[FPSPACE] The pathetic state of NASA impact research

[E.P. Grondine]

Hi all - 

As you can see from the following exchange, Dr. Morrison is actually impeding Dr. Firestone's impact research, rather than helping him and his colleagues. It will be interesting what shows up when former Administrator Griffin's email is examined for his failure to respond to the instructions of the Congress.

In what follows, it is obvious that Firestone is oblivious to Morrison's biases against Clube and Napier's work and cometary impact generally.

Leroy Ellenbeger: 

Thank you, Rick (Firestone), for this eloquent, reasoned defense of the YD-impact model at 12,900 BP (see below). You rightfully point out problems with identifying the nature of the impact that would have "done the deed" and I wonder whether or not Herbert R. Shaw's Craters, Cosmos and Chronicles: A New Theory of the Earth (1995, Stanford U. Press), see description below, might contain insights that would help resolve this impass. [n.b.: after I finished this email, I find Morrison's reply to Firestone (reproduced below), which IMHO does not properly discriminate between hard impact events such at Meteor Crater in Arizona 50,000 years ago and aerial detonations such as Tunguska in June 1908, as well as three other major aerial detonations in the 20th century: two in South America in the 1930s and Revelstoke, Alberta, in 1965, as well as implicitly discounting the presence of a "real crater" submerged in the Great Lakes as suggested by Firestone (which hypothesis admittedly needs to be proven).]

On my own, after Morrison pointed out problems to me a year or so ago, I wonder whether or not the dispersion problem might be approached with a large, friable, low tensile strength impactor shattering during a close passage by the Moon and then intercepting the Earth over the Laurentide ice sheet. Back in 1990-91 I corresponded with Don E. Gault, formerly an associate of Peter Schultz on impact simulations, with the initial idea that the Carolina bays were formed by ice debris lofted by an impact on the ice sheet, as suggested in a 1975 U. of Ill. monograph by Eyton and Parkhurst. Gault indicated to me that he was convinced the quasi-Gaussian distribution of the Carolina bays (mostly elliptical in shape, shallow, with low rims thickened on the SE quadrant) between northern Florida and New Jersey with the densest distribution in Virginia and Carolinas with their long axes directed NW-SE (exhibiting a systematic rotation from south to north) strongly
indicated an extraterrestrial origin of some sort and that finding an e.t. chemical signature in the bays' basal sediments would prove it.  There are over 250,000 Carolina bays with long axes greater than 1/4 mile (if memory serves).

I am also aware of many investigators deducing dates of origin for the bays much greater than 12,900 years, but I believe this results from conflating the origin date for a particular specimen with the origin date for the depression in which the specimen is located.  FINALLY, the clincher for me concerning an e.t. "impact" origin for the bays is the fact that no single terrestrial process can account for the bays in all their coastal plain provenances and no terrestrial process can account for the bays in gravel above the fall line at Midlothian, Virginia.

At the bottom of this message find additional information on the putative YD impact event provided by E.P. Grondine.

C. Leroy Ellenberger
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Leroy_Ellenberger>
St. Louis, MO

--- On Fri, 4/3/09, Richard Firestone <rbfirestone at lbl.gov> wrote:
 
> To all:
>
> The evidence that an impact occurred is broad and
> inescapable.  A thin layer of microspherules,
> nanodiamonds, soot, iridium, and other markers isolated > in time 12,900 years ago does not form by terrestrial 
> processes or by the gradual accumulation of >micrometeorites. 
> Consistent evidence is found at over 30 sites on two
> continents.  The consequences of the impact are 
> evident in the sudden disappearance of the megafauna
> and the sudden onset of the Younger Dryas.  
> Everything is consistent except that we don't understand the nature of the impacting object.
>
> The geology community has a long and dismal history 
> of denying processes even school children could
> recognize.  Plate techtonics is evident to anyone who
> ever looked at a map.  Fifty years ago most scientists
> still believed that that craters on the moon were 
> volcanic in origin.  Many still fight to disprove the 
> importance of the K-T impacts.  Thus reporting that a > recent impact caused a major extinction has received a > visceral response, based largely on belief, from a long 
> discredited scientific establishment.  Criticism is fine if > it is based on data, not belief, but new ideas based on > data are still widely denounced and denied publication > when they clash with reviewers prejudices.
>
> I agree that the impact scenarios described in Nova 
> leaves much to be desired.  Certainly a cluster of 
> objects bombarding earth could leave no crater but we
> have no observations or astronomical evidence of such
>  events. 
> Nevertheless the chemistry of the impactor is unique
> suggesting something very unusual happened.  The 
> recent timing of the event may be surprising, but any 
> argument that it is less likely to have occurred 12,900 > years ago than 10 million years ago is entirely 
> specious.  In fact there is evidence that the recent 
> impact rate is much higher than
> the past and perhaps as high as it was 3 billion years 
> ago.
>
> The impact experts are right to be concerned about 
> the lack of a big crater.  Evidence based on the 
> thickness and high water content of the impact layer 
> suggest that the impact occurred near the Great Lakes
>  over the Laurentide Ice Sheet.  If the impact were an > airburst that would explain the severity of damage on a > continent wide scale,
> but as has been pointed out it still should have left a
> prominent mark on the Earth.  Most of the discussion
> has suggested that no such mark exists.  That is not
> true.  The Great Lakes are built around four great
> basins or holes that would be the lowest points in North
> America, much deeper than Death Valley.  The "hole" in
> Lake Superior is 1332 feet deep.  All other deep holes
> on Earth have tectonic or volcanic origins.  It is well
> recognized that these holes were not formed by the 
> glaciers and it is supposed that they were somehow 
> excavated by rapidly flowing water.  I'd postulate that > these holes are in fact craters formed by a solid body > that exploded in the atmosphere 12,900 years ago.  
> Add the fact that this impact site was covered by a 
> kilometer of ice and these craters are consistent with a > massive impact that formed the Great Lakes.  Certainly > other smaller craters should exist.  One is Charity 
> Shoal, a small 1 km crater in Lake Ontario, which is 
> about the right age.
> I'll leave it to impact experts to test the viability of my
> hypothesis and geologists to prove that it disagrees 
> with what they already know.  Hopefully future 
> discussions can take a more positive turn where 
> controversy is looked upon as a good thing.  As Rodney > King said after being viciously beaten by the authorities > "can't we all just get along".
>
> Regards,
>
> Rick Firestone

(Leroy then cited:) 

Craters, Cosmos and Chronicles: A New Theory of the Earth (1995) by Herbert R. Shaw of the U. S. Geological Survey applies nonlinear dynamics to the impact pattern on the Earth. Shaw argues that much of the impact cratering record on Earth (and in the solar system in general) is nonlinearly organized rather than random. He suggests that an intermittently filled and emptied geocentric reservoir of resonantly held impactors has played a key role in the patterns of impacts on Earth during the Phanerozoic Eon (the last 570 my) and probably for much of the Precambrian as well. Shaw sees this patterned input of impacting energy reflected in mountain building, volcanism, plate tectonics, geomagnetic field behavior, and the fossil record.

Craters, Cosmos, and Chronicles contains 688 pages, 37 figures, 27 appendices, extensive chapter notes, a bibliography, and an index. William Glen provides the forward.

From: <http://www.pibburns.com/catastro/neopub.htm>

Additional information concerning YD impact from Ed Grondine:

1) I posted some of the first peoples accounts of these impacts to the paleo-anthropology list:

http://forum.palanth.com/index.php/topic,1093.0.html

Note that the Shawnee remembered impacts south, east, north, west and then three more fragments hit. But at this distance in time, detail may have been replaced by theology.

2) Ken Tankersley has found a 1 inch thick layer of impactites near Sandusky, Ohio along with the remains of blast killed mega-fuana:
http://www.ourstrangeworld.net/index.php/main/article/extraterrestrial_event_affected_human_history/

3) A possible Holocene Start Impact structure has been located in Alberta:
http://www.meridianbooster.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1484183

4) Work is being done on the Carolina Bays:
http://hamptonroads.com/2008/09/carolina-bays-new-evidence-points-killer-comet

5) Note the strata at this site in Venezuela:
http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/journey/taima-taima-text.html

I am currently running a special on personally signed first editions of "Man and Impact in the Americas", at a mere $20 plus $5 for shipping in the US, if anyone wants to contact me for a copy.

E.P. Grondine, <epgrondine at yahoo.com>
Man and Impact in the Americas

Morrison's reply to Firestone:

Richard:

Thanks for the long note. Unfortunately, I think you are confusing two issues — the evidence that something happened 12,900 years ago (including extinction of magafauna, the decline of the Clovis culture, climate change, and the “black mat”) and the quite different issue of evidence for an impact.

You begin by stating that “the evidence that an impact occurred is broad and inescapable.” I work with a sophisticated international group of scientists who study impacts from a variety of perspectives, geological and astronomical. None of them would agree with this statement. I don’t think your diatribe against the geological community is relevant; the people I am talking about have been leaders in establishing the role of impacts in Earth history, including the KT. They are not part of a “long discredited scientific establishment”. You conclude with the statement that “I'll leave it to impact experts to test the viability of my hypothesis.” What hypothesis? I have not seen a testable impact hypothesis. The burden of proof is upon you. If you can’t find any collaborator who can work with you to develop a reasonable impact hypothesis that can pass peer review for publication, there is perhaps a message here. If you do, then I am sure that the community of impact scientists I deal with will be happy to see it and examine the evidence.

David


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