Kerr Watch

Number of days writer Richard Kerr has failed to inform his Science readers of the confirmation of nanodiamonds at the YDB: 1 year, 1 month, and 14 days

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Trust but Verify: Independent confirmations of evidence for the Younger Dryas Impact Boundary

Skeptics of the YDIB hypothesis frequently state that “no one can reproduce the YDIB results” (Kerr, 2010); “nobody has found anything” (Kerr, 2010); there is a “lack of reproducibility of data” (Holliday, 2011); and “unique peaks in concentrations at the YD onset have yet to be reproduced” Pinter (2011). These casual dismissals are hurtful to the investigation, and demonstrably false. That independent researchers have identified materials diagnostic of an event of cosmic proportions at 12.9 before present should not be subject to debate.

To wit, I offer below citations of published research confirming the original findings of Firestone, et. al. in 2007. Note that some of these researchers disagree with an extraterrestrial impact as cause and offered alternate hypotheses, but, in every case, those speculating about causation have not conducted any analytical work to determine if their hypotheses are correct.

INDEPENDENT GROUPS with positive results:

MAGNETIC SPHERULES.

Baker et al. (2008)

Fayek (2008)

Ge et al. (2009, page 1)

Haynes et al. (2010, page 1)

LeCompte et al. (2010)

Mahaney (2010a, page 10)

Wu (2011)

NANODIAMONDS.

Ge et al. (2009, page 1)

Tankersley (2009)

Tian (2010, page 1)

Van Hoesel (2011)

Bement et al. (2011)

IRIDIUM.

Beets et al. (2008, page 1)

Sharma et al. (2009)

Haynes et al. (2010, page 1)

Mahaney (2010a, page 10)

Marshall (2011)

Wu (2011)

CARBON SPHERULES and GLASS-LIKE CARBON (some w/ NANODIAMONDS)

Mahaney (2010a, page 10)

Tian (2010, page 1)

Courty et al. (2010)

Ge et al. (2009, page 1)

Baker et al. (2008, page 1)

Tankersley (2009)

CHARCOAL AND BIOMASS BURNING:

Mahaney et al. (2010b)

Ge et al. (2009)

Courty et al. (2010)

HUMAN AND ANIMAL POPULATION DECLINES.

Schroeder (2009)

Steele (2010)

CRATER or IMPACT.

Higgins, et al. (2011)

REFERENCES.

Baker DW, Miranda PJ, Gibbs KE. (2008) Montana Evidence for Extra-Terrestrial Impact Event That Caused Ice-Age Mammal Die-Off. American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2008, abstract #P41A-05.

Beets C, Sharma M, Kasse K, Bohncke S. (2008) Search for Extraterrestrial Osmium at the Allerod – Younger Dryas Boundary. American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2008, abstract #V53A-2150.

Bement L, Carter BJ, Simms A, Madden A. (2011) The Bull Creek valley stream terraces, buried soils, and paleo-environment during the Younger Dryas in the Oklahoma Panhandle, USA. Paper #1447, XVIII INQUA-Congress, 21-27 July 2011 in Bern, Switzerland.

Continue reading Trust but Verify: Independent confirmations of evidence for the Younger Dryas Impact Boundary

Clovis Comet Crater?

Internet science gadfly, Mr. Thomas Lee Elifritz, suggested a couple of years ago that the subtle elevation feature in Ontario described in his monograph below might be a candidate for what might remains after a large impact into the Pleistocene ice sheet. Like Mr. Elifritz or not, it is an interesting feature and I thought [...]

A Nickel Pickle Part A

A NICKEL PICKLE

The Problems of Building High-Tech From a Meteoroid Wreck

by Bob Kobres

Part A

——————————————————————————–

Though a nickel will not buy much today the element nickel is invaluable to our contemporary way of life. Without access to this nonferrous metal, much of what we take for granted would not be practical or in many cases possible.Automobiles would be fragile–hitting a pothole would, as in very early cars, often break an axle. Internal combustion engines could not be depended upon and would also weigh a great deal more per unit of horse-power than the motors we are accustomed to. Airplanes, if they could be made to fly (the Wright brothers used a motor that took advantage of nickel steel’s superior strength to weight ratio), would be terribly unsafe. Jet powered flight would be impossible–the strength that nickel gives to steel at high temperatures made this type engine feasible. No buildings could scrape the sky without nickel’s contribution; steel bridges would be massive, ugly and corrode rapidly as well. In essence, our world would appear and function much as it did one hundred years ago, for it was in the late 1880′s when nickel-steel became a product.

Continue reading A Nickel Pickle: The Problems of Building High Tech from a Meteoroid Wreck

Tusk bullish on old Taurid papers

Articles pertaining to the Taurid Complex:


Title: Meteor observations in Japan: new implications for a Taurid meteoroid swarm
Authors: ASHER, D. J.IZUMI, K.
Affiliation: AA(Communications Research Laboratory, 893-1, Hirai, Kashima-shi, Ibaraki-ken 314-0012, Japan), AB(Nippon Meteor Society, 812-8 Namiki-machi, Shibukawa-shi, Gunma-ken 377-0033, Japan)
Journal: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 297, Issue 1, pp. 23-27. (Journal Homepage)
Publication Date: 06/1998
Origin: MNRAS
MNRAS Keywords: COMETS: INDIVIDUAL: 2P/ENCKE, METEORS, METEOROIDS
Abstract Copyright: (c) 1998 The Royal Astronomical Society
Bibliographic Code: 1998MNRAS.297…23A

Abstract

Observational evidence is sought that the long-term (10^4 yr) action of a mean motion resonance with Jupiter can produce structure in a meteoroid stream, concentrating meteoroids in a dense swarm. More specifically, predictions tabulated by Asher & Clube of enhanced meteor and fireball activity from a Taurid Complex swarm in the 7:2 resonance are compared with observational data collected in Japan over several decades. The swarm model was proposed for reasons independent of the observations analysed here, and these newly considered data are shown to be consistent with it. This allows increased confidence in the Taurid swarm theory, and more generally could mean that resonant trapping is a dynamical mechanism affecting a significant amount of meteoroidal material in the inner Solar system.

Continue reading Tusk bullish on old Taurid Comet papers

Antarctic Tunguska Blasts: Link trove from Heinrich

Paul Heinrich over at the Hall of Maat provides some fine links on the big cold bangs(s):

Direct Links to “Tunguska type blast detected in Antartica” Papers and Articles

Below are the direct links to the Antarctica Tunguska articles and papers:

Articles are:

Clues to Antarctica space blast by Paul Rincon
BBC News, [news.bbc.co.uk]

Antarctica May Have Been Battered by Huge [...]

Predictive paper: Nesvorny, Bottke, Vokrouhlicky used astronomy to predict Antarctic stratigraphy

David Nesvorny

I might be pushing the publishing envelope here, but this Science paper was available at several locations on the web for free with no sign-in. For the time being it is now on Scribd:

Therefore, a wave of micrometer sized Datura particles may have reached Earthonly a [...]

Great Paper: The case for significant numbers of extraterrestrial impacts through the late Holocene

I love this paper.  It’s in a great journal, chock full of well-sourced, multidisciplinary information, and written by a rock-solid expert in an immensely important field: Dendrochronology.  While other Dendrochronologists signed-up for the terribly political job of attempting to document slow and incremental temperature change over the ages, Mike Baillie [...]

Firestone's response to Paquay and Surovell papers blogged -- Stafford, Sharma and Courty left out of discussion

Little Bird Update:

A little bird called me to make a couple of points related to my blog last night regarding the (limited) Firestone  quotes provided at Anthro.net.

1)  Rick  apparently used “we” inappropriately when claiming Surovell was biased. Other YD team members do not think Surovell was biased — and surely not malignly biased to the extent [...]