, Luis and alter Alvarez dropped in on Asaro and asked ests for them.
It e a presumptuous request. to devote montomaking t painstaking measurements of geological samples merely to confirm irely self-evident to begin ts ted. Certainly no one expected o yield any dramaticbreakthroughs.
“ell, terview in 2002.
“And it seemed an interesting co try. Unfortunately, I of ot o it.” ed es from t 1:45 p.m., a sample in tector. It ran for 224minutes and ting interesting results, so opped it and had alook.”
ts ed, in fact, t tists at first t tobe of iridium in timesnormal levels—far beyond anyt ed. Over to ty a stretcarted you couldn’t stop,” Asaro explained) analyzing samples, als.
tests on otarctica—s t ly elevated every, and probablycataclysmic, ing spike.
After muc, t t plausible explanation—plausible to t any rate— truck by an asteroid or comet.
t t be subjected to devastating impacts from time to time quite as ne is noimes presented. As far back as 1942, a NorternUniversity astrop named Ralped sucy in anarticle in Popular Astronomy magazine. (icle to run it.) And at least tists, tronomerErnst ?pik and t and Nobel laureate for tion at various times. Even among paleontologists it unkno Oregon State University, M. . de Laubenfels, ing in tology, ually anticipated ting t t adeat from space, and in 1970 t of tological Society, De ty t an extraterrestrial impact may knoinction.
As if to underline just ime, in 1979 audio actually produced a movie called Meteor (“It’s five miles ’scoming at 30,000 m.p.o arring alieood, Karl Malden, and a very large rock.
So a meeting of tion for t of Science, t tinction taken place over millions of years as part of some slosuddenly in a single explosive event, it s have come as a shock.
But it did. It icularly in tological community,as an outrageous heresy.
“ell, you o remember,” Asaro recalls, “t eurs in ter specializing in paleomagnetism, Luis ologists t ’s not