It's the End of the World as We Knew It

Not an actual extinction level event — it only feels like one.

In the 13 years of blogging before last week, I don’t think I’d ever written once about the Chicxulub crater — and now I get to do it twice:

Scientists plan to drill 5,000 feet below the surface of the Chicxulub crater in Mexico to bring up a giant core — and delve 10 million to 15 million years into the past. The endeavor would result in the first offshore core taken from near the center of the crater, which is named for a nearby seaside village located on the Yucatán Peninsula.

An international team of scientists met last week in Mérida, Mexico, located within the 125-mile-wide Chicxulub crater, to discuss their plans for the drilling project, slated to start in spring 2016.

Why now? “The Chicxulub impact crater has been a remarkable scientific opportunity for the 20 years since it’s been discovered,” said Sean Gulick, of The University of Texas at Austin Institute for Geophysics. And, for the first time, scientists have subsurface images from the offshore part of the crater, so they can pinpoint a spot for sampling. They chose a spot along the crater’s peak ring — a ring of mountainlike structures around the center of the crater.

By sampling there, the researchers can get a clearer picture of ancient biological and geological processes.

Until scientists figure out a way to simulate massive meteor strikes, I’ll have to make do with martinis.