[meteorite-list] Swiss Kiss: Nanodiamonds and Iridium independently confirmed at Bern INQUA session on Younger Dryas climate crash: cosmictusk.com George Howard: Rich Murray 2011.07.05

From: Rich Murray <rmforall_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 21:51:16 -0700
Message-ID: <CAHqJ8pbR=tNqSkb_1Y07SGjwiJXQW5gWjfgV=7AkQeAYzd14Bg_at_mail.gmail.com>

Swiss Kiss: Nanodiamonds and Iridium independently confirmed at Bern
INQUA session on Younger Dryas climate crash: cosmictusk.com George
Howard: Rich Murray 2011.07.05

The Cosmic Tusk www.cosmictusk.com
Abrupt climate change induced by comets and asteroids during human history

Swiss Kiss: Nanodiamonds and Iridium newly reported at Bern INQUA
session on Younger Dryas climate crash -- The Cosmic Tusk on German
researchers have found those same pesky nanodiamond encrusted Carbon
Spherules

Swiss Kiss: Nanodiamonds and Iridium independently confirmed at Bern
INQUA session on Younger Dryas climate crash

The titles for the upcoming talks and posters at the upcoming INQUA
session, The Enigmatic Younger Dryas, have been posted for some time.
Typical of these conferences, the actual abstract revealing the
findings (or musings) of the speaker is posted later a few weeks
before the conference. The abstracts for the conference have now been
published.

Here again in Switzerland, in keeping with the cognitive dissonance of
the Skeptics, are supportive findings from researchers not previously
published with or in collaboration with the Younger Dryas boundary
team. These reports are typical of others at conferences concerning
the Pleistocene-Holocene transition and the Younger Dryas. Similarly
supportive research appears regularly in such forums but somehow
escapes the playlist of the critics. (The Tusk is working on a
comprehensive list of independent-but-seemingly-invisible studies
which I will post in the next few weeks.)

But for today, lets start with separate reports from the laboratories
of Marshall, et. al. and van Hoesel, et. al.

My apologies for not being able to appropriately ?Block Quote? them at
the moment, but they are verbatim.

http://www.inqua2011.ch/?a=programme&subnavi=abstract&id=2641&sessionid=60

Exceptional iridium concentrations found at the Aller?d-Younger Dryas
transition in sediments from Bodmin Moor in southwest England

William Marshall
Katie Head
Robert Clough
Andrew Fisher

Elevated iridium values, dated to start of the Younger Dryas cooling
event, have been found in sediments deposited at a number of Late
Glacial sites in North America and one in Europe. It has been proposed
(e.g., Firestone et al., 2007, PNAS 104: 16016-16021) that this
widespread iridium enrichment signal is the result of an explosive
disintegration of a large extraterrestrial object over North America
around 12,900 cal. yr BP, and it is contended that it was this event
which instigated the Younger Dryas cooling. This scenario is
controversial, and the ?ET? explanation of these geochemical signals
is not universally accepted. This notwithstanding, we report here the
finding of an iridium anomaly in the Aller?d-Younger Dryas boundary
sediments at Hawks Tor in the southwest of England.

The concentration of iridium and other elements is determined in peat
monoliths using ICP-MS, operated in collision-cell mode, and ICP-OES
instruments. We find an increase of over 300 % in the iridium
concentration measured in the bulk sediment immediately above the
Younger Dryas boundary compared with the values found below the
transition. The iridium-titanium ratio is used to confirm a lag
between the start of the iridium enrichment and the timing of abrupt
environmental disruption at the site signalled by decreases in the
organic carbon content, and changes the concentrations of potassium,
iron and manganese. These geochemical changes coincide with a shift
from a humified peat to a minerogenic lithology. By using a new
calibration of existing 14C ages, integrated with new AMS dates and
optically stimulated luminescence ages, we show that the timing of
this iridium enrichment found in southwest England is in agreement
with the dates proposed for the iridium enrichment signals previously
found in North America and Belgium.

And:

http://www.inqua2011.ch/?a=programme&subnavi=abstract&id=1556

Nanodiamonds and the Usselo layer

Annelies van Hoesel
Wim Hoek
Freek Braadbaart
Hans van der Plicht
Martyn R. Drury

Nanodiamonds make up one of the important lines of evidence for the
controversial hypothesis that an extraterrestrial impact took place at
the onset of the Younger Dryas. These nanodiamonds have been found in
the Aller?d-Younger Dryas boundary layer or ?black mat? in North
America, a section of the Usselo palaeosol in Belgium and in samples
from the Greenland ice sheet. Nanodiamonds are known to occur in
association with known impact events and within meteorites. However,
the use of nanodiamonds as diagnostic evidence of an extraterrestrial
impact is still debated. Concerning the Aller?d-Younger Dryas boundary
layer it has been suggested that the nanodiamonds accumulated over
time from meteoritic rain or possibly formed during intense forest
fires. In addition, it has been claimed that the nano-crystalline
carbon in the North American black mat is graphene and not diamond.

We have sampled the previously investigated Usselo layer in detail at
two classic locations in the Netherlands, Aalsterhut (near Geldrop)
and Lutterzand. Several individual charcoal particles of the
Aalsterhut Usselo layer have been AMS dated to assess the variability
in age in the Usselo layer at this location. Samples are analysed for
the occurrence of nanodiamonds using electron microscopy. In addition,
samples from modern wildfires and controlled heating experiments will
be analysed for nanodiamonds to investigate possible non-impact
related origins of the nanodiamonds.

In the samples from the Usselo layer at Aalsterhut, we have found
nano-crystalline carbon aggregates with selected area electron
diffraction patterns similar to nanodiamond.


Pretty intriguing, huh? And how ironic to come right on the heels of
the personal trashing given Allen West in a recent blog? Kind of a
back-to- the-science footnote.

I feel and admire Marshall and van Hoesal who revealed their work
during such a vicious period of personal criticism of the theory and
its earliest proponents across the pond. I am sure it does not make it
any easier to find extrordinary things in extraordinary places when
the first folks to do so are being eviscerated as kooks, fools and
charlatans (even if by a handful).

But science does have a distinguished history of avoiding being
extinguished. The insistence by some that we all ?move along, move
along? and that ?there is nothing to see here,? is more foolhardy in
this instance than is normally the case in similar idea pogroms. The
Younger Dryas Boundary covers a great deal of ground -- literally. If
a guy with a video camera in his backyard can add to the debate --
those who wish to sweep it away are in trouble.

But these folks were not guys with video cameras in their backyards.
Van Hoesal is from Ultrecht University in the Netherlands, which seems
to be a reliable authority on ancient dutch soils. You will remember
this institution as the home of catastrophist Hans Kloosterman?s
erstwhile nemesis, Eduard Atze Koster, with whom Han had a run-in over
the same Usselo black band studied by Van Hoesal. [Tusk Exclusive]
I?d love to be a tulip in the faculty lounge when those two
generations compare field notes.

Recall as well that the subject black stripe was also discovered to be
diamondiferous by Tian, Claeys and Schryvers in their dissonantly
titled 2010 paper in PNAS, ?Nanodiamonds do not provide unique
evidence for Younger Dryas Impact.? Covered here in the Tusk.

And previously found by Schryvers, et. al. in at least two European
locations. Covered here.

Notably, the previous Schryvers work (way back in 2006) discovered and
specifically described the nanodiamonds as encrusting anomalous Carbon
Spherules.

These are the same spherules dismissed as insect poop by Andrew Scott
and reported by the Richard Kerr of Science.

Which begs me to ask, what is more likely, that multiple, serious,
german scientists have found nanodiamonds in bug feces, failed to
identify the carbon as simple crap, and call for a ?systematic,
world-wide study of the materials?? Or that smug doubters like Kerr
and Scott are willing to believe anything -- but the truth?

Finally, we have Mr. Marshall?s confirmation of Iridium in
concentration at the Younger Dryas Boundary, but this time in
Southwest England. This was more of a surprise than the previously
reported nanodiamonds littering the continental low-country. For one,
Iridium has never been at the top of the list of solid evidence, even
for the core supporters. Apparently it is expensive to test and the
result can swing around a lot depending on concentrations within
particularly grains and such. But replication is the most sincere
form of flattery and Marshall and his team bring another welcome data
point to the fore.

To be proofed and continued?

July 5th, 2011 | Tags: Aller?d, Cornwall, Greenland Stadial-1,
Iridium, younger dryas | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment


pertinent features near Campbell Mountain, studied by Dennis Cox, by
his house in Fresno, CA: Rich Murray 2011.06.27
http://rmforall.blogspot.com/2011_06_01_archive.htm
Monday, June 27, 2011
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Received on Wed 06 Jul 2011 12:51:16 AM PDT