The Carolina Bays

[Turtle]

After examining the Carolina bay craters I am convinced that their origin is the same as the origin of the craters all over Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma.

here is my places I saved from google earth

http://www.bigfatpothead.com/craters.kmz

 

I looked at the elongated craters and I followed the direction they are all pointing to. It is exactly where I say a large impact site happened in Alabama.

 

 

I was browsing google earth and found that a very large object hit the US and scraped along the surface before

 

Exploding in alabama and showering the midwest with huge rocks that left craters all over texas and arkansas.

 

Most of these craters have taken the form of small ponds.

 

The impact point is a hundred miles or so south east of huntsville Al.

 

And there is a huge impact crater that goes through 3 states.

 

The thing was so huge that it carved out the Appalachian mountains.

 

You can zoom in on them and see the serated edges of the object

 

Where it rolled and scraped the land.

 

Ronnie Smith

 

Ahhh the enthusiasm of new discovery! :weather_snowing: Having found what I believe is an 80 mile diameter crater in Chiuahuha State Mexico, I empathize with your plight. It's all in those other threads I linked if you care to have a look.

 

But, back to your finds. I have boldened your terms 'rolled' and 'scraped' because I think they don't properly describe the high-energy physics involved in an impact, particularly a large one. This is not backyard marbles. :smart: :eek2:

[bigfatpothead]

I disagree, I think it is like marbles.

 

 

 

Roland A. Duby

Brothers For Mercy

 

 

Ahhh the enthusiasm of new discovery! :weather_snowing: Having found what I believe is an 80 mile diameter crater in Chiuahuha State Mexico, I empathize with your plight. It's all in those other threads I linked if you care to have a look.

 

But, back to your finds. I have boldened your terms 'rolled' and 'scraped' because I think they don't properly describe the high-energy physics involved in an impact, particularly a large one. This is not backyard marbles. :smart: :eek2:

[Turtle]

I disagree, I think it is like marbles.

 

:smart: This is a science site, so you're gonna have to do better than that. Even on the low end of entry speed, we are talking about 20 times the speed of sound. This is high energy physics, not marbles, not billiard balls, not anything you have common familiarity with in real experience.

 

Your hazy speculations don't make up for actual geologic field studies. Is there shocked mineral(s) in the rock you suspect is an impact site? :weather_snowing:

[bigfatpothead]

again I disagree.

 

I have done a lot of shooting and experimenting with

blowing things up. I have a pretty good analitical mind and I can SEE!!

 

go look at my google earth places

http://www.bigfatpothead.com/craters.kmz

 

download it and load it into google earth.

 

now look at the impact craters I have marked.

 

they only appear in a strip going north to south

and line up perfectly with the arc in Alabama.

 

I will keep searching til I find the main chunk that got ejected.

 

The bigger ones are in the carolina bays.

I can explain the oblong craters in the carolina bays.

If you follow the direction of the oblong craters, they point right to the impact zone.

 

I am collecting evidence for my theory and I think it will pan out as true.

I will see how much shocked quartz is found in Marshall Alabama.

 

Roland A. Duby

 

Brothers For Mercy

 

 

:hyper: This is a science site, so you're gonna have to do better than that. Even on the low end of entry speed, we are talking about 20 times the speed of sound. This is high energy physics, not marbles, not billiard balls, not anything you have common familiarity with in real experience.

 

Your hazy speculations don't make up for actual geologic field studies. Is there shocked mineral(s) in the rock you suspect is an impact site? :esmoking:

[Turtle]

again I disagree. [about high-energy impacts]

 

I have done a lot of shooting and experimenting with

blowing things up. I have a pretty good analitical mind and I can SEE!!

 

Let me persuade you of your mistakeness. No facility on Earth can reproduce these kinds of material velocities, which are ~10 times as fast as the fastest rifle bullet. Here is something for your analytical mind to look at; done by the big boys. :esmoking:

 

The velocity of meteorites can reach 100 km/sec and higher. There is currently no facility that can accelerate a sample in the solid state up to such speeds to experimentally simulate a high velocity meteorite impact. But for velocities larger than 10 km/sec. the kinetic energy density in a meteorite is much larger then the material evaporation energy, so the impact can be simulated by an impulsive, local energy release. The time of release must be smaller than the impact time and the energy must be released on a scale comparable with the meteorite size. ...

Simulating High Speed Meteorite Impact Physics with Experiments on the PetaWatt

 

Results 1 - 10 of about 274,000 for high speed impact physics

high speed impact physics - Google Search

 

PS >> Killer crater found under the ice in Antarctica

...The 300-mile-wide crater lies hidden more than a mile beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. ...

[Hill]

After examining the Carolina bay craters I am convinced that their origin is the same as the origin of the craters all over Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma.

here is my places I saved from google earth

http://www.bigfatpothead.com/craters.kmz

 

I looked at the elongated craters and I followed the direction they are all pointing to. It is exactly where I say a large impact site happened in Alabama.

 

 

I was browsing google earth and found that a very large object hit the US and scraped along the surface before

 

Exploding in alabama and showering the midwest with huge rocks that left craters all over texas and arkansas.

 

Most of these craters have taken the form of small ponds.

 

 

The impact point is a hundred miles or so south east of huntsville Al.

 

And there is a huge impact crater that goes through 3 states.

 

The thing was so huge that it carved out the Appalachian mountains.

 

You can zoom in on them and see the serated edges of the object

 

Where it rolled and scraped the land.

 

Ronnie Smith

 

Your geology seems confusing BFP.

 

First:

Exploding in alabama and showering the midwest with huge rocks that left craters all over texas and arkansas. as well as Oklahoma and North Carolina

 

Most of these craters have taken the form of small ponds.

 

I am attaching my google earth places file so you can look at it yourself.

 

http://www.bigfatpothead.com/craters.kmz

 

Your placemark locates one of many man-made stock ponds in the area. Some are round. Others are oval, rectangular, and random shapes. These ponds are created in this area - and throughout the world, to water livestock. The mechanism is a bulldozer, not meteoric debris.

 

Second:

The impact point is a hundred miles or so south east of huntsville Al.

 

And there is a huge impact crater that goes through 3 states.

 

The thing was so huge that it carved out the Appalachian mountains.

 

You can zoom in on them and see the serated edges of the object

 

Where it rolled and scraped the land.

 

Here are some images I put on my site

 

 

 

http://www.bigfatpothead.com/earth/1.jpg

http://www.bigfatpothead.com/earth/2.jpg

http://www.bigfatpothead.com/earth/3.jpg

http://www.bigfatpothead.com/earth/4.jpg

 

Your screenshots of Alabama highlight geologic structures that are much older than 65,000,000 years, the time of the demise of the dinosaurs. ( Current geological models and evidence point to Chixulub Crater of the Yucatan Penninsula in Mexico as the crater that helped to end the dinosaurs' reign)

 

Source

 

The parallel stripes in the southern and western part of Alabama are rocks which were laid down during retreat of the waters of an inland sea which once almost split what is now North America. They date from less than 65 MY to over 95 MY. The rocks trending SW from the NE corner of the state are the ancient (480 MY) eroded Appalachians

 

There is a known meteor crater under Wetumpka. It is well eroded and was proven by drilling deep below the surface structures. It has a diameter of about 4 miles and is about 81 MY old. There is a link here.

[Moontanman]

Your geology seems confusing BFP.

 

First:

 

 

Your placemark locates one of many man-made stock ponds in the area. Some are round. Others are oval, rectangular, and random shapes. These ponds are created in this area - and throughout the world, to water livestock. The mechanism is a bulldozer, not meteoric debris.

 

Second:

 

 

Your screenshots of Alabama highlight geologic structures that are much older than 65,000,000 years, the time of the demise of the dinosaurs. ( Current geological models and evidence point to Chixilub Crater of the Yucatan Penninsula in Mexico as the crater that helped to end the dinosaurs' reign)

 

Source

 

The parallel stripes in the southern and western part of Alabama are rocks which were laid down during retreat of the waters of an inland sea which once almost split what is now North America. They date from less than 65 MY to over 95 MY. The rocks trending SW from the NE corner of the state are the ancient (480 MY) eroded Appalachians

 

There is a known meteor crater under Wetumpka. It is well eroded and was proven by drilling deep below the surface structures. It has a diameter of about 4 miles and is about 81 MY old. There is a link here.

 

Some of what you say may be true but the Carolina Bays are not stock pods built by bulldozers. I live there, I've heard the arguments most of my long and wicked life. They might not be meteor craters but they are not man made.

[Hill]

Some of what you say may be true but the Carolina Bays are not stock pods built by bulldozers. I live there, I've heard the arguments most of my long and wicked life. They might not be meteor craters but they are not man made.

 

Sorry if there was a misunderstanding. I was referring to his kmz file >>

http://www.bigfatpothead.com/craters.kmz (Google Earth required) which locates a stock pond in NE Texas. My original post in this thread details my opinions about the Carolina Bays.

[Moontanman]

People had lived in North Carolina, and other places, and never though much about the many small shallow lakes and ponds in the vicinity except to figure out ways to drain them and plant crops there. That changed in 1930 when the first aerial photographs of the area were taken.

The lakes were then discovered to be of about the same shape and orientation, and people began to speculate about their origin. One strong contender for awhile has been the bays are formed by winds, and or water currents. The other strong contender is that they were formed by a large meteor or comet that exploded high in the atmosphere and spewed chunks of itself over much of North America.

Recent evidence strongly supports the fragmented comet theory. Rather than duplicate everything I've gathered at the Google Earth Community Forums, I'll provide a link: Google Earth Community: The mystery of the Carolina Bays

The initial post has some links itself. The Carolina Bays has a video of a conference about event which is rather long but may be of perticular interest because it contains current information (May, 2007).

 

Great post Hill, I've been scuba diving in several of these bays and they all had an artisian spring supplying them with water. When I get rich I'm going to buy a house on one:D I won't hold my breath but they are very interesting, some of them have no outlet or inlet other than the spring. This allows for sometimes unique fish populations. More often they have been stocked with exotic fish (for the area) and have little or no trace of the orginal populations.

[bigfatpothead]

Are these MAN MADE Ponds?

http://www.bigfatpothead.com/earth/5.jpg

or these

http://www.bigfatpothead.com/earth/6.jpg

 

http://www.bigfatpothead.com/earth/7.jpg

 

 

 

 

Sorry if there was a misunderstanding. I was referring to his kmz file >>

http://www.bigfatpothead.com/craters.kmz (Google Earth required) which locates a stock pond in NE Texas. My original post in this thread details my opinions about the Carolina Bays.

[Hill]

Are these MAN MADE Ponds?

http://www.bigfatpothead.com/earth/5.jpg

or these

http://www.bigfatpothead.com/earth/6.jpg

 

http://www.bigfatpothead.com/earth/7.jpg

 

Indeed they are, as well as the first twenty of your hundred or so I looked at in your posted folder. You are getting to be very good at finding stock ponds. If you browse the globe anywhere in the world where people raise farm animals you will find them. The big empty Western states and provinces have many as does Australia, and many countries in Africa, South America and Asia and Europe. (None that I know of in Antarctica:hihi:)

 

Your eyes are sharp and if you browse the earth you will find many more things which puzzle you and amaze you. You might even get lucky and find a real meteor crater as someone in Australia recently did. The story is here: Google Earth Community: New crater discovered in Western Australia

[bigfatpothead]

I have drawn a red line from a crater to a city.

You cannot possibly believe that this is a pond for livestock!

if you zoom in on it you will see that it is full of trees.

 

http://www.bigfatpothead.com/earth/9.jpg

 

http://www.bigfatpothead.com/earth/a.jpg

 

Stock ponds are full of water, not trees.

no disrespect.

 

 

Indeed they are, as well as the first twenty of your hundred or so I looked at in your posted folder. You are getting to be very good at finding stock ponds. If you browse the globe anywhere in the world where people raise farm animals you will find them. The big empty Western states and provinces have many as does Australia, and many countries in Africa, South America and Asia and Europe. (None that I know of in Antarctica:hihi:)

 

Your eyes are sharp and if you browse the earth you will find many more things which puzzle you and amaze you. You might even get lucky and find a real meteor crater as someone in Australia recently did. The story is here: Google Earth Community: New crater discovered in Western Australia

[Hill]

I have drawn a red line from a crater to a city.

You cannot possibly believe that this is a pond for livestock!

if you zoom in on it you will see that it is full of trees.

 

http://www.bigfatpothead.com/earth/9.jpg

 

http://www.bigfatpothead.com/earth/a.jpg

 

Stock ponds are full of water, not trees.

no disrespect.

 

No disrespect was perceived. :evil: It's really fun to zoom around the globe and find things you always knew were there, but you can now see from a different vantage point. It's also fun to find things you don't understand and would like to figure out, as well as to speculate and debate about things. This is a lot about how science is done.

 

But using the right tools or knowing how to get the most out of the tools is very important. Take your screenshot 9.jpg for instance. Ponds do dry up and are often then filled by a succesion of types of vegetation. *(more on this below) That might be true in the case of the feature at the other end of the red line extending NE from Lometa, TX - if it was a pond. But it wasn't. If you make sure that terrain is on and you tilt your view, you will see that the feature is a tree covered hill.

 

a.jpg marks a spot near some oil drilling pads. Often in the course of drilling for oil or gas the drill goes through an aquifer and water come to the surface, and it looks like at least one of the wells produced some water. Other than that I see nothing special about the area imaged in screen capture a.jpg

 

* Speaking of the age of ponds and lakes, many large lakes occupied land in the American west during the last glacial period a bit over 10,000 years ago. Now with a few exceptions all that remains are salt flats. Small ponds have an even shorter life. To claim that such small water features would still exist after over 65.000,000 years of erosion and tectonic action just does not fit with what we know about geological processes.

 

The giant meteor scar you depict in Alabama is the the combination of two different geological processes which have been much studied and investigated, mountain building (uplift) in the case of the ancient Appalachians and near shore deposition of sediments from an extinct sea in the case of the southern layered rocks. The rocks from one geological province are of a much different age and type from the rocks of another province. They are related only by proximity and not history or process. The small ponds in Texas are separated from the other two by geologial time as well as process.

[bigfatpothead]

cool, You certainly are a learned fella.

This is totally fun for me.

 

I figure if it is what I think then I will be the first one to say it.

If not then it was a stoner moment for the record books.

 

I am a stand-up comic by trade.

Marijuana Man

I should have some good material from all this.

 

Roland A. Duby

 

 

No disrespect was perceived. :) It's really fun to zoom around the globe and find things you always knew were there, but you can now see from a different vantage point. It's also fun to find things you don't understand and would like to figure out, as well as to speculate and debate about things. This is a lot about how science is done.

 

But using the right tools or knowing how to get the most out of the tools is very important. Take your screenshot 9.jpg for instance. Ponds do dry up and are often then filled by a succesion of types of vegetation. *(more on this below) That might be true in the case of the feature at the other end of the red line extending NE from Lometa, TX - if it was a pond. But it wasn't. If you make sure that terrain is on and you tilt your view, you will see that the feature is a tree covered hill.

 

a.jpg marks a spot near some oil drilling pads. Often in the course of drilling for oil or gas the drill goes through an aquifer and water come to the surface, and it looks like at least one of the wells produced some water. Other than that I see nothing special about the area imaged in screen capture a.jpg

 

* Speaking of the age of ponds and lakes, many large lakes occupied land in the American west during the last glacial period a bit over 10,000 years ago. Now with a few exceptions all that remains are salt flats. Small ponds have an even shorter life. To claim that such small water features would still exist after over 65.000,000 years of erosion and tectonic action just does not fit with what we know about geological processes.

 

The giant meteor scar you depict in Alabama is the the combination of two different geological processes which have been much studied and investigated, mountain building (uplift) in the case of the ancient Appalachians and near shore deposition of sediments from an extinct sea in the case of the southern layered rocks. The rocks from one geological province are of a much different age and type from the rocks of another province. They are related only by proximity and not history or process. The small ponds in Texas are separated from the other two by geologial time as well as process.

[Moontanman]

cool, You certainly are a learned fella.

This is totally fun for me.

 

I figure if it is what I think then I will be the first one to say it.

If not then it was a stoner moment for the record books.

 

I am a stand-up comic by trade.

Marijuana Man

I should have some good material from all this.

 

Roland A. Duby

 

 

 

Wow, a stand up comic? For real, would we know you? Where are you playing? Seems you can meet almost anyone on this list, I think it says a lot about how important intellegent discussion is to most people. let me know if you are playing in my area anytime, I would love to see you.

[John L]

Let me comment a little here on the "Bays". I too was unaware of them until recently. But they are clearly the signature of an upper atmospheric detonation of cometary origin. It is rare for an Impactor to strike the atmosphere or land at a ninety degree angle. Most are less than that, and the best stikes appear to be on the 30% angle, or somewhere close to that.

 

And the reason why they show up in the Carolinas, and some other places, is because of the flat layout of the land. Those strikes on the piedmont, or higher elevations, would be masked easier, and the weathering effect would be faster as well. On a flat lowland area, such as the lower Carolinas, these 'bays' would take longer to disappear.

 

As I showed here, on another thread, there is evidence of multiple timelines involved. Look closely at the picture, and you will see that there are older impact "bays" that have been mostly covered over, and newer ones on top. This can only mean that we are continuslly being struck by Impactors.

 

And while we are able to discover and chart the tract of asteroids, this is not so easy with comets. Many of them are forever leaving the Kuiper Belt, and even the Ort Cloud, becoming drawn into Saturn's gravitational pull, and forced to assume new orbits. Furthermore, many of them are breaking up, as with Shoemaker-Levy 9, and becoming multiple missiles that present constant danger to our planet.

 

I printed this on my own forum, and will do so here, because there is more to this than meets the eye. I am talking about the effects of these HUGE comets(those 100km and over) which break up and leave smaller bombs for us to run into.

 

Here is some more Carolina Bay information. To my thinking, this has got to be Impactor related. And the dating appears to be older than the Clovis Comet timeline. If you look at this Google Earth Shot, it is like looking at the effects of a shotgun shell being fired at a target, off to a slight angle. And these landmarks are found all over the North American continent, not just in the Carolinas. This points to some HEAVY bombardment from outer space. To acheive this, the Impactor would have had to break apart, waste most of it's energy in an atmospheric burst, and then the reminents striking the earth at many places, some greater than others.

 

And here is another picture. If you look closely, you can see that there are much older ovals, that have practically disappeared, and newer ones on top of the older ones. Clearly, this is not just a "one shot" deal, but occurs constantly, geologically speaking. Sort of makes one feel less than secure from the danger of being destroyed some day when you least expect it.

 

 

This abstract does a pretty good job of covering the details of the Bays and their implications.

 

A COMET AS THE BAY FORMING MECHANISM *

 

One other aspect peculiar to comets may be important to the genesis of the Carolina Bays. Because of the volatile content in a comet nucleus, a collision trajectory may not result in actual impact. Observations of meteors and fireballs indicate that some of these objects break up as they enter the Earth's atmosphere and sometimes explode in the air.

 

The 1908 Tunguska fall in Siberia is commonly regarded as the explosion of a very small comet nucleus. Hartmann (1973, p. 146) said that the explosion, estimated to be 1021 to 1023 ergs, knocked a man off his porch 38 miles away. Trees as much as nine miles from the impact site were felled radially outward by the shock wave, whereas trees at ground zero were merely denuded of their branches and left in growth position. Baldwin (1963, p. 37) added that trees in protected locations such as deep valleys remained standing and in some cases were still alive. According to Hartmann ( p. 146), by 1928 when trained observers first visited the site, they found the impact site to be pockmarked with a series of shallow, funnel-shaped depressions of variable width but not more than four or five meters in depth. No meteorites were discovered. Baldwin (1963, p. 37) noted that in 1928 the original forest vegetation was replaced with tundra except in the craters where swampy vegetation was already well established Hartmann (1973, pp. 146-147) summarized the evidence supporting a cometary origin for the 1908 fall:

 

1. The object evidently exploded in the air, since trees at "ground zero" stood upright but were stripped of branches. A loosely consolidated ice comet nucleus would be expected to volatilize and explode before it hit the ground.

 

2. The lack of meteorite fragments is consistent with our picture of a predominantly icy nucleus.

 

3. A 1961 expedition recovered soil samples that contained small spherules believed to be part of the object. The spherules would be consistent with the idea of an admixture of small grains of non-icy "dirt" in the dirty iceberg and their spherical shape could be the result of sudden melting during the explosion.

 

4. Observations of the motion of the object across the sky indicated that it was traveling toward the earth probably in retrograde motion at a very high velocity, perhaps 50 km/sec, which would be typical of a comet but not of ordinary meteorites. .

 

5. For weeks afterward, the night sky in Europe and Russia was anomalously bright. This may have been due in part to atmospheric interaction with tail and coma material (although the comet was too small to have been noticed prior to the collision, being on the order 101g to 1011g in mass instead of about 1018g, typical of observed comets).

 

Multiple shallow craters of variable widths, a climax vegetation destroyed except where topographically protected, the absence of meteoritic finds, a high velocity but low angle trajectory, plus a shock wave felt at least 38 miles and heard 620 miles from the impact site suggest a cometary explosion before actual impact. Hartmann stated that the Tunguska fall was a small comet nucleus. If such a singular event happened once, it could happen at least once more.

 

But if you think that this is less than worrisome, consider this. While these impactors break up in the atmosphere, there are many more that actually expend their energy upon striking the planet. There is no way of telling which is tme more prevelent, but there are still many, may earth strikes.

 

Also, it is slowly becoming clear that most major disruptions to human civilization were the direct result of celestial impacts, which disrupted the agricultural and climate conditions, resulting in collapses of civilizations. Even the "so called" Dark Ages are now being attributed to the aftermath of bombardment.

 

The Dark Ages : Were They Darker Than We Imagined?, By Greg Bryant. This is a very fascinating article. Here is some of it.

 

Mike Baillie is Professor of Palaeoecology at Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. He is an authority on tree rings and their use in dating ancient events (every year, a tree adds a "ring" to its trunk as it grows - good years are represented by thick rings while bad years are represented by thin rings). He conducted a complete (and continuous) review of annual global tree growth patterns over the last 5,000 years and found that there were five major environmental shocks that were witnessed worldwide. These shocks were reflected in the ring widths being very thin. Wanting to know more, he turned to human historical records, and found that the years in question (between 2354 and 2345 BC, 1628 and 1623 BC, 1159 and 1141 BC, 208 and 204 BC, and AD 536 and 545) all corresponded with "dark ages" in civilisation.

 

Most people who are fairly knowledgable of astronomy, are familiar with the Torids, a meteor show(comet debris tail) that the earth goes through annually. Usually it is accompanied by a shower of debris, known to have come from the bread-up of the comet Encke, which had to have been one HUGE comet. But we do not cross it's main path often.

 

The calculations for the Taurids suggest that we pass through the core of the meteor stream approximately every 2,500 years - today, we are passing through the outer edges. The last two occasions when we passed through the core were in 2200 - 2000 BC and in AD 400 - 600. The epoch around AD 3000 looks like being a fun time too - the Y2K doomsayers can always say they just got the millennium wrong.

 

If you will note the dates above. The first timeline, 2200-2000 coincides with the end of the Bronze Age, and the 400-600 period that of the Dark Ages. Could this be just a coincidence? My guess is no.

 

"A large fraction of the objects on Earth-crossing orbits, of all dimensions, are the daughter products from the break-up of a giant comet some time during the past 100,000 years, dynamical studies suggesting around 20,000 years as likely. All that is suggested here is a break-up similar to that undergone by P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 in 1992, except by a comet at least 100 kilometres across and in an orbit crossing from Jupiter to the Earth.

 

The core of the complex...evolves to have a node near 1 AU every millennium or so, at which time the Earth is bombarded by many [large] objects in episodes at certain times of year. It is these events that dominate the hazard to humankind. Such an episode would last for a century or two."

 

We have a pretty good idea that there are some HUGE comets out there in the Ort Cloud, and they are mainly long term comets, so we cannot project their danger until they enter the inner solar system, and are affected by Jupiter's gravitational pull, which will alter it's orbital path. If a comet can be 100 km or more, the danger presented it unimaginable.

 

Also, remember, asteroids are made up of the same material as that of comets. All are material from the original forming of the solar system. The only difference is that comets still retain a larger amount of volatile, frozen gasses, that have not vented out. But they still have large amounts of solid components. And most inner orbital asteroids are nothing more than comets that have already broken up and assumed more stable orbits.

 

Is Global Warming worth worrying about? Should we be worried about a warmer planet? Or should be be Really concerned about some huge object dropping in, from outer space, and obliterating civilization, on moment's notice? I'll let you decide that one, I've already made up my mind, a long time ago. :wink: [/size]

[Turtle]

As I showed here, on another thread, there is evidence of multiple timelines involved. Look closely at the picture, and you will see that there are older impact "bays" that have been mostly covered over, and newer ones on top. This can only mean that we are continuslly being struck by Impactors.

 

And while we are able to discover and chart the tract of asteroids, this is not so easy with comets. Many of them are forever leaving the Kuiper Belt, and even the Ort Cloud, becoming drawn into Saturn's gravitational pull, and forced to assume new orbits. Furthermore, many of them are breaking up, as with Shoemaker-Levy 9, and becoming multiple missiles that present constant danger to our planet.

 

I printed this on my own forum, and will do so here, because there is more to this than meets the eye. I am talking about the effects of these HUGE comets(those 100km and over) which break up and leave smaller bombs for us to run into.

 

I recalled your statement I have boldened, when I read this article today that gives a similar description. The dates in your quote overlap as well for the Kreutz 'event'. :hihi: Thanks for the post. :shade:

SUNGRAZING COMET: Note to comets: Don't get too close to the sun. Yesterday, June 16th, one did and suffered the consequences, disintegrating as the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) looked on:

 

 

Click to play a 1 MB movie: http://www.spaceweather.com/images2008/16jun08/c2_big.gif?PHPSESSID=hr3663vjmf9r51jf5o0l32f824

 

The comet goes in but nothing comes out. It's what usually happens when fierce sunlight beats down on the fragile, icy nucleus of a kamikaze comet. This one was probably a member of the Kreutz sungrazer family. Named after the 19th century German astronomer who studied them in detail, Kreutz sungrazers are fragments from the breakup of a giant comet 2000+ years ago. Every day, one or two fragments pass by the sun and disintegrate. Most are too small to see, but occasionally a big one catches our attention--all the more reason to keep an eye on the sun.

 

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