[meteorite-list] Last Word (from me) on the Crackpot Theory, I Think...

From: Sterling K. Webb <kelly_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue Nov 1 04:26:12 2005
Message-ID: <4367348A.B1A1A240_at_bhil.com>

Hi,

    Both Paul and Marco supplied a lot more
information about the extinction of mammoths
and somewhat took me to task at the same time.

    Understand, I am not carrying Firestone's
water here nor attempting to validate his
theories. I do not believe that his data is
particularly relevant to the extinction of
the mammoths. I was merely trying for a
summary.

    I prefaced the mention of mammoth extinction
with this statement: "Firestone ties his 'event,'
whatever it is, to the extinction of the mammoths.
This is awkward, since mammoths did not go extinct
all at one time, but at widely differing times in
different locations."

    The gist of which is exactly what Paul and
Marco are pointing out: that the "extinction" was
complex, phased, and time and place variable. And
as I pointed out, other historic extinctions may
have the same characteristics, blurred by time into
seeming more like a single event than it was.

    The clustering I mentioned came from a
complete list of dated carcases. Most dates
were single and isolated times, but there
were several dates clustered around the
two time periods Firestone found (elsewhere)
anomalies for. It was a very weak association
and I probably shouldn't have even suggested it
supported even vaguely the isotopic timetable.
And it was the one from the "talkorigins"
website you recommended, Paul.

    When I referred to the megafauna extinction at
13,000 to 11,000 years ago, I was referring SOLELY
to North America and said so. I specifically
mentioned that the extinctions took place at other
times on other continents. What Paul called this
"old misstatement of the facts, which has been
endlessly recycled on various catastrophist web
sites despite having been long known to be quite
false" was mostly taken from the web site of the
American Museum of Natural History in New York,
New York...

    Here is the problem with my attempting to deal
with the data (the isotopic anomalies). People seem
to consider me instead a supporter of various theories,
whacky or not, Firestone's or any other's, about
extinctions. I have no brief for these theories.
I am interested only in what exterior astronomical
events created these isotopic anomalies. They
require an explanation.

    (To be perfectly honest, as far as mammoths
go, I don't give a damn if Clovis Man hunted them
to death by chasing them around in Toyota pickups
with machine guns mounted in the truckbed, or
if those hairy elephants were buried up to their
nostrils in interstellar dust, or...)

    Just kidding...

    Marco mentions the vagaries of radiocarbon
dating and so forth. It's obvious nobody is
reading the reference I gave for Firestone's
earlier paper on them:
<http://www.centerfirstamericans.com/mt.html?a=36>

    It derives, among other things, from
trying to calibrate those vagaries.

    As a geochronologist, he was (apparently)
called in to examine material from a group of
paleoindian sites that, in varying degrees,
yielded anomalous dates.

    Below a strata well-known to date geologically
to 10,000 BP (before present) are artifacts with
thermoluminescent dates of 12,400 BP but with
radiocarbon dates that are almost recent, 2880 BP.
There are a number of these sites, including
one where there is an area with an archaic
cultural items whose radiocarbon date is 160
years old!

    This indicates an large excess of radiocarbon,
which is normally formed in the upper atmosphere
by the solar wind (protons) and cosmic rays
(also protons) at a relatively constant rate,
but in fact is produced in variable qualtities.
But these excesses are far beyond mere variation,
much larger.

    Firestone finds other isotopic anomalies.
The soil itself is radioactively enhanced. The
uranium content of the flint implements is
very abnormal. This whole area of the upper
Midwest US has been, more than once, irradiated
on a massive scale. Go to the link; read the
details.

    Everything indicates a massive radiation
exposure. This is not a minor occurrence. The
dose is "comparable to being irradiated in a
5-megawatt reactor more than 100 seconds," in
other words, instantly lethal.

    At the time, Firestone favored cosmic rays
reaching the ground because of a weakening of
the earth's magnetic field. Then, a nearby
supernova. Later, somebody must have told him
that there could not have been a supernova
THAT close. There is no other evidence of
magnetic field weakening elsewhere. Now,
he proposes a comet made up of supernova
debris.

    Here's the logical dilemma:
EITHER this area was exposed to an astronomically
local source of massive radiation more than once
OR a large amount of matter containing a
substantial fraction of heavily irradiated
material was transported to Earth and deposited
here in, well, astronomical quantities.

    There is a third logical possibility that
can be eliminated with no problem. Did ancient
indians have unshielded nuclear reactors in
their camps? Did they wage war with hydrogen
bombs? Did the inhabitants of Atlantis and
Mu have a nuclear exchange in Michigan? Not
bloody likely.

    The mere fact that we are dealing with
multiple events so near in time rules out the
"nearby supernova" theory if nothing else did.
Of course, a nearby supernova would leave
all kinds of other evidence that just ain't
there.

    That leaves material transport of large
quantities of material FROM a supernova TO a
region of the surface of the Earth as the
only remaining mechanism.

    Well, how the heck do you do that?
Firestone has proposed his (ridiculous)
comet. This packs all the supernova debris
on one freight train and sends them down
the track to North America. I don't think
much of the idea.

    If you read the main body of my original
post under this heading ("More Work..."),
I have managed to stitch together a bunch
of widely accepted facts and theories to
outline a mechanism that will transport
large amounts of supernova debris to the
surface of the Earth.

    The very nearby Scorpius-Centauri OB
Association is full of hot young high-mass
stars and has been having scads of supernovas
in recent ages. Its bubbleful of supernova
debris is leaking rapidly into the nearly empty
Local Bubble (on the very edge of which the
Sun is located), pumping new supernova dust
in dense clumps and knots straight toward us.

    When the Solar System passes through one
of these dense knots of a supernova's dusty
material, the focusing mechanism outlined
by Fred Hoyle in his seminal 1930's paper
on accretion causes vast quantities of
concentrated fresh supernova debris to
be dumped onto localized areas of the Earth's
surface for up to several thousand years
before the dust passes on in a dispersed
manner, disrupted by the Sun's gravity.

    My theory does require accepting greater
dust densities and cloud frequencies than others
suppose, but current beliefs about these details
are mostly suppositions without any data, based
on generalizations of the conditions that exist
now, only it's not now we're talking about. The
dust may become dense enough to disturb climate
for short periods (100's or a few 1000 years)
by decreasing sunlight.

    For example, there is a brief intense
episode of cooling that interrupted the
warming that ended the last glaciation
called the Younger Dryas. Was this the
last passage of an interstellar dust cloud?
There have been a number of brief instense
coolings in geological history, called
"false ices ages," as if an ice age began
but abruptly ceased.

    Firestone specifies his event is northern
hemisphere only because he says there is no
data from Antarctica, but since then the work
has been done and there are radiation peaks
(10-Be) in the ice cap at the same times
detected by Firestone. Thus, there is (very)
independent validation of his isotopic data's
time scale.

    The enhanced presence of these isotopes
could be explained by a variety of means:
immense solar flares, magnetic collapse
allowing the solar wind to near the surface,
flux of cosmic rays enhanced by magnetic
collapse, nearby supernovae, silly comets,
and lastly big in-falls of supernova debris.
All of them have serious flaws except the last.

    And the acclaimed work by Knie and
Hillebrandt, finding 60-Fe from a 2.8 million
year old supernova in the Scorpius-Centauri
OB Association in Indian Ocean sediments
demonstrates that it is a fact that recent
supernova material can be transported
effectively to the Earth.

    This is why I suggested to Firestone
that he should assay for 60-Fe from his
recently evaluated soil layers. Its
presence would force an acceptance of
the extraterrestrial origin of those
isotopic anomalies.


Sterling K. Webb
-----------------------------------------
Marco Langbroek wrote:

> > Looking at it, it is quite clear that the dates on mummified
> > mammoths are spread over a range of radiocarbon dates starting
> > from greater than 50,000 BP to 32,000 - 34,000 BP.
>
> Also, > 30,000 BP is exactly the region where the 14C method starts to get
> insecure and easily falters. Very small amounts of contamination already leads
> to large errors, and the error on any 14C age determination is large for this
> period anyways.
>
> The preservation of frozen mummies relies on a very specific sedimentation
> regime (see Guthrie's book about "Blue babe"), which produces a bias on where
> and when mummies of this kind are preserved in the permafrost or not.
>
> About the "Human Hunting Overkill" hypothesis:
>
> > This claim is an old misstatement of the facts, which has been
> > endlessly recycled on various catastrophist web sites despite
> > having been long known to be quite false. It is true that more
> > than many genera of mostly megafauna have become extinct
> > during the Pleistocene. However, it is quiet false to say that
> > all of them became extinct between 11,000 to 13,000 BP.
>
> > Also, the claim that conventional scientists, as a rule, regard
> > humans as the sole cause of these Pleistocene extinctions is
> > simply not true. In fact, there now exists a wide divergence of
> > opinion and a lack of any real consensus as to what, if any role,
> > humans played in any the several extinction events, which
> > occurred during the Pleistocene Epoch.
>
> I agree. The Overkill hypothesis is pushed for a long time now by people like
> Martin etc. and gets much attention in the press, but it is certainly not
> accepted by every scholar in this area.
>
> - Marco
>
> -----
> Dr Marco Langbroek - Pleistocene Archaeologist
> e-mail: marco.langbroek_at_wanadoo.nl
> website: http://home.wanadoo.nl/marco.langbroek
Received on Tue 01 Nov 2005 04:25:30 AM PST