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To: RightWhale
Geologists have found that plankton and molluscs were wiped out in vast numbers and that land animals and plants were also affected. 'We now think these creatures were killed off because Earth's ozone was blasted away by two or more supernovae,' said Benítez. 'There would have been no protection against the Sun's intense ultraviolet radiation. All sorts of changes could have resulted.'

If you stripped all of the ozone from the atmosphere today, the UV light from the sun would replace it very quickly. UV light makes ozone (O3) by splitting oxygen molecules (O2) into atomic oxygen (O) which quickly re-combine to form ozone. This paper suggests that the ozone layer was "blasted" away, which implies a shock wave. (rather than radiation) If he is suggesting a shock wave, then why would it only take the ozone layer? What about the rest of the atmosphere? If the density of the dust and gas in the shockwave was high enough to strip away the ozone layer, it would also deposit huge amounts of dust and gas into the atmosphere.

The asteroid theory of mass extinctions claims that dust in the upper atmosphere blotted out the sunlight, causing plants and the rest of the food chain to collapse. The shock wave remnant of a supernova would contain lots of dust and gas, and due to its velocity, lots of that dust (including Iron 60) would be dumped into the upper atmosphere, causing global extinction by the same method as the asteroid impact. (No need to invoke the ozone layer and UV light to explain this one)

34 posted on 02/18/2002 4:29:08 PM PST by e_engineer
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To: e_engineer
Of course there's no telling what else might have been dumped here at the same time.

Hopefully not any more Star Blast Gum,that stuff is aweful,can't even blow square bubbles with it.
Gamma,I'm late for my Lunar morphology class,got to jet!

37 posted on 02/18/2002 4:50:06 PM PST by tet68
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To: e_engineer
I like your analysis and agree with you. But I think the author was trying to explain how the Hulk was created.
41 posted on 02/18/2002 7:36:12 PM PST by <1/1,000,000th%
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