The journal
Science
[Feb. 23, 2001] reported conclusive evidence that an asteroid smashed
into Earth 250 million years ago and likely launched the age of the
dinosaurs. The impact disaster wiped out 70 percent of land vertebrates
and 90 percent of marine animals. The research performed by NASA, the
National Science Foundation, and three leading universities, revealed a
type of carbon structures called
fullerenes
in 251 million year old geological samples taken from Japan and China.
On June 1, 2006 scientists, using satellite data,
discovered the 300-mile-wide crater buried more than a mile beneath the
East Antarctic Ice Sheet in what's known as the Wilkes Land region of
Antarctica.
65
Million B.C.E.
In 1979 physicist Luis Alvarez, his son, geologist
Walter Alvarez, and nuclear chemists Frank Asaro and Helen V. Michael
from the University of California, Berkeley, began to publish their
research regarding "Extraterrestrial cause for the Cretaceous-Tertiary
extinction." In June 1980 the journal Science
published the Alverez team's groundbreaking report titled, Extraterrestrial
Cause for the Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction. The team had
discovered unusually high concentrations of iridium, an element that's
rare on the Earth but common in meteorites. From the amount and
distribution of iridium present in the 65 million year old "iridium
layer", the Alvarez team estimated that an asteroid about 5 milies wide
(10–14 kilometers) must have collided with the Earth. This iridium
layer has been found worldwide at 100 different sites.
In 1981, exploring for oil reserves in Yucatan,
Mexico, Penfield and Camargo recognized that the gravity and magnetic
anomalies centered on the village of Chicxulub, at the tip of the
Yucatan peninsula in Mexico, resemble those identified at large impact
structures. But it was only in 1991, that Hildebrand et al., proposed
that the long sought impact crater lied buried under 1000 m of Cenozoic
sediments at the tip fo the Yucatan peninsula. During the following
years, the crater origin of the structure was demonstrated by
geophysical and lithological studies and its age determined by
radiometric dating (Swisher et al. 1992; Sharpton et al. 1993). The
northwestern part of the crater lies offshore of the Yucatan peninsula.
Onshore the crater rim is marked by a line of cenote (Pope et al,
1996).
35
Million B.C.E.
Thirty five million years ago, a 5 km-wide
asteroid ploughed into what is now Chesapeake Bay, in the US, leaving
an 80 km crater.
Undetermined
Date:
Kebria Crater in
Egypt
On March 3, "2006" Space.com
reports, "Huge Crater Found in Egypt - Scientists have discovered a
huge crater in the Saharan desert, the largest one ever found there.
The crater is about 19 miles (31 kilometers) wide, more than twice as
big as the next largest Saharan crater known. It utterly dwarfs Meteor
Crater in Arizona, which is about three-fourths of a mile (1.2
kilometers) in diameter. In fact, the newfound crater, in Egypt, was
likely carved by a space rock that was itself roughly 0.75 miles wide
in an event that would have been quite a shock, destroying everything
for hundreds of miles. The crater was discovered in satellite images by
Boston University researchers Farouk El-Baz and Eman Ghoneim. El-Baz
named the crater 'Kebira,' which means 'large' in Arabic and also
relates to its location on the northern tip of the Gilf Kebir region in
southwestern Egypt…The crater has two rings, a common configuration.
Over time, it has been eroded by wind and water to make it
unrecognizable to the untrained eye. The impact that carved Kebira
might have created an extensive field of yellow-green silica fragments,
known as desert glass and found on the surface between the giant dunes
of the Great Sand Sea in southwestern Egypt."
"The
Zodiac Glass gleams through the sky, it could happen soon…If you revert
back in time, there's Egypt. It's very dusty now, but it used to be
green. I had a vision and it told me to go there. I'm always having
visions and I know that it's building up to something really major."
- Jimi
17
Million B.C.E.
Two asteroids crash into the Atlantic Ocean 150 km
(93 miles) south of the Azores. The larger one left a crater 6 km (3.7
miles) wide, 2 km (1.2 miles) under the ocean surface. The craters were
discovered in 2008.
Meteor Crater, AZ
48,000
B.C.E.
A meteor about 50 meters (54 yards) across impacts
the desert near what is now Flagstaff, Arizona, leaving a crater about
1,200 m (4,000 ft) in diameter, some 170 m deep (570 ft),
10,900 B.C.E.
In June 2007 University of South Carolina News
reported: Comet Theory Collides with Clovis Research, May
Explain Disappearance of Ancient People:
"A theory put forth by a group of 25
geo-scientists suggests that a massive comet exploded over Canada,
possibly wiping out both beast and man around 12,900 years ago, and
pushing the earth into another ice age. Archaeologists have long known
that the great beasts of the age - the wooly mammoth and mastodon -
suddenly disappeared around the same time period (12,900 - 12, 800
years ), but little was known about their demise. The notion that a
comet collided with Earth and caused these events was farfetched until
recently, when the group of scientists began looking for evidence of a
comet impact, which they call the Younger - Dryas Event.
"They turned to University of South Carolina
archaeologist Dr. Albert Goodyear and the pristine Clovis site of
Topper. In 2005, Arizona geophysicist Dr. Allen West and his team
traveled to Topper in hopes of finding concentrations of iridium, an
extra-terrestrial element found in comets, in the layer of Clovis-era
sediment. 'They found iridium and plenty of it,' said Goodyear. 'The
high concentrations were much higher than you would normally see in the
background of the earth's crust. That tends to be an indicator of a
terrestrial impact from outer space.' The researchers also found high
iridium concentrations at six other Clovis sites throughout North
America, as well as in and along the rims of the Carolina Bays, the
elliptically shaped depressions that are home to an array of flora and
fauna along South Carolina's coast. The Younger-Dryas Event suggests
that a large comet exploded above Canada, creating a storm of fiery
fragments that rained over North America. The fragments could have
easily killed the giant mammals of the day, as well as Clovis man.
"'No one has ever had a really good explanation
for the disappearance of mammoth and mastodon,' Goodyear said. 'The
archaeological community is waking up to the Younger-Dryas Event.' The
comet theory dominated the recent annual meetings of the American
Geophysical Union held in Mexico. Goodyear's Clovis-Redstone point
study and West's research on the comet were featured at the AGU
meetings and by the journal, Nature. The comet will be the subject of
documentaries featured on the National
Geographic Channel and NOVA television late this fall [2007]
and in early 2008."
8498
B.C.E.
German physicist, Otto Muck, analyzed the
elaborate calendar of ancient Mayan Indians and established that its
purpose is to commemorate the date and time of impact of an
asteroid that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean more than ten thousand
years ago. In his book, The Secret of Atlantis,
Muck concludes that the impact coincided with a conjunction of the Sun,
Moon, and Venus. This triple conjunction enabled a calculation of
orbits to find the exact moment of impact: 20:00 hours local time on
June 5, 8498 B.C.E. From this cataclysmic moment over 10,500 years ago,
marked by a triple conjunction, ancient Mayans counted the days and
years of their calendar. Muck concludes that the impact and tidal waves
produced the story of Atlantis, as well as the biblical flood of Noah,
and the legend of Gilgamesh.
Other researchers contend that a comet or asteroid
that crashed into the Indian Ocean south of Madagascar 4800 years ago
(see below) is a better candidate as the souce of the Noah/Gilgamesh
legend, because Hebrew writings, the souce of the Noah story, date
back only to the 6th century B.C.E. But then in January 2010 LiveScience.com
reported that "scientists have discovered the earliest known Hebrew
writing - an inscription dating from the 10th century B.C.E.,
during the period of King David's reign. The breakthrough could mean
that portions of the Bible were written centuries earlier than
previously thought…The writing, dug up during [2009] excavations at
Khirbet Qeiyafa, near Israel's Elah Valley, indicates that the Kingdom
of Israel already existed in the 10th century B.C.E. and that at least
some of the biblical texts were written hundreds of years
before the dates presented in current research."
This scenario supports Muck's assertion that a
fully developed Hebrew writing society dating back 12,000 years would
likely have recorded a massive tsunami in the region that occurred
10,500 years ago, a tsunami that we know today as "Noah's flood."
Until the ancient writings from Khirbet Qeiyafa
were unearthed in 2009, it appeared that the story of the
Noah/Gilgamesh flood likely resulted from a more recent impact tsunami
near Madagascar 4800 years ago…
2800
B.C.E.
Microscopic
"Spherule"
Fingerprint of
Asteroid-Tsunami
The
New York
Times News Service (Nov. 14, 2006) reports, "This tiny
spherule [see right] is a once-vaporized or melted fragment of
microejecta resulting from an extraterrestrial impact into the Indian
Ocean about 4,800 years ago. Some scientists believe the hit, by either
a meteor or asteroid, produced a tsunami at least 600 feet
high…Madagascar provides
the smoking gun for geologically
recent impacts…tiny fossils from the ocean floor, sprinkled throughout
[with] splashes of iron, nickel and chrome fused to the fossils. When a
chondritic meteor, the most common kind, vaporizes upon impact in the
ocean, those three metals are formed in the same relative proportions
as seen in the microfossils…[that] melded with the condensing metals as
both were lofted up out of the sea…About 900 miles southeast
from Madagascar, in deep ocean, is the
Burckle Crater…cores
from the area contain high levels of nickel and magnetic components
associated with impact ejecta.
Holocene Impact Working Group…experts
in geology, geophysics, geomorphology, tsunamis, tree rings, soil
science and archaeology…say that
astronomers simply have not
known how or where to look for evidence of [asteorid] impacts.
They say that
once they
started looking, the evidence was obvious…
Classic
Chevron Insignias
"At the southern end of Madagascar lie…enormous
wedge-shaped sediment deposits, called chevrons,
that are composed of material from the ocean floor…the chevron
deposits contain deep ocean microfossils that are fused with a medley
of metals typically formed by cosmic impacts. And all of them
point in the same direction - toward the middle of the Indian Ocean
where a newly discovered crater, 18 miles in diameter, lies 12,500 feet
below the surface.
Fenambosy
Chevrons in Madagascar
Chevron
points directly at 4800 yrs. old
impact crater at bottom of Indian Ocean
A
large asteroid or comet, the kind that could kill a quarter
of the world's population, smashed into the Indian Ocean 4,800 years ago
[2800 BCE], producing a tsunami at least 600 feet high, about 13 times
as big as the one that inundated Indonesia [Dec. 2004 tsunami]…
astronomers
have not known to look for evidence of such impacts during the past
10,000 years (known as the Holocene epoch) along
the world's shorelines and in the deep ocean. They say the
evidence is strong enough to overturn current estimates of how often the Earth suffers a
violent impact…Instead
of once in 500,000 to 1 million years, as astronomers now calculate,
catastrophic impacts could happen every few thousand years…
"Surveys show that as many as 185 large asteroids
or comets have hit the Earth [but] most of the craters are on land. 'No one has spent much time looking for craters
in the deep ocean,' said David Morrison, a
leading authority on asteroids and comets at the NASA Ames Research
Center in Mountain View."
800
C.E.
New York Times - Nov. 14, 2006:
"Ted Bryant, a geomorphologist at the University of Wollongong in New
South Wales, Australia, was the first person to recognize the
palm prints of mega-tsunamis…Deposits from mega-tsunamis contain
unusual rocks with marine oyster shells…[he] started…to
search around the globe for chevrons, which [he] interpret as
evidence of past giant tsunamis. Scores of such sites have
turned up in Australia, Africa, Europe and the United States, including
the Hudson River Valley and Long Island…Bryant identified two chevrons
found more than four miles inland near Carpentaria in north-central
Australia. Both point north…Searching the shallow water north
of the two chevrons, Dallas Abbott [scientist] found two craters. 'We
think these two craters are 1,200 years old,'
Abbott said. The chevrons are well preserved and date to about the same
time. Abbott and her colleagues have located chevrons in the Caribbean,
Scotland, Vietnam and North Korea, and several in the North Sea.
Heather Hill State Park on Long Island has a chevron whose front edge
points to a crater in Long Island Sound, Abbott said. There is another,
very faint chevron in Connecticut, and it points in a different
direction."
536 C.E.
Restricted
tree ring growth across world forests after 536 C.E. is among
evidence scientists provide to prove that an asteroid collided with
Earth and the result was the Dark Ages. Astronomical records in Europe
coincide with simultaneous records in China which report impact winter
conditions that enveloped the world for 18 months. The space rock's
entry into the atmosphere gave rise to folk tales of dragons - long
tailed, fire breathing lion's heads speeding through the sky. The comet
or asteroid exploded in the atmosphere, creating a dense cloud that
encircled the Earth and shut down photosynthesis. Tree ring records
worldwide record the event.
October
8, 1871
On the night of October 8, 1871 Peshtigo, a
booming town of 1700 people was wiped out of existence in the greatest
forest fire disaster in American history. Loss of life, and even
property, in the great fire occurring the same night in Chicago, did
not match the death toll and destruction visited on Peshtigo in
Northeast Wisconsin.
They
Need Us To Think
"Mrs. O'Leary's COW" Killed Thousands
"The reason no one can explain these great fires
is that no one knew to look to the heavens," explains scientist Randall
Carlson, "But recent tests have shown that a comet nucleus only a
hundred yards in diameter exploding 20 miles up in the atmosphere can
set a large pine forest on fire. This is the only explanation that can
account for the simultaneous outbreak of massive forest fires all over
the mid west on October 8, 1871."
In fact astronomers at that time were tracking the
dying comet Viala whose orbit was dangerously close to Earth. Some
scientists have suggested that fragments falling from the comet may
have ignited not only the Chicago fire, but the fires in neighboring
states as well. The most deadly fire that night was not in Chicago, but
in the small town of Peshtigo. Twelve hundred people died there in the
worst fire in American history. A mass grave commemorates the remains
of victims burned beyond recognition."
Robert Couvillion is the president of the Peshtigo
Historical Society. The stories he has preserved are of a fire unlike
any other: "Fire is not unusual in this territory, but on this
particular night, this was a fire like nobody had ever seen. It was 7
or 8 o'clock at night when it became dark and they could see this glow
in the western sky. It was like a muddled thunder that never ceased, it
just kept growing louder and louder. Trees were being uprooted and
roofs were coming off of the homes, chimneys were crashing to the
ground. Everything was moving horizontally. It was like the heaviest
snow storm you've ever seen, only it contained the burning embers and
the ashes and the red hot sand and the dirt that was picked up. When
they decided it was time to go to the river, already it was too late."
Before they could run, a firestorm blasted them
off their feet. Clothing and hair combusted spontaneously. The air
itself seemed to be on fire.
"Eyewitnesses described that the very sky itself
was on fire as far as the eye could into space," said Randall Carlson.
"Eyewitnesses described fireball and meteor-like phenomena falling from
the sky just prior to the outbreak of the fire. In the aftermath they
described whole forests of great maple trees uprooted and laid flat
like new mown hay. This is strikingly suggestive of the forests knocked
flat at Tunguska (Russian meteor impact site, June 30, 1908). While no
one was killed at Tunguska, twelve hundred people lost their lives at
Peshtigo."
-
Fire In the Sky, TBS 3/23/97
June
30, 1908
Tunguska Event
The Taiga meteorite impacts the Tunguska River in
Siberia. While the 1908 destruction in Siberia is well known, and
repeatedly cited in countless reports about impact hazzards, two other,
more recent, but similar, impacts that happened in South America in the
1930s continue to be ignored by media as if they never occurred (in
order to play down and artificially reduce, in our minds, the chance of
another impact)...
August
13, 1930
Rio Curaca Event
A massive asteroid explodes over western Brazil
and is reported in South American newspapers. The explosion happened
over Amazonia, near the Brazil-Peru border and is described in the
papal newspaper L'Osservatore Romano,
the report being derived from Catholic missionaries working in
Amazonia. That report, in Italian, was used as the basis of a
front-page story in the London newspaper The Daily
Herald, which was published on March 6, 1931. The
locality of the explosion gives it it's name: The
Rio Curaca Event, close to the border between
Brazil and Peru.
MENACE OF
METEORS LIKE HUGE BOMBS FROM SPACE
HURRICANE OF FLAME
"Another colossal bombardment of the
Earth from outer space has just been revealed.
Three great meteors, falling in Brazil, fired and depopulated hundreds
of miles of jungle. The Brazilian meteors are reported (says the Central
News) by Father Fidello of Aviano, writing from San
Paulo de Alivencia in the state of Amazonas, to the papal newspaper, Osservatore
Romano. Terrific heat was engendered. Immediately
after they struck the ground the whole forest was ablaze. The fire
continued uninterrupted for some months, depopulating a large area. The
fall of the meteors was preceded by remarkable atmospheric
disturbances. Three great explosions were heard and the Earth trembled."
The
Daily Herald - March 6, 1931
December
11, 1935
Marudi Mountain Event
Three asteroids exploded in tremendous fireballs a
mile above the jungle floor of Brazil and British Guyana close to
Marudi Mountain, igniting a ground fire that destroyed over 800 square
miles of rain forest.
"In the magazine The
Sky (forerunner of Sky & Telescope)
of September 1939, a report from Serge Korff of the Bartol Research
Foundation, Franklin Institute (Delaware, USA) was printed. Korff was
in the area - the Rupununi region of British Guyana - a couple of
months [after impact]. Korff's description suggested that the region of
devastation might be greater than that involved in the Tunguska
[Siberia, June 1908] event. Korff obtained several local reports, the
best being from a Scottish gold miner, Godfrey Davidson, who reported
having been woken by the explosion, with pots and pans being dislodged
in his kitchen, and seeing a luminous residual trail in the sky. A
short while later, whilst prospecting, he came across a devastated
region of the jungle he estimated to be about five by ten miles (8 by
16 kilometers), with the trees all seeming to have been pushed over.
"On Korff's suggestion, a message was
sent to William H. Holden, who in 1937 was in the general region with
the Terry-Holden expedition of the American Museum of Natural History.
That group hiked to the top of Marudi Mountain in November 1937 and
reported seeing an area some miles across where the trees had been
broken off about 25 feet above their bases. Holden believed the
devastation was due to an atmospheric explosion of cosmic origin.
"An explorer and author, Desmond
Holdridge, also visited the region in the late 1930's and confirmed the
suspicion that a comet or asteroid detonation was responsible.
Holdridge reported eye-witness accounts in accord with a large
meteoroid/small asteroid entry, with a body passing overhead
accompanied by a terrific roar (presumably electrophonic effects),
later concussions, and the sky being lit up like daylight.
"And a local aircraft operator, Art
Williams, reported seeing an area of forest more than twnety miles (32
kilometers) in extent which had been destroyed, and he later stated
that the shattered jungle was elongated rather than circular, as had
occurred at Tunguska."
Duncan
Steel, WGN, Journal for International Meteor Organization
- Dec. 1995
February
1936
A large asteroid named Adonis passed within
186,000 miles of Earth. Had it hit it would've wrought destruction
equal to several nuclear explosions.
September
1985
An asteroid the size of several football fields
comes within 1.5 the distance of the Moon from the Earth. This incident
was referred to in January 2008 when another similar asteroid, 2007 TU24, was
discovered heading for a similar near miss of Earth.
March
22, 1989
An asteroid came within 400,000 miles of Earth,
and was within 6 hours of striking the Earth, but was not detected
until later. Other asteroids have come even closer, one would have hit
the Earth if it had come just 4 hours sooner.
- Asteroids: Deadly Impact, National Geographic, NBC 2/26/97
"In 1989 we had an asteroid pass us at only
690,000 miles away...and in 1991 the Earth came perilously close to yet
another encounter with an asteroid. This asteroid passed the Earth at a
distance of only 106,000 miles...These asteroids just barely missed us.
Had they been at just a slightly different path, or been traveling at
just a tiny different speed, the human race and much of the life on our
planet would be gone now...These two most recent close passes by
asteroids were discovered only a couple of months before they would
have hit."
-
Practical Guide to the Universe, TLC 2/95
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