the time I got there. |
It would have taken only a second or two for a meteor that's 20 kilometers in diameter to pass through the ocean and impact the rock beneath. |
The most advanced organisms at the time were bacteria, so there isn't a big extinction event you can identify as cut-and-dry as the extinction of the dinosaurs. |
We have no idea where the actual impact might have been [but it] left deposits in both South Africa and Australia. |
When the meteor hits the surface, it instantaneously melts and vaporizes rock, and that rock vapor is sucked right back up the hole into the atmosphere, |