Posted on 10/15/2009 10:07:58 AM PDT by decimon
Boulder, CO, USA -- A mysterious basin off the coast of India could be the largest, multi-ringed impact crater the world has ever seen. And if a new study is right, it may have been responsible for killing the dinosaurs off 65 million years ago.
Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Tech University and a team of researchers took a close look at the massive Shiva basin, a submerged depression west of India that is intensely mined for its oil and gas resources. Some complex craters are among the most productive hydrocarbon sites on the planet. Chatterjee will present his research at this month's Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America in Portland, Oregon.
“If we are right, this is the largest crater known on our planet,” Chatterjee said. “A bolide of this size, perhaps 40 kilometers (25 miles) in diameter creates its own tectonics.”
By contrast, the object that struck the Yucatan Peninsula, and is commonly thought to have killed the dinosaurs was between 8 and 10 kilometers (5 and 6.2 miles) wide.
It's hard to imagine such a cataclysm. But if the team is right, the Shiva impact vaporized Earth's crust at the point of collision, leaving nothing but ultra-hot mantle material to well up in its place. It is likely that the impact enhanced the nearby Deccan Traps volcanic eruptions that covered much of western India. What's more, the impact broke the Seychelles islands off of the Indian tectonic plate, and sent them drifting toward Africa.
The geological evidence is dramatic. Shiva's outer rim forms a rough, faulted ring some 500 kilometers in diameter, encircling the central peak, known as the Bombay High, which would be 3 miles tall from the ocean floor (about the height of Mount McKinley). Most of the crater lies submerged on India's continental shelf, but where it does come ashore it is marked by tall cliffs, active faults and hot springs. The impact appears to have sheared or destroyed much of the 30-mile-thick granite layer in the western coast of India.
The team hopes to go India later this year to examine rocks drill from the center of the putative crater for clues that would prove the strange basin was formed by a gigantic impact.
“Rocks from the bottom of the crater will tell us the telltale sign of the impact event from shattered and melted target rocks. And we want to see if there are breccias, shocked quartz, and an iridium anomaly,” Chatterjee said. Asteroids are rich in iridium, and such anomalies are thought of as the fingerprint of an impact. **WHEN & WHERE**
The significance of the contemporaneous Shiva impact structure and Deccan volcanism at the KT boundary Sunday, 18 October 2009, 3:45-4:00 p.m. Oregon Convention Center, Portland Ballroom 256
View abstract, at http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2009AM/finalprogram/abstract_160197.htm. **CONTACT INFORMATION**
For on-site assistance during the 2009 Annual Meeting, 18-21 October, contact Christa Stratton in the Newsroom (7:30 a.m.-6:00 p.m. PDT), Oregon Convention Center, Room D133, +1-503-963-5708.
After the meeting contact: Sankar Chatterjee Geosciences, Texas Tech University MS Box 41053 Lubbock, Texas 79409-3191, USA +1-806-794-3287
i belive the earth is around 6 thousand years
...
Well, er, no.
The earth is a round about 8000 miles across. Not a 6000. 8<)
Certainly is reasonable that there could be a second crater from the same comet/collision.
Jupiter was clobbered recently by a series of 8 fragments, and the Decca Traps lava flows are at the same time period. Thru-earth resonances of the one Yucatan peninsula collision don’t seem to be large enough to create enough of a hole to release that much lava volume.
decimon wrote: Bang galore ping.
As opposed to a Bangalore torpedo blowing a hole in a theoretical pipeline?
decimon wrote: Bang galore ping.
As opposed to a Bangalore torpedo blowing a hole in a theoretical pipeline?
one-eyed-jack.
And wild.
Just as with Shoemaker-Levy breaking up to cause a string of collisions, there is no reason why there couldn’t have been multiple impacts at or near the same time.
>>At least those of us who believe in telescopes do...<<
Light refraction and space telescopes are the work of Satan, Satan I tells you!
>> Some complex craters are among the most productive hydrocarbon sites on the planet.
When these meteors hit they must crush a gazillion dinosaurs at a time to generate that much oil at the impact site. <<
Actually if the impact is reason there are now large amounts of easily accessible hydrocarbons it could boost the abiogenic theory of oil production...
That theory states that oil is formed in the lower cryst/mantle and heat forces it upwards. That most Oil if formed via internal non-biological processes.
The impact could create an easy means for this oil formed at deep depths to drift upwards in the crust and concentrate around the impact area for many years following the event.
>> This theory might be much closer to right than we think. There is another huge crater under the Ross ice shelf, from about the same period of time. <<
The more we learn about these impact craters the more we realize that the earth would indeed look like the moon had it not had weather and water to wear down the evidence of those events.
>> Yes, there are Freepers who believe that the earth is 6000 years old, that Adam and Eve lived among the dinosaurs (and that dino bones were put on earth by the old man in the sky to “fool us”). <<
They must think that God is like Karl Rove and is a “Magnificent Bastard”
The biggest one is the basin in South Africa, IIRC.
when someone can show me 100% scientific proof that earth is older than 10k years ill believe it. so far no proof just hopes and dreams of fake science
maybe satan put the bones in earth. the bible does say satan is the god of the earth. it also says satan will use writted words to decieve our children.
I’ve always wondered if the Yucatan event was quite big enough to cause a mass extinction all over the earth, but this thing was a monster.
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