PLEASE NOTE:
*
CAMBRIDGE-CONFERENCE DEBATE, 25 March 1998
------------------------------------------
"What is normal in nature and society rarely excites
the myth-making imagination, which is more likely to be
kindled by the abnormal, some startling catastrophe,
some terrible violation of the social code"
(Lewis Farnell 1919)
(1) RISKS OF HAILING HISTORY TOO LITERALLY
Bob Kobres <bkobres@uga.edu>
(2) STONES FROM THE SKY: METEORITES OR HAIL
Simon Mansfield <simon@spacer.com> wrote:
(3) FIRST STONES, THEN HAILSTONES
Ed Grondine" <epgrondine@hotmail.com>
====================
(1) RISKS OF HAILING HISTORY TOO LITERALLY
From: Bob Kobres <bkobres@uga.edu>
Rob McNaught makes a good point with regard to attempting to
extract
information from ancient text. From our ancestors perspective
phenomena
of the sky was just that and not until very recently did it
become
common for a certain phenomenon to have a discrete
classification. In
other words a few hundred years ago description of a meteor
display might
be a meteoroid shower but it could also be an aurora type
phenomenon.
That’s why it ultimately comes down to probing the dirt if
we are to
really know what happened when and where.
In my view, handed down history should be valued more than it
generally
has been for clues about when and where significant impact type
phenomena have occurred but such memories cannot be counted upon
as
an accurate description of what, if anything, came down.
A few pages pertinent to this topic are:
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/discd.html
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/iceoxy.html
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/phaeth.html
Also, by querying my NEW search engine for ‘hail*’ you’ll
turn up
several interesting tidbits including this particularly relevant
page
that I had forgotten about:
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/hotwater.html
Later.
bobk
==================
(2) STONES FROM THE SKY: METEORITES OR HAIL
From: Simon Mansfield <simon@spacer.com>
wrote:
> Rob McNaught <RMN@AAOCBN3.AAO.GOV.AU>
wrote:
>
> "And it came to pass, as they fled from before Israel,
and were going
> down to Beth-horon, that the Lord cast down great stones
from heaven
> upon them unto Azekah, and they died. More died with
hailstones than
> they whom the children of Israel slew with the
sword."
>
> I have no idea what the conventional explanation for this
is, but there
> is presumably the explanation that the cause WAS
hailstones. Death by
> hail is common worldwide and every few decades some hundreds
die in
> large hailstorms. There are many more stock deaths,
often thousands at
> a time. Hail up to grapefruit size is not uncommon.
>
I would recommend John Lewis' book "Rain of Iron and
Ice" pp. 176-182
for an excellant list of "Property Damage, Injuries and
Deaths caused
by meteorite falls."
It is a detailed list that would make a good discussion point for
this
conference. I would be interested in any confirmation or further
input
on Lewis' list.
Regards, Simon
=======================
(3) FIRST STONES, THEN HAILSTONES
From: Ed Grondine" <epgrondine@hotmail.com>
Rob -
I am certainly aware of the dangers of hail. Once when I
was
driving across the northen plains I was caught in a hailstorm; by
a
stroke of incredibly good luck one the only overpass for miles
around
appeared ahead; I pulled under it, and thus my car escaped major
damage.
So after I first read others' suggestions that the Joshua event
was an impact event, I briefly considered both that the stones
mentioned
were indeed hailstones; and I also considered whether the
hailstones
were an addition by a later scribe trying to explain the
first sentence
in the passage.
In the end it seems more likely that what happened is that the
disintegration of a large meteoroid of the Sikhote Alin class
released a
large amount of kinetic energy into the atmosphere
("stones") ; this
heated air came into contact with particles at the super cold
temperature of space, producing hail ("hailstones").
Also, while Joshua does not contain "fire from the sky"
it does
contain atmospheric dust from an event of the Sikhote Alin /
Tunguska
class. Joshua 10:13: "And the sun stood still (the dust
obscured
sunlight), and the moon stayed (the dust reflected sunlight),
until the
people had avenged themselves upon their enemies.
Besides the explicit detail in Joshua, you must remember that the
Achaeans, the source for the Tantalus myth, were contemporaneous
with
the events. If it had been hail, most likely Tantalus's hell
would have
involved hail instead of a stone.
But this is only interpretation, and as you rightly point out
because
of language difficulties even the location of more records might
not be
able to resolve the problem. In the end, the only thing hope for
a
definite solution is a search for meteorites in the Beth Horon
area.
E.P. Grondine
*
CAMBRIDGE-CONFERENCE DIGEST, 25 March 1998
------------------------------------------
(1) METEORITE CRASHES IN MONAHANS
Bernd Pauli <bernd.pauli@lehrer1.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>
(2) CRATER CHAIN ON TWO CONTINENTS POINTS TO IMPACT FROM
FRAGMENTED
COMET
Ron Baalke <BAALKE@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov>
(3) HOW LIFE RECOVERED AFTER THE END-CRETACEOUS MASS EXTINCTION
D. Jablonski, University of Chicago
(4) HOW LIFE RECOVERED AFTER THE PERMIAN MASS EXTINCTION
J.C. Gall et al., University of Strassbourg
(5) DOES GLOBAL BIOTA PRODUCE THREE NEW SPECIES PER YEAR?
J.J. Sepkoski, University of Chicago
=====================
(1) METEORITE CRASHES IN MONAHANS
From: Bernd Pauli <bernd.pauli@lehrer1.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>
For all those who haven't had time to download those press
releases:
01) http://www.mrt.com/news/archives/9803/meteor23.html
Meteorite crashes in Monahans (By Gary Shanks - Staff Writer)
The Monahans Police Department has temporary custody of a
meteorite
fragment that struck the ground in a small housing development in
the
northern part of that city, Sunday. The meteorite shown brightly
as it
arced across the Permian Basin, between 6:45 and 7 p.m. Sunday,
sparking numbers of calls to the Midland and Ector County
sheriff's
offices as well as the Monahans Police Department.
From Midland, the meteorite could be seen burning brilliantly
high in
the sky, even though there was still sunlight and blue sky. The
meteorite left a smoke trail pointing west, according to reported
sightings.
An astronomer at the McDonald Observatory theorized that the
meteorite
could have contained copper among its metallic ores, explaining
the
greenish tint to its glow as it passed over Midland. The
meteorite
continued on this path for a few seconds before exploding into
several
small, white-hot fragments which quickly vanished, according to a
local
eye witness to the event.
In Monahans, a group of youths were playing basketball when a
chunk of
this meteorite landed with a thud, causing the youths to
investigate,
according to Allen Martin, news director for the KLBO Radio
station,
which is located near to the site of the meteorite fragment.
Monahans residents who witnessed the meteorite's passage through
the sky
reported a "boom" as well as the bright light, Martin
said. The
fragment was burned black and had a texture like chipped
concrete,
although it was reportedly "very dense," Martin said.
"It was charred
black as night," he added. The oddly-shaped meteorite was
eight to nine
inches in length, about four inches wide and about two inches
thick and
weighed about five pounds, Martin said.
It struck the ground within 50 feet of five homes, Martin said.
"It
landed right in the middle of them," he said. While still
warm when it
was found, several people hefted the fragment before Monahans
police
suggested that testing it for radioactivity might be wise, Martin
said.
The fragment is being kept at the police department today. People
were
still milling about the site late into the evening, he said.
"It has
stirred up quite a bit of excitement for around here,"
Martin said.
--
http://www.abqjournal.com/scitech/1sci3-23.htm
March 23, 1998 - Pieces of Possible Meteoroid - Fall in
West Texas
The Associated Press MONAHANS, Texas - Authorities are
investigating
whether an unusual black rock discovered by a group of teen-agers
caused
a flash of light that many believed to be a falling meteoroid.
Monahans police suspect the rock could be the cause of Sunday's
sighting, but officials still weren't sure on Monday. "Right
at the
moment they don't know what it is," said a woman who
answered the phone
at the police station. "No experts or anything have looked
at it yet."
The woman, who declined to give her name, said the rock was about
3
inches wide.
Monahans radio station KLBO reported the charred rock was about 9
inches
long and landed about 50 feet from five homes. Law officers were
keeping
the fragment for examination by scientists. Several witnesses
told local
newspapers and television stations that they had seen something
streaking across the sky as dusk fell.
People from as far as 70 miles away also heard a loud boom. The
Goldsmith and West Odessa fire departments were sent out to look
for a
possible plane crash. The possible celestial visitor appeared as
a
bright green streak that exploded into white-hot fragments,
according
to the Midland Reporter-Telegram. They could have been meteorites
composed of copper, explaining the greenish tint, an astronomer
at
McDonald Observatory said. Monahans is about 60 miles southwest
of
Odessa. Copyright © 1997, 1998 Albuquerque Journal
=======================
(2) CRATER CHAIN ON TWO CONTINENTS POINTS TO IMPACT FROM
FRAGMENTED
COMET
From: Ron Baalke <BAALKE@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov>
University of Chicago News Office
5801 South Ellis Avenue - Room 200
Chicago, Illinois 60637-1473
Tel: (773) 702-8360 Fax: (773) 702-8324
http://www-news.uchicago.edu/
Contact: Diana Steele, (773) 702-8366
d-steele@uchicago.edu
Crater chain on two continents points to impact from fragmented
comet
214 million year-old event corresponds with mass extinction
A team of scientists working on two continents has discovered
that a
series of five craters on Europe and North America form a chain,
indicating the breakup and subsequent impact of a comet or
asteroid
that collided with Earth approximately 214 million years ago.
The impacts may have contributed to a mass extinction that
occurred at
the end of the Triassic period -- one of the five greatest mass
extinctions
in history.
The work, by scientists at the University of Chicago, the
University of New
Brunswick (Canada) and The Open University (Milton Keynes, U.K.)
is
published in a paper in the Thursday, March 12, issue of the
journal
Nature.
"When scientists observed the impacts of the pieces of Comet
Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter in July 1994, they said that the
impact of a
fragmented comet could never happen here on Earth because the
Earth's
gravitational field is too weak to break a comet into
pieces," said David
Rowley, University of Chicago Associate Professor in Geophysical
Sciences. "But our studies of these five craters provide
compelling
evidence that this happened at least once, and there's no reason
it
couldn't have happened more than that."
Rowley's colleagues, John Spray, a structural geologist from the
University of New Brunswick, and Simon Kelley from The Open
University,
were interested in the relationship between impact craters of
similar ages.
Kelley had developed a technique to date such craters more
precisely --
using laser argon/argon dating of the glass formed by localized
heating of
the rock. They asked Rowley to help figure out how the craters
were
aligned when the impacts occurred -- because of plate tectonics,
the
continents have moved extensively in the last 214 million years.
Rowley, a principal investigator for the University of Chicago's
Paleogeographic Atlas Project, which is compiling an atlas of the
paleogeography and paleoclimate of the world as it changed over
the
past 500 million years, had that kind of information at his
fingertips.
"I get these kinds of requests all the time," said
Rowley, "so at first I didn't
think about it too much. But when they asked to me take a closer
look at
the data and I saw the alignment, I just said, 'wow!'"
Three of the five craters, Rochechouart in France, and
Manicouagan and
Saint Martin in Canada, were at the same latitude -- 22.8 degrees
--
forming a nearly 5000-kilometer chain. The other two, Obolon' in
Ukraine
and Red Wing in Minnesota, lay on identical declination paths
with
Rochechouart and Saint Martin, respectively. All of the craters
are
previously known and well-studied, but the paleoalignment has
never
before been shown.
One possible explanation for the alignments of the five craters
is a
fragmented comet that crashed to Earth in three major groups over
a
period of time as short as four hours, in two groups of two and
one solitary
chunk. It is possible that the comet or asteroid actually broke
into more
than five pieces, but most of the Earth at that latitude was
ocean 214
million years ago, and evidence of any ocean-bottom craters has
long
been obliterated. The impacts may have occurred over a period of
several
days, depending on how widely the fragments were dispersed.
Rowley said that the chance that these craters are randomly
aligned is
near zero.
Manicouagan, the largest of the five craters, is more than 100
kilometers
in diameter, comparable to the 170-kilometer Chixulub crater in
the
Yucatan -- the impact that is believed to have caused the mass
extinction
at the end of the Cretaceous period 65 million years ago, killing
the
dinosaurs.
The Triassic extinction was equivalent in magnitude to the
Cretacious/
Tertiary (K/T) extinction: about 80% of the species then living
on the planet
became extinct.
There are 150 known impact craters worldwide; the group is now
studying
others to see if there are other coincident crater chains.
The Paleogeographic Atlas Project at the University of Chicago is
compiling an atlas of the world's changing geography and climate.
The
data are used for testing climate change models, finding probable
sites
for oil and minerals, and for providing a comprehensive look at
the
evolution of Earth's geographic features. The work is funded by a
constortium of companies that has included Amoco, Exxon, Mobile,
Total,
Elf-Aquitaine and Shell, British Petroleum, Conoco and Marathon.
More
information can be found at <http://plates.uchicago.edu/>.
================
(3) HOW LIFE RECOVERED AFTER THE END-CRETACEOUS MASS EXTINCTION
D. Jablonski: Geographic variation in the molluscan recovery from
the
end-Cretaceous extinction, SCIENCE, 1998, Vol.279, No.5355,
pp.1327-1330
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, DEPARTMENT OF GEOPHYSICAL SCIENCE, 5734 S
ELLIS
AVE, CHICAGO, IL, 60637
Biotic recovery patterns after the end-Cretaceous mass extinction
differ among the molluscan faunas of the North American Gulf
Coast,
northern Europe, northern Africa, and Pakistan and northern
India. In
contrast to the Gulf Coast, the other three regions lack a rapid
expansion and decline of 'bloom taxa' and have lower proportions
of
invaders early in the recovery phase. The anomalous Gulf Coast
patterns, distinct from extratropical Europe and the tropical
regions,
provide evidence for the biogeographic and macroevolutionary
complexity
of biotic recoveries and may have implications for present-day
biotas.
Copyright 1998, Institute for Scientific Information Inc.
==========================
(4) HOW LIFE RECOVERED AFTER THE PERMIAN MASS EXTINCTION
J.C. Gall, L. Grauvogel-Stamm, A. Nel and F. Papier: The Permian
mass
extinction and the Triassic recovery, COMPTES RENDUS DE L
ACADEMIE DES
SCIENCES SERIE II FASCICULE A-SCIENCES DE LA TERRE ET DES
PLANETES,
1998, Vol.326, No.1, pp.1-12
*) UNIVERSITY OF STRASBOURG 1, EOST, 1 RUE BLESSIG, F-67084
STRASBOURG,
FRANCE
The most severe mass extinction of the Phanerozoic occurred by
stages
in the Permian and spanned several millions of years. The marine
environment suffered the most since their ecosystems greatly
collapsed
under the joint effects of a great drop in sea level and general
anoxic
conditions in the ocean. On the land, arid conditions and several
brief
episodes of climatic cooling led to a great loss in biodiversity
of the
vertrebrate fauna and flora and therefore in the ground cover by
the
plants. in contrast, the insects did not seem to be very much
affected
by the crisis. The recovery of the disturbed ecosystems at the
beginning of the Triassic proceeded from refuges, such as the
transitional environments between sea and emerged lands.
Copyright
1998, Institute for Scientific Information Inc.
================
(5) DOES GLOBAL BIOTA PRODUCE THREE NEW SPECIES PER YEAR?
J.J. Sepkoski: Rates of speciation in the fossil record,
PHILOSOPHICAL
TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LONDON SERIES B-BIOLOGICAL
SCIENCES, 1998, Vol.353, No.1366, pp.315-326
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, DEPARTMENT OF GEOPHYSICAL SCIENCE, 5734 S
ELLIS
AVE, CHICAGO, IL, 60637
Data from palaeontology and biodiversity suggest that the global
biota
should produce an average of three new species per year. However,
the
fossil record shows large variation around this mean. Rates of
origination have declined through the Phanerozoic. This appears
to have
been largely a function of sorting among higher taxa (especially
classes), which exhibit characteristic rates of speciation (and
extinction) that differ among them by nearly an order of
magnitude.
Secular decline of origination rates is hardly constant, however;
many
positive deviations reflect accelerated speciation during
rebounds from
mass extinctions. There has also been general decline in rates of
speciation within major taxa through their histories, although
rates
have tended to remain higher among members in tropical regions.
Finally, pulses of speciation appear sometimes to be associated
with
climate change, although moderate oscillations of climate do not
necessarily promote speciation despite forcing changes in
species'
geographical. Copyright 1998, Institute for Scientific
Information Inc.
--------------------------------
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