Posted on 11/28/2008 7:56:19 PM PST by SunkenCiv
About 1,100 years ago a space rock the size of a big tree stump slammed into western Canada, carving an amphitheater-like crater into the ground and littering it with meteorites, a new study found. The rock that made the newly identified crater might have created a sky show similar to the one that tore across northern Alberta's skies in the early evening hours of November 20. But unlike the recent fireball -- which broke apart as it streaked through Earth's atmosphere -- the meteorite that carved the newly announced crater would have stayed solid until impact... Meteorites, objects from space that hit Earth, often come from asteroids. Only about 175 impact craters are known worldwide, and when a space rock does slam into Earth with enough force to create a crater, the rock almost always evaporates on impact.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalgeographic.com ...
No, Global Warming.
The jokes just get crater and crater around here.
I admit, if you have to label it, it’s a bad joke.
Abstract:
Small impact events recorded on the surface of Earth are significantly underrepresented based on expected magnitude-frequency relations. We report the discovery of a 36-m-diameter late Holocene impact crater located in a forested area near the town of Whitecourt, Alberta, Canada. Although undetectable using visible imagery, the presence of the crater is revealed using a bare-Earth digital elevation model obtained through airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR). The target material comprises deglacial Quaternary sediments, with impact ejecta burying a late Holocene soil dated to ca. 1100 14C yr B.P. Most of the 74 iron meteorites (0.11196 g) recovered have an angular exterior morphology. These meteorites were buried at depths <25 cm and are interpreted to result from fragmentation of the original projectile mass, either at low altitude or during the impact event. Impact of the main mass formed the simple bowl-shaped impact structure associated with an ejecta blanket and crater fill. The increasing availability of LiDAR data for many terrestrial surfaces will serve as a useful tool in the discovery of additional small impact features.Herd C, Froese D, Walton E, Kofman R, Herd E, et al. (2008) Anatomy of a young impact event in central Alberta, Canada: Prospects for the missing Holocene impact record. Geology: Vol. 36, No. 12 pp. 955958
I ♥ LIDAR!
See, see Al Gore is right the sky really is falling !!!!!!
(Or should that be "behalves"?)
Nice find
Access: The Hart Mountain Antelope Refuge Road runs right by this larger circle site within the Harney Basin near the Warner Mountains in the South East corner of Oregon. The area is grassland with a desert mix.
The largest circle is over 2,000 feet wide and appears to be a spiral shape. The smaller spiral can be seen faintly to the SW and it's over 1,000 feet wide.
*ping*
“The target material comprises deglacial Quaternary sediments, with impact ejecta burying a late Holocene soil dated to ca. 1100 14C yr B.P.”
BP= Before Present, but you need to calibrate Present as it changes every year. So the origin is normally set to 1950. That would indicate that the impact was around 1950 - 1100 = around the year A.D. 850. (and not around 2008- 1100)
I checked the Chronicle http://omacl.org/Anglo/part2.html It has no record of extreme weather etc at around 850.
“Saw a GREEN meteor one night, it was supercool...
Are you “Den?”
...obscure Heavy Metal reference...”
OOlahtech, come forth - I summon you........
Perhaps his nae was Ard, and not Den...
Equally obscure Heavy Metal reference. I remember watching that movie the first time totally trashed, back while I was in college. Wow...
I have the soundtrack to the movie - on vinly........
It's something they've been working on their whole life.
But the spirals from Ireland may be a closer match:
You are correct in your estimate on the radiocarbon date. (We have to assume that it is a calibrated intercept.)
There was a warmer and drier episode that started somewhat after that date; that's the Medieval Warm Period or Medieval Climate Optimum. I would very much doubt if they were related.
thanks for the comment, I do see similarities, but one of the Google Earth images of the circles in Oregon are supposedly 2,000 feet wide! (That’s a HUGE petroglyph!)
Got the 2,000 ft. thing. And they only reminded me. Not like my life is spinning Largely out of control...or something...
And I have seen The Lion King (Disney). So fauna engaged in some weird trance dance wouldna surprise me at all, no, not at all. (It’s the Circle of Life!!)
And there is always Nazca.
...and the geoglyphs of the Acatama Desert:
http://weird-google.blogspot.com/2008/07/google-earth-acatama-giant.html
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