A Catastrophe of Comets

DragonHunter

The Force is Strong With This One
Most of the academic community are still thinking of a typical catastrophic impact event as being the result of a single large bolide. But I don’t think so.

Instead, in the geophysical world according to me, most extinction level catastrophic impact events are the result of very large clusters of smaller, air-bursting fragments. And those fragments are commonly large enough to produce significant ablative geomorphology. And without forming an impact crater.

When a large cluster of air-bursting comet fragments hits, only those one the leading edge of the cluster fall into cold atmosphere. The rest fall into the superheated impact plumes of those that went before them, and just crank-up the heat, and pressure.

The result is a very different kind of catastrophe from anything that’s ever been imagined, or studied, before. And it’s something that can melt, and ablate the surface. over a very large area. It can melt, and ablate, whole mountain ranges like wax under a high pressure blowtorch. Tossing them like the waves in a storm tossed sea. And it can produce hundreds of thousands of cubic miles of wind-driven pyroclastic materials in seconds.

I've read many times that craters, impact structures, and signs of geologically recent catastrophic morpholgy are hard to find. I haven't found that to be the case either.

I’ve been blogging about the planetary scarring of a very large geo-ablative impact storm that may have been caused by the debris of the Taurid progenito, and may have been the trigger for the megafaunal extinctions, and the demise of the clovis culture a few thousand years ago.

My blog is called 'A Catastrophe of Comets’. And you can find it at: http://craterhunter.wordpress.com/
 
Great blog DragonHunter. :thup: I'm sure you are aware that SOTT.net has posted some of your articles before, like the one below.

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/227015-A-Different-Kind-of-Catastrophe-Something-Wicked-This-Way-Comes
 
Thanks for sharing. You've put much work into your blog. I'll be reading and checking in...
:cool2: :cool2: :cool2:
 
What is so satisfying about your work, Dragonhunter, is that you came to it strictly via research... I was guided to it by the Cs and only after started collecting the data.
 
Hi DragonHunter,

Thanks for sharing! Very interesting stuff. Just curious if you have looked at Capital Reef, National Park in Utah and if you have an opinion? I have been a couple of times and have been very fascinated as to what its true origins might be. I don't really buy the explanation given http://www.nps.gov/care/naturescience/index.htm.

Here is a couple of images.

wk30c3.jpg


2iup02b.jpg


More images _http://www.google.com/search?q=capitol+reef+national+park&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=Drb&rlz=1R1GGGL_en___US397&prmd=ivnsm&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=l_XKTeCOF5OD0QHHi42NCQ&ved=0CGgQsAQ&biw=1280&bih=589
 
DragonHunter said:
Thanks,

There are two of them so far. The other was written exclusively for SOTT.nett. It's at: http://www.sott.net/articles/show/227829-A-Pig-in-a-Poke-and-the-scars-of-a-Wayward-Comet

I'm just getting started though. As I get more data, I'll writing a whole lot more on the subject.

Very intersting articles, and I will start keeping up with your blog. Of course, if we need any assurance that you are correct, we can look back just a few years to Shoemaker-Levy slamming into Jupiter. If those rocks had hit the Earth, we probably would not be around to talk about it now.
 
Hi Rhiannon,

My take on what happened in the western side of the continent sometime around the end of the last ice age begins with a large oval area that is about 500 miles wide, and extends up through the center of Mexico from the Mexican Volcanic Ark, up into west Texas.

Clube & Napier's work on the Taurid Complex puts the estimate on the total tonnage that fell when the Taurid progenitor hit at a little over 1.1 billion tons. And a very strong case can be made that North Central Mexico is one of the primary impact zones. And that the Chihuahuan ignimbrites are not volcanogenic at all. The word 'Ignimbrite' comes from the latin for 'fire cloud rock'. Those flash melted rivers of stone were formed in a superheated cloud of fire all right. But their emplacement motions can be read like a dance chart. Those aren't gravity-attracted patterns of movement, and flow. The dance didn't start underground. Those're wind-driven patterns of flow. The heat, and pressure to melt, and move, all that stuff came from above.

Forensically speaking, the clearly legible emplacement motions of the blast effected materials there describe the impact of a very large cluster of cometary debris with a fragment, and particle, density similar to what we see in the images of comet Linear.

CometLinear.jpg


The cluster came from the southeast at a low angle of about 30 dgrees. Probably at something like 30 km/sec, or so. And it sent an awful lot of hell, and devastation, downrange. The post impact storm front that went downrange to the northwest would've been a storm front as tall as the atmosphere, hundreds of miles wide. With winds gusting to supersonic. The winds were gusting from tens of thousands random, scattered, high pressure areas of millions of PSI. And the center of each of those high pressure areas was hotter than the surface of the sun.

Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado, were directly in the path of that blast of heat. And there are a hell of alot of Terrains on the western side this continent that've always been assumed to be the work of millions of years of errosion. But which are actually the result of a few seconds of ablation in a very large air-burst impact storm. And then followed by a a few thousand years of normal weather.
 
Great blog DragonHunter. I have added you to my fav bookmarks and will follow your entires.
Do you know of anyone researching similar events here Down Under? I am interested to find studies in these neck of the woods.
 
Hi fisheye,

I don't know anyone down there looking yet. But as a matter of fact, in central Australia I see much the same kind of geomorphology as I see in North Central Mexico. The geo-ablative features are a bit more weathered, and silted in, down under. But you can compare the geology of the region around Alice Springs with that of north central Mexico. Look for their common features And you'll see the footprints of exactly the same kind of catastrophe. The one down under is just older, that's all.

The giant mutple air-burst impact storms of the early Holocene weren't a unique kind of event. Something wicked has come this way many times before, and a few times since. And once you figure out what the geo-ablative beast's wind-driven footprints look like, you'll see that they are as common as the craters on the moon.
 
DragonHunter said:
Thanks,

There are two of them so far.
Three actually. Below is the 3rd article published last October. ;)

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/216907-A-Crater-a-Day-Field-Investigators-at-Heart-are-Encouraged-to-Go-Meteorite-Hunting
 
You know DragonHunter, after I posted to you I started thinking and came up with the same idea as far as Central Australia. Thanks again
 
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