[meteorite-list] KT extinction impacts

From: E.P. Grondine <epgrondine_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2011 11:32:30 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <772487.24769.qm_at_web36901.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Hi all -

Ahem.

Jay, you are right that it is a hypothesis that the KT impacts were from fragments of the same comet.

The other explanation, and a far more likely one, now that you mention it, is that Clube and Napier's injection mechanism was at work, and multiple comets hit at roughly the same time.

In this summary, note the pooling of oil in the fractures, which may go a long way toward explaining the lack of public publications:

http://starmon.com/KT_craters.html

http://bi154.dhcp.ttu.edu/extinction/chatterjee+rudra08.pdf

It is also interesting that 41 major scientists signed an open letter declaring that Chicxulub caused the extinction of the dinosaurs shortly before Chatterjee's work was widely circulated.

In doing this they followed me in the earlier mistake I made in responding to Keller's nonsense several years earlier.

In answer to the nuclear effects of hypervelocity impacts, it appears that photons in the reaction reach an energy level capable of splitting neutrons (nucleons) into neutrons and protons, resulting in higher 10 Berylium and 14 Carbon levels. Even in impacts much smaller than these.

(Sterling, do you have a public formula handy for converting craters into megatons in a very rough number? Anything better than the Purdue online impact simulator? I have misplaced my Excel spreadsheet. Stroke.

Can you also speak to the issue of the energy in the 10Be/14C production?
Is it a fission addition, or a fission subtraction?)

By the way, there is a special on my book "Man and Impact in the Americas" over at the cosmictusk.com.

E.P. Grondine
Man and Impact in the Americas
Received on Tue 26 Apr 2011 02:32:30 PM PDT