66 million years ago an asteroid destroyed the dinosaurs. Now scientists are drilling into the crater it made to understand how.

For a brief moment, those watching would have seen a hunk of space rock the size of a city hurtling Earthward at inconceivable speed. Then there was a flash of light and a release of energy like a billion atomic bombs. The force of the impact sent towering mega-tsunamis raging across the Gulf of Mexico and blew a superheated cloud of dirt, rock and dust sky high. When the cloud descended, it coated everything from the Yucatan to the Caribbean in hundreds of feet of debris. Meanwhile, the shock waves set off devastating earthquakes and volcanic eruptions around the globe — perhaps worsening a massive flood of lava that was already bubbling up from a hotspot beneath India.