Asteroid that doomed the dinosaurs originated beyond Jupiter

It was a turning point in the history of life on the earth. A new analysis of this debris has resolved a long debate about the nature of the asteroid, showing that it was a type that originated beyond Jupiter in the outer solar system. “Ruthenium is especially useful in this context as the isotopic signature in the clay layer is almost entirely made up of ruthenium from the impactor and not the background sediment, and ruthenium shows distinct isotopic compositions between inner and outer solar system materials,” said geoscientist and study co-author Steven Goderis of Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium. “The C-type asteroids represent leftover building blocks of the outer solar system’s gas and ice planets, whereas the S-type asteroids are the primary building blocks of terrestrial planets like the earth” in the inner solar system, Fischer-Gödde said. After forming in the outer solar system, the asteroid probably later migrated inward to become part of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, Fischer-Gödde said, before somehow being sent hurtling in the direction of the earth, perhaps due to a collision.