Phys.org has a story about the asteroid that took out the dinosaurs.  A study at Imperial College London did simulations and found that the angle of attack for the asteroid that struck the Earth at the end of the Cretaceous Period hit at the “deadliest possible” angle.  All the details are in a paper published in the journal Nature Communications.

New simulations from Imperial College London have revealed the asteroid that doomed the dinosaurs struck Earth at the ‘deadliest possible’ angle.

The simulations show that the asteroid hit Earth at an angle of about 60 degrees, which maximised the amount of climate-changing gases thrust into the upper atmosphere.

Such a strike likely unleashed billions of tonnes of sulphur, blocking the sun and triggering the nuclear winter that killed the dinosaurs and 75 per cent of life on Earth 66 million years ago.

Drawn from a combination of 3-D numerical impact simulations and geophysical data from the site of the impact, the new models are the first ever fully 3-D simulations to reproduce the whole event—from the initial impact to the moment the final crater, now known as Chicxulub, was formed.