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The Impact And Exit Event.


Finchcliff

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Turtle and I covered geology, space rock impacts and volcanism in http://scienceforums.com/topic/8886-craters-on-earth-and-the-other-planets/page__st__60

 

What made the Antarctic impact of 250 million years ago unique is the size of the rock -estimated at 25 miles in diameter, moving 10 mps-, the resulting antipodal focusing creating a hot spot resulting in the (the largest known in the planets history) which caused global warming which drew oxygen out the oceans which allowed sulphur dioxide excreting bacteria to poison the oceans and then the land over a period of several million years and making condition ripe for the rise of the dinos.

 

That's a wrap. :Exclamati :thumbs_up

 

Hello Turtle,

 

It's good to see that the people involved with detecting dangerous asteroids are also researching what happens when one hits.

 

The book I referred to is actually called 'a journey through stone, The Chillagoe Story - the extraordinary history and geology of one of the richest mineral deposits in the world' by Ian Plimer.

 

Here's a quote. 'One of the biggest volcanic eruptions ever to occur on Earth happened in north Queensland around 280 million years ago, when some 2000 cubic kilometers of material erupted from the Featherbed volcano, located to the northeast of Chillagoe. By contrast, the 1981 eruption of Mount St Helens in Washington state, USA - which received enormous publicity - erupted 1.3 cubic kilometers of material.... The Featherbed eruption was highly explosive. Quartz rich rocks rose from great depth and, near the surface, a large amount of water dissolved in them. As the water rich molten rocks rose the last 3 kilometers through the crust to the surface, the water pressure in the rocks became far higher than pressure of the overlying rocks. The quartz rich melt became overpressurised, the overlying rocks failed and, with a decrease in the weight of the overlying rocks, the dissolved steam was catastrophically released from the molten rock.'

 

He also discusses meteorite impacts 368, 208 and 65 million years ago.

 

Another interesting point is that he uses a geological time frame (from 500 million years ago) on the side of each page (that can be seen from the edge of the book) and he also shows maps that place the Australian continent with respect to its current position.

 

And guess what Turtle, The Featherbed volcanic system was nearly a thousand miles away from the south pole (in Antarctica) between 250 and 220 million years ago!

 

I was discussing this exact same thing with a mate from Mount Isa the other day and he said they were taught that a meteorite flipped the geological plates that Mt Isa sits on. If I had read my old posts before last week I could have argued that the meteorite caused the volcanic eruption that flipped the plates.

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Could this be a mutated "earth changes" idea?

I was discussing this exact same thing with a mate from Mount Isa the other day and he said they were taught that a meteorite flipped the geological plates that Mt Isa sits on.

I don’t think it’s possible for anything to flip (capsize, turn over, etc.) a tectonic plate. Plates are big – the one with Mt Isa on it includes the entire continent of Australia and a range of ocean floor from the latitude of about the Indian peninsula to Hawaii, making it about 15,000 km wide – and thin – about 100 km undersea, 200 km above. Even if you had enough kinetic energy – my quick estimate puts the 100% efficient, minimum energy requirement at about 1030 J, about 3 times the energy needed to stop the rotation of the Earth! – there’s no way a huge, thin sheet of what’s essentially unreinforced rock could withstand the stress of being tipped.

 

I’m curious about the origins of your mate’s idea, Laurie. :QuestionM My guess is it’s a variation of an idea popular among a fringy but now worldwide community of “earth changes” proponent/believers: that the Indo-Australian plate is slowly tipping as its east edge subducts and it west edge expands (see, for example, this earth changes blog page). This appears to me to be an entirely wrong, pseudoscientific idea, for the same reason that its impossible to capsize a plate – an object as huge as a tectonic plate doesn’t behave the way everyday small rigid objects like dinner plates do, but rather is both flexible and, on a gigantic scale, fragile and crumbly. Though I’ve yet to see any sensible science come from them, I find earth changes believers an interesting bunch, sociologically, and have personally know lots of them. They've been around with more or less their present belief set for about a century.

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Though I’ve yet to see any sensible science come from them, I find earth changes believers an interesting bunch, sociologically, and have personally know lots of them. They've been around with more or less their present belief set for about a century.

 

Wow. Arrogance coupled with ignorance - what a powerful combination.

CraigD - look up Alfred Wegener, and how (as you put it) 'any sensible science came from' ....the ideas and research of people like him.

For everybody else who reads this, CraigD is such a scientist, and is so knowledgeable that he openly criticises a new idea - The Impact And Exit Event - while ignoring/dismissing the amazing (yet equally critiscised at the time) contribution of one of the key 'earth changes believers'. Mr. Wegener - the originator of the Continental Drift theory which was, of course subsequently adopted and used as the foundation of Plate Tectonic science.

CraigD's lack of knowledge is an example of EXACTLY why Mr. Wegener was ridiculed back in the early 1900's; Arrogance coupled with ignorance, and a lot of self righteousness thrown in.

Ironically, without Wegener's proposals, CraigD would not have an argument!!!!!

Oh, by the way, for those who would like to learn the truth, Wegener was eventually proven correct.

 

CraigB ?????

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Wow. Arrogance coupled with ignorance - what a powerful combination.

CraigD - look up Alfred Wegener, and how (as you put it) 'any sensible science came from' ....the ideas and research of people like him.

For everybody else who reads this, CraigD is such a scientist, and is so knowledgeable that he openly criticises a new idea - The Impact And Exit Event - while ignoring/dismissing the amazing (yet equally critiscised at the time) contribution of one of the key 'earth changes believers'. Mr. Wegener - the originator of the Continental Drift theory which was, of course subsequently adopted and used as the foundation of Plate Tectonic science.

CraigD's lack of knowledge is an example of EXACTLY why Mr. Wegener was ridiculed back in the early 1900's; Arrogance coupled with ignorance, and a lot of self righteousness thrown in.

Ironically, without Wegener's proposals, CraigD would not have an argument!!!!!

Oh, by the way, for those who would like to learn the truth, Wegener was eventually proven correct.

 

CraigB ?????

 

 

So an idea totally violating the laws of physics doesn't bother you at all? You would seriously compare a theory that doesn't violate the laws of physics as being equal to one that does? Seriously? I think the planets in the solar system are there due to an alien space ship using a tractor beam to tow them into place, is that as viable a theory as the ones that explain the solar system in natural ways?

 

It is physically impossible for an object to act the way the OP describes, no matter what angle of impact, or any other details that would seem to support this idea that one thing falsifies the idea of this impact event, then there is the fact that such an impact would have sterilized the Earth, how many times does this idea have to be trivially falsified before it dies the quick death it deserves?

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“Earth changes” =/= “continental drift”

Though I’ve yet to see any sensible science come from them, I find earth changes believers an interesting bunch, sociologically, and have personally know lots of them. They've been around with more or less their present belief set for about a century.

...

CraigD - look up Alfred Wegener, and how (as you put it) 'any sensible science came from' ....the ideas and research of people like him.

...

I think you’ve misunderstood my use of the phrase “Earth changes” (see this wikipedia article for the meaning I intended), by which I mean not to people who accept the now-mainstream scientific theory of continental drift, but people who believe, to quote the wikipedia article “the world will soon enter on a series of cataclysmic events causing major alterations in human life on the planet.”

 

Wegener was not, by any account I’ve seen or heard, a believer in these sorts of cataclysmic “Earth changes”, nor, to the best of my knowledge, is any respected scientist (Despite the resistance his ideas encountered, Wegner was respected). Well known proponents of Earth changes include mystics such as the famous Edgar Cayce, and many less famous people, such as Lothar Schwarz, the writer of the blog to which I linked in my previous post.

 

For everybody else who reads this, CraigD is such a scientist, and is so knowledgeable that he openly criticises a new idea - The Impact And Exit Event - while ignoring/dismissing the amazing (yet equally critiscised at the time) contribution of one of the key 'earth changes believers'. Mr. Wegener - the originator of the Continental Drift theory which was, of course subsequently adopted and used as the foundation of Plate Tectonic science.

The argument that if claim A is criticized as being physically impossible, then accepted in light of new evidence, and claim B is criticized as being physically impossible, then claim B will be accepted in light of new evidence, is a logical fallacy exemplified by: “Alice has hair. Alice is female. Bob has hair. Therefore, Bob is female”

 

PS: I’m flattered to be called a scientist, and a knowledgeable one at that! :) However I’m not a professional scientist, but currently a medical computer programmer, formerly a science teacher, statistician, and a science enthusiast since childhood.

 

CraigD's lack of knowledge is an example of EXACTLY why Mr. Wegener was ridiculed back in the early 1900's; Arrogance coupled with ignorance, and a lot of self righteousness thrown in.

Please read and follow hypography’s site rules, JJUK. Accusing me of arrogance, ignorance, and self righteousness is rude, offensive, and against these rules. Although many internet forums tolerate and even encourage such conduct, hypography doesn’t. This is a forum for discussion, not flaming!

 

Hint: try replacing “Arrogance coupled with ignorance, and a lot of self righteousness thrown in” with “CraigD appears to me to be arrogant and ignorant, with a lot of self righteousness thrown in”. Better, engage in some discussion (and read the linked to webpages and references I try to use to explain what I’m writing about), getting to know me better, before reaching such conclusions.

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