Comets & Meteorites
Space contains a lot of debris, mostly rock particles and other remnants of asteroids and comets in the Solar System. When these arrive at the Earth, they burn up in the atmosphere before they have a chance to reach the surface, and are seen at night as shooting stars. Very rarely, every few million years, a much large body from space collides with Earth, too big to burn up totally in atmosphere. The impact at the surface causes a massive explosion and injection of fine debris into the air, which, like volcanic pollution, can block out the sunlight for months and even years, leading to a cooling of the Earth. Many scientists think that such a comet impact occurred 65 million years ago, at exactly the same time as the dinosaurs died out.
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