New evidence supporting extraterrestrial impact at the start of the Younger Dryas

Watts Up With That 'blog ^ | Monday, March 12, 2012 | Anthony Watts

[SunkenCiv]

We report the discovery in Lake Cuitzeo in central Mexico of a black, carbon-rich, lacustrine layer, containing nanodiamonds, microspherules, and other unusual materials that date to the early Younger Dryas and are interpreted to result from an extraterrestrial impact. These proxies were found in a 27-m-long core as part of an interdisciplinary effort to extract a paleoclimate record back through the previous interglacial.

Our attention focused early on an anomalous, 10-cm-thick, carbon-rich layer at a depth of 2.8 m that dates to 12.9 ka and coincides with a suite of anomalous coeval environmental and biotic changes independently recognized in other regional lake sequences.

Collectively, these changes have produced the most distinctive boundary layer in the late Quaternary record. This layer contains a diverse, abundant assemblage of impact-related markers, including nanodiamonds, carbon spherules, and magnetic spherules with rapid melting/quenching textures, all reaching synchronous peaks immediately beneath a layer containing the largest peak of charcoal in the core. Analyses by multiple methods demonstrate the presence of three allotropes of nanodiamond: n-diamond, i-carbon, and hexagonal nanodiamond (lonsdaleite), in order of estimated relative abundance.

This nanodiamond-rich layer is consistent with the Younger Dryas boundary layer found at numerous sites across North America, Greenland, and Western Europe. We have examined multiple hypotheses to account for these observations and find the evidence cannot be explained by any known terrestrial mechanism. It is, however, consistent with the Younger Dryas boundary impact hypothesis postulating a major extraterrestrial impact involving multiple airburst(s) and and/or ground impact(s) at 12.9 ka.

[exDemMom]

I don’t understand why the debris layer should be 10 cm thick. That isn’t all debris from the space object, is it? I’m thinking that it would take a huge amount of debris to cover the earth with 10 cm of dust, and that much additional mass would certainly have caused the rotation of the earth to slow.

[SunkenCiv]

The Carolina Bays and the similar formations elsewhere in North America began simultaneously as ejecta craters from an event located in the midwest.

[SunkenCiv]

If it was published in the past ten or so years, I’m sure blam posted it on FR. :’)

[SunkenCiv]

The debris layer they studied in lakes was 10 cm; the thickness of the layer depended on the distance from the impact, depths iow varied. :’)

[Yollopoliuhqui]

Then too there is that pesky Tsunguska “impact” that left no crater yet blew down trees in a 60 mile radius. This and many other conundrums can be easily solved if one assumes that the incoming comet/meteor was carrying a hugely different static electrical charge that arced to earth before impact with enough force to vaporize the object and knock over the trees without digging a crater. But associating electricity with objects in space is taboo, let’s just keep calling the solar electric current the “Solar Wind”.

www.thunderbolts.info
http://sites.google.com/site/dragonstormproject/

[aruanan]

This layer contains a diverse, abundant assemblage of impact-related markers, including nanodiamonds, carbon spherules, and magnetic spherules with rapid melting/quenching textures, all reaching synchronous peaks immediately beneath a layer containing the largest peak of charcoal in the core.

Also consistent with effects of the Z-pinch aurora in which there would have been massive arcing to ground in the Northern Hemisphere as well as a level of incoming radiation that would have been sufficient to kill off large mammals unable to take shelter in caverns.

[aruanan]

This layer contains a diverse, abundant assemblage of impact-related markers, including nanodiamonds, carbon spherules, and magnetic spherules with rapid melting/quenching textures, all reaching synchronous peaks immediately beneath a layer containing the largest peak of charcoal in the core.

As I wrote to Anthony Peratt in 2010: Recently I read that some believe the North American megafauna were doomed by an asteroid or comet near impact in Canada around the end of the last ice age ~12,000BCE, near impact because no impact crater could be found. They did find, however, evidence of widespread burning and nano-diamonds they cite as evidence of the extraterrestrial origin. I've read that high energy electric discharge can create nano-diamonds. Is it not possible that what they observed was the result of heavy arcing to the earth from the northern auroral zone? Have there been any attempts to survey the general latitude around the world for similar evidence?

He indicated that their experimental evidence showed that nano-diamonds could, indeed, be formed by such heavy arcing and that in summer they would be examining the nano-diamonds in situ. But I haven't heard anything recently.

[bert]

-——evidence that could be dated.———

the date was 12.9 ka whenever the hell that was in BP years

[muawiyah]

500,000 of them ~ all up and down the Atlantic Coast.

I liked the note that pointed to their having an origin somewhere about SE Indiana and SW Ohio.

I have hope for the volcano South of Seymour, Indiana having had intermittent activity within the last 100,000 years ~ that'd explain all your "bays".

That would also make them land features and not bays at all since sea level would have been lower than the bottoms of those bays through that period.

There's another lurking cauldera in the vicinity of Paoli, Indiana and up to Martinsville, Indiana.

These things are supposed to be OLD and inactive, but there's a heat source still cooking water for them.

[exDemMom]

Ah, thanks.

They had mentioned that people have found similar sites on other continents; from that, I had assumed that the sites were all from the same impact. It would seem not.

[baynut]

Civ, et al., make sure to bookmark this blog for all things black mat and Younger Dryas Impact: www.cosmictusk.com

[baynut]

Civ, et al., make sure to bookmark this blog for all things black mat and Younger Dryas Impact: www.cosmictusk.com

[SunkenCiv]

I was very surprised to learn about the North American splash sites other than the Carolina Bays, simply because I’d never heard of them at all when reading about the CBs, or just generally.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks baynut, I also added that to my FR links page.

Time to trim that links page down a bit, I believe.