Fw: [meteorite-list] Re:Comet hit Britain in mid sixth, RE-POSTED

From: E.P. Grondine <epgrondine_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sun Jul 23 12:15:33 2006
Message-ID: <20060723144654.77255.qmail_at_web36908.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Hi all -

I didn't get too far before I found another message
which seemed to need some comment.

We can argue theory here or we can get data and then
try to form theory. Might I suggest my book "Man and
Impact in the Americas" as a good startting point?
$34.95 via

1-877-494-0044 Ancient American or
1-800-718-4514 Adventures Unlimited

(The later because I believe in starting with the most
confused first. I don't know if they still take orders
- I discovered four weeks ago that AU's founder David
Hatcher Childress was (is) a disciple of the late cult
leader and sexual predator Richard Kieninger, and am
now working on a detailed article on that loon.)

In any case, it looks like we might have some
observational answers by 2022, depending on where
Schwassmann Wachmann 3 ends up. Anybody have the
latest orbital calcs for its 64 fragments and its dust
stream?

Good Hunting -
EP

--- "Sterling K. Webb" <sterling_k_webb_at_sbcglobal.net>
wrote:

> Hi, List (and Marco)
>
> [Re-Post of previous post. No idea why my
> email program decided to space the message
> out the way it did. It's hard to read, so here's
> (I hope) normal text.]
>
> Marco, I seem to have a talent for annoying you.
> I apologize for annoying you. However, I would like
> to point out that my posting was addressed to The
> List
> and to Paul Barford who asked the question in the
> first place. I did not even copy you. Could I point
> out that not every posting to The List is directed
> at
> you, personally. True, you had also answered him,
> and I referred to your reply because I disagreed
> with it.
> >
> > Don't lecture me that condescendingly man.
>
> > Who's got the PhD in prehistoric
> > archaeology here?
> >
> However, disagreement is not condescension. If
> you
> read what I wrote, you might see that I was
> addressing
> The List generally, and presenting the historical
> background
> of the hypothesis. I narrated what Napier and Clube
> thought (and wrote) when they first suggested it in
> the
> 1970's. (At least I think they were first.) I made
> no
> evaluation of their notion, nor gave my own personal
> opinion of it.
> >
> > Which is a naive "Pompeii Premise" about general
> > taphonomic processes and ignores that in the 19th
> century, taphonomic and
> > post-depositional processes were concepts still
> completely ignored. And
> > catastrophic thinking reigned those days.
> > Have you ever been to a peat excavation?
> > It looks like Tunguska allright, fallen tree
> trunks everywhere. Only it
> > isn't.
> >
> I have not read the original they cited for this
> discovery,
> so I can't evaluate it, either. I don't even know if
> it WAS a
> peat excavation. Are you familiar with the
> citation, or are
> you just making the assumption that it was a peat
> bog?
> I would also point out that Britons have been
> digging
> in peat bogs for millennia and are probably pretty
> familiar
> with what one looks like... If that's what it was.
> If they
> thought this excavation, peat or not, was different,
> they
> could probably tell. Anglesey has peat bogs, and
> they
> have been dug for fuel since prehistoric times, and
> Anglesey has lots of prehistory, so I assume a
> familiarity
> with peat on the part of Anglesey excavators.
> >
> > Large impact phenomena come with a suit of
> > identifiable things. If there was such an event in
> Britain as recent as AD
> > 540,
> > then where are the ejecta layers, the dust layers,
> the spherule layers,
> > the impact
> > glasses, the shocked quartz, the impact craters,
> the extinction events in
> > flora and fauna? There is no reason why these
> should have vanished from
> > the
> > geological record in this case.
> >
> You should really become familiar with the
> hypotheses you
> are ridiculing. Neither Napier and Clube nor Baillie
> nor anyone
> else that I am aware of have ever suggested any
> impact like that
> (or any impact), with an accompanying cratering
> event, ejecta,
> spherules, glasses, shocked quartz -- none of that,
> for which
> there is no evidence. Dust, yes, and climatic
> change, and effects
> on flora and fauna (but not extinctions) for all of
> which there
> is evidence. What you put forward in this remark is
> a "straw
> man" argument, in which you grossly mischaracterize
> a
> hypothesis, then proceed to demolish your own
> misrepresentation of it very effectively.
> The term "cometary impact" could, in this
> context, refer to
> a series of atmospheric entries and disintegration
> of many
> low-density objects which would load the Earth's
> atmosphere
> with dust to the extent of reducing solar input and
> causing
> sudden and irregularly distributed "coolings." No
> objects
> would ever get within 20-40 miles of the Earth's
> surface.
> And large, very high-altitude airbursts could
> produce loads
> of catastrophic results and leave little physical
> evidence
> except its extremely disruptive effects. There would
> be surficial
> damage to flora, "years without summers," dustfalls,
> crop
> failures, ecological disruptions which could include
> sudden
> outbreaks of diseases due to the forced migration of
> their
> vectors. This last happened in 541 AD with the first
> known
> pandemic of bubonic plague in Europe.
> We have seen here on The List in many exciting
> news
> flashes of huge fireballs and the hope for object
> recovery,
> how rarely that happens, but every one, in
> fragmenting, dropped
> dust into our atmosphere. There are Hiroshima sized
> airbursts
> every year in the upper atmosphere, sometimes two or
> three
> a year. Just increase the frequency to where there
> are
> Hiroshima sized airbursts EVERY DAY and dozens of
> huge
> fireballs somewhere on Earth EVERY NIGHT. There
> would
> be 100's of meteorite falls a year, and still no
> "impacts" or
> craters, perhaps for years, and even then, likely
> only small ones.
> Increase the frequency again ten-fold or more,
> but hypothesize
> it's all from a swarm of small weak objects -- never
> a crater,
> never a tsunami, never an overt "disaster." Increase
> it ten-fold
> again if you want it. And again... What's happening?
> Countless
> millions of tons of dust are raining into the
> atmosphere, persisting
> for years, the sunlight is dim and watery, there's
> ice on the pond
> in July. As the dust accumulates, it just gets worse
> and worse, a
> progressive disaster. Human functioning societies
> and agriculture
> at 50 degrees N. and S. become impossible, then at
> 40 degrees
> N. and S., then 35... Populations begin to migrate,
> societies
> break down, nations become fictions, order
> disintegrates.
> We all know the scenario, if we've seen enough bad
> movies,
> except of course, they're never bad enough... Mad
> Max just
> isn't crazy enough, much too elegant and well-fed
> for reality.
> We don't even need that swarm of small weak
> bodies.
> Just the dust is enough all by itself. It's hard to
> get people to
> take this seriously, it's so UN-spectacular. Big
> deal, dust...
> One might doubt how much dust could be dumped in
> the
> atmosphere by "cometary" (or other) bodies, and ask
> where
> is the evidence, the layers of deposits, but it
> would all
> be washed into the oceans and their sediments are in
> fact
> fat with interplanetary and cometary dust, untagged
> as to
> origin and method of dispersal.
> And then the eposide would be over, the swarm
> out of
> the way, or the interstellar dust stream passed, and
> we start
> to recover. The eposide might be minor, might be
> severe,
> might return in a few decades, might vanish for a
> century.
> There would be little physical evidence left behind
> but the
> reports of the damage, hence the interest in old
> chronicles.
> On to history...
> >
> > Complex societies are inherently instable. There's
> no need
> > for a clear-cut external prime-mover to make such
> a society
> > collapse.
> >
> Since the Roman empire (E. Division) under
> Justinian was
> virtually as complex as Western Civilization over
> most of the
> past half millennium, why, I expect we'll go under
> any day
> now, then? Western Civilization has managed to avoid
> this
> "inherent" potential for destruction for at least
> 500 years.
> We ought to be ready to just go "poof!" any minute
> now...
> Should have already done it. Wonder why not?
> >
> > DON'T NEED TO HAVE a clearly identifiable
> prime-mover.
> > Thinking in prime-movers only to explain
> (pre-)historic change
> > is utterly simplistic.
> >
> What you call "prime-movers" is what we call
> "cause," as in
> that familiar duo of "cause and effect." I realize
> that you regard the
> notion of "cause and effect" as "in my opinion...
> pseudo-science,"
> etc., etc. At the risk of labeling myself as an
> intellectual dinosaur,
> as insufficiently post-modern, hopelessly naive, as
> un-hip, as
> definitely not-with-it, I will confess that I
> ACTUALLY BELIEVE
> that events HAVE causes! Gasp! What an archaic idea.
> Oh, wait a minute...
> >
> > That's why the whole neo-catastrophic movement of
> > primarily ASTROPHYSICISTS who bring up cosmic
> impact as a prime-mover in
> > far too many cases of (pre-)
> > historic change is just a too simplistic look on
> (pre-)history
> >
> I see, it's only "cosmic impacts" that can't be
> causes. Any
> other cause or causes is OK with you. Now I get it.
> I thought
> you just denied all causality as a philosophic
> principle (like
> Hume), but it's just one particular cause that you
> object to.
> >
> > Clube, Napier, Steel and such have their own
> agenda to see
> > "impacts" in history and recent pre-history
> everywhere. It ties
> > in with their idea's on the evolution of the
> Taurid meteor
> > complex as being derived from the arrival and
> breakup of a
> > giant comet a few millenia ago...
> >
> You gotta read'em before you stomp on'em: that
> "few millenia"
> is 20,000 to 60,000 years ago, possibly 100,000
> years ago,
> says N & C. That is a FEW millennia. It is a strong
> hypothesis
> because this kind of progressive breakup and
> evolution of bodies
> is exactly how objects get supplied to orbits of
> limited lifetimes,
> like Near-Earth and Apollo orbits, something we did
> not understand
> well in the middle 1970's and that they helped to
> highlight. Remember,
> in the 1970's there were still many Ph.D geologists
> who ridiculed
> the idea that the craters on the Moon were from
> impacts, a silly
> American notion, they said, when it's obvious
> they're volcanic.
> They had to be right; they had Ph.D's, didn't they?
> Impact was a struggling new idea when N & C
> wrote. It's not
> an agenda; it's an hypothesis, and they not hiding
> it.
> OK, astronomically, their notion about the
> breakup of the
> Comet Encke parent body is not bad, really
> well-done. But
> (like you, I suspect), I thought the Von D???niken
> tone of their
> books was silly and their reading of most of the
> history in those
> books silly and childish. I can see how it would
> more than
> annoy you. Since their astronomy is good and the
> rest of their
> writings are ridiculous, I like to imagine an editor
> at their
> publishing house pushed them to accept that
> best-seller
> style crap as filler for the sake of sales...
> See, I like to think the best of everybody.
> Maybe it was
> their idea. Maybe they needed the money. Maybe they
> wanted, politically, to worry enough people to get
> the
> notion taken seriously... Their history is goonish,
> wherever it came from.
> You've got to separate the good idea from its
> all-too-human
> context. Kepler was a famed and money-making
> astrologer,
> yet equal areas are swept out in equal times,
> nevertheless.
> >
> > As far as short-term climatic fluctuation is
> concerned,
> > there is much more cause to look at variations in
> solar flux
> > as a possible explanation .
> >
> I want to stop and savor this moment when we
> agree
> almost perfectly. That's obviously not a frequent
> event.
> What better way to explain SHORT-TERM solar flux
> variation than the short but intense dumping of
> opaque
> (or reflective) particulate matter into the Earth's
> atmosphere?
> It would settle on a time scale much shorter than
> what we
> know of innate solar variation.
> You see, I think you, and perhaps some
> "neo-catastrophists,"
> think of the term "impact" in a much too restricted
> sense. A dust
> grain stumbling into the Earth's atmosphere and
> getting stuck there
> is a kind of cosmic impact. Enough dust in a short
> enough time
> could be more catastrophic than anyone imagines.
> We just don't appreciate the role of dust, but
> we're learning.
> I reference the recent discovery of supernovae iron
> isotopes in
> sediments only 2.3 million years old, the heavy dust
> layer deposited
> on the Earth 8.3 million years ago by the breakup of
> the Veritas
> asteroid family. The 2.2-2.3 mya dust event has been
> proposed
> as the cause of a marine mass extinction at that
> time.
> And then, there's even more recent isotope
> anomalies
> discovered by Firestone, over which we disagreed, I
> recall.
> His hypothesis was utterly ridiculous, a "comet"
> formed in
> a supernovae. OK, he's an idiot (outside of his
> expertise)
> with a perfectly idiotic explanation of how these
> materials
> got here, mammoths being shot with interstellar
> particles and
> becoming extinct. Because it was so silly, you
> questioned totally
> the validity of their presence and dating on
> "depositational"
> arguments, wanting to dump the whole thing,
> dismissing
> the isotopic evidence as irrelevant and proving
> nothing, but
> these isotopes have since been found and similarly
> dated in
> Antarctic ice cores, where "depositational" issues
> are moot.
> They fell out of the atmosphere. They're almost
> certainly the
> dust from supernovae, possibly the
> Scorpius-Centaurus
> supernovae complex, possibly a closer former
> supernovae
> as yet undiscovered.
> Not all catastrophes are Hollywood-style. If you
> insist on a
> Hollywood spectacular, Google up HR 8210 (aka IK
> Pegasi B).
> Could it find an extra 0.15-0.27 solar mass in dust
> or a stray
> super-Jupiter-body and let go tomorrow? It would
> certainly be
> spectacular, during the interval when we were still
> alive, that is.
> Granted, wisps of interstellar dust or sudden
> effusions of
> asteroidal or cometary dust or even a swarm of small
> weak
> bodies breaking up in the Earth's upper atmosphere
> are not as
> picturesque nor as suitable for Hollywood movies as
> big
> splashy impacts, but they can deliver as much or
> more
> disruption as all but the best of the planet
> crashers. Of course,
> direct exposure to a nearby supernovae is a
> spectacular
> possibility, but interstellar drifts of supernova
> dust can
> be almost as bad, not only unspectacular but hardly
> noticeable... until it's too late.
> Since I've disagreed with you (and
> extensively), I'll
> apologize in advance for annoying you again, Marco.
> Isn't strange how everybody doesn't agree on
> everything?
>
>
> Sterling K. Webb
>
-------------------------------------------------------
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Marco Langbroek"
> <marco.langbroek_at_wanadoo.nl>
> > To: "meteorite list"
> <meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com>
> > Sent: Saturday, July 22, 2006 5:54 AM
> > Subject: [meteorite-list] Re:Comet hit Britain in
> mid sixth, century, AD?
> >
> >
> >> Sterling K. Webb wrote:
> >>
> >>> The scientist you're referring to is Michael
> Baillie,
> >>> an Irish dentrochronologist (not Bailey).
> >>
> >> Too many Bailey'/Baillie's around, sorry... And
> its dendrochronologist,
> >> not
> >> dentrochronologist.
> >>
> >>
> >>> Their suggestion arose from uncovering a
> 19th century
> >>> account of an excavation on the island of
> Anglesey (which
> >>> is the least forested portion of the UK, less
> than 0.5%)
> >>> of an ancient forest which had been flattened
> and crushed
> >>> wholesale and apparently instantaneously and
> which to
> >>> them greatly resembled a naive description of
> the flattened
> >>> forest on the Tungus River caused by the
> Tunguska object,
> >>> only much larger.
> >>
> >> Which is a naive "Pompei Premise" about general
> taphonomic processes and
> >> ignores that in the 19th century, taphonomic and
> post-depositional
> >> processes were concepts still completely ignored.
> And catastrophic
> >> thinking reigned those days.
> >> Have you ever been to a peat excavation? It looks
> like Tunguska allright,
> >> fallen tree trunks everywhere. Only it isn't.
> >>
> >>
> >>> Yes, Marco, History is Change. But there are
> also
> >>> those "with a known fetish" AGAINST impacts or
> any
> >>> other physical event as a source" for any
> historical change.
> >>> The sudden collapse of the "Byzantine" or
> eastern Roman
> >>> Empire after 534 AD is without known social,
> political,
> >>> economic, military nor other human cause. It is
> the sudden
> >>> commencement of the Dark Ages for no apparent
> reason.
> >>> Dark Ages are rare, and always without apparent
> explanation
> >>> (1200 BC to 800 BC is another, and there was
> another
> >>> about 4000 years ago, too).
> >>
> >>
> >> Don't lecture me that condescendingly man. Who's
> got the PhD in
> >> prehistoric
> >> archaeology here?
> >>
> >> The point is that many (pre-) historic events
> indeed DON'T HAVE and DON'T
> >> NEED
> >> TO HAVE a clearly identifiable prime-mover.
> Thinking in prime-movers only
> >> to
> >> explain (pre-)historic change is utterly
> simplistic. That's why the whole
> >> neo-catastrophic movement of primarily
> ASTROPHYSICISTS who bring up
> >> cosmic impact as a prime-mover in far too many
> cases of (pre-)historic
> >> change is just a too simplistic look on
> (pre-)history, and in my opinion
> >> is pseudo-science.
> >>
> >> Complex societies are inherently instable.
> There's no need for a
> >> clear-cut
> >> external prime-mover to make such a society
> collapse.
> >>
> >> Volcanic super eruptions, cosmic impacts and
> other natural disasters
> >> happen. And
> >> when they happen, they can have a profound impact
> on human society in the
> >> affected area, no doubt (an appendix to my own
> dissertation explores the
> >> possible effekts of the Australasian impact for
> early Asian Homo erectus,
> >> in fact). And there are some good historic
> examples of that too (for the
> >> case of volcanic eruptions at least).
> >> But some people use them as Dei ex Machinae to
> explain everything we
> >> don't
> >> readily understand.
> >>
> >> Large impact phenomena come with a suit of
> identifiable things. If there
> >> was such an event in Britain as recent as AD 540,
> then where are the
> >> ejecta layers, the dust layers, the spherule
> layers, the impact glasses,
> >> the shocked quartz, the impact craters, the
> extinction events in flora
> >> and fauna? There is no reason why these should
> have vanished from the
> >> geological record in this case.
> >>
> >> A set of narrow tree rings that can have multiple
> causes is not enough to
> >> see an impact evidenced. And its all we have
> here. A very meagre set of
> >> proxy data by all means. I do not doubt Baillie's
> tree ring analysis, but
> >> the whole hypothesis attached to it I do doubt
> for it is founded on very
> >> flimsy multi-interpretable proxy data.
> >>
> >> As far as short-term climatic fluctuation is
> concerned, there is much
> >> more cause to look at variations in solar flux as
> a possible explanation
> >> than to impact.
> >>
> >> Clube, Napier, Steel and such have their own
> agenda to see "impacts" in
> >> history
> >> and recent pre-history everywhere. It ties in
> with their idea's on the
> >> evolution
> >> of the Taurid meteor complex as being derived
> from the arrival and
> >> breakup of a
> >> giant comet a few millenia ago. They believe this
> showered the earth with
> >> impact
> >> fragments. As a result, they have a strong
> tendency to see everything
> >> which in
> >> their perception is "odd" in the history of the
> past few millenia as
> >> "evidence"
> >> for their theory. Even Stonehenge is a giant
> memorial to celestial Taurid
> >> displays in e.g. Steels opinion. In my opinion,
> this conceptually is very
> >> near
> >> to Von D???niken seeing Alien influence and
> references to Alien visitors
> >> everywhere as its the result of a similar
> simplistic and biased idee-fixe
> >> look
> >> at (pre-) history.
> >>
> >> And please note that "Dark age" is an often
> misused and misunderstood
> >> concept. It says more about our inability to
> access the character of that
> >> period, than about that period itself.
> >>
> >> - Marco
> >>
> >> -----
> >> Dr Marco Langbroek
> >> Dutch Meteor Society (DMS)
> >>
> >> e-mail: meteorites_at_dmsweb.org
> >> private website
> http://home.wanadoo.nl/marco.langbroek
> >> DMS website http://www.dmsweb.org
> >> -----
> >>
> >> ______________________________________________
> >> Meteorite-list mailing list
> >> Meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com
> >>
>
http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
> >>
> >
>
>
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Received on Sun 23 Jul 2006 10:46:54 AM PDT