The Cosmic Tusk

December 14, 2013

Broecker to Kunzig: This Deal is Real

Readers will recall the awkwardly titled September post, “NatGeo actually calls Wally Broecker to discuss evidence for cosmic impact at Younger Dryas start.” The Tusk was trying to convey there my astonishment that a thoughtful and thorough article was written on recent advances in the study of the Younger Dryas Boundary. Only later, with very little digging, did I realize this was…

118

Random Tusks

December 7, 2013

Fair Enough: Van Hoesel breaks down YDB science in critical review

Annelies Van Hoesel (Dr. Van Hoesel yet?) recently published an overview of Younger Dryas Boundary Hypothesis in Quaternary Science Reviews. I hear at least one of the YDB authors found it terribly biased against the impact. But it seems to me that she is implicitly admitting that the many obituaries of the YDB impact have been premature. In this game that counts as a win. View The Younger Dryas…

87

Random Tusks

December 5, 2013

Heinrich disputes Burchard

Clarifying note: The Tusk, not Dr. Burchard, suggested the name Crater Burchard for this feature. And yes, I know. Craters are named for nearby geographic features, not people. The always smug but relatively well informed Paul Heinrich had a post on the Meteorite-list serve today disputing the cosmic origin of circular features identified by Hermann Burchard in the South China Sea and posted last…

99

Random Tusks

November 9, 2013

Crater Burchard?

View Larger Map Subject: Australasian Tektite Impact 780 Ka Crater Identified in Spratly Islands From: Hermann GW Burchard To: XXX Date: November 3, 2013 There seems to be a recent update to Google Earth,– apologoizing for over-reliance on this dubious source — the ocean between Vietnam and the Phillipines, the South China Sea. At least, I have not seen this much detail on earlier…

391

Random Tusks

October 31, 2013

Love Notes: Napier takes down The Bos on disintegrating comets in space; Tusk lends hand

…

124

Random Tusks

October 10, 2013

Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick: 60 Minutes' Cooper nails NASA's Yeomans and Chodas on common asteroid threat

We all know the Tusk enjoys the study of past catastrophes but is less interested in blogging on space borne threats to our future. The intellectual real estate of future apocalypse — Repent! — is too well populated on the internet for us. But great TV is great TV and Anderson Cooper did a surprising and praise worthy job last Sunday with a couple of Tusk-worthy follow-up questions…

277

Random Tusks

October 5, 2013

Faye Flam?: Knight Science Journalism Tracker gets nearly everything wrong in a single blog

Faye Flam Flam responds in KSJT comments? Below is a link to a very poorly written, intellectually depressing and kinda mean press blog out of MIT. Flam does not distinguish Dartmouth’s Markul Sharma et al. from the original Firestone authors despite the point of her lede. Later she updates her blog to correct another less significant — but also easily discoverable &#8212…

114

Random Tusks

September 18, 2013

Love Notes: Wittke and van Hoesel in PNAS

Cosmic impact or natural fires at the Allerød–Younger Dryas boundary: A matter of dating and calibration Annelies van Hoesel,a,b,1 Wim Z. Hoek,b Johannes van der Plicht,c,dGillian M. Pennock,a and Martyn R. Drurya Author information ► Copyright and License information ► See the reply “Reply to van Hoesel et al.: Impact-related Younger Dryas boundary nanodiamonds from The…

197

Random Tusks

September 12, 2013

In desperate hole, Pinter grabs another shovel

Nicholas Pinter In a recent interview with NBC News anti-YDB jihadi Nick Pinter claimed that “the pro-impact literature is, at this point, fringe science being promoted by a single journal.” This is nonsense — and easily disproven. The critics of the YDB hypothesis have published 10 times in PNAS (see #1 below), whereas the YDB proponents have published only 8 times (see #2…

216

Random Tusks

September 10, 2013

NatGeo actually calls Wally Broecker to discuss evidence for cosmic impact at Younger Dryas start

NatGeo 2007 NatGeo 2008 NatGeo 2013 Did a Comet Really Kill the Mammoths 12,900 Years Ago? Did the planetary upheaval 12,900 years ago come from the heavens—or Earth? Robert Kunzig National Geographic Published September 10, 2013 Why did mammoths, mastodons, and other mega-beasts vanish from North America? Was it because: 1) humans killed them; 2) they couldn’t hack the climate after the…

123

Latest Posts

The archives

Broecker to Kunzig: This Deal is Real

Fair Enough: Van Hoesel breaks down YDB science in critical review

Heinrich disputes Burchard

Crater Burchard?

Love Notes: Napier takes down The Bos on disintegrating comets in space; Tusk lends hand

Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick: 60 Minutes' Cooper nails NASA's Yeomans and Chodas on common asteroid threat

Faye Flam?: Knight Science Journalism Tracker gets nearly everything wrong in a single blog

Love Notes: Wittke and van Hoesel in PNAS

In desperate hole, Pinter grabs another shovel

NatGeo actually calls Wally Broecker to discuss evidence for cosmic impact at Younger Dryas start

Archive

Don’t miss

Cosmic Summit Program

Marc Young: The world's first Cosmoarchaeologist