Major Cosmic Impact Towards the End of the Ice Age, Suggested by New Research

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On a ho-hum day some 12,800 years ago, the Earth had emerged from another ice age. Things were warming up, and the glaciers had retreated.

Out of nowhere, the sky was lit with fireballs. This was followed by shock waves.

Fires rushed across the landscape, and dust clogged the sky, cutting off the sunlight. As the climate rapidly cooled, plants died, food sources were snuffed out, and the glaciers advanced again. Ocean currents shifted, setting the climate into a colder, almost "ice age" state that lasted an additional thousand years.

Finally, the climate began to warm again, and people again emerged into a world with fewer large animals and a human culture in North America that left behind completely different kinds of spear points.

This is the story supported by a massive study of geochemical and isotopic markers just published in the Journal of Geology.

The results are so massive that the study had to be split into two papers.

"Extraordinary Biomass-Burning Episode and Impact Winter Triggered by the Younger Dryas Cosmic Cosmic Impact ~12,800 Years Ago" is divided into "Part I: Ice Cores and Glaciers" and "Part 2: Lake, Marine, and Terrestrial Sediments."

The paper's 24 authors include KU Emeritus Professor of Physics & Astronomy Adrian Melott and Professor Brian Thomas, a 2005 doctoral graduate from KU, now at Washburn University.

"The work includes measurements made at more than 170 different sites across the world," Melott said.

The KU researcher and his colleagues believe the data suggests the disaster was touched off when Earth collided with fragments of a disintegrating comet that was roughly 62 miles in diameter—the remnants of which persist within our solar system to this day.

"The hypothesis is that a large comet fragmented and the chunks impacted the Earth, causing this disaster," said Melott. "A number of different chemical signatures—carbon dioxide, nitrate, ammonia and others—all seem to indicate that an astonishing 10 percent of the Earth's land surface, or about 10 million square kilometers, was consumed by fires."

According to Melott, analysis of pollen suggests pine forests were probably burned off to be replaced by poplar, which is a species that colonizes cleared areas.

Indeed, the authors posit the cosmic impact could have touched off the Younger Dryas cool episode, biomass burning, late Pleistocene extinctions of larger species and "human cultural shifts and population declines."

"Computations suggest that the impact would have depleted the ozone layer, causing increases in skin cancer and other negative health effects," Melott said. "The impact hypothesis is still a hypothesis, but this study provides a massive amount of evidence, which we argue can only be all explained by a major cosmic impact."

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-02-ice-age-human-witnessed-larger.html#jCp

Abstract

Part 1 of this study investigated evidence of biomass burning in global ice records, and here we continue to test the hypothesis that an impact event at the Younger Dryas boundary (YDB) caused an anomalously intense episode of biomass burning at ∼12.8 ka on a multicontinental scale (North and South America, Europe, and Asia). Quantitative analyses of charcoal and soot records from 152 lakes, marine cores, and terrestrial sequences reveal a major peak in biomass burning at the Younger Dryas (YD) onset that appears to be the highest during the latest Quaternary. For the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary (K-Pg) impact event, concentrations of soot were previously utilized to estimate the global amount of biomass burned, and similar measurements suggest that wildfires at the YD onset rapidly consumed ∼10 million km2 of Earth’s surface, or ∼9% of Earth’s biomass, considerably more than for the K-Pg impact. Bayesian analyses and age regressions demonstrate that ages for YDB peaks in charcoal and soot across four continents are synchronous with the ages of an abundance peak in platinum in the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 (GISP2) ice core and of the YDB impact event (12,835–12,735 cal BP). Thus, existing evidence indicates that the YDB impact event caused an anomalously large episode of biomass burning, resulting in extensive atmospheric soot/dust loading that triggered an “impact winter.” This, in turn, triggered abrupt YD cooling and other climate changes, reinforced by climatic feedback mechanisms, including Arctic sea ice expansion, rerouting of North American continental runoff, and subsequent ocean circulation changes.

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/695704

Abstract

The Younger Dryas boundary (YDB) cosmic-impact hypothesis is based on considerable evidence that Earth collided with fragments of a disintegrating ≥100-km-diameter comet, the remnants of which persist within the inner solar system ∼12,800 y later. Evidence suggests that the YDB cosmic impact triggered an “impact winter” and the subsequent Younger Dryas (YD) climate episode, biomass burning, late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions, and human cultural shifts and population declines. The cosmic impact deposited anomalously high concentrations of platinum over much of the Northern Hemisphere, as recorded at 26 YDB sites at the YD onset, including the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 ice core, in which platinum deposition spans ∼21 y (∼12,836–12,815 cal BP). The YD onset also exhibits increased dust concentrations, synchronous with the onset of a remarkably high peak in ammonium, a biomass-burning aerosol. In four ice-core sequences from Greenland, Antarctica, and Russia, similar anomalous peaks in other combustion aerosols occur, including nitrate, oxalate, acetate, and formate, reflecting one of the largest biomass-burning episodes in more than 120,000 y. In support of widespread wildfires, the perturbations in CO2 records from Taylor Glacier, Antarctica, suggest that biomass burning at the YD onset may have consumed ∼10 million km2, or ∼9% of Earth’s terrestrial biomass. The ice record is consistent with YDB impact theory that extensive impact-related biomass burning triggered the abrupt onset of an impact winter, which led, through climatic feedbacks, to the anomalous YD climate episode.

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/695703


This may have some very interesting implication for human prehistory.
 
just like many vulcano eruptions, the impact of this impact on nature and humans in the prehistoric is overrated
 
The comet or meteor would need to be size of a city. The civilization ending size.
 
Is there anything in mythology that could be reflection of this?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths

There are world flood myths in all most every culture on earth, between tribes that never had contact with one another etc.

This is massive news. I remember graham hancock used to go on about this theory with precisely this date although he latched on to some other pseudoscientific ideas that discredited him.

I wonder what new discoveries this will bring into the spotlight.
 
Is there anything in mythology that could be reflection of this?

When Cronus sickle his fathers balls... (Blood as the fireballs) and Venus rise from the sea (Rebirth) ?
 
No mithology can survive that long in oral form, unless it is written down.
Allthough the homeric epic poetry -amazingly- was oral tradition, that was the reason for others versions like the Arcado/cypriot;When a myth get written... lose its glamor.(Where you 've been, -We lost you)
 
Just maybe because floods and tsunamis happen on all continents all the time? ;)

How widespread the myth of a world flood is, not just a flood myth.

Sure it could be just that there were floods everywhere and they thought of their dwellings as "the world".

It could also be related to the massive rise in sea levels after receding of the ice age.

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But if the science behind the article that is mentioned is solid and if "Earth collided with fragments of a disintegrating ≥100-km-diameter comet" then such massive floods
would have happened worldwide and it makes sense entirely that the trauma of such events would survive in myth.
 
How widespread the myth of a world flood is, not just a flood myth.

Sure it could be just that there were floods everywhere and they thought of their dwellings as "the world".

It could also be related to the massive rise in sea levels after receding of the ice age.

sqbz8bw.png


But if the science behind the article that is mentioned is solid and if "Earth collided with fragments of a disintegrating ≥100-km-diameter comet" then such massive floods
would have happened worldwide and it makes sense entirely that the trauma of such events would survive in myth.
Definitally big NO. How accurate are the Albanian myths about ethnogenesis of Albanian people? And we are talking about range of last 1-2 thousand years. For example Slavic myths in Northern Europe talk about migration of Poles, Russians and Czechs. The rest of Slavs don't exist in this oldest myth! And it is last 1,500 years maybe, and assuming it refers about the big migration, with last one third of time being written down. Now, you are telling me that myths about the flood from 12kya can survive in only spoken form?!
 
But if the science behind the article that is mentioned is solid and if "Earth collided with fragments of a disintegrating ≥100-km-diameter comet" then such massive floods
would have happened worldwide and it makes sense entirely that the trauma of such events would survive in myth.

I certainly find it plausible that some basic premises of some myths may date back to events thousands of years earlier, but definitely not in any way that can make them reliable indications of what happened. Even in just a few centuries, people embellish their ancient stories and also re-interpret them according to their present experiences and values so much that they become unrecognizable, let alone after 10,000 years.

Also, I could see the "trauma" of a massive comet causing huge tsunamis all over the world remaining in the collective oral culture for thousands of years even if in an entirely new shape that would only slightly resemble the original event...

but only if what happened was really a rapid destructive event. The massive rise in sea levels after the end of the last ice age happened during centuries or even a few thousands of years, and though it was apparently very rapid in geological scales, so that the rising levels were probably noticed by older people who lived for up to 3 generations, they were definitely not "traumatic" nor dramatic. They could've interpeted it all in very fancy terms, but certainly not as a massive and murderous world flood, for the change certainly happened gradually enough to allow people to recede from the coasts and look for new settlements.
 
there have been earlier 2 theories about this 12.800 year ago impact
- it would have caused the youngest dryas cold period
- it would have caused the extinction of the megafauna in Northern America, and subsequently the end of the Clovis culture
both have been investigated and both theories have been rejected
I suggest they stop making theories about this impact untill they have more solid evidence
 
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