[meteorite-list] Mammoth Stew, then you take the pieces back to your fire

From: Jason Utas <meteoritekid_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2007 13:40:19 -0800
Message-ID: <93aaac890712201340s5a27fe96ge68bba13034941db_at_mail.gmail.com>

E.P, All,

> >Well, probably, though we have no real proof of their
> >having been blasted to death *anywhere.*
>
> Denial takes many forms.

Show me proof. Show me blackened bones.
Oh, that's right - there isn't any.
As I said before, I won't say that such events haven't happened,
because in all likelihood, they have - but we *have no proof.*
This is not denial. This is fact.

> > I'm not an idiot.
>
> No one said you were. It simply that your efforts to
> rationalize away the deaths from these impacts is
> reducing your replies to incoherence.

Rationalize them away? I'm not trying to say anything other than the
fact that you're attributing a mass hominid death to an
airburst/impact scenario (you seem to have changed your mind in this
regard), when the geologic effects that we observe can not be
attributed to any known extraterrestrial or terrestrial mechanism.
I'm not saying they didn't die. I'm not saying that it doesn't matter
if or how they died. I'm saying we don't know how they died.

That's not denial. It is nothing more than plainly admitting to what
we do and do not know - which is, in my (evidently raving and
incoherent) mind, the right path to take.

> > A cometary airburst of a body, say, 1km in diameter,
> > simply doesn't make any sense. Physically
> > speaking (I'm currently taking college-level
> > physics), it just doesn't make sense. Maybe you
> know > of some laws regarding atmospheric resistance
> that I > don't, but unless some such laws exist, I'm
> > disinclined to believe just about everything you
> say.
>
> I never said that a 1 kilometer comet airburst.

How big would it have to be to release enough energy to reduce the
hominid population of the continent to 1/10 of its original number?
I don't know the exact dynamics of an airburst, but I would assume
that it would take a body in the ten km range to generate enough
energy. A 1km object, the one used in my examples, although not big
enough to create the observed effects, is far above the limit in size
of what could conceivably detonate i nan airburst scenario without
having reached the ground.
Hell, you're the one saying it was an airburst - you tell me how big
the body was.

> I used to get upset when people put words into my
> mouth, as I always used to attribute it to my
> inability to communicate clearly. Now I realize that
> it has a different cause.

See above.

> >We don't know much about cometary composition, but
> > there's no reason (at all) to suspect that they
> > formed around iron cores,
>
> I never said that.

And I quote:

"It seems to me that the cores of the cometissimals in
a comet have a nice metal content. That's where the
iridium is, after all."

So...you did say that....

Bad memory?

> > They were mostly in the past. Impact rates have
> been > declining. I'm not saying that there's no
> chance
> > that we could be wiped out tomorrow.
> > What I'm saying is that the odds are better for us
> > living out the next day than they were, say, two
> > billion years ago. That's a fact.
>
> No it isn't. You forgot to consider comet impact when
> estimating the odds. Once again, estimates of the
> impact hazard are exactly that, estimates, and are
> known to be weak.

Well we know for a fact that there were more large bodies in the early
solar system billions of years ago than there are today simply from
mathematical models, though we may not be able to prove such numbers
precisely with vast numbers of dated craters.
The models are still sound; it would take a good few pages of my
typing to explain them fully, and, to be frank, I see no point in
wasting the time.

> >Because you're misunderstanding just about everything
> >I say?
>
> No, see my comment on my communication skills, above.
> It's for a different reason.

Well, evidently I haven't been able to truly "rationalize" these
deaths (that so clearly plague my subconscious) and they are thus
driving me to "incoherence..."

Right.

If you stopped lying - and maybe started obeying the laws of physics,
scientific method, not to mention basic logic, we might get somewhere.

Until that day, good day.

Jason

> good hunting all,
> E.P. Grondine
> Man and Impact in the Americas
>
>
>
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Received on Thu 20 Dec 2007 04:40:19 PM PST