Скачать или смотреть What Happened When a Meteor Exploded Over Antarctica 400,000 Years Ago?

In the frigid emptiness over Antarctica some 430,000 years ago, a fireball tore through the sky. It was not a typical meteor. It never reached the ground to leave a crater as a smoking scar upon the Earth. Instead, this extraterrestrial body exploded in the atmosphere with such magnitude that molten debris rained down onto the ice sheet below, embedding itself as microscopic spherules that would remain locked in time.

This was the Walnumfjellet meteoritic event—an impact so powerful that its airborne debris has only recently been recovered and dated. And yet, thousands of miles to the north, in a limestone cave in what is now Spain, a different drama was unfolding—one buried deep in the earth, among the bones of our ancient ancestors. Geologists know this event as "Termination 5", the sudden end of a glaciation, and the beginning of a warm interglacial.