Comet smashes triggered ancient famine [ March 536 AD ]

New Scientist ^ | January 7, 2009 | Ker Than

[SunkenCiv]

Multiple comet impacts around 1500 years ago triggered a "dry fog" that plunged half the world into famine.

Historical records tell us that from the beginning of March 536 AD, a fog of dust blanketed the atmosphere for 18 months. During this time, "the sun gave no more light than the moon", global temperatures plummeted and crops failed, says Dallas Abbott of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York...

Now Abbott and her team have found the first direct evidence that multiple impacts caused the haze. They found tiny balls of condensed rock vapour or "spherules" in debris inside Greenland ice cores dating back to early 536 AD. Though the spherules' chemistry suggests they did not belong to an impactor, they do point to terrestrial debris ejected into the atmosphere by an impact event, Abbott says. "This is the first concrete geological evidence for an impact at 536 AD," she says.

The fallout material was also laid down over several years, and some layers were particularly densely deposited. This suggests more than one impactor was involved -- probably a comet, because they tend to fragment on their way to Earth.

Abbott and her team have identified two possible underwater craters whose age ranges fit the global dimming event. The first appears to have formed when an object roughly 640 metres wide slammed into the Gulf of Carpentaria in Australia, and the other when a smaller object crashed into the North Sea near Norway.

Marine microfossils found with the impact spherules are also consistent with an ocean impact. "There's clearly stuff that has been transported a long distance," says Abbott, who presented the team's findings at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco last month.

[SunkenCiv]

This topic was posted 1/9/2009, ping message update.

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The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: Flood, Fire, and Famine in the History of Civilization by Richard Firestone, Allen West, and Simon Warwick-Smith

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• Black Death may have scuppered Roman Empire [01/28/2014]
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• Living In The 'Bowels Of The Earth' [06/04/2008]
• Plague Victims Discovered After 1500 Years (Justinian) [04/10/2008]
• Ancient Global Dimming Linked to Volcanic Eruption (The Dark Ages) [03/19/2008]
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• Tale Of (King) Arthur Points To Comet Catastrophe [04/21/2006]
• Bubonic Plague Traced To Ancient Egypt (Black Death) [03/11/2004]
• Astronomers unravel a mystery of the Dark Ages [02/03/2004]
• The Dark Ages: Were They Darker Than We Imagined? [06/08/2003]
• WERE THE DARK AGES REALLY DARK? [12/10/2002]
• The Dark Ages: Were They Darker Than We Imagined? [09/24/2002]
• Did Asteroids And Comets Turn The Tides Of Civilization? [07/11/2002]