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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Grey Lensman says:
August 31, 2010 at 5:08 am
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
Gary,
“From potential energy gradients doth all life spring.”
-Buffoon
Prof. Jared Diamond states in his Pulitzer price winning book “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies”, that the mass extinction of big animals in North America around some 12000 years ago happened right about the point of time when the first humans appeared at the scene and that he doesnt believe in climate factors but that the arriving archaic hunter hords killed all big animals within a relatively short amount of time. They were experienced hunters and those poor mammoths had never seen humans before. When I was reading the book I remember it sounded very sound to me.
It’s a great book btw.
@ur momisugly SSam says August 30, 2010 at 5:00 pm:
Only meteor impacts have impactors that we can find. Cometary impactors generally do not.
Air bursts do not, either, generally.
No one has ever found a Tunguska impactor. Are we to believe that nothing happened there?
@ur momisugly 899 says August 30, 2010 at 5:21 pm:
That is incorrect. The earliest Cro-Magnon man dates to approximately 35,000 BP.
Zeke the Sneak you too think the grand canyon was carved out by electrical discharges?
Really? What’s the evidence? Are some of you folks here just willing to believe anything at a whim?
@ur momisugly Ed Caryl says August 30, 2010 at 5:34 pm:
Firestone et al did test this out in a ballistics lab, as well as they could. There was essentially very little effect under the ice, while the ice was blasted to smithereens, as you would expect. It isn’t definitive, but supported their premise.
Firestone et al really have floundered, looking for exactly what they think happened. With no impact site, that is tough. The “Carolina Bays” that exist up and down the Eastern Seaboard have an axis-alingment pattern that centers around Lake Michigan/Wisconsin, and ones in the Great Plains do, too. It appears something occurred in that area, but evidence is sending their brains here and there. It is giving others fodder to throw at them.
There ARE other studies from quite a few other scientists that identify the material as nano-diamonds, so this study is either wrong or all the others are.
The lines are being drawn in the sand. One side is lying low, trying to play “skeptic” (WHA??? Stealing our thunder?!!…lol), while the other side is trying to explain what all the evidence means. Firestone first thought it might be a super-nova nearby, with an energy wave and a later blast wave (still to come if correct). Some evidence still points at that. Some does not. The LAYERS are definitely at the Y-D boundary, so SOMETHING happened then.
It is still unfolding.
So far no one has mentioned the Carolina Bays phenomena. A series of tear drop shaped water filled holes mainly located 0n the eastern to mid-western north American continent, with a NE to SW orientation. (If I remember correctly, there have been some found in northern Europe). Their formation seems to have occurred at about the same time as YD.
Anthony, Moderators
(1) can we have the italicisation removed please, from Aug 30 @ur momisugly 9.49
(2) isn’t the thickness of the sooty layer 4 cm not 40?
[Italics glitch fixed. 40 cm changed to 4 cm, I trust you’re right about that! ~dbs, mod.]
Benjamin P. says:
August 31, 2010 at 4:04 pm
Zeke the Sneak you too think the grand canyon was carved out by electrical discharges? Really? What’s the evidence? Are some of you folks here just willing to believe anything at a whim?
The hypothesis that the planets and moons show evidence of powerful electrical scarring begins with some very basic premises regarding craters. It has both explanatory and predictive power has the advantage of being reproduced in a lab.
There is no point in discussing the Grand Canyon until the foundation for electrical cratering, that most common of topological features, is laid. 3 photos of cratering on nearby bodies should suffice to show that the meteor impact explanation for these craters is freighted with difficulties.
Mercury’s Caloris Basin Mariner 10 image
Phobos: Crater Stickney and surface groves, Viking orbiter image
Mimas, innermost of Saturn’s large satellites, Voyager 1 image
Please note the following:
missing ejecta, smaller craters on the rims of larger craters, craters always round (except when they are hexagonal), central peaks, flat crater floors, craters found in close groups, to name a few.
It is precisely the opposite of a whim to question NASA’s meteor impact hypothesis for the rocky bodies in our solar system.
Steve Pace says:
August 31, 2010 at 12:39 pm
Or, could the firestorm have ended the younger dryas?
I’m thinking of a stratosphere loaded to the gills with highly reflective, rapidly spreading ice crystals from the colossal amount of water vapor released from the rapidly vaporized and exploding comet material. No sulfate ions needed, these ice crystals and their super abundance would far exceed the troposphere cooling ability of ash aerosol and sulfur dioxide. A stratosphere saturated with fine water crystals should take decades, possibly even centuries to clear out and would certainly affect climate on a long timescale. Something resembling this:
http://www.pnas.org/content/101/17/6341.full
Geologists have a bit different reconstruction of past climate which I’m also drawn to.
An Inconvenient Temperature Graph
http://scienceofdoom.com/2009/11/22/temperature-history/
Welcome aboard Steve, its so very nice to hear from you again!
The Carolina Bays have NO meteoric Material (only a little salt, in the mounds at the NW end – – incidentally, implying an Impact FROM THE SOUTHEAST) … but when I investigated the normal disclaimer – – which is that they occur near Barrow Alaska, also, so they must be GLACIAL … I found the people there cited the Carolina Bays as examples their “Bays” were likely meteoric – – as THEY KNEW IT COULD NOT BE GLACIAL BECAUSE GLACIAL ICE IS NEVER EVER EVER SALTY.
I have numerous times claimed an OBVIOUS Solution exists: Louis Frank’s “Small Comets” or “Water Comments” are SECONDARY METEORS.
– – But, you say: Mars Secondaries are ALWAYS ROCK. Moon Secondaries are ALWAYS ROCK.
– – Yeah, & how many Lakes & Oceans do they have between them ? ?
75% of the Earth is salty Water, and ~6% is Glacial = Fresh.
Most Big Earth Impacts spray WATER !
(which explains their ultra-low velocities relative to the Earth)
The seminal calculations on the Carolina Bays are in Otto Muck’s book – – take a DEEP breath – – The Secret of ATLANTIS. Yes, that’s right: and if every Scientist didn’t immediately get scared off – – he explains Noah’s Flood, too. And if THAT didn’t stop them, he actually makes sense, by first calculating the Size of the Blast – – in foot-pounds, no less, he uses MOMENTUM to get a “rebound” in terms of the Volcanic Activity – – and coming up with.an amount of rainfall – – 40 CUBITS (if you.remember your bible & your science, Science says the Sea NEVER ROSE to drown the Land in the last Billion years — BUT the Bible does not SAY that exactly – – we just ASSUME that – – as it says the TOPS of the Mountains were covered. Muck says: from ABOVE. 60 feet of RAIN & a weird Cloud reflectance effect. And yes, the predicted rain in the Volga River Basin sends a wave up the Araxes River which, Due to a Funnel effect — is a 1000 foot-plus wave. The valley turns at a Mountain so the Wave would run up the side of — what’s that Mountain’s name ? Oh, Yes, Ararat. I am NOT kidding. It’s a DeBunker’s NIGHTMARE. Muck says the “fountains of the deep were broken upwards” implies, at least 1 Eyewitness KNEW that a Volcanic Rebound was going on – – even if thousands of years later they could only imagine that the Plug was pulled on the Divine Bathtub.
Actually he HAS to be right.
FIRST, the Coast of France is PUMICE – – and the right QUANTITY. Just look at any Map. There are _NO_ river Deltas. It is Bizarre.
But, it is REAL.
Second, in the Ice Ages the Atlantic Currents went DUE EAST, to Spain.
Now this does not bother anyone ELSE, but Muck, the Nuclear Physicist, could not believe that CORIOLIS could be just IGNORED. The Forces are TOO big – – the Atlantic MUST ROTATE. Period.
– – Thus, the Azores must have been higher (after all, parts are islands today), blocking the current. Period. AND, the amount of ejecta neccessary to reduce the Azores height agrees with Conservation of Momentum for the size of Craters measured by German Submarines in the 1930s. He also uses Krakatoa Measurements to show this provides the right amount of Pumice !
As his Final Insult to Credibility, he notes Plato reported the post-Atlantis Atlantic was Choked by Mud for centuries – – so, he says, Plato is REALLY based on EYEWITNESSES to the Pumice (pumice FLOATS, you know) !
PS :in Analog in the 1960’s a totally different crew calculated a PLASMA TOWER ~1200 miles high would would follow any Asteroid Seabed Hit. Just Glowing Stuff, but remember Plato talked of a Lightning Bolt thrown by Zeus as part of his Atlantic Atlantis’s destruction – – and thus is saying it wsa VISIBLE IN GREECE – – which – – fits the NUMBERS.
So I have no doubts.
But, if you want Preachers, Historians, Geologists, etc. to RUN not walk, in the opposite direction … just try to publish something on it.
But it is Logical — the Numbers agree — So What ?
I cannot even get the Simple alteration in the Small Comet Controversy (baloons have taken SAMPLEs so we know they are Identical to SeaWater. _MODERN_ Seawater. But Frank won’t admit they are coming FROM the Earth & not TO the Earth (thus Frank has them be the Source of the Oceans – – but if so, they should match ANCIENT Seawater before Erosion added stuff to it ). And his opponents won’t even admit they exist ! — even if they are detected on dozens of instruments & we even have SAMPLES ? ! !
PS I have also predicted all the Weird Stuff about the Lunar Water – – It is because it is SPORADIC – – water comets hit for 30,000 years after a Big One, then, 10 to 100 times as long until the next ones. It also compresses a percentage of Lunar Dust each time, thus there is not either NONE, OR 100s of feet. It’s BOTH – – the 100s of feet get compressed, Sporadically. Solving the “missing Lunar Dust Mystery”.
I cannot get this Published, alas.
So, sorry for the Long Post, but THAT is the WHOLE STORY of the Carolina Bays.
Happy ?
@ur momisugly Linda says August 31, 2010 at 4:40 pm:
Smiles – I JUST managed to throw the Carolina Bays into the comment just ahead of yours. Good to see someone else mentioned them.
I will point out that the orientation is actually SE-NW, not NE-SW as you say – probably a typo.
“Mossala fjärd” north of Houtskär” is critically linked to the description of catastrophic glaciation in the palaeological record, Statistical correlation of the age of fallen trees and standing stone rings in Scandinavia is possible because ring meteorites still preserved in former stave church churchyards prove that impacts have occurred historically, just as the Elder Edda Ice Moon hypothesis suggests, Since isotopic comparison of lunar mare materials proves some stony meteorites ordinated on the moon, we cannot discount the global warming effect of their atmospheric friction, the, capacity of some larger ones to impact the seabed and release ocean warming magma, as Plimer has so astutely pointed out, and above all, the criminal refusal of the IPCC to account for Co2 added to the atmosphere not by fossil fuel combustion as the Warmists allege, but by the oxidation of carbonaceous chondrites.
Wonderful debate, lots of questions and potential new ideas.
If my memory serves me correctly, it has been confirmed that guys, possibly Cro Magnons, from France replaced the Clovis culture in the North East USA. So who made that point seems to be correct.
Next major issue relates to as big a storm as Climate gate, the CO2 Warmers versus the realists but in this case its gravity versus electricity in Astronomy.
Puma Punku, big difference between dating human remains and dating the site. The site is much older and much work remains to be done there but Initial looks seem to indicate a possible mini Scablands event with rapid uplifting.
Nearby is some of the worlds oldest terraforming done on a vast scale and extending into the Amazon Jungle. Seems then they farmed it and built Cities.
Just adds more woes to the warmist “unprecedented” that they so love to instill fear with.
Bit of a ramble but trying to eat my breakfast.
@ur momisugly coldlynx says August 30, 2010 at 11:23 pm:
The Vela supernova was one of Firestone’s initial ideas about the Y-D event. Certina aspects of it led him more toward an impact event.
If the Carolina Bays are tied to this event – which is not a certainty at all at this stage – then it is difficult to explain a connection between Vela and the formation and alignments of the Carolina Bays. They would seem to be two different events. I do NOT think Firestone’s thinking made this point.
The loopy stuff being said by several new commenters, involving vaguely described theories of various catastrophic events, smells to me like an attack from 4chan or Anon. If you can overwhelm a legitimate forum with synthetic moonbattery, you can lower the value of that forum to its regular patrons.
In other words, DON’T FEED THE TROLLS!
Hmmm –
It seems that an EXTEMELY curious particular in this story is the graphene/graphane itself.
Lazy guy that I am, for non-AGW stuff I go see what Wikpedia has to say. Let’s start with graphane:
Simple enough. Graphane is 2-D, which means pretty much VERY thin. As in (see below) 1-atom thick apparently
It is a very short Wiki entry on graphane, but a very long one on graphene.
And graphene is a VERY interesting – AND essentially NEW – material, having been kind of “rediscovered” in 2004.
Oddly enough, for a form of carbon, graphene
The (original source) Science Daily article says this:
Now, after reading about graphene, that word “aggregate” jumped out like a lit arc lamp. You see, graphene basically is a one-atom-thick, 2-dimensional material. So what is this about “aggregates”?
Because it was found in the “black mat” (which seemingly NEEDS to be in quotes, btw), I went searching for how graphene is formed in nature. Simple enough, yes? Is it common in meteoric material? Is it formed in impacts? Is it common in graphite?
The article certainly suggests the latter, when it says they
You see, THAT is supposed to be them laughing down their nosesthe Y-D people – RUBBING their noses in it, even – who evidently can’t even tell nano-diamonds from common everyday graphite.
Yet the article says
Well in a LONG Wiki entry, guess what? They don’t mention graphene being made naturally at ALL. Does that strike any of you as odd?
(Note: I’d actually not long ago had reason to look up graphene. I can’t recall exactly why, but it MIGHT have been when I was reading Firestone’s popular book. I recognized the name and then recognized the Wiki entry.)
It seems that graphene is sort of the current Wunderkind of materials science.
Since 2004, labs have been working on ways of making graphene, which is NOT easy, yet there have been several developments. One thing they ca NOT do is make “large” sheets of it. . .
Wow.
So we have this REALLY odd material that has only been known really since 2004. Firestone was getting his book published about that time. No wonder if his labs didn’t recognize it. The work was being done in Manchester, England, and not many people in the world really knew about it. One MIGHT forgive them for mistaking some new material – especially one in a form not known even now, if I read Wiki correctly. Nano-diamonds are not 2-D, but the material in the “black mat” is an “aggregate,” whereas graphene is only 1 atom thick 2-D material.
That is pretty much how I understand the term “aggregate”
Now I am getting a disconnect here. The article is scathing in its laughter at the “Y-D team” for having mistaken graphene/graphane for nano-diamonds – EVEN THOUGH GRAPHENE WAS A NEW MATERIAL, GRAPHENE IS 2-D, AND THE MATERIAL IN THE “BLACK MAT” WAS AN AGGREGATE. GRAPHENE DOES NOT COME AS AN AGGREGATE.
On the surface, it seems the researchers are anymore correct than the Y-D impact scientists. If it is an aggregate, it cannot be graphene. If it is graphene OR Graphane it cannot be an aggregate.
(continued…)
In the very long article Wiki does not ever say how graphene is made in nature. Which I find most interesting.
I am still looking elsewhere. . .
Link to the original paper:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/36697955/no-evidence-of-nanodiamonds-in-Younger-Dryas-sediments-to-support-an-impact-event
Sticky notes attached to the paper refute two points:
Here we go: a good article on graphene:
http://onnes.ph.man.ac.uk/nano/Publications/Naturemat_2007Review.pdf
If these people are claiming “graphene” now the “skeptic” lab coat can be worn on the other side of the aisle.
Graphene, a 2-D material with a max thickness of 10 layers (atoms) – how do they justify calling it an “aggregate”?
Graphene – has it ever been SEEN in nature?
I am wondering if they didn’t screw up.
Sad
Quote ‘In other words, DON’T FEED THE TROLLS!
You take a real interest in the world around you, enter a discussion about a possibly world changing event with an alternative but still valid vies and you get called a troll.
Dont forget that is exactly the same track that warmers take, all dissenters are deniers, skeptics etc.
In view of the Climategate E-mails and subsequent exposures of many deceptions, dont you think that it is right that all science should be up for investigation.
In my posts above I indicated by my comments clearly divergent evidence from the mainstream. It needs debate.
GL, way back at 8:02 PM on the day before yesterday you claimed that the destruction of Puma Punku was at about the same time as the Younger Dryas. My definitive source, heh, Wikipedia, claims that Puma Punku thrived from about 400 AD to 1000 AD, when it was apparently abandoned rather than destroyed. We are not talking about the same Puma Punku, are we?
So tell me about yours, the non-human one.
===============
GL, @ur momisugly 11:44 PM
“don’t you think it is right that all science is up for investigation”?
All science, always, is subject to skeptical inquiry, but the rest of science has not been subjected to the same concatenation of fame, power, and money that climate science has encountered. It is clear that the uses to which climate science can be put by the politicians have perverted it beyond the realm of science. I do not think the rest of science has been subjected to such torquing, certainly not to the degree to which climate science has been wrenched.
But you have a bit of a point. Years ago I decided that the main social function ultimately of this climate scandal may be to help immunize us against the next attack of an ‘Extraordinary Popular Delusion, and Madness of the Crowd’ and we may be just a little less likely to stampede over a cliff, all in the name of Holy Science.
====================
Kim, as you know, wiki is not the best source although it can be useful.
There are a lot of studies on the site, the best I feel are Bolivian. You can google and find a lot. But you have to weigh it.
I found out a lot of interesting stuff, in particular re agriculture but that is not relevant here.
More to the topic, look at the date of the layer, what happened then around the world. How did the layer form. A tipping point (to use the accepted jargon) for me was the discovery that Niagara falls began at that time. Its a case of join dots, see where it lead not what Wiki says.
All else being equal, I would love to find a CO2 emitting “warmer” that can replicate Puma Punku.
Kim
As a thank you, here is a very interesting link
http://www.atlantisquest.com/prehistcity.html
enjoy and ponder