Around 13,000 years ago, giant animals such as mastodons, mammoths, saber-toothed cats and ground sloths disappeared from the Earth. Scientists have found evidence in sediment cores to support a controversial theory that an asteroid or a comet slammed into Earth and helped lead to this extinction of ice age animals and cooling of the globe.
It's called the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis and was first suggested in 2007. The hypothesis included the idea that an extraterrestrial body impacted Earth 12,800 years ago. This led to an extreme cooling of the environment, which in turn helped cause more than 35 species of large animals to go extinct.
At the same time, human populations declined. The impact also has been suggested as the cause of large, raging wildfires that created enough smoke to block the sun and created an "impact winter," in which cold weather lasts longer than expected after Earth is impacted.
[...] Today, evidence of such an impact can be found in platinum spikes. Platinum can be found in asteroids, comets and meteorites. Researchers found them in sediment cores collected from White Pond in Elgin, South Carolina.
Sediment Cores from White Pond, South Carolina, contain a Platinum Anomaly, Pyrogenic Carbon Peak, and Coprophilous Spore Decline at 12.8 ka (open, DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-51552-8) (DX)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 30 2019, @11:54PM (9 children)
From the 1989 link:
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday October 31 2019, @12:35AM (7 children)
Are we calling solar flares "micro-novas" now? I guess that proves the electric universe theory then.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 31 2019, @12:44AM (6 children)
No, we are not. Did you read any of those links?
(Score: 3, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday October 31 2019, @01:41AM (5 children)
Yes. (Apart from the ones that require a login) None of them say what you seem to believe.
None of those links explain how the heavy elements got where they are if they didn't arrive on a comet or asteroid.
Nobody seriously believes the Moon was molten in "geologically recent times."
TFA is about The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis and presents some evidence. The contention that Occams razor tells us the heavy elements come direct from the source is just stupid and has no basis in reality.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 31 2019, @02:10AM (4 children)
Why not? The arguments are all in the links provided, learn to use sci-hub to read it... And how can you claim to be interested in actual science and not know how to do that in this day and age? It is more evidence you only have textbook parroting knowledge, not actual understanding.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday October 31 2019, @02:52AM (3 children)
There is no evidence at all in any of those links that the Moon was molten 13,000 years ago.
There is also no evidence anywhere that the Sun has ever deposited heavy elements like Platinum directly on the Earth. There is plenty of evidence that meteors have, however.
Are you the Time Cube guy?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 31 2019, @03:01AM (2 children)
Yes, there is. I will leave it to any reader to decide for themselves who is correct on that ridiculously obvious point. Anyone capable of comprehending a few paragraphs can see it...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Thursday October 31 2019, @02:39PM (1 child)
No, that's not how rational argument works. It's your job to support your arguments. Not this ridiculous cycle of making unfounded assertions and then vacuously claiming that the right people will bother to research it and reach the right conclusions.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 31 2019, @05:50PM
Wow. Who knew Trump comes to this site?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 31 2019, @03:31PM
This is the "widespread melting seen on the surface of the moon"? Interesting how paltry the supporting evidence is. And increasing solar influx from 1kW per meter to 100kW per meter for that length of time is going to screw up an entire hemisphere not merely a continent. Where's the evidence for that?