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Sandia supercomputers offer new explanation of Tunguska disaster
EurekAlert ^ | 12/18/07 | Mark Boslough

Posted on 12/18/2007 10:12:19 AM PST by crazyshrink

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To: Fred Nerks

[sigh] 30 or so years ago I read “The Fire Came By”, which tries to make a case for the nuclear explosion of an extraterrestrial craft which was having engine trouble. The aliens changed direction so that, in case they didn’t quite make it in time, the explosion would happen in an area with very low population density. I guess they missed the Sahara...


21 posted on 12/18/2007 8:30:47 PM PST by SunkenCiv (Profile updated Tuesday, December 18, 2007___________________https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: Fred Nerks

My hovercraft is full of eels.


22 posted on 12/18/2007 8:30:54 PM PST by blam (Secure the border and enforce the law)
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To: blam

so, watcha gunna do about it, hmmm?


23 posted on 12/18/2007 8:53:10 PM PST by Fred Nerks (FAIR DINKUM!)
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To: SunkenCiv

..ok, but what about my poor twisted trees?


24 posted on 12/18/2007 8:58:20 PM PST by Fred Nerks (FAIR DINKUM!)
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To: Fred Nerks
"so, watcha gunna do about it, hmmm?"

S Roždestvom Khristovym i S nastupayuščim Novym Godom.

25 posted on 12/18/2007 9:02:02 PM PST by blam (Secure the border and enforce the law)
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To: crazyshrink

bump


26 posted on 12/18/2007 9:05:27 PM PST by VOA
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To: Fred Nerks

Oakstioarthritis, a doctor viewed the pics and is a grain with me.


27 posted on 12/18/2007 9:10:36 PM PST by SunkenCiv (Profile updated Tuesday, December 18, 2007___________________https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: blam

..and a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you too!


28 posted on 12/18/2007 9:21:48 PM PST by Fred Nerks (FAIR DINKUM!)
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To: Fred Nerks

AYE!


29 posted on 12/18/2007 9:26:19 PM PST by blam (Secure the border and enforce the law)
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To: okie01

Apparently.


30 posted on 12/18/2007 11:23:30 PM PST by BenLurkin
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To: SunkenCiv; All

According to a book which includes the Tungusku incident, people in London could read a newspaper at night from the glow. Also there was a similar event in the Amazon forest in the mid 20th century that had a 50 mile diameter blowdown area. Wish I could find the book I read these things in, will continue to look.


31 posted on 12/19/2007 9:40:58 AM PST by gleeaikin
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To: gleeaikin
Here's an omnibus of links to just a few of William Corliss' Science Frontiers briefs about impacts:
A Bright Flying Object And Another Enigmatic Crater
"On the early morning of 1994 January 18, a very bright luminous object crossed the sky of Santiago de Compostela, Spain... A surface "crater" in Cando (close to Santiago) with dimensions 29 x 13 m and 1.5 m deep was later discovered within 1 km of the projected "impact" point of the luminous object.
Exotic Seismic Signals
"On the afternoon of December 9, 1995, a bolide exploded in the atmosphere over the Andes in southern Ecuador. Many people in nearby towns witnessed the event. They reported seeing a streaking meteor, which terminated in a loud and brilliant explosion. In some locales, the flash was noticeable even through cloud cover. The burst of light was observed by satellite optical sensors used to detect atmospheric nuclear tests. Three local seismic stations also recorded signals from the explosion...This bolide appears to be unique in that it was observed by eyewitnesses and located by both satellite and ground-based sensors."
A Meteor Impact Or Earth Slump?
About 10:10 PM [November 22, 1996], the residents of this area [the Honduras-Guatemala border] observed a red-and yellow fireball moving east-to-west. The bolide's passing was marked by a loud detonation. From this information, one would bet heavily that this was simply a routine meteor detonation caused by the heat generated during entry into the atmosphere... So far, investigators have not been able to decide whether the landslide is just gravity-slumping on the slope or a disturbance created by the night's meteor.
Target: South America
"They landed in the centre of the forest with a triple shock similar to the rumble of thunder and the splash of lightning. There were three distinct explosions, each stronger than the other, causing earth tremors like those of an earthquake. A very light rain of ash continued to fall for a few hours and the sun remained veiled till midday. The explosions of the bodies were heard hundreds of kilometres away."... Only five years after the Brazilian event, a large bolide apparently smashed into the jungle of Guyana. Buried in the library stacks, we found a mostly forgotten trio of reports on the 1935 event in a 1939 issue of The Sky, predecessor of Sky & Telescope. The articles suggest that the devastated area "may equal or exceed that of the great Siberian meteor of 1908." ..."Scientists in Brazil's northeastern state of Piaui are baffled by a crater that was punched into the tropical rain forest shortly after witnesses reported seeing a bright light streak across the sky. Researchers are uncertain whether the crater, 16 feet wide and 32 feet deep, was left by a meteorite or a piece of a comet. Physicist Paulo Frota of the University of Piaui believes it was caused by a block of ice from a comet because the surrounding vegetation is not burned and the crater's rim is not raised."
Giant Impact-wave Deposit Along U.S. East Coast
[D]eep-sea drillers have charted the Exmore Boulder Bed... over 60 meters thick in places and [covering] more than 15,000 square kilometers... argon dating of the ejecta yield a date of 35.5 million years, which correlates with the North American tektite strewn field... Our planet's land surfaces are also strewn with many debris deposits that are probably the consequence of giant impact waves.
Everglades Astrobleme?
At a recent meeting of the Geological Society of America, E.J. Petuch proposed that the Everglades region received a direct hit from an asteroid about 36 million years ago. The Everglades region is a swampy, forested area surrounded by an oval-shaped system of ridges. Geologists usually maintain that the Everglades represent a collapse feature caused by groundwater dissolving away limestone... Petuch disagrees with the collapse theory. [diagram shown on page]
Eight Little Craters All In A Row
M.R. Rampino and T. Volk describe a possible swath of meteoric devastation across the North American Midwest. The craters are all roughly the same age: 310-330 million years. Rampino and Volk suspect they were formed all at once by a string of asteroids or comets.
also this one, and I'm glad to find it, I'd remembered it but hadn't been able to find it on the drive or online.
Possible Formation of the Guatemala Basin by the Impact of an Extraterrestrial Body
by Charles E. Corry and Miller L. Bell
The earth must be as frequently cratered per unit area as the moon. By a relative cross section argument, more than 13 times the number of craters the size of the maria on the moon exist, or existed, on the earth. Whether such events occur with sufficient frequency in recent geologic time to provide tangible evidence today of such cratering is uncertain. From the arguments set forth, and the continuing discovery of meteorite craters on the continents (Short, 1966, Baldwin, 1963, Dietz, 1961, and Prouty, 1952) it seems likely that the importance of the effect of extraterrestrial bodies impacting the earth has been, at least, underestimated (the Alverez's hypothesis concerning the end of the dinosaurs by such a mechanism was more than a decade in the future). Certainly there is as much evidence at present to support our hypothesis for the formation of the Guatemala Basin as other hypotheses advanced to explain the low heat flow found in this basin.

With the tests for shock processes advanced by Short (1966), our hypothesis should be capable of field verification or rejection.

[1999 -- The letter of rejection from Nature for the following article is dated August 28, 1968. At the time most earth scientists would not even accept the fact that meteorites regularly impacted the earth. For example, Barringer Crater in Arizona was still thought by many to be of volcanic origin, as well as the craters on the moon. Bob Dietz had just published his work on shatter cones but I wouldn't say that had been generally accepted. There was not even general agreement on sea floor spreading and plate tectonics outside the radical few at Scripps, Woods Hole, and related institutions.]

32 posted on 12/19/2007 11:27:05 AM PST by SunkenCiv (Profile updated Tuesday, December 18, 2007___________________https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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Scientists say asteroid may hit Mars in late January
(1 in 75 chance on Jan. 30, 2008)
AP on Examiner.com | 12/20/07 | Alicia Chang - AP
Posted on 12/20/2007 9:27:00 PM EST by NormsRevenge
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1942591/posts


33 posted on 12/21/2007 9:54:55 PM PST by SunkenCiv (Profile updated Tuesday, December 18, 2007___________________https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: crazyshrink

Is that an inkblot?


34 posted on 12/21/2007 10:05:01 PM PST by ValerieTexas
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To: SunkenCiv

You can bet that lots of telescopes will be watching for that possibility.


35 posted on 12/22/2007 9:16:23 AM PST by reg45
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SIBERIA METEORITE FLATTENS 40 SQ MILES
The Times | 7 June 2003 | Robin Shepherd
Posted on 06/09/2003 5:25:21 PM PDT by Mike Darancette
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/926025/posts


36 posted on 04/13/2008 12:52:42 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/_____________________Profile updated Saturday, March 29, 2008)
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