Houston, Nov 21 (PTI) The asteroid that ended the age of dinosaurs about 65 million years ago may have nearly punctured the Earths crust, and temporarily caused the surface of the planet to behave like a slow-moving fluid, a new study has found. Major craters sometimes possess rings of rocky hills in their centres known as peak rings. Most of these peak rings exist on extraterrestrial rocky bodies such as the Moon or Venus, making it difficult to analyse these structures in detail and pin down their origins. "These deeply buried rocks rose up to the surface of the Earth within the first few minutes of the impact," Gulick told the Live Science. "The stony asteroid would have opened up a hole probably almost the thickness of Earths crust, almost 30 km deep, and on the order of 80 to 100 km wide," he added.

Source: India Today November 21, 2016 12:10 UTC