Something’s off.The Chicxulub impact may have created a long-lived hydrothermal environment while destroying many species. A report describes analysis of potentially habitable conditions beneath the Yucatán Peninsula.
According to the report, isotope measurements and simulations suggest heated water circulated there for about 8 million years, with temperatures below 50°C reached only after as much as 5 million years at a depth of one kilometer. That could have left heat and nutrients available for microbes long after the impact’s destructive aftermath. The reported analysis does not establish that life actually inhabited the crater.
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The underlying claims in this report have not been independently verified.
