From the University of California – Santa Barbara
Study finds new evidence supporting theory of extraterrestrial impact
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– An 18-member international team of researchers that includes James Kennett, professor of earth science at UC Santa Barbara, has discovered melt-glass material in a thin layer of sedimentary rock in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Syria. According to the researchers, the material –– which dates back nearly 13,000 years –– was formed at temperatures of 1,700 to 2,200 degrees Celsius (3,100 to 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit), and is the result of a cosmic body impacting Earth.
These new data are the latest to strongly support the controversial Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB) hypothesis, which proposes that a cosmic impact occurred 12,900 years ago at the onset of an unusual cold climatic period called the Younger Dryas. This episode occurred at or close to the time of major extinction of the North American megafauna, including mammoths and giant ground sloths; and the disappearance of the prehistoric and widely distributed Clovis culture. The researchers’ findings appear today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“These scientists have identified three contemporaneous levels more than 12,000 years ago, on two continents yielding siliceous scoria-like objects (SLO’s),” said H. Richard Lane, program director of National Science Foundation’s Division of Earth Sciences, which funded the research. “SLO’s are indicative of high-energy cosmic airbursts/impacts, bolstering the contention that these events induced the beginning of the Younger Dryas. That time was a major departure in biotic, human and climate history.”
Microscopic Images of Grains of Melted Quartz
Morphological and geochemical evidence of the melt-glass confirms that the material is not cosmic, volcanic, or of human-made origin. “The very high temperature melt-glass appears identical to that produced in known cosmic impact events such as Meteor Crater in Arizona, and the Australasian tektite field,” said Kennett.
“The melt material also matches melt-glass produced by the Trinity nuclear airburst of 1945 in Socorro, New Mexico,” he continued. “The extreme temperatures required are equal to those of an atomic bomb blast, high enough to make sand melt and boil.”
The material evidence supporting the YDB cosmic impact hypothesis spans three continents, and covers nearly one-third of the planet, from California to Western Europe, and into the Middle East. The discovery extends the range of evidence into Germany and Syria, the easternmost site yet identified in the northern hemisphere. The researchers have yet to identify a limit to the debris field of the impact.
Photos of Melt Glass Known as Trinitite
“Because these three sites in North America and the Middle East are separated by 1,000 to 10,000 kilometers, there were most likely three or more major impact/airburst epicenters for the YDB impact event, likely caused by a swarm of cosmic objects that were fragments of either a meteorite or comet,” said Kennett.
The PNAS paper also presents examples of recent independent research that supports the YDB cosmic impact hypothesis, and supports two independent groups that found melt-glass in the YDB layers in Arizona and Venezuela. “The results strongly refute the assertion of some critics that ‘no one can replicate’ the YDB evidence, or that the materials simply fell from space non-catastrophically,” Kennett noted.
He added that the archaeological site in Syria where the melt-glass material was found –– Abu Hureyra, in the Euphrates Valley –– is one of the few sites of its kind that record the transition from nomadic hunter-gatherers to farmer-hunters who live in permanent villages. “Archeologists and anthropologists consider this area the ‘birthplace of agriculture,’ which occurred close to 12,900 years ago,” Kennett said.
“The presence of a thick charcoal layer in the ancient village in Syria indicates a major fire associated with the melt-glass and impact spherules 12,900 years ago,” he continued. “Evidence suggests that the effects on that settlement and its inhabitants would have been severe.”
Other scientists contributing to the research include Ted Bunch and James H. Wittke of Northern Arizona University; Robert E. Hermes of Los Alamos National Laboratory; Andrew Moore of the Rochester Institute of Technology; James C. Weaver of Harvard University; Douglas J. Kennett of Pennsylvania State University; Paul S. DeCarli of SRI International; James L. Bischoff of the U.S. Geological Survey; Gordon C. Hillman of the University College London; George A. Howard of Restoration Systems; David R. Kimbel of Kimstar Research; Gunther Kletetschka of Charles University in Prague, and of the Czech Academy of Science; Carl Lipo and Sachiko Sakai of California State University, Long Beach; Zsolt Revay of the Technical University of Munich in Germany; Allen West of GeoScience Consulting; and Richard B. Firestone of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Caleb says:
June 13, 2012 at 2:04 pm
Don’t believe a word of it.
The main evidence for the YDB was the alleged micro-diamonds that proved to be nothing of the kind.
Bjorn Kurten has well explained the frozen mammoths.
Should we really try to displace AGW catastrophist myths with cosmic ones?
Anthony,
One element of meteorite/bolide intrusion that has not yet been reckoned
with is the plasma envelope that accompanies any object streaming through
our atmosphere at 18,000+ miles per hour.
NASA and DoD have gone to great lengths to minimize the problems this
envelope produces around re-entry vehicles (shuttles, etc.). Despite
“hardened” electronic systems, controlled flight orientation, and specific
structural design details they still end up with communications blackouts
and possible burn-though because of it.
Bolides tend to tumble as they descend, and the uncontrolled plasma
envelope melts the edges of the object. However, things coming in from
space tend to have very low space-cold interiors. The shaking and bouncing
during uncontrolled descent tend to loosen parts of the amalgamation, and
temperature/pressure variations lend themselves to the object coming
apart before it hits terra firma.
However, they aren’t any real studies of what happens as
this plasma-encased thing passes over and explodes. Nuclear air burst tests
were all single-point-in-time single-point-in-atmosphere events using
specifically shaped munitions. A bolide breaking up and parts exploding
while other parts continue down the track might be compared to a MIRV
attack without fixed targets. However, there aren’t any real
studies of what happens as this non-weaponized plasma-encased thing
passes over in an arc and explodes. A bolide of any good size on the move
with a plasma envelope doesn’t allow a 100% comparison with any
nuclear explosion.
If there is data or studies of what happens when plasma-encased objects
actually hit the ground, nobody’s sharing it. There’s even less
information on what happens when such an object, with it’s plasma
envelope intact, penetrates the surface of the earth.
Are they grants out there to investigate this ? Will I need
a security clearance ?
Laurence Crossen said:
This is untrue. Your confirmation bias is showing. In fact nano-diamonds in the Younger Dryas boundary layer have been confirmed many times over since 2007. And the groups who published work that failed to replicate the stratigraphic work of Firestone 2007 have been largely discredited by rebuttals in refereed literature. Perhaps you should read the recent PNAS paper titled Evidence from central Mexico supporting the Younger Dryas extraterrestrial impact hypothesis, specifically the section titled “potential misidentification of markers” before you make such absolute statements.
Sorry, I just read one article I thought had settled it.
For those interested in actual earth impacts the there are several papers written by Dennis Orphal and the late David J Roddy. Very interesting reading.
In the late 70’s the connection with ring structures and meteorites was confirmed. After the connection was made, and researchers learned what to look for; satellite images were reviewed leading to the discovery of many ring structures in northern Europe and elsewhere.
In my haste I left out Paul S. DeCarli who has done a lot of work on meteorite impact alteration of minerals. He even has a patent for producing synthetic diamonds by impulse loading.
It could be that the art of glassblowing was much more widespread than anyone has yet imagined!
The Okotoks Erratic train – a debris field resulting from a catastrophic release of meltwater from near Jasper, Alberta, that ended up in the Pacific in Washington – resulted from a sudden burst or sustained, higher-than-normal meltrate of the alpine and continental glaciers at 12,500 YBP. If the impact at 12,900 YBP caused a sudden but short cooling, the “melt-load” would have been high when warming returned.
Something triggered a melting that was beyond the established capacity of a series of ice-dammed lakes along the eastern edge of the Rocky Mts. The short-lived cooling period – a relative cooling period – could have caused the prior, stabilized melt and release processes to stall. It was then the return of more “seasonal” conditions that created a non-sustainable though non-castastrophic melt to occur. The inability of one ice-dam to hold its lake then triggered a consecutive collapse of the other lakes downstream.
Hmm. The chain of events.
The main thing I like about more evidence being found is that it means a lot of “scientists” are going to have to eat a lot of very snotty words.
Criticism of the hypothesis that the Younger Dryas was caused by a cosmic encounter has not been polite or academic. Much of it was from the same CAGW folks that were hung up on the idea that the thermohaline circulation was responsible. Tomwys’ Law strikes again!
Bon Appetit!
Before jumping on the comet bandwagon, a number of dots need to be connected and some critical questions need to be addressed. For example, how could a single event, even with multiple projectiles, cause an ice age that lasted for more than 1,000 years? Surely not from atmospheric dust and if not that, then what? The Younger Dryas is not the only climatic event during the post glacial maximum period—there are also a number of others spanning the time from 14,500 radiocarbon years (about 17,500 calendar years) to 10,000 14C years (about 11,500 calendar years). These are well known, well dated, and well documented in ice cores and in the global glacial record. So the question is, how could an impact event cause both multiple warming and cooling events over a 3,000 year period? Doesn’t seem logical at all for either impact or volcanic events.
Some other questions pertain to the evidence for the proposed cosmic event. Geologists are used to studying micro-images of rocks and looking at the two samples shown in the paper, it is obvious that both show definite flow structures that closely resemble glass flows from volcanic lava. The statement “Morphological and geochemical evidence of the melt-glass confirms that the material is not cosmic, volcanic, or of human-made origin. “The very high temperature melt-glass appears identical to that produced in known cosmic impact events such as Meteor Crater in Arizona, and the Australasian tektite field,” is very vague. What morphological and geochemical evidence? As for these specimens being identical to trinitite from atomic blasts, there is surely no flow structure in the photos shown so how can they be identical?
The bottom line here is—a lot more dots need to be connected and these critical questions (as well as a number of others) need to be addressed before concluding that the Younger Dryas was caused by a cosmic impact.
http://www.cosmictusk.com
Faux Science Slayer says:
June 13, 2012 at 9:03 am
——————
I also like the ‘dry ice (frozen co2) raining down on unsuspecting beasts’ theory.
I’m not sure how frozen co2 causes forest fires, though I could ask Dr. Mann at what temperature would wood start burning and could an ice cycle cause a forest fire?
@Dennis Cox June 13, 2012 at 7:24 am:
Dennis, you make a good point. Lake Cuitzeo is immediately north of the Trans-Mexico Volcanic Zone (I’ve been there), so volcanism did have to be taken into account for that study. There may, indeed, be misidentification of features in that area.
The features you often talk about are a considerable distance from both Lake Cuitzeo and the volcanic zone, so you do make a good argument that volcanism as an explanation is misidentification there.
Steve Garcia
I would invite interested readers/commenters to visit CosmicTusk.com for ongoing and in-depth coverage of the YD Impact hypothesis (from a supporting POV).
Steve Garcia
REPLY: And I disinvite readers to visit any site that blogroll lists “Big City Lib”, “Real Climate” and “Taminos Open Mind” as “other great websites”. – Anthony
I’ve always thought the YD event over-rated. Here a few others overlapped (from GISP2 with shifted x axis to overlap the similar events). Note the similarities in duration and amplitude of the min max (entering and exiting the events) between the three events (they tend to ride on top of the obliquity signal, single 1200yr cycles by themselves, but doubled up when obliquity coincides like the three examples overlapped).
http://s852.photobucket.com/albums/ab89/etregembo/?action=view¤t=YDComparison.jpg
If the YD was caused by meteors, then they must have a period of roughly 1200 yrs or so (throughout the GISP2 record, both during glacial and interglacial (though much attenuated during the interglacial as sensitivity is obviously much lower with warmer temps, hence the bimodality),
I’m sticking with the man wiped them out theory (along with all of the giant Moa relatives piled up on the islands heading towards hawaii, whenever man shows up), and that the cooling of the YD is the same as the exiting of all of the preceding 1200yr (and doubled up) events. Same rise and fall,,,
@blueice2hotsea June 13, 2012 at 10:25 am:
I’ve made the same connection. There is no ‘curiously’ about it. You make a very pertinent observation/connection. It is too early in the game for this to be a solid connection, but in the end I am certain you will be proven correct.
It IS cool that Göbleki Tepi is so close to the Syrian site, isn’t it? That it dates about 900 years later puts it within the YD, and that would seem to make sense. If the global climate was cooler by several degrees that area – and all of the Fertile Crescent – would have had a much better climate for agriculture. Such a place would have been ideal for humans to start making a comeback.
Steve Garcia
Yeah Steve, The large ablative airburst event that produced the LIbyan Desert Glass without making a crater hit a big desert full of clean silicate sand. It’s impossible to mistake the resulting blast-effected materials (beautiful clear glass) as being volcanic.
But what form do we expect ablative melt to take if the same kind of large ablative airburst hit a target surface that was was an active volcanic zone? And how would we diferentiate between volcanogenic materials, and the blast-effected materials of an airburst, when the parent materials were volcanic to begin with?
@Mark June 13, 2012 at 1:52 pm:
“Shoemaker–Levy 9 had 21 major fragments. So it’s perfectly possible to get multiple planetary impacts from a single comet.”
It is amazing how inimical, how much in denial, the geological and astronomical people are about cometary events on Earth and even more so multiple events, given the lesson of SL/9. If comets can hit Jupiter, they can obviously hit the Earth. If multiple comet fragments can hit Jupiter, then multiple comet fragments can hit the Earth. Especially given that we go through the Taurids twice a year, and the Taurid progenitor also spawned Comet Encke (3.3 year orbit), which is far bigger than any fragment of SL/9. The Taurids are far from being mapped, so we do not know what is out there playing hide-and-seek every time we go through the Taurids.
The number of hostile scientists about this is utterly incomprehensible. And the head of NASA – Dave Morrison – is the leading denier. NASA puts essentially no money at all into coming up with a workable plan to protect the Earth from such events, whether singular or multiple. If one is found to be bearing down on us, our goose is cooked and another Göblecki Tepi is in our future about 900-1,000 years. I don’t want to sound like an alarmist – here of all blogs – but one impact the size of the larger half dozen of the SL/9 fragments will send us back to both the stone age and the ice age, making global warming a moot point.
Steve Garcia
@Edward – You make good points. You seem to be talking in part about the Heinrich Events, the rafting of rock debris into the N Atlantic by slowly melting icebergs, which are thought to have calved off glaciers in northern Canada. I would say that a lot of what is said about the Heinrich events is interpretations, not necessarily fact. In the Pleistocene similar events were called Dansgaard-Oeschger events. The climatic as a cause of the debris fields is only the current thinking on it. Roll back the clock 50-75-100-150 years ago and there were many seemingly valid interpretations in science which we know now were wrong. Like its connected paradigm – the oceanic conveyor and Lake Agassiz fresh water incursions – this is all IMHO a house of cards. Ask famed climatologist Carl Wunsch about these and he will tell you they are fantasy.
So, what is the actual truth of it? We are in the middle of it, so we can’t see the forest for the trees yet. All the cards are not yet on the table. The totality of the evidence is not in yet (as this study shows). We are at some point along the continuum of evidence discovery and analysis. Conclusions on either side are premature. And as this study shows, reports of the demise of the YD impact event are greatly exaggerated. I am enjoying the progression of events NOW. Watching this unfold is very entertaining. And enlightening.
Steve Garcia
@Caleb June 13, 2012 at 2:04 pm:
Caleb, you might be interested to know that overlaying many of the Carolina bays is a layer of quartz sand that has exactly the qualities you speak of here. The grains are remarkably uniform in size and have sharp edges, as if “laid down at once.” In addition the sand is not stratified. In fact, it even drapes over the rims of the bays, a blanket that extends from inside the bays to the outside of them. Though often close to water, the sand does not seem to be from local sources. The sand is so consistent and pure it is used to make a high quality of glass, with almost no pre-processing.
How to explain? Not by fluvian action. Not by aeolian action. Not by slow deposition. Impact? Perhaps, but not proven, not by a long shot.
Steve Garcia
agfosterjr says:
June 13, 2012 at 1:33 pm
The Book of Enoch equated stars with angels and planets with archangels.
How do you get agriculture from a catastrophe?
Mammoths survived on Wrangel island till 4kya, at 71N latitude. That was probably when humans arrived.
Instantly frozen mammoth carcasses is a creationist myth.
Frozen decayed carcasses have been dated to various ages. I’m not aware of any dating to 12900BP. –AGF
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I for one would rather consider the opinions of a well thought out treatise on possible events that caused the catastrophic demise of the Wooly Mammoth and other temperate region grazing animals and their predators such as :-
http://www.grahamkendall.net/Unsorted_files-2/A312-Frozen_Mammoths.txt
rather than off the cuff prejudiced arm waving. Caleb, for the Graham Kendal link, and Swampmerchant for http://www.scribd.com/george1202/d/27825834-Napier-Astro-Model-Ras have obviously put a great deal of thought into their replies, and both links point in the same direction.
As to how you get agriculture from catastrophe, ask yourself, you have been a hunter all your life, all the available live game is destroyed, how would you survive but by grains, vegetation and perhaps roots and legumes ?
As for Wrangel Island, that is another argument and not in itself enough to refute the main evidence, dating being notoriously unreliable particularly when high radiation is involved.
It seems that extraterrestrial bodies are much more negatively impacting on our climate and life on earth than an increase of a few parts per million CO2 molecules in the atmosphere. To defend ourselves and the planet from the latter threat we are spending trillions of dollars/euros with the exuse of saving the planet (from a non-existing enemy), while about the former threat which seems to be more real and far more devastating, we are doing abolutely nothing. Honestly though, I do not believe that we can do anything to save ourselves from any one of thesentwo threats, one because it is not real and the other because it is so devastatingly unstoppable.
Where’s Bruce Willis when one needs him most?
Whose to say all of the ice ages were not caused by such events? We keep looking for a regular pattern on a world is more susceptible to the cosmos then anyone wants to admit. Random just drives people insane doesnt it? Honestly, knowing what we do know should drive us to expand our existence off the vulnerable place we call Earth, before the cosmic pinball game throws us another whopper.
TonyG says:
June 13, 2012 at 10:51 am
Did it hit on Tuesday? (with apologies to Niven & Pournelle)
No, Sundae.
Jesting aside, though, a most interesting post and set of comments. My problem with the YD is its square-wave shape. Yes, I can accept the possibility of an impact cause, but what about the recovery? A single pulse might well cause the observed sudden drop in temperatures, but temperatures would then be expected to recover asymptotically back to the trend line. That’s not what we see. Many thanks to Edward for his overlay of similar events. That looks as if there is some sort of natural time constant working with such events, since they’re all of about the same duration and amplitude. It does rather look as if a multiple impact 12,900 years ago might well have been coincidence, especially in light of the recent posting here which showed no long-term cooling from volcanic events.
We watch with interest.
****
Don J. Easterbrook says:
June 13, 2012 at 8:21 pm
Before jumping on the comet bandwagon, a number of dots need to be connected and some critical questions need to be addressed. For example, how could a single event, even with multiple projectiles, cause an ice age that lasted for more than 1,000 years?
****
That’s the 64m$ question. I agree impact effects themselves wouldn’t last more than a few decades — prb’ly less.
I think it boils down to the “tendency” for the earth to fall into glacial conditions — the conditions that occur 90% of the time in the last 2 mil yrs. Milankovitch cycles are the trigger, but something else causes the rapid temp declines that occur not only when interglacials end, but even during the glacial periods as D/O events. IMO, it has to be some kind of major ocean/atmospheric reorganization to a colder pattern. If an impact causes a temporary severe cooling, then that reorganization might be initiated. Ice-cores show a slow decline from N hemisphere solar max to near min (Milankovitch) is enough to abruptly end just about every interglacial in the last 1 mil yrs. So a brief but severe impact cooling (especially localized in N hemisphere where glacial conditions originate) ought to be able to do it.