Moldavites: Natural Or Fake? 30AUG2017

 Moldavites: Natural Or Fake?

In a previous post, Dirk Ross wrote:

"Another note on faked impactites -

India is now producing faceted fake

moldavite."

An appropriate article is:

Moldavites: Natural Or Fake? by Jaroslav Hyršl

Gem and Geminology, Spring 2015, Vol. 51,

no. 1, pp. 103-104.

https://www.gia.edu/gems-gemology/spring-2015-gemnews-moldavites-natural-fake

Yours,

Paul H.

Blueprint for a Global Fireball Observatory 26AUG2017

 Blueprint for a Global Fireball Observatory

Here's the blueprint for a global fireball observatory

– and why we need one by Luke Daly, Gareth Collins

and Martin Suttle, The Conversation, August 23, 2017

http://theconversation.com/heres-the-blueprint-for-a-global-fireball-observatory-and-why-we-need-one-82798

https://phys.org/news/2017-08-blueprint-global-fireball-observatory.html

Yours,

Paul H.

Citizen Scientists To Study Solar Eclipse 2017 19AUG2017

 Citizen Scientists To Study Solar Eclipse 2017

Make history during the solar eclipse as a citizen scientist

by Anna Kusmer, KQED  August 16, 2017

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/make-history-solar-eclipse-citizen-scientist/

Solar Eclipse 2017: Life Respond

https://www.calacademy.org/citizen-science/solar-eclipse-2017

NASA Invites You to Become a Citizen Scientist During

US Total Solar Eclipse, NASA, July 20, 2017

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/nasa-invites-you-to-become-a-citizen-scientist-during-us-total-solar-eclipse

Citizen Scientists Gear Up for Eclipse, Voice of America

https://www.voanews.com/a/citizen-scientists-gear-up-for-eclipse/3990715.html

Citizen scientists will take to the field for eclipse

KGMI News, August 18, 2017

http://kgmi.com/news/030030-citizen-scientists-will-take-to-the-field-for-eclipse/

Citizen Scientists Join Forces To Document Eclipse

by Tom Banse, Northwest News Network, August 15, 2017

http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2017/08/15/eclipse-citizen-scientists

NASA taps citizen scientists to help study eclipse by Brooks Hays

Washington (UPI), Space Daily, August 17, 2017

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/NASA_taps_citizen_scientists_to_help_study_eclipse_999.html

An unrelated  article:

Will The Eclipse Make Crops And Animals Flip Out? Scientists Ask (Really)

Kristofor Husted, the salt, NPR, August 17, 2017

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/08/17/543741919/will-the-eclipse-make-crops-and-animals-flip-out-scientists-ask-really

Yours,

Paul H.

Periodicity in Impact Cratering ? Part 2 15AUG2017

 Periodicity in Impact Cratering ? Part 2

Hi,

Yesterday, I posted the link to apaper that argued
against there being a periodicity in Phanerozoic
impact cratering.

On the other side of the argument, I found some
papers that argued for a periodicity in Phanerozoic
impact cratering. They include:

Rampino, M.R., and K. Caldeira, 2017: Correlation of the
largest craters, stratigraphic impact signatures, and
extinction events over the past 250 Myr. Geosci.
Frontiers, in press, doi:10.1016/j.gsf.2017.03.002.
https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ra08800k.html
https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/authors/mrampino.html

Rampino, M.R., and K. Caldeira, 2015: Periodic impact
cratering and extinction events over the last 260
million years. Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., 454, no. 4,
3480-3484, doi:10.1093/mnras/stv2088.
https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ra04800g.html https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/authors/mrampino.html

Prokoph, A., M.R. Rampino, and H. El Bilali, 2004: Periodic
components in the diversity of calcareous plankton and
geological events over the past 230 Myr. Palaeogeogr.
Palaeoclimatol. Palaeoecol., 207, 105-125,
doi:10.1016/j.palaeo.2004.02.004. (Has PDF file.)
https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/pr08200o.html
https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/authors/mrampino.html

Yours,

Paul H.

Is there a resolvable periodicity in impact cratering record ? 14AUG2017

 Is there a resolvable periodicity in impact cratering record ?

Could asteroids bombard the Earth to cause a mass extinction in ten

million years?

Asteroids have hit Earth throughout its history, but there’s no way to

know when

the next big one is likely. Sanna Alwmark, Lund University, Cosmos,

Agust 14, 2017

https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/could-asteroids-bombard-the-earth-to-cause-a-mass-extinction-in-ten-million-years

The paper is:

Matthias M. M. Meier  and Sanna Holm-Alwmark, 2017, A tale of clusters: no

resolvable periodicity in the terrestrial impact cratering record.

Monthly Notices

  of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 467, Issue 3, 1 June 2017,

Pages 2545–2551, https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stx211

https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/mnras/stx211

Yours,

Paul H.

Asteroid the size of a house set for near miss with Earth 14AUG2017

 Asteroid the size of a house set for near miss with Earth

Big asteroid to sweep close September

By Eddie Irizarry in Astronomy Essentials,  August 13, 2017

http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/asteroid-1981-et3-3122-florence-pass-earth-2017-binoculars

https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news198.html

"Asteroid 3122 Florence is the biggest near-Earth

object to pass this close since this category of objects

was discovered over a century ago."

Close encounter: asteroid the size of a house set for

near miss with Earth Space rock 2012 TC4 expected

to zoom by harmlessly, coming within 27,300 miles –

an eighth of the distance from the Earth to the Moon

The Guardian, Agence France-Presse, August 10, 2017

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/aug/11/close-encounter-asteroid-2012-tc4-size-of-a-house-near-miss-with-earth

Yours,

Paul H.

More Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis Papers 09AUG2017

 More Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis Papers

The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis debate

continues with papers that are published both

supporting and disputing it. The debate is a binary

one with one side either denying or supporting

an extreme event  capable of causing extinction

and climatic change. The ambiguous and

inconsistent nature of the hypothesized impact

signals might be used to argue for a third possibility.

This possibility is that the consequence of either

a rather minor extraterrestrial event or set of

rather minor extraterrestrial events have been

grossly overinterpreted and exaggerated  as

being larger than they were because by random

coincidence they occurred at the same time as a

major paleoclimatic change.

Some of the recent papers are:

Huber, R., Darga, R. and Lauterbach, H., 2017,

April. Pseudoimpactites in anthropocenically

overprinted quaternary sediments. In EGU

General Assembly Conference Abstracts

Vol. 19, p. 16545

http://www.rimbao.de/egu2017/Poster_EGU_2017_Pseudoimpaktites.pdf

Israde-Alcántara, I., Domínguez-Vázquez, G.,

Gonzalez, S., Bischoff, J., West, A. and Huddart,

D., 2017. Five Younger Dryas Black Mats in

Mexico and their stratigraphic and

paleoenvironmental context. Journal of

Paleolimnology, pp. 1-21.

Mahaney, W.C., Somelar, P., West, A., Krinsley,

D., Allen, C.C., Pentlavalli, P., Young, J.M., Dohm,

J.M., LeCompte, M., Kelleher, B. and Jordan,

S.F., 2017. Evidence for cosmic airburst in the

Western Alps archived in Late Glacial paleosols.

Quaternary International, 438, pp. 68-80.

Moore, C.R., West, A., LeCompte, M.A., Brooks,

M.J., Daniel Jr, I.R., Goodyear, A.C., Ferguson, T.A.,

Ivester, A.H., Feathers, J.K., Kennett, J.P. and

Tankersley, K.B., 2017. Widespread platinum

anomaly documented at the Younger Dryas

onset in North American sedimentary sequences.

Scientific Reports, 7, article 44031.

Roperch, P., Gattacceca, J., Valenzuela, M.,

Devouard, B., Lorand, J.P., Arriagada, C., Rochette,

P., Latorre, C. and Beck, P., 2017. Surface

vitrification caused by natural fires in Late

Pleistocene wetlands of the Atacama Desert.

Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 469, pp. 15-26.

Seo, J., Han, C., Steffensen, J.P., Hong, S. and

Sharma, M., 2017, March. Osmium Isotopes at the

Onset of Younger Dryas Using the GRIP Ice Core.

In Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.

Vol. 48, abstract 3005.

Scott, A.C., Hardiman, M., Pinter, N., Anderson,

R.S., Daulton, T.L., Ejarque, A., Finch, P. and

Carter - champion, A., 2017. Interpreting

palaeofire evidence from fluvial sediments: a

case study from Santa Rosa Island, California,

with implications for the Younger Dryas Impact

Hypothesis. Journal of Quaternary Science,

32(1), pp. 35-47.

Schumann, R.R., Pigati, J.S. and McGeehin, J.P.,

2016. Fluvial system response to late Pleistocene-

Holocene sea-level change on Santa Rosa Island,

Channel Islands National Park, California.

Geomorphology, 268, pp. 322-340.

(Comment) - Pinter, N., Hardiman, M., Scott, A.C.

and Anderson, R.S., 2017. Discussion of “Fluvial

system response to late Pleistocene-Holocene

sea-level change on Santa Rosa Island, Channel

Islands National Park, California”(Schumann et

al., 2016. Geomorphology, 268: 322–340).

Geomorphology.

(Reply) - Schumann, R.R. and Pigati, J.S., 2017.

Reply to the discussion of Pinter et al. on ‘Fluvial

system response to late Pleistocene-Holocene

sea-level change on Santa Rosa Island, Channel

Islands National Park, California’ by Schumann

et al.(2016). Geomorphology.

Zamora, A., 2017. A model for the geomorphology

of the Carolina Bays. Geomorphology, 282, pp. 209-216.

As usual, the “impact cratering bandwagon” that

Reimold  (1997) talks about is alive and well as

part of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis

discussion. This is seen in the number of imaginary

impact craters and structures that have been

offered as evidence of this event and an earlier

Pleistocene hypothesized impact event.

The latest of these imaginary craters is discussed in:

Burchard, H.G., 2017. Younger Dryas Comet

12,900 BP. Open Journal of Geology, 7(02), p.193.

(Note:, the “Open Journal of Geology is published

by “Scientific Research Publishing.” Go see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Research_Publishing

Their evidence also includes a few real pre-Pleistocene

craters and structures.

Also, authors and podcasters of fringe science

in their zeal to find evidence for a catastrophic

Younger Dryas impact event repeatedly have

mistakenly and incorrectly presumed that events

associated with the Missoula Floods and various

meltwater events and pulses were

contemporaneous with the start of the Younger

Dryas. Some blatant errors are repeatedly made

despite an abundant data that these events are

quite obviously not contemporaneous.

One of the more bizarre of these ill-informed and

unsupported interpretations is the claim that

the Palouse Loess consists of some type of

Younger Dryas Impact ejecta-like deposit.

References cited:

Reimold, W.U., 2007. The impact crater bandwagon

(some problems with the terrestrial impact cratering

record). Meteoritics & Planetary Science, 42(9),

pp. 1467-1472.

Yours,

Paul H.

Comic-Con, a Meteorite Petting Zoo, Etc, for 2 Minutes of Darkness 07AUG2017

 Comic-Con, a Meteorite Petting Zoo, Etc, for 2 Minutes of Darkness

Comic-Con, a Meteorite Petting Zoo, and a $10,000 VIP Package

— All for 2 Minutes of Darkness, The Chronicle Of Higher Education

http://www.chronicle.com/article/Comic-Con-a-Meteorite-Petting/240798

Yours,

Paul

Giant Mud Balls Roamed the Early Solar System 07AUG2017

 Giant Mud Balls Roamed the Early Solar System

Giant mud balls roamed the early solar system
Rethinking early asteroids’ rockiness could solv
some meteorite mysteries. By Lisa Grossman
Science News, August 4, 2017
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/giant-mud-balls-roamed-early-solar-system

Early solar system may have slung giant mud balls.
The first asteroids may not have been so rocky,
explaining some meteorite mysteries. By Lisa Grossman
Science News for Students, August 4, 2017
https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/early-solar-system-may-have-slung-giant-mud-balls

The paper is:

Bland, P.A., and B.J. Travis. 2017. Giant convecting
mud balls of the early solar system. Science Advances.
Published online July 14, 2017. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1602514.
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1602514

Also, there is:

The solar system's earliest asteroids may have all
been massive. A new analysis offers new clues to
how planetary building blocks form
By Maria Temming, August 3, 2017

The paper is:

Delbo, M., K. Walsh, B. Bolin, C. Avdellidou, and,
A. Morbidelli. 2017. Identification of a primordial
asteroid family constrains the original planetesimals
population. Science. Published online August 3, 2017.
doi: 10.1126/science.aam6036.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2017/08/02/science.aam6036

Yours,

Paul H.