North American comet impact theory disproved

The report

New data, published today, disproves the recent theory that a large comet exploded over North America 12,900 years ago, causing a shock wave that travelled at hundreds of kilometres per hour and triggering continent-wide wildfires.

I'm not sure if this accounts for all the evidence of an event over North America at this time. Will have to read the report to understand what the main points and conclusions are.

Interesting though.

“The end of the Younger Dryas, about 11,700 years ago, was an interval when the temperature of Greenland warmed by over 5°C in less than a few decades. We used 35 records of charcoal accumulation in lake sediments from sites across North America to see whether fire regimes across the continent showed any response to such rapid warming.”

The team found clear changes in biomass burning and fire frequency whenever climate changed abruptly, and most particularly when temperatures increased at the end of the Younger Dryas cold phase. The results are published today [26 January] in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

This is a good example of the give and take of theory acceptance and debate. Firestone and friends put out a theory about a North American event and now contra-evidence is coming in.....then more evidence for the other side will come out. In about ten years we should have a better idea of what happened, when, why and how much effect it had. I suspect that a number of unrelated incidents are being reported as one event...but we shall see.

reply to post by Hanslune


Hans -

I am unclear how this particular theory, based around charcoal sediments from various fires -- which they are trying to assert were caused by abrupt climate changes (?) -- debunks, or even impacts, Firestone et al's diamond fields in Ohio.

Am I reading this wrong? It seems like apples and oranges to me.

TWISI

I'm not surprised.

I talked about it with paleontologists when it first came out, mentioning the points that I found that spoke against it -- such as the inconsistency of the types of animals that died, the lack of an abrupt rise in sea level (it rose over hundreds of years at a rate of about 3-5 inches a year. That's not much.) The fact that no area shows any indication of all species in that place being completely wiped out except for small burrowing animals.

In order to produce the results we see at the end of the Ice Age, the meteor would have had to actually be a series of ICBMs, each targeted for one (and only one) species of animal... killing them off over the course of a thousand years or so (the last mammoth died within the past 10,000 years).

The fossils just didn't match.

The "black mats" have been made much of, as have the diamonds. However, it's known that wildfires have ALWAYS been with us, so a few years of dry weather and lots of lightning can produce large burned areas in thick forests. And while they found the material in some places, I am completely certain that they didn't find them on every single dig and in every single place.

reply to post by Byrd


Yep as more information comes in I think we'll see a clearer picture of what actually happened in that time frame.

When do you think there will be a North American comet/fires conference?

Oh and one tiny point the last mammoth, okay a dwaf mammoth. is thought to have died out around 1700 BCE on Wrangel and St Pauls island

reply to post by Byrd


To the best of my knowledge, the charcoal deposites, while widespread, aren't found everywhere. As I am strictly a layman where this stuff is concerned, take my opinion for what it may be worth.

It does seem to me, however, in the past decade; that so many events are trying to be blamed on comets, or asteroids, impacting on Earth. While the impacts do occur, obviously; big, or rather catastrophic impacts aren't that common.

I think you hit it with climate causeing widespread drought, a lightning strike, and a nice breeze...and away we go. Wildfire. Seems a rather more reasonable explanation than a comet strike. Though, of course, that hasn't been entirely ruled out.

Reply to Byrd

Here is a link to another recent theory from my earlier threadwhich addresses some of your concerns with the black mat and animal extinctions. This theory is taking into consderation fullernes and nano-diamonds being where they should not, the lynch-pin holding the cometary theory together.

None of those 'issues' is being addressed by this new thoery that Hans has posted. So I do not understand how it can be said to 'debunk' the cometary impact one.

Also, they have found the nano-diamonds at various locations where they should not be. Including the Carolina Bays this data is a few months old and, to my mind, a very big deal especially when it is considered with the other papers that have been published lately.

There seems to be a lot more evidence for cometary impact than what is being served up here, re: dry weather and lightening storms, all of which is linked to, and addressed, in the "Science Proving Global Flood Myth..." thread. (Which I am loathe to drag over here and start all over again)

All to say, if you, or anyone, can explain to me how this new theory undermines cometary impact, as opposed to simply overloooking the data that supports it, I would greatly appreciate it.

Respect,
TWISI



[edit on 28-1-2009 by TheWayISeeIt]

Hans -

I see you have been on and off-line many times since I posted the above; am I safe to assume that I have 'won this round' and N.A. Cometary Impact has indeed NOT been disproved?

reply to post by TheWayISeeIt


Howdy TWISI

Oh sorry, I was busy writing something for work and missed you.

The report I posted seems to dismiss the concept of large, widespread fires at one time caused by a single source. As I noted elsewhere. This is yet another step in what will be a long dance as they try to figure out what happened all those thousands of years ago.

Ask that same question in about ten years.

What my opinion is that there were a number of events and incidents going on during that period. I think that a number of distinctly separate events have been pooled together to make/theorize a more dramatic effect than what really occurred. Example:

If we all disappeared and an archaeologist 10k from now was looking at the middle of the US he might have a theory that the Bison disappeared because of a event that was caused by the New market earthquake, the flooding of News Orleans and the burning of Chicago. All these events happened but they are separated in time. Looking back as we are these events are being compressed into one larger events while they may be separate ones which have been mis-identified as a single event.

reply to post by Hanslune


Mmkay, but I will point out that it would seem your thread title does not match your opinion, nor does the paper address the foundations of Cometary Impact Theory let alone 'disprove' it. On that I think we can all agree; it is too narrow a focused theory to 'disprove' anyting of the kind.

And I will also point out that the edit button is still under your control ...

so this means the dinosaurs - mass extinction happened via another worldwide calamity.. like say.... a flood followed by an ice age?

or a massive solar flares causing earthquakes volcanic eruptions and fire and destruction?

-

so this means the dinosaurs - mass extinction happened via another worldwide calamity.. like say.... a flood followed by an ice age?

or a massive solar flares causing earthquakes volcanic eruptions and fire and destruction?

-

reply to post by TheWayISeeIt


Howdy TWISI

I was posting an article that had that title so it seemed appropriate to retain it. I often post articles I don't fully or completely agree with. I provide information as I find it. If I were to find something that proved a fringe concept, I'd post that too.

Just call me ありのまま rather than きょくがくあせい

Hey Prevenge

We are talking about a later event in North America that may have contributed to the loss of the megafauna. It is the idea of some that this event wiped out Atlantis and/or some other unknown civilizations.

[edit on 28/1/09 by Hanslune]

Originally posted by Hanslune

Just call me ありのまま rather than きょくがくあせい

Okay, if you insist, 'Frankly Honest' it is... but Hans was a more convenient dimmunitve.

PS - It seems I take this round.



[edit on 28-1-2009 by TheWayISeeIt]

reply to post by TheWayISeeIt


Round of what?

Originally posted by Hanslune
reply to post by Byrd

 

Yep as more information comes in I think we'll see a clearer picture of what actually happened in that time frame.

When do you think there will be a North American comet/fires conference?

A good one or an "OMG! I HAZ A THEEOREY!!!!" one?

I'm being sarcastic, I know, but I have noted a number of conferences on various "hot" scientific theories. So far, they've managed to do a session on it at a Texas archaeological conference last year.

Wikipedia's got a nice review of the process so far:
en.wikipedia.org...

Oh and one tiny point the last mammoth, okay a dwaf mammoth. is thought to have died out around 1700 BCE on Wrangel and St Pauls island

I was aware of that... but felt I should stick to the megafauna rather than confuse everyone.

For me, the jury's still out on the diamonds. I'd like to know about the soils and whether, if I dig around here in Texas, I can find them at non-archaeological sites of a similar age and all over the state. The gods know we have enough soil samples in labs all over the place.

I understand that if you're not looking for them, it's hard to identify them. But the papers so far have been specific to a few sites and not generalized... and, as I said, the extinction pattern looks very species-specific, which would really rule out a comet/asteroid but leaves in "intergalactic species-seeking missles."

IMHO, of course. I haven't studied the evidence... only talked with paleontologists.

Hello Byrd


Yeah as the information mounts and the counter-evidence is weighed it will be interesting to see how this comes out. Finding the 'range of effect' of an event is always difficult because you have to study or restudy so much material.

We should have a clearer idea of what happened around 2020.

I'd also like to point out that there is nothing at all "out of place" concerning nanodiamonds and fullerenes in the Carolina Bays.

These naturally formed depressions would obviously be collection points for all sorts of debris from any number of meteor impacts.

Any event which created nanodiamonds or fullerenes anywhere in that part of the world, in any timeframe, would ultimately deposit some of these sorts of residue into many Carolina Bays formations simply due to oceanic wave and current action.

This would likely occur even for such debris created prior to the existence of the Carolina Bay depression in which the debris was found.

After all, as the Civil Engineers will tell you, **it flows downhill.

Harte

Hey, I'm sorry I didn't get around to this earlier. It's a busy week.

Originally posted by TheWayISeeIt
Reply to Byrd

Here is a link to another recent theory from my earlier threadwhich addresses some of your concerns with the black mat and animal extinctions. This theory is taking into consderation fullernes and nano-diamonds being where they should not, the lynch-pin holding the cometary theory together.

I confess I didn't read the thread. I had read some of it at the time you posted, but was on one of those very busy periods and decided to not comment.

Marusek's idea doesn't impress me... and let me go into a bit of detail on why. In order for it to work...

* the impactor would have to have some sort of selection method where it kills off certain animals of a certain size (like the horses and camels) and leaves other animals of the same size living in the same area (deer, moose) untouched.
* the entire human population of the continent would have had to NOT gone further inland on the American continent ... and would have had to stay within a mile or two of the (then) shore.
* these shore-living humans would have eaten fish and clams and oysters and birds but ... would have had to run several miles into the interior of the continent to put down shell mounds and campsites and then run back to a comfortable civilization (or tribal area) within a mile or two of the shore.
* they would have to be so neurotically attached to the shore that they wouldn't move farther inland as the water slowly rose (the rate of rising was irregular... and it rose between several inches to a foot in a year.)
* the impactor would have had to kill some species quickly and others very slowly. It would have to leave elephants alive in Africa while wiping them out in America, and kill camels in North America but not South America (llamas) and kill horses in the Americas while leaving them alive elsewhere.


I did look at your link the cometary impact one. as well as the Carolina Bays link. I'm not skeptical of meteors hitting the Americas... in fact, there is Meteor Crater in Odessa where a fair sized one hit just about the end of the Ice Age. The crater, however, is only a mile or so across and while it probably killed everything for miles around and tossed dust into the atmosphere, it wasn't anything along the lines of the one that killed the dinosaurs.

Given that these things can travel in "packs" (as a comet breaks up), it wouldn't entirely surprise me that we'd find several meteor impacts that are about the same age. It wouldn't surprise me that a single meteor impact hitting an area where the species were pretty specialized and were in decline might wipe something out (like, say, one hitting Africa close to where the last of the cheetahs are living. They aren't very genetically diverse and they're being pressured by civilization, so some ecological disaster could tip the balance and force them into extinction.)

But the rest of it doesn't match up. Mammoths and mastodons died out over a period of thousands of years. The last of the giant ground sloths and giant armadillos were certainly around during the last of the ice age, but evidence shows they'd been in decline for awhile... and shows that the habitat was changing (but not in the space of months. The change was over centuries.)

They're still arguing over the genetic results in modern Native Americans. I tend to go with this one that says three migrations rather than the single migration ( www.genomeweb.com... ) simply because of the data of the language families and language isolates. The languages show pretty clearly that certain tribes (language families) ended up in certain areas, with pockets of older language families surrounded by migrants (I'm thinking particularly of the Chumash languages... one of the oldest language families on the continent.)

So that's in part why I have never found the theory very convincing. I could certainly believe that one or more smaller meteors (like the one in Odessa) hit the planet about the end of the Ice Age. I could believe that they would affect global weather for months... or even up to a year (or two.) But I don't see any good evidence of human societies living only on the edge of the sea where they build monumental cities (with no farming areas to support them) and then die because they're too scared to move away from the slowly rising waters. And I don't see good evidence that shows the animals that went extinct all went into a certain area where they all dropped dead within a year or two.

And that's my objection to the theory. Or, at least, some of them.

I think people on both sides of this question are reading way to much into the comet impact theory, and try to take an event that is very "grey" and divide it into black and white.



The event just started a series of events the eventually lead to a change in climate and eventually lead to the extiction of some mega fauna.



One of the things that strikes me about the group that has put forth the best research, is that it is comprised of a large number of individuals from a whole range of disciplines, who's own research has lead them to a common idea.

One thing Ive never been able to resolve, for myself, is how an extremely limited human population can depopulate an entire continent of large animals.
and something like 90% of all animals over 40lbs went extintc in north america.



And as I have pointed out that most of the large animals that repopulated NA were of asian origin.
I would also lay odds that the deer of the far north like the moose and the caribou also repopulated from asia, just like the bison.



The effects from the impact took centuries to come to fruition, with some of them being more immediate and pronounced.



The only thing i see the paper proving is that when the cllimate warms you have fires, duh.
I dont think that the event set the whole continent at one time, it likely set a large area ablaze, and then the fires spread across the continent, posibbly taking years to do so.
There are fires burning in the forests here that have been buring for more than two years, they continued to smolder through the winter snow pack and get to full burning again once summer comes.
the odessa crater is just one of hundreds in a crater field that lies in that area of texas/new mexico.
I have flown over it a couple of times, its pretty impressive, its like flying over a moonscape.

Ive read a paper by a meteor guy, that indicates that there a couple of swarms of objects that we pass through on on a cyclic basis.
The timing of one of these swarms coincides with the timing of the possible ice age impact.



Im going to hold firm that the event did happen and it had a dramatic impact on the history of NA.

And that memory of the event lived on in the mythos of the people of mesoamerica, but it was not a "global flood" causing event.

Like hans said in ten or twenty years after more of this huge puzzle is peiced together, the whole picture will be more clear that it did happen.

On a related note there was a paper just published by a geologist with the USGS, on antipodal impact/hotspot pairs.

Fascinating stuff, in light of the fact that there is still a camp of thought that, insists that massive vulcanism in india caused the extinction of the dinosaurs and not the chixilub impact.

He has found that with impacts over a certain size, chixilub being at the lower end, on oceanic crust that much of the energy will pass through the earth and cause a magma plume at its antipode(opposite side of the earth).

The deccan traps are the antipode to chixilub. He has identified a fair number of large impacts and the antipodal hotspot associated with them.