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One fragment, known as Nucleus G, struck with the force of about six million megatons—seventy-five times more than all the nuclear weaponry in existence. Nucleus G was only about the size of a small mountain, but it created wounds in the Jovian surface the size of Earth. It was the final blow for critics of the Alvarez theory.
有個名叫“核G”的碎塊，其撞擊威力高達6億噸級──相當于現有核武器的總威力的75倍。核G只有大約一座小山大小，但它在木星表面造成了地球大小的傷口。這對批評阿爾瓦雷斯理論的人來說是決定性的打擊。
Luis Alvarez never knew of the discovery of the Chicxulub crater or of the Shoemaker-Levy comet, as he died in 1988. Shoemaker also died early. On the third anniversary of the Shoemaker-Levy impact, he and his wife were in the Australian outback, where they went every year to search for impact sites. On a dirt track in the Tanami Desert—normally one of the emptiest places on Earth—they came over a slight rise just as another vehicle was approaching. Shoemaker was killed instantly, his wife injured. Part of his ashes were sent to the Moon aboard the Lunar Prospector spacecraft. The rest were scattered around Meteor Crater.
路易斯·阿爾瓦雷斯永遠也不知道發現了奇克休留布大坑或蘇梅克-列維彗星。他于1988年與世長辭。而且，蘇梅克也去世得太早。在木星撞擊事件發生3周年之際，他和他的妻子長眠在澳大利亞腹地。他每年都要去那里尋找撞擊現場。在塔塔米沙漠的一條土路上──這里通常是地球上最空曠的地方，他們正翻越一個小丘，恰好對面來了另一輛汽車。蘇梅克旋即喪命，他的妻子受了傷。他的部分骨灰被“月球探索者”號宇宙飛船送上了月球，其余的撒在隕星坑周圍。
Anderson and Witzke no longer had the crater that killed the dinosaurs, "but we still had the largest and most perfectly preserved impact crater in the mainland United States," Anderson said. (A little verbal dexterity is required to keep Manson's superlative status. Other craters are larger—notably, Chesapeake Bay, which was recognized as an impact site in 1994—but they are either offshore or deformed.)
安德森和威策克的大坑不再是恐龍滅絕的原因。“但我們仍然擁有美國本土最大、保存最完好的撞擊坑。”安德森說。（為了讓曼森大坑保持最高的地位，用詞方面需要有點兒靈活性。別的坑還要大──引人注目的是切薩皮克灣，它于1994年被確認是個撞擊現場──但它們不是在近海，就是變了形。）
