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.”
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Kim says
Puma Punku is much later than that
Again, who says so? That place is old beyond measure and the agriculture they did there amazing but you need to research it
If the ‘usual suspects’ have been ruled out, it’s time to start looking for the unusual ones…
Warmists are in denial about how feedback from telluric currents induced by the Tunguska explosion has altered the sunspot cycle and cosmic ray driven warming. So-called climatologists are ignoring the magnetodynamic coupling of the iron sun and the earth’s core so they won’t have to explain why CO2 has anything to do with either, and admit that lightning and glacial scouring could have explosively unleashed CO2 from the coal beds of Wyoming and New Mexico to form the scablands and the Grand Canyon during the few days that the preadamic lesser Dryas period persisted
The force of these phenomena was demonstrated last year when the Focault pendulum in Paris broke last year despite the absence of sunspots and a record weekly increase in arctic sea ice cover. We should be hearing more of how this drives unstoppable warming of the global core now that the Hannity Show has broken the tricky stickists icy IPCC monopoly by securing Alexander Cockburn to repersonate Lord Monckton’s party in the European parliament.
Christopher, great prose. Have you considered that possibly nature discovered a flaw, a breakdown in recycling. tried to overcome it with the invention of grass and when that failed, invented humans.
We are doing our job great returning vital co2 to the atmosphere stopping the planet from extinction. Just a thought.
OK, GL, I’ll play. Who says, besides you, that the destruction of Puma Punku ‘can be dated to that same time’, that is, shortly after the Younger Dryas. It seems to me that the destruction, not the origin, is dated to only around a millenium ago.
=============================
But I do thank you, GL, for the tip about Gobekli Tepe. What a zoo!
====================
rbateman says:
August 30, 2010 at 8:58 pm
Thank you!
I am trying to show how science in general has generated a “Peer-Reviewed” course of mistaken theories as the consensus of science. There is 2 routes that should have been considered. The current science believes in the theory of fussion and nuclear motion that is keeping planets rotating and generating magnetics.
The actual “physical evidence” shows that the planets and suns are infused with rotating energy that is stored and is slowly being used. Compressing gases and mass stores energy. On a rotational base, it is very simular to compression of a spring at birth of a solar system and allowing this compressed energy to slowly decompress.
The speed of rotation and materials is a very important factor to how compacted the energy is.
Centrifugal force was deemed a pseudo-science as scientists could not figure out what it was and it’s purpose. Yet when lookin at the evidence, we weigh less at the equator and this evidence was NOT carried to the suns energy output.
The sun holds the planets by magnetics. Yet we are not bound to the equator of the sun which would be the hotest point. So, in the planet drifting, an Ice Age is a predictable event.
Grey Lensman, you write tantalisingly about big global geological anomalies pointing to catastrophe, that all lie in the same YD time frame – then you give no refs, no follow-ups! However, I found The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes which looks like source info for the sort of phenomena you mention. Interestingly, it has excellent ratings generally, is described as a bad cover for a scientific book that is also a good read, and it’s linked sales-wise with, inter alia, Andrew Montfort’s Hockey Stick Illusion. Well, that was enough for me to go for it.
Ed Caryl says:
So, what DID cause that 40 cm layer in the photo?
What would happen if a meteor strike took place on a kilometer of ice?
—-
Have a look at the Turku archipelago in Finland (SW Finland) using Google maps. There are two formations that look strikingly like meteorite impact craters. The bigger one is “Mossala fjärd” north of Houtskär/Houtskari (diameter ca. 6 km). The other one is “Ängskärsfjärden” close to Åva on the eastern part of Aland (diameter ca. 5 km). Neither of these are presently accepted as meteorite impact craters because they look very atypical. Geologists have said that they are of volcanic origin with an age of approximately 1.5 billion years. The reason for this estimate is that they look like if roughly one kilometer of rock has weathered away.
I have visited both places during the last three years and I simply don’t buy the old age estimate (I am a physicist but not a geologist so I may be mistaken). For example the south western part of Mossala fjärd has very broken edges with _clean_ essentially unwithered surfaces. One single ice age would have at least rounded the cliff edges. My view is that the craters look atypical because what we see is the remnant of bigger craters that was formed when one big (1 km diameter?) meteorite arrived from north east at a very flat angle and broke into several pieces with the biggest striking Mossala, and a slightly smaller one striking Åva. At the impact the “rock” was broken and enormous amounts of material down to a depth of 1 … 2 km was spread over the surroundings. This is possibly where the accepted interpretation may err. The “craters” are atypical because the rock that the impact should have spread in the surroundings with layers of broken tens of meters deep and distances up to some 50 … 100 km is missing. If on the other hand the impact was toward inland ice there would have been wast amounts of broken rock spread around but because the “rock” was ice nothing is visible today. Only the deepest parts of the craters would be visible today.
There is a third interesting formation on the “Korpo” island ca. 20 km south of the Mossala formation. There is a roughly 1 km diameter impact like crater seen on 3D maps. I haven’t visited this formation yet so I can’t give more details.
– Both areas show areas of broken rock at the edges.
– A friend of mine found a piece of glazed sea bottom at his summer cottage ca. 15 km south of the Mossala crater. It smells like mud when polishing it in water. Fossiles are extremely rare in Finland because ice ages has cleaned the land several times. The piece looks very similar to glazed sea bottom found in “Siljan” in Sweden (diameter ca. 50 km) known to have been caused by a big impact.
– I think I have found breccia at Mossala.
– I think there is a very large number of “bombs” lying around everywhere. A bomb is molten rock that is thrown away from the impact site and cools very rapidly. Fast cooling doesn’t allow crystal structures to form. I cut one of these this summer and it looks partly molten with no clear chrystal borders (amorphous).
– In my youth (ca. 1965) we found pumice at the island “Lövskär” ca. 10 km towards SW from the Mossala crater. We then assumed that some ship had brought it from abroad but it could as well have been locally produced through an impact.
– I haven’t yet found clear impact cones. Impact cones would be a very strong sign of a meteorite impact.
– I have found a number of big pieces of rock with sharp edges and clean unwithered surfaces lying on top of rocks polished by the ice having no marks of abrasion (big rocks were moved by the inland ice towards SSE. My interpretation is that some of these may be rocks that were moved to the top of the surrounding ice by the impact and then gently deposited into the present location when the ice melted.
If there was a big impact at the end of the last Ice age (assume for simplicity ca. 12900 years ago) then some 100 km³ of water would have been thrown into the atmosphere. I then assume the ice thickness to be 1000…2000 m. The southern edge of the ice was then roughly at Jurmo/Utö some 40 km towards the south. Because the impacts correspond to tens of thousands of Hiroshima size bombs a significant part of the water would have gone into the stratosphere (where it stays for a long time) causing enormous impacts on the northern hemisphere weather. Most of the water would probably have come back down very fast causing heavy floods again over the whole northern hemisphere. It is well known that the fast warming at the end of the ice age stopped for almost 1000 years starting roughly 13000 years ago.
If somebody knowing something about impacts/geology is interested in looking further google me and send an email to me.
Meteor Crater Arizona – 50m chunk? Nawww.
http://bing.search.sympatico.ca/?q=meteor%20crater%20Arizona&mkt=en-ca&setLang=en-CA
Did they find microdiamonds associated with this and the other indicators mentioned?
I note mention by several commenters that Mamoths were found frozen standing with grass in their mouths. I have heard the theory that these beasts may have fallen into crevasses while walking over tongues of ice.
Lucy, try this
http://home.hiwaay.net/~jalison/index.html
It joins a lot of dots but you have to dig around it. Thats all i have done, as a Layman, I take all with a pinch of salt. Man Made global warming included. Especially when they changed the tune to “Climate Change”.
The effects of the event that caused the mystery layer in the USA were global and are readily visible to all. How you interpret the data is another matter. Seeing if you can fathom a different answer is part of the fun.
Sorry to take up so much of this topic
So Grey Lensman, you say to me,
“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.”
But you said previously,
“As with the Scablands, the Grand Canyon was formed very quickly but by electricity rather than water. The event is recorded in Human Mythology”
…formed by electricity rather than water….?
So what is it? Scablands formed by water, but the grand canyon was carved out by electricity? Just need some clarification of what you are trying to say here.
Moderator – if you happen to be looking for the errant italics tag, it’s at the end of the comment at 9:43 pm on Aug 30th.
Ed Caryl says:
August 30, 2010 at 5:34 pm
So, what DID cause that 40 cm layer in the photo?
Something really happened around 10,000 years BC. Tradition and history tells that was the epoch of the mythical disapperance of Atlantis, due to a series of earthquakes, which left islands like the azores and bermuda. What else has it been discovered about this?
Gary Pearse says: August 31, 2010 at 8:46 am “I note mention by several commenters that Mamoths were found frozen standing with grass in their mouths. I have heard the theory that these beasts may have fallen into crevasses while walking over tongues of ice.”
Here, this is the best link I have on this subject.
Woolly Mammoths: Evidence of Catastrophe?
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mammoths.html
I tried unsuccessfully to get this guy http://stevepace.intuitwebsites.com/ to come over here and comment on this. He did send me this…
“I saw the article on the lack of evidence for a ‘large’ impact, but my theory concludes it was a storm of small meteors, and not large enough to create nanodiamonds.
I think the North American firestorm was started in many places by many small impacts. Otherwise, why would any fire burn an entire continent and kill everything on it?
Small rocks raining down have impacts, but only produce small craters and extreme heat.
It’s just my theory, though.”
S Pace
And there’s this:
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/seri/MNRAS/0251/0000636.000.html
And this:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2003AAS…203.0701D
I sure wouldn’t rule out impact from crossing the Taurids core stream. And a lot less of it had been lost to the Sun and Jupiter back then.
Grey Lensman says:
August 30, 2010 at 9:10 pm
“I suggest you tell me where the 3,000 cubic miles of sediments are from the water eroded Grand Canyon.”
It’s called Yuma, the Imperial Valley and the Gulf of California.
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:aDXePG3wgcoJ:www.grandcanyon.org/booksmore/epubs/origin/pdfs/28-the_bouse_formation_and_post-miocene_uplift_of_the_colorado_plateau.pdf+Colorado+river+history+discharge+material&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjFFe8_oyJQkGsOO_LG5-GIzKdbb7s8SSYYaLJn8CC6YIMm2RCrCJcGGm-TOiAD69T7Rz0qVF2Zob8biq2CcCZXwayI-94fVB2wzPtUXu9ctMX-IS_MikwD23E58yNr6Bqa02Vz&sig=AHIEtbQPMLugzq6awXYvTSuYezm3cMnsJw
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:aDXePG3wgcoJ:www.grandcanyon.org/booksmore/epubs/origin/pdfs/28-the_bouse_formation_and_post-miocene_uplift_of_the_colorado_plateau.pdf+Colorado+river+history+discharge+material&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjFFe8_oyJQkGsOO_LG5-GIzKdbb7s8SSYYaLJn8CC6YIMm2RCrCJcGGm-TOiAD69T7Rz0qVF2Zob8biq2CcCZXwayI-94fVB2wzPtUXu9ctMX-IS_MikwD23E58yNr6Bqa02Vz&sig=AHIEtbQPMLugzq6awXYvTSuYezm3cMnsJw
Remember sea levels were a lot lower and the Salton Sea area is below sea level.
Sigh and Good night
my quote
“As with the Scablands, the Grand Canyon was formed very quickly but by electricity rather than water.”
as with Scablands, Grand Canyon was formed very quickly. I>E> They both formed quickly. Scablans was formed by flood water but however, GC was formed by electriciity. Says the same thing, not what you are inferring.
Remember, its a theory, that explains several strange events but not totally. Other things must have happened in conjunction or in tandem with, but thats another story.
Try and have some fun thinking outside the box, something warmers could do with.
Again, Night night and thanks for the chats.
See this:
http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/Firestorm.htm
Levels of extraterrestrial debris seem to decease further south, suggesting that the comet might well have blown up over Ontario or the Hudson’s Bay area. Geologists believe that the Great Lakes could well provide vital clues of the catastrophe. Team member Richard Firestone has detected ‘four large holes in the lakes which are deeper than Death Valley, so we kind of suspect that pieces of this impact did penetrate them.’
The YD is a cluster of cold events the similar to the LIA, also known as a Heinrich event. Their frequency is 4627yrs, such that 3 of these periods map from the Older Dryas to the LIA, so that 3*4627yrs after YD is another cold event cluster. The period between YD and OD is the same as the c.1150yr cycle we see mapping back through LIA, MWP, Dark Ages, Roman Warm Period, Greek Dark age etc. So on that basis, I would place the next cold cluster starting around 2450AD.
Grey Lensman it is not a theory. Its a hypothesis!
And I just want to make this clear, because your style of writing makes it about as clear as mud. You are claiming that the GC was carved out by electricity? Right?
Because that is about the stupidest thing I have ever read. And I like to think outside the box, but I need to keep that box constrained by physical reality.
Hey, come back here, GL. Archeologists claim that the oldest layer of Puma Punku dates to around 400 AD, leaving the whole complex around a 600 year life and all of it in the Christian Era. Younger Dryas ain’t even in it.
===============================
Benjamin P. says:
August 31, 2010 at 11:22 am
You are claiming that the G[rand] C[anyon] was carved out by electricity? Right? Because that is about the stupidest thing I have ever read. And I like to think outside the box, but I need to keep that box constrained by physical reality.
Electrical scarring on a grand scale is a viable alternative to the highly speculative and ad hoc explanations offered regarding all of the rocky bodies in the solar system, not just earth.
If you haven’t had doubts about NASA’s hypotheses on the unexpected markings and/or hemispheric differences found on every moon, you may not have been paying attention.
Paul LaViolette’s theory seems to fit once again….. does it deserve more attention?
An active Sun and increased comet bombardment triggered by a Galactic cosmic ray volley may have led to the extinction of the mammoth about 13 thousand years ago according to research conducted by astrophysicist Paul LaViolette of the Starburst Foundation.
http://www.starburstfound.org/PR/mammoth.pdf
Here’s where the meteor storm came from and the research:
http://2012forum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=6319&hilit=+taurids
Here’s the theory of periodic bombardment:
http://stevepace.intuitwebsites.com/
A storm of small rocks will leave many small craters, and thousands of intense fires. The craters would be unrecognizable in just a millenium. This is the only way the north american continent could have suffered such an intense firestorm, which eliminated all the clovis civilization, all the animals, and all the fauna. It also put enough suet and carbon and ash into the air to initiate a rapid cold ‘snap’. This part went global.
Or, could the firestorm have ended the younger dryas?