Tuesday, 23 November 2010

Louisiana Impact Crater 23NOV2010

Heart of Louisiana: La's meteor strike w/ video
by Dave McNamara

A research team, led by Dr. Paul V. Heinrich from LSU
has found the remains of a large crater that experts
believe was caused by a long-ago meteor impact
... See Video

Video

More about the Brushy Creek Impact Crater in
St. Helena Parish, Louisiana by Paul V. Heinrich:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/18934514/Brushy-Creek-Impact-Crater-St-Helena-Parish-Louisiana

http://www.research.lsu.edu/newsletter/archives/2004summer/crater.htm

Sunday, 21 November 2010

The Manuel Benavides Craterwrong and Cratermania

People having been using Google Earth for a number of purposes, including the search for impact craters. Although Google Earth has been useful in the search for impact structures and craters, some people have been indulging in a cratermania in which any circular feature and even a number of noncircular features are instantly claimed to be either impact structures and craters without a single shred of either ground truthing, literature review, or hard evidence. One specific example is:

1. The Benavides Impact Structure: A large, multiple airburst,
geo-ablative impact structure.
http://craterhunter.wordpress.com/the-planetary-scaring-of-the-younger-dryas-impact-event/the-benivides-impact-structure/

http://tiny.cc/Benavides
This feature is described as:

"The semi circular ring of The Benavides Impact Structure is 17 miles wide. Just across the border from Terlingua, Texas, and Big Bend National Park, USA. "and it is stated, "There is no volcanic vent here."

Unfortunately, recently published and very, very detailed geologic mapping demonstrates beyond any shadow of a doubt that the above statements are completely wrong. The so-called "Benavides Impact Structure" is in fact a volcanic caldera and would be more correctly called the "Benavides Craterwrong."

This detailed geologic mapping, McDowell (2010), states about the Benavides structure;

"The caldera is an unusual trap-door type with a hinge zone on the southwest and two separate collapse and eruption margins around the north and east. Its outer diameter is approximately 25 km, which is unusually large for the tuffs that erupted from it, suggestive of a shallow collapse. Inflation or tumescence prior to the eruptions modified a preexisting Laramide fold by bowing it outward toward the north and east; a 31.5 Ma granitoid was intruded into the fold axis, resulting in the formation of skarn deposits in the surrounding limestones of the fold."

References Cited;

McDowell, F. W., 2010, Geologic Map of Manuel Benavides area,
Chihuahua, Mexico. Map and Chart no. 99. Geological Society of
America, Boulder, Colorado.
http://rock.geosociety.org/Bookstore/default.asp?oID=0&catID=2&pID=MCH099F

Yours,

Paul H.

Drumlins Are Glacial, Not Impact, In Origin

Dear friends,

New research concerning how drumlins form has appeared
in the October 2010 (vol. 38 no. 10) issue of "Geology."
http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/38/10.toc

The significance of this research is discussed in:

1. How Drumlins Form, olelog What on Earth
Blog, Nov. 18, 2010, http://my.opera.com/nielsol/blog/show.dml/22004962

2. Drumlin Field Discovery Gives Answers
About Glaciation And Climate, redorbit
November 16, 2010, http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1951595/drumlin_field_discovery_gives_answers_about_glaciation_and_climate/index.html

The paper is;

Johnson, M. D., A. Schomacker, I. O. Benediktsson,
A. J. Geiger, A. Ferguson, and O. Ingolfsson, 2010,
Active drumlin field revealed at the margin of
Múlajökull, Iceland: A surge-type glacier. Geology.
vol. 38, no. 10, pp. 943-946, DOI: 10.1130/G31371.1
http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/38/10/943

This refutes the claims by various catastrophists that drumlins
were either created by Pleistocene extraterrestrial impacts or
Noah's Flood.

An example of how drumlins are misinterpreted and misused
as evidence of an extraterrestrial impact is discussed in "Could
a Comet Tail Have Scarred the Earth in the Recent Past?" at
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/206447-Could-a-Comet-Tail-Have-Scarred-the-Earth-in-the-Recent-Past-

Even more detailed discussion of how drumlins were created
is discussed in a number of papers in the December (vol. 232,
no. 3-4) issue of "Sedimentary Geology" at
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00370738

Best Wishes,

Paul H.

Meteorite Crater or Collapsed Lava Tube on Mt. Ararat ??

On Nov. 20, 2010 and in "meteorite crater on Mt. Ararat?" at
http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/meteorite-list/2010-November/070933.html

Don Giovanni posted;

" http://snipurl.com/1hm8yo

"

Other web pages for this story are:
1. http://technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26039/

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/files/48956/Ararat.png

2. Meteorite Crater on Mount Ararat?
http://www.armenianweekly.com/2010/11/19/meteorite-crater-on-mount-ararat/

and wrote

""Technology Review," a publication of MIT, published a story
on Thurs., Nov. 18 titled “Unrecorded Meteorite Crater Found
on Mount Ararat?” The article reveals that two physicists, Vahe
Gurzadyan from the Yerevan Physics Institute in Armenia and
Sverre Aarseth from the University of Cambridge in the UK,
somehow gained access to the northern and western slopes of
Mount Ararat—areas that are off-limits to visitors—and there
discovered a “well-preserved” crater “at an altitude of 2100
meters, at coordinates 39˚ 47’ 30”N, 44˚ 14’ 40”E, and…some
70 meters across.”"

It must have been a very slow newsday for "Technology
Review" to have published what is essentially a nonstory.
The two page article can be found in "A meteorite crater
on Mt. Ararat?" by V. G. Gurzadyan and S. Aarseth (Submitted
on 16 Nov 2010) in the arXiv.org archive.

Summary at http://arxiv4.library.cornell.edu/abs/1011.3715

PDF file at http://arxiv4.library.cornell.edu/pdf/1011.3715v1

Looking at the picture, it does not even look like a
convincing volcanic crater and certainly does not look
anything like a convincing impact crater. One possibility
which they do not address is that this depression is a
collapsed lave tube. The roof collapse of lava tubes also
creates circular depressions, which the picture in their
article definitely looks like one.

Some examples of collapsed lava tubes are:

1. The Desert Caves Project
http://www.saudicaves.com/science/index.html

http://www.saudicaves.com/science/hib.jpg

2. "Lava tube listed only in Becka's rough guide of America" (Utah)
http://www.goatchurch.org.uk/atrips/usa/utah/utah.html

http://www.goatchurch.org.uk/atrips/usa/utah/lavatube.jpg

3. Pisgah Lava Tubes
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=ce5aa161-17aa-48a3-b1a1-89b72a9dff1f

http://img.geocaching.com/cache/log/2ef85cee-6cc7-4674-b8c7-10d867e3beb0.jpg

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/gallery.aspx?guid=ce5aa161-17aa-48a3-b1a1-89b72a9dff1f

4. Collapsed Lava Tube, Craters of the Moon
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/11599385

5. Volcanic ventures
http://volcanicventures.wordpress.com/

http://volcanicventures.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/shellyp.jpg?w=497&h=372

6. Martian caves
http://dwarmstr.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html

http://www2.lib.uchicago.edu/~dean/blog/mars-cave.jpg

http://www2.lib.uchicago.edu/~dean/blog/mars-cave-floor.jpg

Yours,

Paul H.

Monday, 8 November 2010