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Did a Pacific Ocean meteor trigger the Ice Age?
PhysOrg ^ | 9-19-2012

Posted on 09/20/2012 5:02:02 AM PDT by Renfield

(Phys.org)—When a huge meteor collided with Earth about 2.5 million years ago in the southern Pacific Ocean it not only likely generated a massive tsunami but also may have plunged the world into the Ice Ages, a new study suggests.

A team of Australian researchers says that because the Eltanin meteor – which was up to two kilometres across - crashed into deep water, most scientists have not adequately considered either its potential for immediate catastrophic impacts on coastlines around the Pacific rim or its capacity to destabilise the entire planet's climate system.

"This is the only known deep-ocean impact event on the planet and it's largely been forgotten because there's no obvious giant crater to investigate, as there would have been if it had hit a landmass," says Professor James Goff, lead author of a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Quaternary Science. Goff is co-director of UNSW's Australia-Pacific Tsunami Research Centre and Natural Hazards Research Laboratory....

(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...


TOPICS: Astronomy; History; Science
KEYWORDS: antarctic; antarctica; archaeology; arctic; atlantis; bellingshausensea; catastrophism; eltanin; eltanincrater; eltaninimpact; eltaninimpactcrater; emiliospedicato; extinction; glaciation; globalwarminghoax; godsgravesglyphs; history; iceage; iceages; impact; iridium; jamesgoff; massextinction; meteorite; pacific; pacificocean; pleistocene; spedicato; tsunami; velaincident; vindicationatlast
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1 posted on 09/20/2012 5:02:10 AM PDT by Renfield
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To: Renfield

What about Burkle? Not deep enough?


2 posted on 09/20/2012 5:04:35 AM PDT by DBrow
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To: SunkenCiv

Catastrophism ping


3 posted on 09/20/2012 5:05:36 AM PDT by Renfield (Turning apples into venison since 1999!)
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To: Renfield

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1248414/posts

Related post from long ago


4 posted on 09/20/2012 5:11:10 AM PDT by DBrow
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To: Renfield

2.5 million years ago, and it’s still Bush’s fault.


5 posted on 09/20/2012 5:17:01 AM PDT by Darteaus94025
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To: Renfield

My understanding was that ice ages are cyclical due to a pattern of variation in Earths orbit around the sun.


6 posted on 09/20/2012 5:19:51 AM PDT by AndyTheBear
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To: AndyTheBear

I was under the same impression...but I believe, it is also connected to the joining of north and south American changing the ocean flow.....


7 posted on 09/20/2012 5:22:49 AM PDT by Vaquero (Don't pick a fight with an old guy. If he is too old to fight, he'll just kill you.)
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To: AndyTheBear

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles


8 posted on 09/20/2012 5:22:49 AM PDT by AndyTheBear
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To: Vaquero

Ok, so why is the article even talking about “the” ice age...as if there were only one?


9 posted on 09/20/2012 5:25:58 AM PDT by AndyTheBear
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To: Renfield

So I guess meteors have more or less regularly been hitting the earth every 100,000 years or so to cause the alternating glacial periods separated by a 10,000 or so interglacial warm period.


10 posted on 09/20/2012 5:30:45 AM PDT by aruanan
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To: AndyTheBear

Even at the height of this GLobull Warming hysteria, the sad irony is that no one ever mentions the fact that we are still in an Ice Age - albeit an Interglacial Warm Period.


11 posted on 09/20/2012 5:38:02 AM PDT by ohioman
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To: Renfield

Good find! Thanks!


12 posted on 09/20/2012 6:10:36 AM PDT by Graewoulf ((Traitor John Roberts' Obama"care" violates Sherman Anti-Trust Law, AND the U.S. Constitution.))
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To: AndyTheBear

The ice ages appear in cycles. But this isn’t speculating about why they have a cyclical nature, but rather what caused the first cycle.

Much more convincing as a cause was the discovery that ice age cycles occur when there is a continent at the South Pole.


13 posted on 09/20/2012 6:24:40 AM PDT by dangus
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To: Renfield

Oooh, I’m looking forward to this. But I’ll look when I’m somewhere that it’s easier.


14 posted on 09/20/2012 2:07:03 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: aruanan

15 posted on 09/20/2012 2:16:57 PM PDT by ctdonath2 ($1 meals: http://abuckaplate.blogspot.com)
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To: Renfield; DBrow; 75thOVI; agrace; aimhigh; Alice in Wonderland; AndrewC; aragorn; aristotleman; ...
Thanks Renfield, and thanks DBrow for that link.
Vindicated at last!


16 posted on 09/20/2012 4:23:00 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: StayAt HomeMother; Ernest_at_the_Beach; decimon; 1010RD; 21twelve; 24Karet; 2ndDivisionVet; ...

 GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach
Thanks Renfield, and thanks DBrow for that link.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.


17 posted on 09/20/2012 4:23:09 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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Emilio Spedicato's idea (circa the 1990s) is that ice ages are caused by impacts on land, and ended by impacts on water; that seemed wrong immediately, but gave me a thwack on the forehead -- ice ages are caused by impacts on water, always, and they end due to the fact that the distance to the Sun doesn't change much, and basically everything thaws out. This explains the ice distribution, and permits ballparking the location of the originating impact (or impacts, in the case of doublet impacts).
18 posted on 09/20/2012 5:29:35 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: ctdonath2

Nice graphic. Notice how the past four glacial periods have been increasingly colder? The trend of the interglacials is decreasing average temperature. And the temperature trend of the last 2000 years has been downward. I don’t think we have a whole lot of time left until the next deep freeze.


19 posted on 09/20/2012 8:20:56 PM PDT by aruanan
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To: aruanan

Methinks the only thing saving us from a deep cooling now is ... “global warming”.


20 posted on 09/20/2012 8:46:06 PM PDT by ctdonath2 ($1 meals: http://abuckaplate.blogspot.com)
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