Question (bonus points): Name the factor in this picture that would have the greatest environmental impact.
Posted on 03/06/2016 8:35:56 PM PST by Utilizer
This month, a drilling platform will rise in the Gulf of Mexico, but it won’t be aiming for oil. Scientists will try to sink a diamond-tipped bit into the heart of Chicxulub crater—the buried remnant of the asteroid impact 66 million years ago that killed off the dinosaurs, along with most other life on the planet. They hope that the retrieved rock cores will contain clues to how life came back in the wake of the cataclysm, and whether the crater itself could have been a home for novel microbial life. And by drilling into a circular ridge inside the 180-kilometer-wide crater rim, scientists hope to settle ideas about how such “peak rings,” hallmarks of the largest impact craters, take shape.
“Chicxulub is the only preserved structure with an intact peak ring that we can get to,” says University of Texas, Austin, geophysicist Sean Gulick, co–chief scientist for the $10 million project, sponsored by the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) and the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program. “All the other ones are either on another planet, or they’ve been eroded.”
At the end of March, a specially equipped vessel will sail from the Mexican port of Progreso to a point 30 kilometers offshore. There, in water 17 meters deep, the boat will sink three pylons and raise itself above the waves, creating a stable platform. By 1 April, the team plans to start drilling, quickly churning through 500 meters of limestone that were deposited on the sea floor since the impact. After that, the drillers will extract core samples, in 3-meter-long increments, as they go deeper. For 2 months, they will work day and night in an attempt to go down another kilometer, looking for changes in rock types, cataloging microfossils, and collecting DNA samples (see figure, below).
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencemag.org ...
I am curious- when coring did anything unusual turn up the samples.
Pull tabs the odd bit of modern or not so modern society,
I understand these are core samples from down deep, but there had to be some funny to layman bits of history in samples
I never saw anything in core samples that should not have been there, in terms of rock, fossils, etc., but the cores I examined were considered to be far older than human existence.
Question (bonus points): Name the factor in this picture that would have the greatest environmental impact.
Not much ‘progress’ was made in that million years. Maybe in the last 500 or so (excluding the last 7 or 8) but a million? At least the dinosaurs weren’t full of sh*t half the time. They were too busy keepin’ it real.
LOL I was just going to type that.
Dinofarts!
Dino in front thinks, "Yep, it's a Monday!"
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/geologists-to-drill-into-heart-of-dinosaur-killing-impact/
The same story in Scientific American.
It is pretty amazing that a 14-kilometre-wide asteroid did so much damage.
Good for us, though.
Note: this topic is from 3/06/2016. Thanks Utilizer, and sorry I missed your ping.
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Note: this topic is from 3/06/2016. Thanks Utilizer, and sorry I missed your ping.
there is no physical evidence of UFO’s
The earth has lots of impact craters that are physical reality. The effort here is to study not only the crater but the possible impact material from the impacting object.
Sceptics wallow in the bliss of certainty and are unable to tolerate anything that falls outside their comfort level. The purpose of scientific endeavor is to transform the unknown into hypothesis and theory with facts rather than myth
God killed them to make way for humans. ;)
Actually, this is a secret CIA operation to raise a sunken flying saucer.
“God killed them to make way for humans.”
Maybe He only evolved them so we would have oil.
Actually, one of the better monster flicks, imo. I remember watching it on the big screen over 50 years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reptilicus
Danish miners Svend Viltorft dig up a section of a giant reptile’s tail from the frozen grounds in Lapland, where they are drilling. The section is flown to the Danish Aquarium in Copenhagen, where it is preserved in a cold room for scientific study. But due to careless mishandling, the room is left open and the section begins to thaw, only for scientists to find that it is starting to regenerate.
Professor Otto Martens, who is in charge of the Aquarium, dubs the reptilian species “Reptilicus” (upon a reporter’s suggestion) and compares its regeneration abilities to that of other animals like earthworms and starfish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=javwT9eyR9g
What do you mean by ‘tripping’?
No worries, mate. Glad you found it. :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5VBKudthII
Meteor Outburst Alert! Sudden Increase in Fireballs Worldwide May 2016
The Mayans knew.
IMO this is on the order of climate change. It’s all theory. Yes, there are craters, yes craters will put dust into the air. But there is no direct evidence that one or more craters killed off the dinosaurs.
There are dust events all the time, dust and smoke being heavier than air settle out within hours or days.
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