Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by chromas on Wednesday October 30 2019, @06:24PM   Printer-friendly

Something crashed into Earth and helped wipe out mammoths and other animals 13,000 years ago, study says

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)


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 30 2019, @11:54PM (9 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 30 2019, @11:54PM (#913940)

    From the 1989 link:

    The
    existence of a glazing on the top surfaces of lunar rocks has
    been used as a strong argument for a “solar outburst” where
    the Sun increased its luminosity by over 100 times for 10 to 100
    s within the last 30,000 years (Gold 1969; see also Mueller and
    Hinsch 1970). Criticisms of this conclusion (Green 1970; Dietz
    and Vergano 1970; Greenwood and Heiken 1970; Morgan et
    al. 1971) have been answered by Gold (1970) who points out
    that much of the criticism discusses ordinary impact glasses
    and not the morphologically specific types of glazes on which
    the argument is based. Gold argues that all alternative hypoth-
    eses have difficulties explaining the glaze’s distribution only on
    the tops of sometimes delicate rocks in the center of small
    craters. A sufficiently large flash will wreak havoc with Earth’s
    environment (Niven 1971). The mode of impact on Earth will
    depend on the spectrum of the flash and may include damage
    by atmospheric heating and ozone destruction. I crudely esti-
    mate that a flash with log (E) = 38 (cf. Table 1) might result in
    a major extinction episode.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +1  
       Interesting=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   1  
  • (Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday October 31 2019, @12:35AM (7 children)

    by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Thursday October 31 2019, @12:35AM (#913952)

    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)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 31 2019, @12:44AM (#913958)

      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)

        by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Thursday October 31 2019, @01:41AM (#913976)

        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)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 31 2019, @02:10AM (#913989)

          Nobody seriously believes the Moon was molten in "geologically recent times."

          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)

            by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Thursday October 31 2019, @02:52AM (#914003)

            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.

            It is more evidence you only have textbook parroting knowledge, not actual understanding.

            Are you the Time Cube guy?

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 31 2019, @03:01AM (2 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 31 2019, @03:01AM (#914006)

              There is no evidence at all in any of those links that the Moon was molten 13,000 years ago.

              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)

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 31 2019, @02:39PM (#914123) Journal

                I will leave it to any reader to decide for themselves who is correct on that ridiculously obvious point.

                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

                  by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 31 2019, @05:50PM (#914253)

                  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.

                  Wow. Who knew Trump comes to this site?

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 31 2019, @03:31PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 31 2019, @03:31PM (#914166) Journal

    The existence of a glazing on the top surfaces of lunar rocks has been used as a strong argument for a “solar outburst” where the Sun increased its luminosity by over 100 times for 10 to 100 s within the last 30,000 years (Gold 1969; see also Mueller and Hinsch 1970).

    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?