It's Official: An Asteroid Wiped Out the Dinosaurs

Reuters ^ | 03/05/2010 | Kate Kelland

[AndyJackson]

It is a tough job, but someone had to do it.

[refermech]

None the less, us mere mortals are very suspicious of you eggheads because of all the frauds you have perpetrated over the years. And that IS settled science.

[AndyJackson]

Well someone here is. In fact, it was the revolution in the subject that Luis Alvarez and his colleagues produced. It lead to a lot of resentment among those who had theories about all sorts of things. THAT is the issue that this pronouncement was designed to settle, i.e. that there is a broad scientific consensus that those who continue to oppose the notion that asteroid impacts have had catastrophic consequences are bitter-enders, to use Rumsfeld’s phrase.

[AndyJackson]

Be as skeptical as you like. It is fine. I am probably more skeptical than any of you on most subjects. This one, however, is sound science backed by one of the most careful experimental physicists of all history.

[PIF]

How perseptive! - that’s exactly the article I was searching for - mind reader? Thanks - whatever your “methods”.

[Thermalseeker]

So they have ruled out gamma ray bursts, the effects of a weakened magnetic field, and the eruption of a supervolcano?

Not to mention a viral pandemic.....

[MestaMachine]

Your attitude is why “science” continues to be baffled by what is right in front of their noses. Science, as some practice it today, is so utterly without merit, has been proven wrong so often, that I truly wonder what ever happened to logic and common sense.
It is more about peer review and getting grants than doing science. It is chauvinistic, dishonest, and petty at so many levels I can barely contain my disdain.

So there!

[ETL]

You come across as more of an arrogant left-wing academic elitist than rational scientist. Are you as nasty on the job with your colleagues? I’ll ask again, how many conferences have you been kicked out of?

[refermech]

Just for the record, I think this asteroid theory is as good as any I have seen. It’s a little like arguing about the existence of god. Many things point to gods existence but none can be proven.

[MestaMachine]

Oh boy! THAT was cute.

It is possible that the earth was on the receiving end of a massive solar event. Vocanoes were far more plentiful then as well. But then again, they believed, and have since been proven wrong, that dinosaurs were all reptiles. Not so. So trying to convince me that they KNOW something they could not possibly know is pretty futile. Lots of things are possible. Including the “improbable.”

[ConservativeMan55]

No problem!

[silverleaf]

oh, for the good old days of Ptolemy when settled science was much more simple

[ETL]

"Robert T. Bakker (born March 24, 1945) is an American paleontologist who helped reshape modern theories about dinosaurs"
______________________________________________

BAKKER: "The final dino-die offs were also complicated. You see the beginning of the crash in North American diversity about 72 million years ago, in the Horseshoe Canyon Fauna. Only a very few big dinosaurs have large numbers. In the Lancian Fauna, 67 to 65.5 million years ago, we still have some dinosaurs but only two herbivores are common: Triceratops and Edmontosaurus. Then, at 65.4 million years ago, all the remaining big dinos go extinct.

These pulses of dino die-offs probably coincide with pulses of faunal interchange among the continents.

Conclusion: the Cretaceous dino extinctions were complicated in time and space. They did not happen suddenly all over the globe."

http://blog.hmns.org/?p=5373

[MestaMachine]

SEARCHING for the truth is far different than expounding a theory and CALLING it truth.
Just saying...

[bonnieblue4me]

Okay, so tell us how you really feel.

[bonnieblue4me]

global warming!

[bonnieblue4me]

Does it really matter? Theories are interesting, as is the science and process, but in the end, they died. Does it really matter if they died from an asteroid impact, a comet fly-by, a volcano, starvation, cannibalism, wars, cars, global warming, global cooling, guns, or anything else? They’re dead, we’re here. Learn to deal with and adapt to the present with lessons learned from relevant past events of which we could have some control in the outcome, while hoping for a better future. The past is important, but nothing can be done to change it. If the same fate awaits us, what can be done to alter that fate? Nothing! Some of us know what will happen to us; as for the rest, only they can change their final fate through acceptance, grace and faith.

[ml/nj]

Just put forward another hypothesis and show that it is a better explanatory fit for the data than the preferred hypothesis.

Uh. "Better" doesn't work in real science. An hypothesis must remain uncontradicted.

ML/NJ

[BrandtMichaels]

It’s not even empirical science! It’s historical iow it can not be tested/re-produced therefore it is highly subjective. The hypothesis is just the best guess so far.

Folks that talk like you seem to think science is a deity and has already solved most everything. The fact is the body of knowledge that we don’t know is at least 100 times larger than what we do know. And some stuff we may never know.

But please don’t let any of that stop you from beating your chest. /s

[AndyJackson]

It’s not even empirical science! It’s historical

WTF are you talking about? If it happened of course it is empirical. We can measure soil samples, etc. with exquisite precision over and over again and make our measurements better and better.