Impact crater 19 miles wide found beneath Greenland glacier

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Guardian

Ian Sample Science editor
@iansample
Wed 14 Nov 2018 14.00 EST

A huge impact crater has been discovered under a half-mile-thick Greenland ice sheet.

The enormous bowl-shaped dent appears to be the result of a mile-wide iron meteorite slamming into the island at a speed of 12 miles per second as recently as 12,000 years ago.

The impact of the 10bn-tonne space rock would have unleashed 47m times the energy of the Little Boy nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. It would have melted vast amounts of ice, sending freshwater rushing into the oceans, and blasted rocky debris high into the atmosphere.

At 19.3 miles wide, the crater ranks among the 25 largest known on Earth and is the first to be found beneath an ice sheet.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/nov/14/impact-crater-19-miles-wide-found-beneath-greenland-glacier

[Honeycombe8]

1. Wow. That's fascinating.

I wonder what the effect of that throughout the world would have been.

[PoliticAverse]

3. It would qualify as an "extinction event". Just hope we aren't all on solar power. n/t

[Honeycombe8]

5. I'll have to look up my history.

Was early man around 12,000 years ago? I think so, right? But that's too recent for the big event that killed the dinosaurs.

Fascinating.

[PoliticAverse]

9. See...

https://www.democraticunderground.com/12294282

[Honeycombe8]

16. Whoa! This continues to get more fascinating.

I'm going to have to read up on this tonight. Maybe find some documentaries on my Roku.

[lagomorph777]

35. Wow, good find.

12k years ago was just around the end of the most recent Ice Age (and the end of the Pleistocene era). The beginning of the thaw was delayed a bit by a glitch ( the "Younger Dryas" ) in the temperature curve; this impact might explain the glitch. On the plot below, note a warm spell about 15k - 13k years ago, then a sudden cold spell, then a resumption of the warming.

https://www.donsmaps.com/endoficeage.html


Notice this is around the same time that the very oldest known megalithic construction (or any substantial stone construction anywhere in the world) appears. The moment it became physically possible, humans started building things. Note: this site predates the Great Pyramids by 5,500 years! It also predates the invention of fired pottery, and the wheel.

http://gobeklitepe.info/

[Boomer]

27. 12,000 years is the agricultural age

Modern humans discovered agriculture somewhere around 12-14,000 years ago, at the start of the current interglacial. So this is practically yesterday for our species.

For the previous 30-40,000 years we were hunter-gatherers.

[noneof_theabove]

32. some place that time

as the "great flood" spoken about in every religion on the planet

JKV does not have monopoly on that.

[lagomorph777]

36. +1 There actually were great floods then; ice dams broke (Great Lakes and Strait of Gibraltar)

[Ferretherder]

34. Early man started being 'around' close to...

...a couple of million years ago, according to some paleo-anthropologists. Actually, I haven't kept all that up to date on the most recent findings and studies, but our species has been plugging along for a 'while', now!

[pecosbob]

2. Was probably a bad day to be on Earth

12000 years ago the effects of the event would likely have been witnessed by 'modern' humans.

[Sunlei]

4. 12,000 years ago! there it was hidden under ice!

[Honeycombe8]

7. 12,000 yrs isn't that long ago, in the history of earth the planet.

I'll have to look & see what was going on 12k yrs ago.

[DFW]

8. I hear Kanavaugh has his calendar from that period

And he was ready to testify to the Senate Judiciary Committee what he was doing when the meteor struck. He had the notes with him while he was testifying.

[Honeycombe8]

17. LOL! Too funny! Very clever. That made me laugh out loud, really. nt

[Talitha]

33. LOL!!!!!!

[Mustellus]

6. there is a much bigger one.....

under the antartic ice sheet.

https://www.space.com/2452-giant-crater-tied-worst-mass-extinction.html

[padfun]

10. 12900 years ago was the beginning of the younger-dryas era.

It marked the extinction of most large animals in the NA continent and the extinction of the mammoths and sabertooths.

It lasted until about 11400 years ago, about 1500 years in total. Sea Level increased almost 400 ft from the time the glaciers were at maximum, about 20,000 years ago.

[Lucky Luciano]

14. I was thinking about this major extinction event. Wonder if it is related.

[Quixote1818]

22. This sure would make a lot of sense and be a good explanation to those extinctions

Last edited Wed Nov 14, 2018, 09:18 PM - Edit history (1)

None of the other explanations were very solid. However, the article says 3 million to 12,000 years ago so we need to wait and see exactly when it occurred. 12,000 years ago is unlikely

[Beausoleil]

11. That seems to track with the Younger Dryas

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/19/the-intriguing-problem-of-the-younger-dryaswhat-does-it-mean-and-what-caused-it/

[herding cats]

13. I had the exact same thought.

[Quixote1818]

23. 3 million to 12,000 years ago

The exact timing of the asteroid strike, however, is fairly vague, with the researchers saying it happened between 3 million and 12,000 years ago. But preliminary evidence suggests it happened relatively recently.

https://gizmodo.com/a-massive-impact-crater-has-been-detected-beneath-green-1830437095

We will have to wait and see if 12,000 years ago ends up the correct date. If so that would make a lot of sense.

[herding cats]

12. This could be the missing piece in the cause of the Younger Dryas cooling period.

A comet of that size, at that time, could have been the cause. As has been speculated before.

[Brother Buzz]

15. There's a good chance that meteor partially broke up before striking earth

The Inuit people discovered deposits of other iron meteorites in that region, and learned to work it using stone tools. Because of limited fuel, they learned to work the iron cold, and used the valuable fire only to relieve stresses to reduce cracking.

https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/people-arctic-worked-meteorite-iron-1200-years-ago-002573

[Honeycombe8]

18. The hell you say. The Inuit were very capable....

they learned to work iron meteorites using stone tools? Interesting.

[Brother Buzz]

19. They had enough iron to build iron tools, but the fuel was the stumbling block

Basalt made decent bashing devices.

[Honeycombe8]

29. Tough life. But I guess they didn't live long. nt

[BlancheSplanchnik]

20. I've just been reading a book hypothesizing this!

Funny coincidence!
The book is Magicians of the Gods by Graham Hancock. I’m listening to the audio book, read by himself. It’s good!

[RandiFan1290]

21. I thought about Graham as soon as I saw this. NT

[Quixote1818]

24. Graham Hancock is an opportunist / con-artist

Either that or he has done too many drugs. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/no-there-wasnt-an-advanced-civilization-12-000-years-ago/

He also wasn't the first to propose a meteor caused the extinctions: Second, Hancock's impact hypothesis comes from scientists who first proposed it in 2007 as an explanation for the North American megafaunal extinction around that time and has been the subject of vigorous scientific debate.

The linked article in the OP says this impact could have happened from 3 million to 12,000 years ago.

One place I can guarantee you he is wrong is he says the megafloods in Washington were just one flood even though deposits in Washington's Wenatchee Valley show literally 40 Rhythmites that were deposited high about the current Columbia River. So absoluty not 1 giant event but at least 40 mega floods:

[BlancheSplanchnik]

28. Ohhhhh....I had no idea...

Well, good to know! Thanks!

He does tell a good story though, I gotta say.

[Codeine]

25. That guy is a complete crank.

Absolute balderdash.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

30. So I have been informed.

He tells a good story, though.

[Quixote1818]

31. Thank you! We are on the same page. nt

[Marthe48]

26. Researchers from KSU (OH)

theorized that meteorites struck the NA ice sheet causing a melt. I think around 12,000. Might have been a big one that broke up.

Up until the early 1960s(I think) most scientists didn't think any meteors had struck Earth, except the recent one in AZ. Then thanks to investigation by Shoemaker (or Levy), scientists started finding craters all over the planet. There's a searchable website. I don't know if I got everything right. Its been years since I read about meteor strikes.

[lagomorph777]

37. And of course Alvarez found evidence of The Big One that killed most of the dinosaurs 65MYA

And Antonio Camargo and Glen Penfield found the actual crater in the 1990s, off the Yucatan Peninsula.

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

[Marthe48]

38. Yes.

I was thinking of what I read on far north strikes. But can't forget that one.