Hildebrand traveled to the site and decided fairly swiftly that they had their crater. By early 1991 it had been established to nearly everyone's satisfaction that Chicxulub was the impact site.
希爾德布蘭德來到該地，很快就得出結論，他們找到了想要找的大坑。到1991年初，已經確定它就是撞擊的現場，幾乎令每個人都感到很滿意。
Still, many people didn't quite grasp what an impact could do. As Stephen Jay Gould recalled in one of his essays: "I remember harboring some strong initial doubts about the efficacy of such an event... Why should an object only six miles across wreak such havoc upon a planet with a diameter of eight thousand miles?"
然而，許多人仍然不大理解撞擊到底會產生什么后果。斯蒂芬·杰伊·古爾德在一篇短文中說：“起先，我對這樣的事件的威力仍然抱有強烈的懷疑態度……一個直徑只有10公里的物體，怎么會對一個直徑1.3萬公里的行星造成這么大的破壞？”
Conveniently a natural test of the theory arose when the Shoemakers and Levy discovered Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which they soon realized was headed for Jupiter. For the first time, humans would be able to witness a cosmic collision—and witness it very well thanks to the new Hubble space telescope. Most astronomers, according to Curtis Peebles, expected little, particularly as the comet was not a coherent sphere but a string of twenty-one fragments. "My sense," wrote one, "is that Jupiter will swallow these comets up without so much as a burp." One week before the impact, Nature ran an article, "The Big Fizzle Is Coming," predicting that the impact would constitute nothing more than a meteor shower.
這真是踏破鐵鞋無覓處，得來全不費工夫，對該理論進行一次自然測試的機會很快就來到了。蘇梅克和列維發現了蘇梅克-列維9號彗星，而且他們很快意識到，它正向木星飛去。人類首次能親眼目睹宇宙里的一次撞擊──而且多虧了新的哈勃太空望遠鏡，看得非常清楚。據柯蒂斯·皮布爾斯說，大多數天文學家不抱多大希望，尤其因為彗星不是個緊密的球體，而是一連串21個碎塊?！拔矣X得，”有人寫道，“木星沒打個嗝就會把這些彗星吞吃了?！弊矒糁暗囊粋€星期，《自然》雜志刊登了一篇題為《大失敗即將到來》的文章，預言撞擊只不過會是一場流星雨。
The impacts began on July 16, 1994, went on for a week and were bigger by far than anyone—with the possible exception of Gene Shoemaker—expected.
撞擊于1994年7月16日開始，持續了一個星期，其威力之大超出任何人的預料──有可能尤金·蘇梅克是個例外。
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