For the purposes of honesty and transparency, I also repeat my OTHER point that if the quartz sand was ejected from Saginaw and in the air for around 10-15 minutes – and then reburied – I think that sampling that particular quartz sand for OSL is not going to give the CB (impact) formation date but give the dates of its entombment at Saginaw. The basic assumption with OSL is that the material was buried in via Gradualist mechanism. If the material is ejecta from elsewhere,will OSL be able to give any useful information?

So, I went to look that up. I found this in Wikipedia, and it turns out that one assumption I made is wrong:

The optical dating method relies on the assumption that the mineral grains were sufficiently exposed to sunlight before they were buried. This is usually, but not always, the case with Aeolian deposits, such as sand dunes and loess, and some water-laid deposits.

All sediments and soils contain trace amounts of radioactive isotopes including uranium, thorium, rubidium and potassium. These slowly decay over time and the ionizing radiation they produce is absorbed by other constituents of the soil sediments such as quartz and feldspar. The resulting radiation damage within these minerals remains as structurally unstable electron traps within the mineral grains. Stimulating samples using either blue, green or infrared light causes a luminescence signal to be emitted as the stored unstable electron energy is released, the intensity of which varies depending on the amount of radiation absorbed during burial. The radiation damage accumulates at a rate over time determined by the amount of radioactive elements in the sample. Exposure to sunlight resets the luminescence signal and so the time period since the soil was buried can be calculated.

That all gave me a bit of hope – the bit about dunes and loess – but this shot it down:

Surface dating by luminescence: An overview
Ioannis Liritzis – Geochronometria September 2011, Volume 38, Issue 3, pp 292-302 **

Abstract

Daylight radiation resets luminescence ‘clock’ to zero on rock surfaces, but transmission depends on the transparency of the rock. On burial, surfaces are no longer exposed to daylight and accumulation of trapped electrons takes place till the excavation. This reduction of luminescence as a function of depth fulfils the prerequisite criterion of daylight bleaching. Thus rock artefacts and monuments follow similar bleaching rationale as those for sediments. In limestone and marble, daylight can reach depths of 0.5–1 mm and up to 16 mm respectively, while for other igneous rocks e.g. quartz in granites, partial bleaching occurs up to 5mm depth under several hours of daylight exposures and almost complete beaching is achieved in the first 1 mm within about 1 min daylight exposure…

A sample in which the mineral grains have all been exposed to at least a few seconds of daylight can be said to be of zero age; when excited it will not emit any such photons. The older the sample is, the more light it emits.

So, that seems to answer my question. It does NOT take a long time to reset the clock on the physics of optical luminescence; it only takes a few seconds. Wow.

The quartz sand at the CBs has grain sizes at or smaller than 1mm – certainly all of it is less than a 5mm radius. So, if it was exposed to sunlight for one second, my idea is wrong.

Or is it?

The Taurids come at two times of the year, the end of June and around Halloween. The June ones are when the Earth passes through the outgoing matter stream – coming away from the Sun after rounding it. If the Saginaw impact occurred at that time all the quartz would have been hit by sunlight and been reset. However, if the Saginaw impact occurred during the Earth’s passage through the incoming stream around Halloween, that side of the Earth would have been in shadow – no direct daylight.

The Abstract does begin with “Daylight radiation…”

If all that is the final word, then that means there is about a 50-50 chance of the ejecta being thrown up in daylight vs at night. That 50-50 may actually be a bit skewed though, because of the dark-light line at dawn and dusk – ejecta could still be exposed to some level of daylight while in flight, even if the ground were not in direct sunlight. So, let’s make it about 60-40 in favor of sunlight exposure. Still, 40% is a pretty decent chance the quartz sand was NOT exposed.

So the idea that the OSL can be misleading for ejecta material lofted from Saginaw to the CB areas is still somewhat tenable.

Based on that, one could posit two things that would make a Saginaw impact and CB secondary impact consistent with the OSL dating, and the second one is at least possibly falsifiable:

1.) That the Saginaw impact occurred around the end of October (by our calendar)

2.) That samples of CB quartz sand might reveal a trend from north to south – and probably the east vs west “splash” – in case the impact came near the dawn or dusk line.*** If so, then there might be some pattern of variation in the OSL dating from north to south and east vs west. I would say this has about a 10-20% chance of being true. But if found out to be true, it would explain the hypothesized variations. In addition, it would lend some support for the YDB impact hypothesis.

Notes:

**http://link.springer.com/article/10.2478/s13386-011-0032-7#page-1

*** The number of days between the vernal equinox and the impact of the Chelyabinsk meteor was very much the same as the number of days between the autumnal equinox and the Taurids at the end of October. The Chelyabinsk meteor happened to arrive just at dawn. All that is almost certainly just a coincidence, but perhaps not. That is something I will hold in the back of my mind. Just in case…

In addition, the Chelyabinsk meteor had a radiant in daylight but landed in – or almost in – darkness. The dawn had only come about 5 minutes before, in Chelyabinsk, so Lake Chebarkul was right on the dividing line. Another few hundred meters of altitude and it might have landed many kilometers farther to the west. Thus, sometimes objects are in daylight while in flight but can land in darkness. That is possible with the proposed Saginaw quartz sand.

p.s. I have even a further and wilder speculation, having to do with the ejected ice/water/steam, but I will pass on that for now.

Clovis was a very short-lived culture, as far as cultures go. With its window of time being only 13.5-12.9 kya, if their tools are found UNDER the quartz sand – as opposed to on top of it – then something seems to be wrong with the OSL datings for the CBs that put the CBs’ formation at 130 kya or 40 kya. Artifacts from 13 kya should not be under sand deposited 130 kya or 40 kya. Since OSL itself is solid science, that suggests that the sampling has been done incorrectly, or assumptions are being made that are misleading.

Even if we extend Clovis back to 22 kya (based on the work of Bradley and Stanford), 22 is less than 40 or 130.

Given people like the Daulton Gang, who everyone says can’t follow a protocol, erroneous sampling is not out of the question. (Though I am not suggesting any plot to bogus up the readings. In this case I suggest bogus assumptions about ejecta.) Since so many of the papers are behind paywalls, I can’t get at them to find out where the samples for OSL dating of the CBs were taken from.

I agree with you. As multiple-function humans and multiple-finction human groups we have the capacity to investigate both lunar cratering and Earth cratering. Earth craters have only been recognized as such since Gene Shoemaker. Lunar ones have been recognized as not volcanic (mostly) since about the Apollo missions (which isn’t that much longer).

While we can’t date lunar ones so easily, we can at least SEE them a whole lot better and investigate some of their properties. We can do that with our right hand, while with our left hand (lovely multi-functional dudes that we are) we can do what we can hear on Earth. Outside of funding, there is no practical reason we cannot do both.

Either inquiry should render the same info, but both inquiries have weaknesses – and different weaknesses. So both should be done. If NASA or others are not doing more on Earth OR the moon because of funding, that is a reality, but a different argument, a political will argument. I see your point being a technical issue.

MY argument has nothing to do with the latitude and longitude relative to bays, but the TIME element. If they were found in the SUBSOIL under bays, they could not have left those points AFTER the sand was deposited.

None of your comments back to me have addressed how the points came to be UNDER the sand.

From what I know so far, the sand had to have been deposited WITH the formation of the bays. Would you agree or disagree, Ed?