Giant asteroid rocked Antarctica

Near Earth Object Information Centre ^ | 8/20/2004 | staff

[SunkenCiv]

The collision happened around 870 000 years ago, a time when Homo erectus, man’s early ancestor, was still roaming the planet. Molten asteroid slabs melted through more than 1.5 kilometres of ice and snow to reach the underlying bedrock... Billions of tons of ice, snow and rock would have been vaporised and thrown into the atmosphere. Rock particles that fell to the ground have been located more that 5 000 kilometres away in Australia. The impact was so immense that it is being considered as the cause of a reversal of the Earth’s magnetic polarity around this time. One enormous asteroid crater measuring 320 kilometres across, 100 kilometres wide and 500 metres deep has long been known to be underneath the Antarctic ice and snow, since being discovered in 1960. Using new satellite technology to help detect magnetic anomalies, scientists located up to five new impact craters. Three of them are on the continental land mass and two more are in the Weddell Sea.

[SunkenCiv]

"Ice" to see ya.

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[SunkenCiv]

Gods, Graves, Glyphs ping.

[bayourod]

"The collision happened around 870 000 years ago,"

Old news, as Clinton would say.

[Texas Eagle]

And they say doing drugs is a victimless crime.

[SunkenCiv]

Sure, but I didn't want to put "868,000 B.C." as the date of the article. ;')

[txhurl]

Yes, I often wonder if the huge glyphs and megaliths aren't really ways to say 'please stop chunking these rocks - we're friendly' - and 'well, if they're going to keep chunking them, let's find a way to predict them'.

[coconutt2000]

Maybe the rocks are glyphs for FU too...

[ProudVet77]

Check the growth rings on Al Gore and check for that time like to see if the atmosphere was effected.

[ValerieUSA]

So how deep did the impact crater go? Did it have an effect on Antarctic volcanoes? Are there/were there parts of Antarctica that are green and growing?

[SunkenCiv]

Yeah, I've noticed.

[SunkenCiv]

The article sez 1.5 kilometers, which is a bit less (110 yards) less than a mile, into the ice. There is at least one active volcano in Antarctica, on land, and I believe at least one under the submarine ice.

Among the first fossils returned from Antarctica were of beech trees, between 2 and 3 million years old, from about 200 miles away from the Pole. This means the climate got no worse than ordinary winters, not the permafrozen, ice covered wasteland seen today.

See the "Eltanin Impact Crater" topic, which is just a few minutes younger than this one, regarding an impact near Antarctica a bit more than 2 million years ago. The Eltanin impact was identified during the International Geophysical Year (IGY) which began I think in 1955, but didn't end until the 1960s sometime. It was a long year. ;')

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[ForGod'sSake]

Using new satellite technology to help detect magnetic anomalies, scientists located up to five new impact craters. Three of them are on the continental land mass and two more are in the Weddell Sea.

I wonder if this new satellite technology will eventually show that the earth is pockmarked to the extent that if resembles the moon? That is, would resemble the moon but for the geologic forces here; absent on the moon?

Thanks for another interesting read.

FGS

[SunkenCiv]

The seeming lack of craters was more a psychological problem than a physical one. While erosion changes the look here and there, the surface of the Earth has quite a few craters, and more are bound to show up as more people are looking. Besides Barringer/Meteor Crater in AZ, Shoemaker also proved the Ries Basin in Germany was formed by impact. The dominant force shaping the lunar surface OTOH is impact. Erosion on the lunar surface is due to micrometeorites, which don't reach the surface of the Earth (other than as slow-settling dust).

http://www.solarviews.com/eng/tercrate.htm

[SunkenCiv]

The Eltanin Impact Crater
Geological Society of America ^ | October 27-30, 2002
Christy A. Glatz, Dallas H. Abbott, and Alice A. Nunes
Posted on 10/17/2004 9:46:13 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1248414/posts

[smonk]

interesting, to be sure. but from the headline, I thought this happened Friday night, or so.

[SunkenCiv]

:') related topic, posted today, but from 1986 source:

Forests Frozen In Time
Science Frontiers (#51) ^ | May-Jun 1987 | William R. Corliss
Posted on 01/15/2005 3:53:29 PM PST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1321587/posts

[SunkenCiv]

[SunkenCiv]

[SunkenCiv]

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