PLEASE NOTE:
*
CCNet 98/2003 - 6 November 2003
K/T MASS EXTINCTION DEBATE WIDE OPEN AND IN FULL SWING
----------------------------------------
It is nice to read such interesting and open debates! This is the
way
Science should work! All participants can present their arguments
(flawed arguments are quickly dismissed by opponents), and a
scientific
audience can compare the logic and weight of arguments of both
sides.
--Andrei Ol'khovatov
K/T MASS EXTINCTION DEBATE WIDE OPEN AND IN FULL SWING
The Geological Society, November 2003
http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/template.cfm?name=NSG1
Welcome to the Chicxulub discussion page
This page contains discussion related to Keller, Adatte &
Stinnesbeck's article, The Non-Smoking Gun (http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/template.cfm?name=NSG2349857238495).
The most recent items in the discussion are to the top of the
page. If you wish to contribute to this moderated on-line
discussion, please Email the Site Editor (ted.nield@geolsoc.org.uk)
=============
13th impact crater associated with K/T boundary
From Tom Van Flandern* Received 5.11.03
Last year, a British team of scientists announced the discovery
of a multi-ringed crater (named Silverpit) with a central peak
beneath the floor of the North Sea, believed to have been caused
by an asteroid impact between 60 million and 65 million years ago
[1-4]. The crater has 10 concentric rings from 2-20 km in
diameter. The rough dating suggests that the asteroid that caused
Silverpit might have been a chunk that broke off the larger
asteroid that hit the Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago.
Together with the Chicxulub and other craters, this discovery
gives new support to the idea that killer objects from outer
space may have sometimes arrived in pairs or even swarms.
"It's so clear," said Dr. Gerta Keller, a geologist and
paleontologist at Princeton, who studies the links between cosmic
bombardments and life upheavals. "A tremendous amount of new
data has been accumulated over the past few years that points in
the direction of multiple impacts."
Actually, that brings the list of impact craters sometimes
associated with the K/T boundary (65Ma) to 13. These are:
Beyenchime-Salaatin (Siberia), Eagle Butte (Oregon), Upheaval
Dome (Utah), Manson (Iowa), Kara (Western Siberia), Kamensk
(Siberia), Gusev (W. Russia near Ukraine), Unnamed (Pacific
Ocean), Chicxulub (Yucatan), Belize (south of Yucatan), Haiti
(Caribbean), Alvaro Obregón (N. Mexico), Silverpit (North Sea)
[5-10]. However, the global distribution of these impacts argues
strongly against chunks off a parent asteroid, which would be
expected to have much less than a hemispheric distribution,
assuming Earth's atmosphere is the agent responsible for the
break up. Capture and tidal break up by Earth, similar to
Jupiter's capture of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, is extremely
unlikely (by a factor of over 10 million) because Earth has a
much smaller mass and is closer to the Sun. The clear implication
of this global terrestrial cratering cluster is the explosion of
a planet-sized parent body in the main asteroid belt, a
hypothesis for which considerable astronomical evidence already
exists [11-22].
*Meta Research
References
(2002), Nature 418, 520-523.
(2002/11/06), CCNet.
(2002) http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/05/science/life/05CRAT.html?ex=1037250000&en=c771927311f6e53f&ei=5040&partner=MOREOVER
(2002), http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/newfound_crater_020731.html
(1996), "Terrestrial impact crater list", http://www.meteorite.ch/crater.htm
(1991), Lunar&PlanetarySci. XXII, abstracts, 961-962.
(1993), Nature 363, 670-671.
(1993), Nature 363, 615-617.
(1980), Nature 288, 651-656.
(1998/03/12), "More evidence points to impact as dinosaur
killer", JPL Press Release 98-42, NASA HQ & Pasadena,
CA.
T. Van Flandern, Dark Matter, Missing Planets and New Comets,
North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, chapter 11, (1993; 2nd edition
1999) - synthesis of exploded planet hypothesis (EPH) evidence.
Icarus 36, 51-74 (1978) - technical justification for the EPH.
http://metaresearch.org.
"Solar System" tab, "EPH" sub-tab - recent
updating and distilling of the most telling EPH evidence, and how
its predictions have fared; to be published in 2002.
Mercury 11, 189-193 (1982) - the EPH as an alternative to the
Oort cloud for the origin of comets.
Icarus 47, 480-486 (1981) - the EPH's "satellite model"
for comets as an alternative to the "dirty snowball"
model.
Science 203, 903-905 (1979) - asteroid satellite evidence,
confirming an EPH prediction.
Science 211, 297-298 (1981) - technical comment on previous
paper.
Asteroids, T. Gehrels, ed., U. of Ariz. Press, Tucson, 443-465
(1979) - theory and observations of asteroid satellites.
Dynamics of the Solar System, R.L. Duncombe, ed., Reidel,
Dordrecht, 257-262 (1979) - short summary of selected EPH
evidence.
Dynamics of Planets and Satellites and Theories of their Motion,
V. Szebehely, ed., Reidel, Dordrecht, 89-99 (1978) -- short
summary of selected EPH evidence.
Comets, Asteroids, Meteorites, A.H. Delsemme, ed., U. of Toledo,
475-481 (1977) - short summary of EPH evidence with technical
critiques and author responses.
Science Digest 90, 78-82 + 94-95 (1982) - popular exposition of
the EPH and its implications.
==============
Multiple impacts not unusual
from Andrew Glikson* Received 5.11.03
Sir, The Archaean imapct records includes the following
documented multiple impacts:
At least 2 and possibly more 3.47Ga impacts in the Antractic
Chert Member, Warrawoona Group, Pilbara (Glikson et al., in
press) and probably a double 3.47Ga impact in the Hoogenoeg
Group, Barberton, South Africa (Lowe et al., 2003).
A double impact in the 3.24 Ga Mapepe Formation, Barberton, South
Africa (S2 and S3) (Lowe et al., 2003).
A double impact in the 2.56Ga Bee Gorge Member of the Wittenoom
Formation, Hamersley Basin (SMB-1, SMB-2).
A double impact in the 2.47-2.50Ga Dales Gorge Group, Brockman
Iron Formation, Hamersley Basin, Western Australia (DG4 and DG7).
Major impact clusters are recorded in the late Devonian
(Woodleigh, Siljan, Alamo Breccia, Charlevoix), late Jurassic
(Gosses Bluff, Morokweng, Mjolnir), Late Eocene (Popigai,
Chesapeake Bay). So far as the K-T boundary is concerned, already
two impact structures are known (Chicxulub, Boltysh), as well as
the fallout units recorded by Keller. The evidence suggests that
double impacts and impact clusters are commonly recorded in the
terrestrial impact record.
*Research School of Earth Science, Australian National University
Canberra, ACT 0200
==========
Smoking gun proponents "must defend themselves"
From Andrei Ol'khovatov, PhD Received 5.11.03
Sir, It is nice to read such interesting and open debates! This
is the way Science should work! All participants can
present their arguments (flawed arguments are quickly dismissed
by opponents), and a scientific audience can compare the logic
and weight of arguments of both sides.
My impressions, which are those of a person who is interested in
Chicxulub but was never deeply involved in this research, are as
follows. It seems that on the basis of "proved
science", the arguments of G. Keller sound more logical, so
her opponents have to defend themselves. It seems that
their best argument is that our understanding of the processes
discussed is not good enough for any solid conclusion to be
drawn. This argument is hard to overcome, as indeed, here we are
in terra incognita. For example, our understanding of all large
impact phenomena is based on our knowledge of relatively small
meteorite impacts extrapolated (with help of numerous
calculations) to impacts many orders of magnitude larger.
Numerical calculations depend on a physical model of the event
under consideration. In the case of smaller events, results could
be verified just by comparing the outcome of one's calculations
with reality. It is very much more complicated in the case of
large impacts. So, all models of large impacts are
"unverified" at the moment.
To sum up. It seems that nowadays a "complete victory"
is not possible due to "being in the field of unknown".
My impression is that more research should be conducted. And
currently we should to recognise (at least to ourselves) that we
really don't know why dinos disappeared!
*Moscow, Russia www.geocities.com/olkhov
================
The timing's right
From Michael Paine* Received 4.11.03
Sir, The debate over the timimg of the Chicxulub impact is
fascinating and indicates a healthy state of scientific research
on this topic. Irrespective of the timimg of the event,
however, the wide range of research that has been conducted since
Chicxulub's discovery has shown that the average frequency of
such impacts is around 50 to 100 million years and the multiple
environmental consequences of impacts the size of Chicxulub can
easily account for the observed mass extinctions. In other
words, the Chicxulub impact is an entirely plausible explanation
for the KT extinction event.
Maybe there were multiple impacts and traces of the others have
been lost to subduction and erosion or maybe there are
other causes. My money is still on Chicxulub (this has nothing to
do with it being Melbourne Cup horse race day in Australia).
For more on environmental effects of impacts see
http://www4.tpg.com.au/users/horsts/climate.htm
*The Planetary Society Australian Volunteers
=========
More pluribus than unum
From Matt Terry*. Received Sunday 2 November
Sir, This vision of multiple large impacts fits better with the
palaeontological protests that the dinos' decline was more
stretched out than that postulated by a single global
"Cosmic Winter" disaster. As Clube and Napier have made
clear, the injection of one or more giant, likely cosmogenic,
comets into the inner solar system necessarily implies its
subsequent fragmentation into a swarm of hazards, as the Kreutz
group gives current evidence for.
Three hundred thousand years is not so long a time, on deep-space
timescales, and it is positable that the Chicxulub crater is one
among many impactors from that time, again, in resonance with the
slow decline of the Triassic hyper-fauna. Statistically,
given the limits of our search and the oceanic plenitude, we
should expect that Chicxulub is certainly not the only, or even
the largest, impactor of its time.
*Tampa, FL, USA
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