Including Original "Paul H. Letters" Copyright © 1996-2025 Paul V. Heinrich / website © 1996-2025 Dirk Ross - All rights reserved.



Friday, 3 January 2020

Quadrantid meteor shower will peak 03/04 January, Friday night/Saturday morning 03JAN2020

 Quadrantid meteor shower will peak 03/04 January, Friday night/Saturday morning

Quadrantid meteor shower will peak tomorrow
night (03/04 January, Friday night/Saturday morning)!
Bad Astronomy, Phil Plait, January 2, 2020

By the way, really weird stuff is also happening in Colorado skies.

Mysterious drones flying nighttime patterns over
northeast Colorado leave local law enforcement stumped
Phillips County sheriff says there are at least 17 of
the aircraft that fly between 7 and 10 p.m. nightly
By Shelly Bradbury, The Denver Post, December 23, 2019

‘It’s Creepy’: Unexplained Drones Are Swarming by
Night Over Colorado. Sheriffs in western Nebraska
and eastern Colorado say they don’t know who’s
flying the drones — or why. The F.A.A. is investigating.
Mitch Smith, New York Times, January 1, 2020

Mysterious swarms of giant drones have started to
appear in the Colorado and Nebraska night sky,
and nobody knows where they're coming from
Irene Jiang, Business Insider, December 30, 2019

Yours,

Paul.

"The past is never dead. It's not even past."
William Faulkner, Act 1, Scene III, Requiem for a Nun (1951)

Saturday, 28 December 2019

Edscottite found in Wedderburn IAB iron meteorite 28DEC2019

 Edscottite found in Wedderburn IAB iron meteorite

Scientists Have Officially Found a Mineral Never Before Seen in Nature
Peter Dockrill, Science Alerts, December 25, 2019

the paper is:

Ma, C. and Rubin, A.E., 2019. Edscottite, Fe5C2, a new
iron carbide mineral from the Ni-rich Wedderburn
IAB iron meteorite. American Mineralogist, 104(9), pp.1351-1355.

Yours,

Paul H.

Metallosphaera sedula eats meteorites (open access paper) 28DEC2019

 Metallosphaera sedula eats meteorites (open access paper) 

Scientists Just Identified an Organism That Thrives on Eating Meteorites Mike Mcrae,
Science Alert, December 5, 2019

https://www.sciencealert.com/researchers-find-a-microbe-that-not-only-eats-meteorites-it-can-t-get-enough-of-them


The paper is:

Milojevic, T., Kölbl, D., Ferrière, L., Albu, M., Kish,
A., Flemming, R.L., Koeberl, C., Blazevic, A., Zebec,
Z., Simon, K.M.R. and Schleper, C., 2019. Exploring
the microbial biotransformation of extraterrestrial
material on nanometer scale. Scientific Reports, 9(1), pp.1-11.

Yours,

Paul H.

Tuesday, 24 December 2019

Scanned and Searchable Historic Texas Newspapers Now Online 24DEC2019

 Scanned and Searchable Historic Texas Newspapers Now Online

Hi,

For people, interested in searching for reports of
aerolites, meteorites, and so forth in Texas, a
considerable collection of historic local and regional
newspapers is online as scanned and searchable
digital files in "The Portal to Texas History" at

For example, there are 595 hits for "aerolite" and
1,760 hits for "meteorite."

Yours,

Paul H.

Thursday, 19 December 2019

Siberian gas venting and the end-Permian extinction 19DEC2019

 Siberian gas venting and the end-Permian extinction

Svensen, H., Planke, S., Polozov, A.G., Schmidbauer, N.,
Corfu, F., Podladchikov, Y.Y. and Jamtveit, B., 2009.
Siberian gas venting and the end-Permian
environmental crisis. Earth and Planetary Science
Letters, 277(3-4), pp.490-500.

Some related papers are:

Burgess, S.D., Muirhead, J.D. and Bowring, S.A., 2017.
Initial pulse of Siberian Traps sills as the trigger of
the end-Permian mass extinction. Nature
Communications, 8(1), p.164.

Polozov, A.G., Svensen, H.H., Planke, S., Grishina,
S.N., Fristad, K.E. and Jerram, D.A., 2016. The basalt
 pipes of the Tunguska Basin (Siberia, Russia):
High temperature processes and volatile
degassing into the end-Permian atmosphere.
Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology,
Palaeoecology, 441, pp.51-64.

Svensen, H.H., Frolov, S., Akhmanov, G.G., Polozov,
A.G., Jerram, D.A., Shiganova, O.V., Melnikov, N.V.,
Iyer, K. and Planke, S., 2018. Sills and gas generation
in the Siberian Traps. Philosophical Transactions
of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and
Engineering Sciences, 376(2130), p.20170080.

Rampino, M.R., Rodriguez, S., Baransky, E. and
Cai, Y., 2017. Global nickel anomaly links
Siberian Traps eruptions and the latest Permian
mass extinction. Scientific reports, 7(1), p.12416.

Yours,

Paul H.

Saturday, 30 November 2019

British scientists try to find Antarctica's "missing meteorites" 30NOV2019

 British scientists try to find Antarctica's "missing meteorites"

Antarctica: Metal meteorite quest set to get under way
By Jonathan Amos, BBC Science, November 29,  2019

The Mystery of Antarctica’s Missing Meteorites
Hiding deep under the ice, iron meteorites could hold
clues to the solar system’s past., The Atlantic

An off-topic, but still interesting article is:

Scientists Recreated Volcanic Lightning by Blasting Ash Out of a Cannon
Robin George Andrews, Gizmodo, November 29,  2019

Yours,

Paul H.

Tuesday, 26 November 2019

Gobekli Tepe and the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis

Gobekli Tepe and the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis

There are an interesting series of blog posts about various ideas about Gobekli Tepe, its archaeology, and an alleged association with the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis on the Lateral Truth blog. They include:

Gobekli Tepe, Part 1: The Background
Rebbeca Bradley, Lateral Truth, October 22, 2018.
https://www.skepticink.com/lateraltruth/2018/10/22/gobekli-tepe-pt-1-background/

Gobekli Tepe, Part 2: The Archaeology
Rebbeca Bradley, Lateral Truth, November 5, 2018.
https://www.skepticink.com/lateraltruth/2018/11/05/gobekli-tepe-archaeology/

Gobekli Tepe, Part 3: The Alternative Mainstream
Rebbeca Bradley, Lateral Truth, November 16, 2018.
https://www.skepticink.com/lateraltruth/2018/11/16/gobekli-tepe-part-3-alternative-mainstream/

Gobekli Tepe, Part 4: Animals and Astronomy,
Rebbeca Bradley, Lateral Truth, November 18, 2018.
https://www.skepticink.com/lateraltruth/2018/11/18/gobekli-tepe-part-4-animals-astronomy/

Gobekli Tepe: Response To Martin Sweatman,
Rebbeca Bradley, Lateral Truth, December 6, 2018.
https://www.skepticink.com/lateraltruth/2018/12/06/gobekli-tepe-response-martin-sweatman/

Decoding Looney Tunes with Astronomy: What Does the Bunny Say?
Rebbeca Bradley, Lateral Truth, December 7, 2018
https://www.skepticink.com/lateraltruth/2018/12/07/decoding-looney-tunes-astronomy-bunny-say/

Martin Sweatman’s Decoding of Prehistory: Incoherent Catastrophe
Rebbeca Bradley, Lateral Truth, January 25, 2019
https://www.skepticink.com/lateraltruth/2019/01/25/martin-sweatmans-decoding-of-prehistory-incoherent-catastrophe/

The above blogs are about:
Sweatman, M.B. and Tsikritsis, D., 2017. Decoding Göbekli Tepe with archaeoastronomy: What does the fox say?. Mediterranean Archaeology & Archaeometry, 17(1)., 233-250.
http://omnilogi.com/ancient/deluge/Sweatman-and-Tsikritsis-gobekli-tepe-comet.pdf

In the same journal, Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry, another paper about a fringe version of a Younger Dryas impact senario is published. The paper is:

Jaye, M., 2019. The flooding of the Mediterranean basin at the Younger–Dryas boundary. Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry, 19(1), 71–83.
http://maajournal.com/Issues/2019/Vol19-1/7_Jaye%2019  (1).pdf

http://www.maajournal.com/Issues2019a.php

As previously mentioned, Rebbeca Bradley also commented on Michael Jaye’s unique ideas about an Younger Dryas impact causing a truly global flood in:

Michael Jaye’s Just-So Story by Rebbeca Bradley, June 22, 2019
https://www.skepticink.com/lateraltruth/2019/06/22/michael-jayes-just-so-story/

Carl Feagans also published a post on his blog about Micheal Jaye’s paper on the Global World-wide Flood and the Younger Dryas Impact. It is:

The Pseudoarchaeology of Michael Jaye’s Worldwide Flood 
Carl Feagans , Archaeology Review, November 18, 2019
https://ahotcupofjoe.net/2019/11/the-pseudoarchaeology-of-michael-jayes-worldwide-flood/

Yours,

Paul H.

Friday, 22 November 2019

"Ice fossils" found in Acfer 094 from the Hoggar Mountains in the Algerian Sahara.

"Ice fossils" found in Acfer 094 from the Hoggar Mountains in the Algerian Sahara.

‘Ice fossils’ from the desert. Algerian meteorite offers new insights into early asteroid formation.
Cosmos, Richard A. Lovett, Novmeber 22, 2019
https://cosmosmagazine.com/geoscience/ice-fossils-from-the-desert

Fossil ice found in meteorite is the first direct evidence of ice in asteroids
By Josh Davis, The Natural History Museum, London, November 21, 2019
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2019/november/fossil-ice-found-in-meteorite.html

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/press-office/press-releases/fossil-ice-found-in-meteor-is-the-first-direct-evidence-of-ice-i.html

The paper is:

Discovery of fossil asteroidal ice in primitive meteorite Acfer 094

By Megumi Matsumoto, Akira Tsuchiyama, Aiko Nakato, Junya Matsuno, Akira Miyake, Akimasa Kataoka, Motoo Ito, Naotaka Tomioka, Yu Kodama, Kentaro Uesugi, Akihisa Takeuchi, Tsukasa
Nakano, Epifanio Vaccaro, Science Advances, 20 Nov 2019 : eaax5078
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/11/eaax5078

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/11/eaax5078/tab-pdf

Yours,

Paul H.

Saturday, 2 November 2019

Nannodiamond plant microfossils created by extraterrestrial impact (open access paper)

Nannodiamond plant microfossils created by extraterrestrial impact (open access paper)

Shumilova, T.G., Ulyashev, V.V., Kazakov, V.A., Isaenko, S.I., Svetov,S.A., Chazhengina, S.Y., Kovalchuk, N.S., Karite – diamond fossil: a new type of natural diamond,Geoscience Frontiers, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gsf.2019.09.011.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1674987119301768

Off topic, counter septarian structure, a great pseudoartifact.

We can't figure this one out By PRK, November 19, 2016
in Fossil ID, Fossil Forum
http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/70152-we-cant-figger-this-one-out-solved-counter-septarian-structures/

Counter septarian structure, Doctor Mud, Posted November 26, 2016
Page 4, Fossil Forum
http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/70152-we-cant-figger-this-one-out-solved-counter-septarian-structures/&page=4&tab=comments#comment

http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/70152-we-cant-figger-this-one-out-solved-counter-septarian-structures/&page=4&tab=comments#comment-737744

Seilacher, A., 2001. Concretion morphologies reflecting diagenetic and epigenetic pathways. Sedimentary Geology, 143(1-2), pp.41-57.

Yours,

Paul H.

Friday, 25 October 2019

End-Permian (252 Mya) deforestation, wildfires and flooding (open access paper) 25OCT2019

 End-Permian (252 Mya) deforestation, wildfires and flooding (open access paper)

Below is a very interesting open access paper.

Vajda, V., McLoughlin, S., Mays, C., Frank, T.D., Fielding, C.R.,
Tevyaw, A.,
Lehsten, V., Bocking, M. and Nicoll, R.S., 2020. End-Permian (252 Mya)
deforestation, wildfires and flooding???An ancient biotic crisis with lessons
for the present. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 529, p.115875.

Yours,

Paul H.

Thursday, 24 October 2019

Chicxulub impact acidified the ocean instantly

Chicxulub impact acidified the ocean instantly

The Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Acidified the Ocean in a Flash
The Chicxulub event was as damaging to life in the oceans as it was to creatures on land, a study shows. New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/21/science/chicxulub-asteroid-ocean-acid.html

Tiny shell fossils reveal how ocean acidification can cause mass extinction By Julie Zaugg, CNN, October 22, 2019
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/22/europe/ocean-acidification-asteroid-intl-hnk-scn/index.html

New study underpins the idea of a sudden impact killing off dinosaurs and much of the other life, GFZ GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam, Helmholtz Centre October 22, 2019
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191022080721.htm

The open access paper is:

Michael J. Henehan, Andy Ridgwell, Ellen Thomas, Shuang Zhang, Laia Alegret, Daniela N. Schmidt, James W. B. Rae, James D. Witts, Neil H. Landman, Sarah E. Greene, Brian T. Huber, James R. Super, Noah J. Planavsky, Pincelli M. Hull,
2019, Rapid ocean acidification and protracted Earth system recovery followed the end-Cretaceous Chicxulub ??impact. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Oct 2019, 201905989; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1905989116
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/10/15/1905989116

Yours,

Paul H.

Younger Dryas platinum anomaly reported from South Carolina - Open Access paper

Younger Dryas platinum anomaly reported from South Carolina - Open Access paper

New evidence that an extraterrestrial collision 12,800 years ago triggered an abrupt climate
change for Earth, the Conversation, October 22, 2019
https://theconversation.com/new-evidence-that-an-extraterrestrial-collision-12-800-years-ago-triggered-an-abrupt-climate-change-for-earth-118244

the open access paper is:

Moore, C.R., M.J. Brooks, A.C. Goodyear, T.A. Ferguson, A.G. Perrotti, S. Mitra, A. Listecki,
B. King, D.J. Mallinson, C.S. Lane, B. Shapiro, J. Knapp, A. West, D.L. Carlson, W. Wolbach,
T.R. Them, S.M. Harris, and S. Pyne-O???Donnell.

2019. Sediment Cores from White Pond, South Carolina, contain a platinum anomaly,
pyrogenic carbon peak, and coprophilous spore decline at 12.8 ka. Scientific Reports
volume 9, Article number: 15121 (2019)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-51552-8

Regardless of how the platinum anomaly is interpreted, White Pond, a Carolina Bay predates
it and the Younger Dryas. Thus, the above paper further supports the idea that the Carolina Bays are not connected to Younger Dryas event as concluded by:

Schaetzl, R.J., Sauck, W., Heinrich, P.V., Colgan, P.M. and Holliday, V.T., 2019. Commentary on Klokocnik, J., Kostelecky, and Bezdek, A. 2019. The putative Saginaw impact structure, Michigan, Lake Huron, in the light of gravity aspects derived from recent EIGEN 6C4 gravity field model. Journal of Great Lakes Research 45: 1220.

A related paper is:

Krause, T.R., Russell, J.M., Zhang, R., Williams, J.W. and Jackson, S.T., 2019. Late Quaternary vegetation, climate, and fire history of the Southeast Atlantic Coastal Plain based on a 30,000-yr multi-proxy record from White Pond, South Carolina, USA. Quaternary Research, 91(2), pp.861-880.
Vancouver

Yours

Paul H.

Wednesday, 16 October 2019

Venus May Not Have Once Been As Earth-like As Scientists Thought

Venus May Not Have Once Been As Earth-like As Scientists Thought

Venus May Not Have Been As Earth-like As Scientists Thought
By Elizabeth Howell, SpaceCom, October 14, 2109
https://www.space.com/venus-not-so-earthlike-after-all.html

The papers are:

Wroblewski, F.W., Treiman, A.H., Bhiravarasu, S.S. and Gregg,
T.K.P., 2019, March. Ovda Fluctus, the Festoon Lava Flow on
Ovda Regio, Venus: Most Likely Basalt. In Lunar and Planetary
Science Conference (Vol. 50).
https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2019/pdf/1699.pdf

Wroblewski, F.B., Treiman, A.H., Bhiravarasu, S. and Gregg, T.K.,
2019. Ovda Fluctus, the Festoon Lava Flow on Ovda Regio,
Venus: Not Silica???Rich. Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets,
124(8), pp.2233-2245.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2019JE006039

Yours,

Paul H.

Saturday, 12 October 2019

The last mammoths were not killed by an extraterrestrial impact

The last mammoths were not killed by an extraterrestrial impact.

How the Last Woolly Mammoths Met Their Demise on a Remote Arctic Island
George Dvorsky, GIZMODO
https://gizmodo.com/how-the-last-woolly-mammoths-met-their-demise-on-a-remo-1838848130

the paper is:

Arppe, L., Karhu, J.A., Vartanyan, S., Drucker, D.G., Etu-Sihvola, H. and Bocherens, H., 2019. Thriving or surviving? The isotopic record of the Wrangel Island woolly mammoth population. Quaternary
Science Reviews, 222, no. 105884.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379119301398\\

Yours,

Paul H.

Friday, 4 October 2019

Evaluation of Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum impact trigger hypothesis

Evaluation of Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum impact trigger hypothesis

Galinkin, R.A., 2019. Evaluating the impact trigger hypothesis for the onset of the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum,
MS thesis, Rutgers University-School of Graduate Studies.
https://rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu/rutgers-lib/60679/

https://rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu/rutgers-lib/60679/PDF/1/play/

Yours,

Paul H.

Tuesday, 1 October 2019

Meteorite found while looking for gold?

Meteorite found while looking for gold?

Man thinks he found gold; he actually found a rare meteorite By Emma Reed, September 24, 2019
https://www.science101.com/man-thinks-found-gold-rare-meteorite/

Yours,

Paul H.

Saturday, 28 September 2019

Edscottite Found in Meteorite

Edscottite Found in Meteorite

Extraterrestrial Mineral Never Before Seen on Earth Found Inside a Famous Meteorite
By Yasemin Saplakoglu, Live Science
https://www.livescience.com/new-extraterrestrial-mineral-edscottite-meteorite.html

Scientists Confirm The Discovery of a Mineral Never Before Seen in Nature. Science Alert
https://www.sciencealert.com/mineral-never-seen-in-nature-found-buried-in-heart-of-mysterious-meteorite

This meteorite came from the core of another planet. Inside it, a new mineral By Liam Mannix, The Age
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/this-meteorite-came-from-the-core-of-another-planet-inside-it-a-new-mineral-20190830-p52mhg.html

The paper is:

Ma, C. and Rubin, A.E., 2019. Edscottite, Fe5C2, a new iron carbide mineral from the Ni-rich
Wedderburn IAB iron meteorite. American Mineralogist, 104(9), pp.1351-1355.
https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/ammin.2019.104.issue-9/am-2019-7102/am-2019-7102.xml

https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/msa/ammin/article/104/9/1351/573345/edscottite-fe5c2-a-new-iron-carbide-mineral-from

Yours,

Paul H.

Monday, 9 September 2019

Meteorite Hunting in China

Meteorite Hunting in China

China's meteorite hunters: Adventurers hoping to get rich from rocks Man travels world to search for fragments, Nanlin Fang, CNN Sep 07, 2019
https://www.koamnewsnow.com/lifestyle/chinas-meteorite-hunters-adventurers-hoping-to-get-rich-from-rocks/1118315685

China's meteorite hunters: The adventurers hoping to get rich from rocks Meet Zhang Bo, who travels to far-flung locations armed with a metal detector, hoping he'll stumble on a fallen meteorite. CNN, Sept. 7, 2019
https://www.cnn.com/style/article/china-meteorite-hunters-intl-hnk-scn/index.html

Yours,

Paul H.

Saturday, 7 September 2019

Meteorite shows evidence of ancient volcanism on a long-gone protoplanet

Meteorite shows evidence of ancient volcanism on a long-gone protoplanet

A meteorite older than Earth shows evidence of ancient volcanism on a long-gone protoplanet, Phil Plait, SYFY WIRE
https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/a-meteorite-older-than-earth-shows-evidence-of-ancient-volcanism-on-a-long-gone-protoplanet

Oldest-ever igneous meteorite contains clues to planet building blocks. University of Arizona, August 2, 2018
https://asunow.asu.edu/20180802-oldest-ever-igneous-meteorite-contains-clues-planet-building-blocks

Taylor, G.J., 2018. The Oldest Volcanic Meteorite: A Silica-Rich Lava on a Geologically Complex Planetesimal. Planetary Science Research Discoveries Report, Hawai'i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology
http://www.psrd.hawaii.edu/Aug18/PSRD-oldest-volcanic-meteorite.pdf

Some papers are:

Hoffmann, V.H., Wimmer, K., Hochleitner, R. and Kaliwoda, M., 2018, March. Northwest Africa (NWA) 11119---Probing an Unknown Early Planetary Body?. In Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (Vol. 49).
https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2018/pdf/2468.pdf

Srinivasan, P., Dunlap, D.R., Agee, C.B., Wadhwa, M., Coleff, D., Ziegler, K., Zeigler, R. and McCubbin, F.M., 2018. Silica-rich volcanism in the early solar system dated at 4.565 Ga. Nature communications, 9(1), p.30-36. Open Access
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05501-0

Yours,

Paul H.

Monday, 12 August 2019

Libyan Desert Glass associated with shocked quartz (Open Access paper)

Libyan Desert Glass associated with shocked quartz (Open Access paper)

Koeberl, C. and Ferri??re, L., 2019. Libyan Desert Glass area in western Egypt: Shocked quartz in bedrock points to a possible deeply eroded impact structure in the region.
Meteoritics & Planetary Science. (Open Access paper)
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/maps.13250

" We interpret these observations to indicate that there was a physical impact event, not just an airburst, and that the crater has been almost completely eroded since its formation."

Yours,

Paul H.