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BIG BANG IN ANTARCTICA -- KILLER CRATER FOUND UNDER ICE
Ohio State University ^ | 01 June 2006 | Staff (press release)

Posted on 06/01/2006 2:26:58 PM PDT by PatrickHenry

Ancient mega-catastrophe paved way for the dinosaurs, spawned Australian continent.

Planetary scientists have found evidence of a meteor impact much larger and earlier than the one that killed the dinosaurs -- an impact that they believe caused the biggest mass extinction in Earth's history.

The 300-mile-wide crater lies hidden more than a mile beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. And the gravity measurements that reveal its existence suggest that it could date back about 250 million years -- the time of the Permian-Triassic extinction, when almost all animal life on Earth died out.

Its size and location -- in the Wilkes Land region of East Antarctica, south of Australia -- also suggest that it could have begun the breakup of the Gondwana supercontinent by creating the tectonic rift that pushed Australia northward.

Scientists believe that the Permian-Triassic extinction paved the way for the dinosaurs to rise to prominence. The Wilkes Land crater is more than twice the size of the Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan peninsula, which marks the impact that may have ultimately killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The Chicxulub meteor is thought to have been 6 miles wide, while the Wilkes Land meteor could have been up to 30 miles wide -- four or five times wider.

"This Wilkes Land impact is much bigger than the impact that killed the dinosaurs, and probably would have caused catastrophic damage at the time," said Ralph von Frese, a professor of geological sciences at Ohio State University.

He and Laramie Potts, a postdoctoral researcher in geological sciences, led the team that discovered the crater. They collaborated with other Ohio State and NASA scientists, as well as international partners from Russia and Korea. They reported their preliminary results in a recent poster session at the American Geophysical Union Joint Assembly meeting in Baltimore.

The scientists used gravity fluctuations measured by NASA's GRACE satellites to peer beneath Antarctica's icy surface, and found a 200-mile-wide plug of mantle material -- a mass concentration, or "mascon" in geological parlance -- that had risen up into the Earth's crust.

Mascons are the planetary equivalent of a bump on the head. They form where large objects slam into a planet's surface. Upon impact, the denser mantle layer bounces up into the overlying crust, which holds it in place beneath the crater.

When the scientists overlaid their gravity image with airborne radar images of the ground beneath the ice, they found the mascon perfectly centered inside a circular ridge some 300 miles wide -- a crater easily large enough to hold the state of Ohio.

Taken alone, the ridge structure wouldn't prove anything. But to von Frese, the addition of the mascon means "impact." Years of studying similar impacts on the moon have honed his ability to find them.

"If I saw this same mascon signal on the moon, I'd expect to see a crater around it," he said. "And when we looked at the ice-probing airborne radar, there it was."

"There are at least 20 impact craters this size or larger on the moon, so it is not surprising to find one here," he continued. "The active geology of the Earth likely scrubbed its surface clean of many more."

He and Potts admitted that such signals are open to interpretation. Even with radar and gravity measurements, scientists are only just beginning to understand what's happening inside the planet. Still, von Frese said that the circumstances of the radar and mascon signals support their interpretation.

"We compared two completely different data sets taken under different conditions, and they matched up," he said.

To estimate when the impact took place, the scientists took a clue from the fact that the mascon is still visible.

"On the moon, you can look at craters, and the mascons are still there," von Frese said. "But on Earth, it's unusual to find mascons, because the planet is geologically active. The interior eventually recovers and the mascon goes away." He cited the very large and much older Vredefort crater in South Africa that must have once had a mascon, but no evidence of it can be seen now.

"Based on what we know about the geologic history of the region, this Wilkes Land mascon formed recently by geologic standards -- probably about 250 million years ago," he said. "In another half a billion years, the Wilkes Land mascon will probably disappear, too."

Approximately 100 million years ago, Australia split from the ancient Gondwana supercontinent and began drifting north, pushed away by the expansion of a rift valley into the eastern Indian Ocean. The rift cuts directly through the crater, so the impact may have helped the rift to form, von Frese said.

But the more immediate effects of the impact would have devastated life on Earth.

"All the environmental changes that would have resulted from the impact would have created a highly caustic environment that was really hard to endure. So it makes sense that a lot of life went extinct at that time," he said.

He and Potts would like to go to Antarctica to confirm the finding. The best evidence would come from the rocks within the crater. Since the cost of drilling through more than a mile of ice to reach these rocks directly is prohibitive, they want to hunt for them at the base of the ice along the coast where the ice streams are pushing scoured rock into the sea. Airborne gravity and magnetic surveys would also be very useful for testing their interpretation of the satellite data, they said.

NSF and NASA funded this work. Collaborators included Stuart Wells and Orlando Hernandez, graduate students in geological sciences at Ohio State; Luis Gaya-Piqué and Hyung Rae Kim, both of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center; Alexander Golynsky of the All-Russia Research Institute for Geology and Mineral Resources of the World Ocean; and Jeong Woo Kim and Jong Sun Hwang, both of Sejong University in Korea.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: antarctic; antarctica; bolide; canopy; catastrophism; chicxulub; creation; crevolist; deccantraps; evolution; extinction; godsgravesglyphs; greatdying; impact; impactcraters; lakevostok; massextinction; meteor; meteorimpact; ohsomysteriouso; permian; ptextinction; russia; stalactites; stalagmites; thegreatdying; velaincident; velikovsky
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To: PatrickHenry

I was expecting another thread about Anna Nicole


21 posted on 06/01/2006 2:38:00 PM PDT by cripplecreek (Never a minigun handy when you need one.)
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To: The_Victor

But God put some ice on it ...


22 posted on 06/01/2006 2:38:52 PM PDT by MHGinTN (If you can read this, you've had life support from someone. Promote life support for others.)
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To: Altair333

I'm sure that Gore and RFKjr will explain to us how this was caused by those wascally wepublicans and will be again if they aren't voted out in 06


23 posted on 06/01/2006 2:39:27 PM PDT by KC Burke (Men of intemperate minds can never be free....)
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To: PatrickHenry
Everybody be nice.

First you people want everyone to bow at the feet of Darwin, now you want us to believe that Gaia evolves? Ha! [/creationoid mode]

24 posted on 06/01/2006 2:40:03 PM PDT by narby
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To: Robert A. Cook, PE
why did the mass they found underneath stay with the surface rock?

Global cooling??

Uhhhhhh.... global warming?

Dunno. I wuz joking.

25 posted on 06/01/2006 2:40:03 PM PDT by angkor
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To: PatrickHenry
A 300-mile-wide crater?

:whistles:

Surfs up dudes!

26 posted on 06/01/2006 2:40:20 PM PDT by Harmless Teddy Bear (Every lady in this land hath 20 nails on each hand five and twenty on hand and feet)
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bump


27 posted on 06/01/2006 2:43:25 PM PDT by Dark Skies
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To: PatrickHenry

Yep!
It probably was brought about by all of the SUVs roaming around causing GLOBAL WARMING, eventually attracting the comet to that region......


28 posted on 06/01/2006 2:44:13 PM PDT by G Larry (Only strict constructionists on the Supreme Court!)
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To: DBrow

I don't think there is an irridium layer associated with it. Don't ask me why there wouldn't be an irridium layer, I don't have a clue


29 posted on 06/01/2006 2:44:23 PM PDT by bobdsmith
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To: PatrickHenry

That's not a mascon, that's a Shoggoth.


30 posted on 06/01/2006 2:44:57 PM PDT by Ruddles
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To: PatrickHenry
Since the cost of drilling through more than a mile of ice to reach these rocks directly is prohibitive...


um... they might want to try a few phosphorous grenades instead of drilling.
31 posted on 06/01/2006 2:45:12 PM PDT by conservative physics
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I must brag a little bit. If you Google for this story, you may find one hit. By tomorrow there will be dozens. As with several other significant science stories, you read it first on Free Republic.
32 posted on 06/01/2006 2:46:15 PM PDT by PatrickHenry (Unresponsive to trolls, lunatics, fanatics, retards, scolds, & incurable ignoramuses.)
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To: Robert A. Cook, PE

obviously when working with the fossil record in the p-t extinction area I assume there is so little to work with, and dating issues involved, that without a crater anything was speculation but I was always surprised at the number of scientists pretty much dismissing the impact theory for the P-T extinction, of all the extinctions to be doubtful of. 95% is a LOT.

Now that there may be a crater confirmed, how is anyone going to argue that such an impact wouldn't have exactly the P-T mass-extinction-type effect, given what the more accepted chicxulub impact did 65m years ago.


33 posted on 06/01/2006 2:46:55 PM PDT by WoofDog123
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To: Diego1618
I have a feeling before it's all over we'll find all kinds of things buried under a mile of ice.....things that will answer a lot of questions.

Jimmy Hoffa? 8^)

34 posted on 06/01/2006 2:47:09 PM PDT by ItsForTheChildren
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To: WoofDog123
Wonder what 250 million years of 5 mile deep ice moving around on top of the original sediments and gravel does to fossils in those rocks...

But actually, it'd probably be irrelevant: Inside the original crater, and around it, there are no fossils. Nothing but melted rock and shatter cones.
35 posted on 06/01/2006 2:50:01 PM PDT by Robert A Cook PE (I can only donate monthly, but Hillary's ABBCNNBCBS continue to lie every day!)
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To: bobdsmith

If the impactor was a comet head, there'd be mostly water, as opposed to a rocky-type asteroid. Just guessing.


36 posted on 06/01/2006 2:51:09 PM PDT by DBrow
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To: Robert A. Cook, PE
Put Macready on it. He'll get to the bottom of this crater.

37 posted on 06/01/2006 2:54:15 PM PDT by kinghorse
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To: PatrickHenry
a meteor impact much larger and earlier than the one that killed the dinosaurs

I've been saying this for years, but nobody ever listens to me.

38 posted on 06/01/2006 2:54:17 PM PDT by layman (Card Carrying Infidel)
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To: PatrickHenry

So Ohio State is using Wikipedia as its primary reference source? Remind me not to send my kids there.


39 posted on 06/01/2006 2:55:45 PM PDT by ZGuy
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To: PatrickHenry

Does not compute in Young Earth Theory.


40 posted on 06/01/2006 2:56:12 PM PDT by H. Paul Pressler IV
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