DEEP IMPACT?: This 4 centimeter band of dark sediment uncovered at Murray Spring, Ariz., may indicate a cosmic impact or explosion that kicked off a period of global cooling and a mass extinction in North America. problem is, a researcher can’t find the nanodiamonds.
Via eurekalert: Impact hypothesis loses its sparkle
Shock-synthesized diamonds said to prove a catastrophic impact killed off North American megafauna can’t be found
About 12,900 years ago, a sudden cold snap interrupted the gradual warming that had followed the last Ice Age. The cold lasted for the 1,300-year interval known as the Younger Dryas (YD) before the climate began to warm again.
In North America, large animals known as megafauna, such as mammoths, mastodons, saber-tooth tigers and giant short-faced bears, became extinct. The Paleo-Indian culture known as the Clovis culture for distinctively shaped fluted stone spear points abruptly vanished, eventually replaced by more localized regional cultures.
What had happened?
One theory is that either a comet airburst or a meteor impact somewhere in North America set off massive environmental changes that killed animals and disrupted human communities.
In sedimentary deposits dating to the beginning of the YD, impact proponents have reported finding carbon spherules containing tiny nano-scale diamonds, which they thought to be created by shock metamorphism or chemical vapor deposition when the impactor struck.
The nanodiamonds included lonsdaleite, an unusal form of diamond that has a hexagonal lattice rather than the usual cubic crystal lattice. Lonsdaleite is particularly interesting because it has been found inside meteorites and at known impact sites.
In the August 30 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of scientists led by Tyrone Daulton, PhD, a research scientist in the physics department at Washington University in St. Louis, reported that they could find no diamonds in YD boundary layer material.
- Tyrone Daulton is pictured with the transmission electron microscrope he used to search in vain for shock-synthesized nanodiamonds, evidence that a extraterrestrial object such as a meteorite killed off North American megafauna
Daulton and his colleagues, including Nicholas Pinter, PhD, professor of geology at Southern Illinois University In Carbondale and Andrew C. Scott, PhD, professor of applied paleobotany of Royal Holloway University of London, show that the material reported as diamond is instead forms of carbon related to commonplace graphite, the material used for pencils.
“Of all the evidence reported for a YD impact event, the presence of hexagonal diamond in YD boundary sediments represented the strongest evidence suggesting shock processing,” Daulton, who is also a member of WUSTL’s Center for Materials Innovation, says.
However, a close examination of carbon spherules from the YD boundary using transmission electron microscopy by the Daulton team found no nanodiamonds. Instead, graphene- and graphene/graphane-oxide aggregates were found in all the specimens examined (including carbon spherules dated from before the YD to the present). Importantly, the researchers demonstrated that previous YD studies misidentified graphene/graphane-oxides as hexagonal diamond and likely misidentified graphene as cubic diamond.
The YD impact hypothesis was in trouble already before this latest finding. Many other lines of evidence — including: fullerenes, extraterrestrial forms of helium, purported spikes in radioactivity and iridium, and claims of unique spikes in magnetic meteorite particles — had already been discredited. According to Pinter, “nanodiamonds were the last man standing.”
“We should always have a skeptical attitude to new theories and test them thoroughly,” Scott says, “and if the evidence goes against them they should be abandoned.”
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Direct link to thunderbolts, no but the evidence clearly points to a similar event. The recent findings of carbon rather than diamonds indicates an electrical rather than an impact event. How else do you explain, or at least attempt to, the recorded events.
Note also That Golbekli Tepe was built shortly after this event and that the destruction of Puma Punku can also be dated to the same time. Clearly this was a global event. Either way, a meteor or thunderbolt, the results in Human terms are the same but the evidence points to the thuderbolt. This can be tested in lab as well.
Engineer………. I read somewhere that upright mammoth carcasses are due to the upper permafrost layer partially melting and refreezing…. This process pushes rocks out of the soil… So it does the same with frozen mammoths.
As the body gets pushed upward it rotates the larger area to the top…. thus the legs are below and it looks like it was frozen standing up.
The fact that a relatively undecomposed mammoth is buried in soil that is or was permanently frozen, would suggest that the animal in question was covered in liquid mud which then frozen in quick succession….. That is interesting in itself. It would suggest a major flooding event, volcanism and lehars, etc.
The asteroid impacted the ice sheet……the “evidence” melted away thousands of years ago.
Grey Lensman says:
August 30, 2010 at 7:18 pm
“As with the Scablands, the Grand Canyon was formed very quickly but by electricity rather than water.”
I agree. I had this thick copper cable and I plugged it into a large current bush and touched the ground with the free end. Oh. Sorry, that was the dream I had after visiting these two places and exalting in the power of rushing water.
Joe Lalonde says:
August 30, 2010 at 7:12 pm
Excellent point. We need 2 Solar Polar missions like STEREO.
We could call them STEREO Above and STEREO Below.
Great job for NASA.
would suggest that the animal in question was covered in liquid mud which then frozen in quick succession
That’s easily explained by the mammoth falling thru ice covering the mud. Even an animal the size of a mammoth would quickly die of hyperthermia in near freezing mud/water. Hence the undigested stomach contents and upright position.
John Holtquist. I dont think that there is any need for that type of comment. I suggest you tell me where the 3,000 cubic miles of sediments are from the water eroded Grand Canyon.
The comments about volcanoes and lahars. are valid but where are they, especially ones with such a widespread impact.
I vote for an ice sheet impact.
Very interesting post (and some good comments (even the sarcastic ones) ).
The Younger Dryas is indeed one of the most intriguing recent (on a geologic time scale) events: 3rd rock from the Sun had been coming out of a major ice-age for, what, about 1000 years; when in an geologic eye-blink (at most a few decades, or even as little as 10 years, from what I’ve read) it temporarily plunges back into pretty much a full-blown ice-age for 1300 years, before doing another about-face and entering another relatively rapid warming period (all without any help from CAGW).
Objectively deciphering that scientific puzzle would seem to be of more than passing interest; i.e.:
If modern society has, say, 100+ years to adapt to something, we can probably adapt reasonably well to substantial changes. But it’s not hard to imagine the magnitude of the world-wide disaster that would occur if anything close to the historical Younger-Dryas occurred now, and average temps dropped by 6-7 degrees C or so in just a decade or so.
Something stopping the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation is certainly one of the prime suspects, but there are other plausible theories; nothing proved yet AFAIK.
As someone who studies this subject (but not an expert), the typical signatures of a meteoric impact would not be there if the object impacted the Laurentide ice sheet.
The graphite is interesting though.
If you vote for an icesheet impact, the layers are rock not ice. So where was the sediment excavated from? There is a major sediment layer, there is no sediment out the Grand canyon outlet, this study shows no impact, so what are you left with?
Other suggestions put the cart before the horse, they need a cause. It was a big event, so look for global events and they are there.
Imagine the Kenyan plains are swamped by a muddy tsnami then frozen. In 13,000 years millions of wilderbeast bones are found piled up. At the edges of an area carcasses are found frozen with grass in their stomachs. How would researchers put that together.
Similarly we find the same sort of thing in Alaska and Siberia, we find a sediment layer, we find cultures missing, we find changed climate. But we dont find Impacts or Man Made CO2 or volcanism.
My theory stands.
Distrusting my creative memory, so I found another source as to how thick the black mat layer is:
http://archaeology.about.com/cs/glossary/g/murraysprings.htm
“Over the top of the well and the mammoth footprints was identified a 1-2 centimeter layer of black organic clay believed by Haynes to represent an algal mat, similar to those found at other Paleoindian sites; recent research suggests it may have resulted from a comet explosion.”
If you’re ever in Sierra Vista, the Murray Springs site is very nicely laid out for visitors. The trail is easy and the interpretive signs are informative. It’s easy to drive to, although there are no highway signs to attract vandals .
Moderater,
My follow up comment on the black matt size seems to be getting deep-sixed. Could it be that your spam filter doesn’t like the link it contains?
John
[Reply: sorry, I checked. No post in the Spam folder. ~dbs, mod.]
The mammoth stuff is off topic really. It’s not pertinent to the area in question. I was only questioning flash frozen standing animals, which I don’t find credible. I think all the frozen mammoths have been found only in Siberia anyway…:-)
So the question remains… How did a layer of sediment containing Graphene come about? What hypothesis is posed to explain it?
…. how extensive is this layer anyway?
J. Hansford said
“The mammoth stuff is off topic really. It’s not pertinent to the area in question. ”
How do you know that?
The exploding of supernova Vela for about 11000 yers ago may have a large impact on earth. But probably a even larger impact on our sun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vela_Supernova_Remnant
Recently I found that there is possible existence of what I termed ‘North Atlantic precursor’, pointing to, or even actually causing, the area temperature changes. The effect of it may be very rapid as can be seen in case 1710-30, the fastest rise and fall in the CETs in the historic records.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CETnd.htm
In 1908, there was a huge explosion (~0.5 megatonnes) in the atmosphere above Tunguska, western Siberia.
This was a comet, or asteroid, exploding several miles above the Earth’s surface.
Most incoming objects (~90%) from space are made of brittle stone (silicate minerals) as opposed to nickel/iron metal, which are more likely to survive because of their hardness and durability.
A high altitude explosion, many times larger than Tunguska, might explain the trigger mechanism for the Younger Dryas. Also, as there was no impact with the Earth’s surface, the extreme pressures required to form nano-diamonds would not have occurred.
Below is the math ( Source: http://www.psi.edu/projects/siberia/siberia.html) for a Tunguska type explosion for a 30 metre wide object incoming at 15km/sec. An incoming 500 metre wide stony object might have been sufficient to trigger a Younger Dryass event.
First, we have to know the energy liberated by an A-bomb. The Hiroshima bomb expended the energy of roughly ten thousand tons of TNT, or 18 “kilotons” in military parlance. One kiloton (1 KT) is about 4.2 x 1012 joules (the joule is the unit of energy in the Standard International, or “SI,” set of scientific units). The Hiroshima bomb thus represented roughly 8 x 1013 joules of energy.
Now all we have to do is calculate the energy of the meteoroid. In freshman physics courses, you learn that the kinetic energy of a moving object is 1/2mV2.
The trick in using any equation like this is to be sure to use the correct units. In SI, the units are meters, kilograms, and seconds, so that mass m must be in kilograms and velocity V must be in meters/second.
Thus, right away we can say that V in the equation will be V = 15 km/s or 1.5 x 104 m/s.
To get the mass, we have to figure out the mass of a 30-meter wide rock. Rock has a density of about 3000 kg per cubic meter, so we need to calculate the volume of the rock and multiply times this density. Thus we have,
m = (4/3) PI R3 (3000 kg/m3) = (4/3) PI (15 m)3 (3000) = 4.2 x 107 kg.
Thus the total energy is,
E=1/2 (4.2 x 107 kg) (1.5 x 104 m/s)2 = 4.8 x 1015 joules.
To be safe, let’s imagine that half the kinetic energy is lost to noise, slowing, and fragmentation of the meteoroid before it explodes. That still leaves about 2 x 1015 joules for the Tunguska explosion, compared to about 3 x 1013 joules for the Hiroshima A-bomb.
Thus, our estimate is that the Tunguska had an explosive energy roughly on order of 60 A-bombs, or 500 KT of TNT. It was closer in effect to a very large H-bomb.
Grey Lensman, your “theory” (read: hypothesis) doesn’t stand until you provide some evidence for it!
I mean, what is the evidence that electricity formed the scablands? More importantly, what is the mechanism?
As for the organic layer…
http://www.agu.org/news/press/pr_archives/2010/2010-13.shtml
Benjamin
Read, I did not say that electricity formed the Scablands. The method of their formation was sudden catastrophic flooding and they formed in days. This has only recently been accepted. I was pointing it out as part of a much larger picture.
There are loads of reports and discussions on the subject, from which I have formed my own ideas and time scale. This I feel is not the place to discuss them but to use them as to illustrate how we can all rush to conclusions or simply follow the herd.
The poster above illustrates nicely how well maths can be used and in great depth but it does not mean that the proposal is correct.
The subject matter here is climate and the claim that despite so many inputs, CO2 is the only one that matters. This is a common failing and restricts our ability to truly perceive events and their causes.
Such is the case here, none of the standard theories stand up. So time for a new one.
Grey Lensman – E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith
great SF series that………..sigh, memories
John Gorter
It would seem to me that at the time of YD event the ice would have been melting for over 1000 years and would therefore have formed huge freshwater lakes sitting on top of the yet to met ice but held back by ice dams close to the coast. The sea would still be very cold and glaciers would be pushing out and calving as they do now. This calving would bring the ice dam closer and closer to the sea. The sheer weight of water or possible even a small meteor or earthquake would have breeched the dam and caused thousands of cubic miles of water to rush into the sea. This would have gauged the coastal plane and left a thick layer of sediment as well as killing everything in its wake. A subsequent disruption of the thermohaline circulation is also not impossible. I am aware of such a theory explaining some of the surface geology in North American and it has been mooted that such an ice dam in the Mediterranean may have been the origin of the biblical story of the Great Flood. It therefore seems that entirely natural causes might have been at play. Where have I heard that before?
Mass magafaunal abduction by aliens is still on the table, though, right?
GL @ur momisugly 8:02 PM.
Puma Punku is much later than that.
===============
Wow!
Such bad news for rabid alarmists and fans of cute harmless ancestors. How wildldy these people promote catastrophic/climatic version of megafaunal extinctions and innocence of industry-less populations. Hopefully, extraterrestrial Younger Dryas seems to be history 🙂