New Theory for the death of the dinosaurs

[DangeRuss]

Anyone fancy some "light" reading?

I have just finished this research paper and would love any, honest feedback.
The theory is new although based on established research: the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs did not just hit the Earth like a nuclear bomb but was more like a bullet to the head: "The Earth Assassination Theory".
Had some excellent pointers from a Nobel Prize winner but what is that compared to the forum.

Earth Assassination Theory:

Abstract

The Cretaceous-Tertiary, or K-T, extinction event is the most widely known mass extinction event in Earth’s history due to its nom de plume “the death of the dinosaurs”. Occurring approximately 66 million years ago, the K-T led to the mass-extinction of three-quarters of all plant and animal species on the planet. The reasons for such devastation to life are linked to increased volcanic activity and climate change caused by a meteorite impact or mass lava flow that occurred at the time. The meteorite impact has been identified at Chicxulub on the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. The mass lava ejection occurred at the Deccan Traps, off the coast of Western India.

The Chicxulub collision created the same amount of energy as 100 teratonnes of TNT, a billion times the power of the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Research confirms the incoming projectile created giant firestorms and tsunamis that vaporized much of the Americas. A dust cloud formed in the atmosphere reducing sunlight for up to ten years devastating plant and marine life. Across the other side of the world, the Deccan Traps exploded out of the Earth, as basalt lava flowed out of the mantle for tens of thousands of years covering up to 1.5 million km², approximately half the size of modern India. Both of these events lead to the extinction of 75% of all species of plant and animal life on Earth.

The fact both events occurred 66 million years ago, at the time of the K-T extinction, supports many research hypothesis. However, there is a further geographical correlation between Chicxulub and the Deccan Traps. The locations are approximately the opposite side of the planet from one another taking into account plate tectonic movements over 66 million years. It is the hypothesis of this paper the kinetic energy the Chicxulub impact created the Deccan Traps with the single event acting as an assassination of life on the Earth. A simplified analogy is a gun shot to the head - a high velocity projectile enters one side of a pressurized sphere, as it slows to a stop inside the enormous kinetic energy is transferred forward and explodes out of the far side. A further hypothesis is this type of event has occurred multiple times throughout Earth’s history and each time has led to a mass extinction event.

Introduction

The mass extinction event at the margin of the Cretaceous and Tertiary Periods, or K-T boundary, is widely studied and researched. The prominent cause involves an asteroid impact. However, there are many conflicting hypothesis for such wide-spread plant and animal extinctions that include increased volcanism, mass lava ejections, sea level regression and climate change.

The Chicxulub impact, on the present-day Yucatan peninsula, Mexico, is considered the most likely location of the asteroid impact. This impact has also been extensively and accurately modeled by Los Alamos National Laboratory1 and the University of Arizona2. While these models prove the devastating power of the impact they assume the meteor was flattened or destroyed in the initial collision.
However, studies by Adrian Jones and David Price at University College London3 suggest meteorites 10km or larger could punch through the Earth’s crust and enter the mantle. Using the minimum factors for the Chicxulub asteroid on the Imperial College London “Earth Impact Effects Program”4 a 10km diameter object traveling at median asteroid speed of 17km/s would make a crater 30km deep. The Earth’s outer surface at Chicxulub is continental crust at 10km - 20km thickness.

The Chicxulub asteroid could have been even larger. Hector Durand-Manterola and Guadalupe Cordero-Tercero at Cornell University5 have confirmed the physical parameters of the impactor are not limited. Based on concentrations of iridium and the mass of the object, they found the asteroid was a minimum 10.6km in diameter up to a maximum 80.9km in diameter. Their calculations also concluded that the impactor wasn’t an asteroid at all but a comet.

Asteroids travel at approximately 10 - 30km/s. Comets travel at approximately 50 - 70km/s. It is the hypothesis of this paper the Chicxulub impact punched through the Earth’s crust and entered the mantle.

The Earth’s crust “floats” on top of the mantle; however, the mantle is a very viscous liquid that is predominantly solid. Only very high pressures and temperatures can melt the mantle to create magma plumes. These are seen around the world’s surface as lava running like a river. Geology and physics show the Chicxulub impact created extreme levels of heat and pressure when it crashed through the crust and entered the mantle. This paper contends ballistics play a crucial role. The Chicxulub comet would have acted as a “kinetic energy penetrator” (K.E.P.) on the Earth. In the military this is an ammunition that does not contain explosives but uses its speed and mass to penetrate, and destroy, a target. Durand-Manterola and Cordero-Tercero5 have calculated the kinetic energy of the Chicxulub impact was up to 5.8x1025 Joules, the single, most powerful event to ever occur on the Earth.

When a “kinetic energy penetrator” hits a solid object the enormous energy transfer forces the solid to behave like a liquid. This means the K.E.P. can penetrate further. As the K.E.P. enters it creates cavitation through a high pressure heat wave. Ballistics could model how far the Chicxulub comet could penetrate the mantle.

The Chicxulub comet would only travel so far into the mantle and then come to a stop. This action is the most destructive in ballistics as it leads to a “high energy transfer”. When a high speed projectile penetrates an object and comes to a stop it transfers all of its kinetic energy into the object in the form of a shock wave. That shock wave travels onwards, along the entry path, with devastating effects.

Therefore in ballistics, exit wounds, where a projectile comes to a stop and a shock wave has travelled through an object to explode out of the opposite side, are much larger and have a longer lasting effects than entry wounds. The Deccan Traps, where plumes of magma exploded from inside the Earth at approximately the same time as the Chicxulub impact, cover an area up to 1.5 million km² while the Yucatan crater is 25,450 km².

The theory a comet impact on one side of a planet could result in damage on the opposite side, the “exit wound” being antipodal to the “entry wound”, has been proposed based on research on other planets in our solar system. P. Schultz and D. Gault6 proposed disruption to the moon as early as 1975. D. Weber, T. Bennett and C. Weber7 demonstrated the correlation between magma bulges and volanoes on Mars and Mercury with large impact craters on the other side of the planet.

It would be disingenuous not to mention that antipodal theory has been proposed for our planet. Mark Richards, at UC Berkeley, has published research on the “uncomfortably close coincidence”8 between the Deccan Traps and Chicxulub crater. However, the Berkeley team’s hypothesis focuses on the impact energy splitting, traveling around the planet’s crust and then coming together antipodal to the collision and forcing lava up from below.

The Berkeley team’s research highlighted an issue with antipodal theory - the Deccan Traps are 5,000km from the exact, opposite spot of the Chicxulub crater. Two issues can challenge this. The first is this fact relates to their positions today. It does not take into account 66 million years of continental drift. The second relates to ballistics. The angle at which the comet hit, and penetrated, the Earth’s surface, would determine where the antipodal position would be created, not just the location.

This introduction demonstrates a strong correlation between the Chicxulub impact crater and the Deccan Traps. Combined with studies in ballistics, the hypothesis would be a comet traveling at very high speed impacted the Earth like a bullet, the kinetic energy penetrator smashed through the crust, it continued moving into the mantle, when it stopped the kinetic energy was transferred into a shock wave that continued on through the Earth and exploded out of the other side of the planet.

As antipodal theory has been seen multiple times in other planets in our solar system, a further hypothesis would be this same event has occurred at other moments in the history of the Earth. Research at Ohio State University9, links the Wilkes Crater in Antarctica with the Siberian Traps in the Arctic. These events occurred at the time of the “Great Dying” at the Permian-Triassic, or P-Tr, boundary mass extinction event 252 million years ago. This paper postulates a link between start of the Central Atlantic magmatic province and the Bedout impact in Australia. Both events occurred around 200 million years ago, are antipodal and are linked to the Triassic-Jurassic extinction event 201.3 million years ago.

In the sections below, we look in greater detail at the proposals. The crucial role ballistics may have on geological impact theories is investigated more thoroughly. The physics of impacts is also explored in greater detail including the use of Sir Isaac Newton’s “approximation for the penetration depth of a projectile at high velocity”. The hypothesis of this paper remains consistent - the kinetic energy of the comet impact at Chicxulub was an entry wound where a projectile shot through the Earth’s crust, into the mantle and the shock wave exploded out of an exit wound that we know as the Deccan Traps. It was an assassination in all but name.

Discussion

The scientific debate on the Cretaceous-Tertiary, or K-T, mass extinction event has focused on a meteorite impact since 1980. Physicists Luis and Walter Alvarez, with chemists Frank Asaro and Helen Michel, produced the first evidence of an impact10. Across the globe from Italy to New Zealand the team found a layer of iridium in the geological sedimentary layers of the K-T boundary. This has become known as the “iridium anomaly”. Iridium is extremely rare in the Earth’s crust but abundant in meteors, asteroids and comets. The conclusion was the concentration of iridium at the K-T boundary, up to 160 times normal levels in one sample, had to have been from an extra-terrestrial source.

Iridium is also derived from a terrestrial origin or more precisely a sub-terrestrial source. Christian Ganter, in his 1986 paper11, showed iridium is only present in the mantle at significant depths and I. Olmez, D. Finnegan and W. Zoller (1986)12 demonstrated modern volcanic eruptions fed by magma plumes from deep inside the planet, like at Kilauea in Hawaii, contain high levels of iridium. The Deccan Traps rate of eruption was at least 30 times the rate of the Hawaiian eruptions today and estimates of the fire fountains generated by eruptions on the scale of the Deccan Traps suggests that aerosols and ash would easily have been carried into the stratosphere. The iridium anomaly at the K-T boundary could have been created by a single or multiple asteroid impacts or the massive eruptions at the Deccan Traps that lasted for approximately a million years.

While the asteroid impact theory was radical and contentious at the time, an impact event has come to be one of the most prominent hypotheses for the mass extinction of plant and animal life 65 million years ago. In 1990 Alan Hildebrand and Glen Penfield identified the Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan peninsula, Mexico, as the possible K-T boundary impact crater13. Discovery of the 180km/110mi diameter crater led to universal acceptance of the impact hypothesis. This has been further strengthened in 2013 by Paul Renne’s high-precision dating technique on tektities14 - pebble shaped rocks formed during meteorite impacts.

Sankar Chatterjee at Texas Tech University calculated in 2004 the Deccan Traps abruptly began erupting a million years before the Chicxulub impact15. The fact the research points to the Deccan Traps erupting before the Chicxulub impact has led many to conclude one could not be as a result of the other. A million years discrepancy when taken in reference to geological time, when life first began on Earth 4 billion years ago, and present day gives a coincidence correlation of 0.025%. There is a 1 in 4000 chance of those two events occurring at relatively the same moment in relation to the time life has been on this planet. While probability can create anomalies, Paul Renne’s Berkeley Geochronology Center provide more conclusive proof14, dating the impact event tektities to 66.043 million years ago. This is almost a million years earlier than previously thought and brings the impact to exactly to the date the Deccan Traps abruptly began erupting.

After variations in time, the predominant reason for the Deccan Traps not being connected to the comet impact is the site of the traps is not on the direct opposite side of the world from Chicxulub, Mexico. The Deccan Traps are approximately 5,000km from the antipode of the Chicxulub crater. The Introduction to this paper sited movement of tectonic places over 66 million years as one of the reasons the site could have moved but extensive modeling of this scenario is inconclusive. This is an unsolved problem for antipodal pressure wave research. This theory relies on wherever the comet hit creating vibrations that travel through the Earth’s crust and meeting on the other side of the world creating a lava plume. However, the lava plume must be on the exact opposite side of the world for this to be true.

The Introduction to this paper touched on another crucial element that has been overlooked: ballistics. When a projectile hits and enters a target the ‘angle of attack’ is crucial in determining the exit point. In the case of a comet hitting and entering a planet angle of attack would have a significant impact on an antipodal ‘exit wound’ lava plume. An angle of attack penetrating the Earth’s crust at exactly vertical, or 90 degrees to the horizon, would create a lava plume on exactly the opposite side of the world. However, this cannot be conclusively proved. The Chicxulub angle of attack, according to L. A. W. Watts, R. Greeley and H. J. Melosh (1991)16, was between 20 and 30 degrees off vertical. In context of the Earth, 20 degrees off vertical would create an exit wound up to 4,800km from an exact antipodal point and 30 degrees would create an exit wound on the other side of the world of up to 7,200km away from an exact antipodal point. Only if the Chicxulub impact entered the Earth’s crust could it have created the Deccan Traps.

The initial discovery of the Chicxulub crater shifted the focus away from theories involving increased volcanic activity and marine regression. There is clear evidence that sea levels fell dramatically in the final stages of the Cretaceous. The removal of the continental shelf, the most species-rich area of the sea, would have caused mass marine extinction. There is no clear cause for the regression so this paper will not have it as a focus. However, this paper will postulate a link between the impact event and the extreme sea level drop. In 2010 Kevin Pope, Steven D’Hondt and Charles Marshall17 concluded the Chicxulub impact created a dust cloud in the atmosphere that blocked sunlight by 50% for up to a year and created a 7℃ drop in global temperature. Smaller reductions in global temperature have created ice ages and a hypothesis would be an ‘impact winter’ formed after the Chicxulub event. This ‘flash ice age’ quickly formed giant ice sheets, removing large amounts of water from the oceans and led to an extreme drop in sea level.

Temperature is an important factor to the Earth assassination theory. An asteroid impact on the surface of a planet that vaporizes the extraterrestrial body upon contact creates a “heat pulse” (D. Robertson, 201218) similar to the explosion of a nuclear bomb. On a much larger scale, the surface impact at Chicxulub is calculated to have released 100 million megatons of energy or 8,000 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb. Dr D. Robertson’s 2012 model18 projected the heat pulse from the Chicxulub surface impact baked the atmosphere to 2,700F/1,482C, “igniting every living thing not shielded underground or underwater”.

The global firestorm theory model was tested in a heat furnace at Exeter University and Dr Claire Belcher’s report19 states “if there were any firestorms they were likely to be local rather than global”. Living plant material was exposed to temperatures similar to a surface impact and conclusively proved not to have been destroyed on a planetary scale. Dr Belcher’s 2015 study is unequivocal the Chicxulub asteroid impact occurred but it did not create a global firestorm. This paper proposes the reason there was no global firestorm is the Chicxulub impact was not a surface impact but one that penetrated into the interior of the Earth.

As explored in the Introduction, Durand-Manterola and Cordero-Tercero’s work at Cornell University5 points to the Chicxulub impactor in fact being a comet, instead of an asteroid, and a comet with the credibility to penetrate the Earth’s crust to enter the mantle. This creates a simple question: why is there a crater at Chicxulub rather than a hole in the Earth’s crust?

In ballistics the morphology of an entrance wound is characterized by the following characteristics created after impact: a central defect, a ‘ring of dirt’ and an abrasion ring (Thali et al, 200220). The Chicxulub crater has all of these. A central defect in ballistics is an area formed after impact that corresponds to the diameter of the penetrating projectile. Chicxulub’s inner ring, inside the crater, measures 70km in diameter, similar to Durand-Manterola and Cordero-Tercero’s predictions5. The outer ring at Chicxulub was described in 1978 by Glen Penfield21, the geophysicist who first discovered the crater while working for the Pemex oil company, as 180km across and tangenital to the inner ring. Entrance wounds have abrasion rings that are symmetrical, concentric circles around the central defect and are over twice the size of the projectile entrance.

The ‘ring of dirt’ in an entrance wound is a depression between the inner, central defect and the outer, abrasion ring created from internal matter exposed during impact. Many meteorite sites have a trough between the inner and outer craters. However, Chicxulub is unique with a lava dome, uncharacteristic of the region’s geology, between the central defect and abrasion ring. Lava domes are created by the slow solidification of viscous lava through exposure over a long period of time. It is the hypothesis of this paper that while the inner and outer craters at Chicxulub could have been created by any meteorite impact, the lava dome is a ballistic ‘ring of dirt’ for the comet’s entry into the Earth’s mantle.

Projectiles entering objects at high velocities are subject to Newton’s ‘Approximation for Penetration Depth’. An impactor carries a given momentum and to stop this momentum energy must be transferred from the projectile to the impacted object and by the time it stops, the projectile will have penetrated to a depth that is equal to its own length times its relative density with respect to the target material. Newton’s ‘Approximation for Penetration Depth’ is cited as a final reason why a comet could not penetrate the Earth. The comet would be composed of material approximately twice as dense as the mantle and, according to Newton’s approximation, it could not penetrate more than twice its own length of 80km.

However, modern ballistic research into hypervelocity compact energy missiles discovered very high speeds have a greater penetration potential than mass alone. Modern anti-tank weapons are constructed from high mass material, like depleted uranium that has a similar density to a comet, but it is their speed on impact that determines penetration depth. A K.E.P. (Kinetic Energy Pentrator) made of depleted uranium can pierce tank armour to a depth up to 3 times its length as it is traveling at a hypersonic speed up to 12,000km/h or 3.33km/s. The Chicxulub comet’s impact speed was up to 70km/s. This would give a maximum penetration potential of 60 times its length or 4,800km into the mantle. This hypothesis requires further research but demonstrates a comet could penetrate deep into a planet’s centre.

Terminal ballistics is the study of projectiles after they have hit their target. The central principle states the more energy that is transferred to the target, the greater destructive potential. The Chicxulub impact was one of the highest energy events ever to occur on our planet. When the comet came to a stop in the mantle all of that energy was directed forward, towards the antipodal side of the planet, in the form of a pressure wave. It is not this paper’s intention to investigate whether this interfered with the Earth’s core. The liquid core generates the natural magnetic field surrounding our planet. Yong Wei, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, concluded in 2014 the geomagnetic reversal rate doubled at the KT boundary which led to a drop in atmospheric oxygen, another possible reason for the mass extinctions seen at the time22.

Exit wounds in ballistics are created by the internal pressure wave meeting the opposite point from impact. The pressure wave does not dissipate but focuses directly forward until it reaches the exit point. Here it explodes outwards, most famously in the John F. Kennedy assassination, creating a wound that is much larger than the entrance with an irregular outline and everted edges. Mantle plumes, discovered in 1971 by W. Jason Morgan23, are narrow, rising columns of magma that stream from the outer core, through the mantle and crust, to the surface of our planet. The Hawaiian island chain is the type example that has been continually erupting for many years. The hypothesis of this paper is when the Chicxulub comet penetrated the mantle and slowed to a halt, the massive amount of kinetic energy it was carrying was transferred forward to create one of the largest mantle plumes the planet has experienced as the Deccan Traps.

The Deccan Traps are one of many flood basalt events, where magma from deep within the mantle has poured out the crust on a continental scale, to have occurred during Earth’s history. The Siberian Traps is a large region of volcanic rock in Siberia, Russia. It was formed by a massive eruptive event, one of the largest volcanic lava flows the world has ever seen, about 250 million years ago at the Permian-Triassic extinction event when approximately 90% of all life died out. The Siberian Traps have been linked to the Wilkes Land crater in Antarctica by Ralph von Frese et al. (2009) through antipodal coincidence24. The theory faces the same challenges as any Chicxulub/Deccan Traps antipodal concept. When ballistics research is utilized the difficulties with a 15 degree misfit for the antipodal location, Markus Fraenz’s revelation of geomagnetic reversals at the same time and less surface impact evidence for the Wilkes Land crater are reduced. Ballistics research supports the von Frese’s Siberian Traps/Wilkes Lane crater antipodal theory and strengthens the proposal that colossal Earth impacts penetrate the planet’s mantle and create giant magma plumes.


Conclusion

Evidence for a comet impact at Chicxulub and flood basalt event at the Deccan Traps is well researched. The two incidents occurred at approximately the same time in Earth’s history, 66 million years ago, and were paramount in the K-T mass extinction event or ‘death of the dinosaurs’.
This paper has proposed using ballistics as a further tool in the research regarding both events.

Ballistics research answers many of the issues surrounding the K-T extinction event and even proposes possible solutions to unanswered problems like geomagnetic reversal.

It is the conclusion of this research paper that a large comet traveling at extra-hypersonic speed hit and penetrated the Earth’s crust 66 million years ago. The comet traveled into the mantle and when it came to a stop it created a massive energy wave. This giant pulse of energy powered through the centre of the Earth and created a magma plume that exploded out of the planet on the opposite side of the entrance site.

The Chicxulub comet was, in effect, a bullet entering the skull of the planet and the Deccan Traps were the catastrophic exit wound. The K-T mass extinction was a global assassination.


Book marks:

1. https://www.lanl.gov/discover/publications/national-security-science/2013-april/_assets/docs/killing-asteroids.pdf
2. https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/maps/article/view/14975/14946
3. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, vol 202, p 551
4. http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects
5. https://arxiv.org/abs/1403.6391
6. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00577875
7. http://charles_w.tripod.com/dweber/mars_volcanos/mars_volcanos2.html
8. http://gsabulletin.gsapubs.org/content/early/2015/04/30/B31167.1.abstract
9. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008GC002149/abstract
10. http://earthscience.rice.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Alvarez_K-Timpact_Science80.pdf
11. http://www.icr.org/article/chicxulub-demise-dinosaurs
12. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/JB091iB01p00653/abstract
13. https://pangea.stanford.edu/courses/ges57/pdf/chicxulub_hildebrand.pdf
14. http://news.berkeley.edu/2013/02/07/new-evidence-comet-or-asteroid-impact-was-last-straw-for-dinosaurs
15. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4095032
16. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/91JB00308
17. http://www.pnas.org/content/95/19/11028.full.pdf
18. http://www.livescience.com/28582-asteroid-extinction-firestorm.html
19. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/giant-asteroid-unlikely-to-have-created-firestorms-big-enough-to-kill-off-dinosaurs-scientists-say-9996049.html
20. Analysis of patterned injuries and injury-causing instruments with forensic 3D/CAD supported photogrammetry (FPHG): an instruction manual for the documentation process'
21. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/a-tale-of-two-rocks-151643588
22. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2014/06/10/earths-magnetic-flips-may-triggered-mass-extinctions/#.WMaFZRBdU7A
23. https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth520/content/l2_p14.html
24. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008GC002149/abstract

 

[Sensei]

the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs did not just hit the Earth like a nuclear bomb

 

Nuclear bombs don't "hit Earth". They have the largest destructive effect when they are exploding couple hundred meters above surface.

 

Nuclear bomb is utilizing fission of unstable isotopes, which release large amount of energy. Which has nothing to do with asteroids or comets. They don't contain significant amount of fissile materials.

[Argent]

There is quite a lot of detail here. Much of the material, as you note, is a restatement of preexisting ideas. To advance the discussion could you answer two questions:

 

What specific claims are different in your proposal from previous studies?

 

Why have you chosen the anthropomorphic term "assassination"? Assassinations are conscious acts. Use of the word is liable to cause some readers to dismiss your thesis from the outset and disappoint those attracted by the word who hoped for speculation about aliens who play bolide billiards. .

[DangeRuss]

Cheers Argent, that's exactly the feedback I'm looking for.

 

The existing theories for the KT boundary asteroid impact centre on the projectile hitting the Earth and disintegrating on impact. If you take this as your starting point, which all modern research on the event does, then the Deccan Traps, occurring on the other side of the world about the same time, can only have been created by "antipodal shock waves", energy waves traveling out from a single point (similar to a bomb) pulsing around the world to then meet up at another point, antipodal to where they were created. When the shock waves meet they push magma up through convergent pressure, similar to squeezing a zit.

 

This theory is completely new as it takes as its starting point the asteroid/comet did not explode on impact but was traveling so fast and with so much momentum that it pierced the Earth's crust and entered the mantle. Acknowledged research points to this but the hypothesis has never been proposed before.

 

The analogies of a bomb, bullet to the head, "zit" or assassination are crude but simple so the hypothesis can be quickly visualized. God help me if this is seized upon by conspiracy theorists. Not sure what I could do to stop that happening tho.

 

Cheers again Argent, top stuff

Edited March 21, 2017 by DangeRuss

[Argent]

Thank you for the reply. I have several additional points and questions. I hope these will help you refine your hypothesis.

 

Mantle Penetration

 

If you argue that the impactor penetrated the mantle you have to be able to demonstrate that. Here is a comment from an early study on the impact event. This study used a range of impactor densities, compositions and velocities.

 

"As we pointed out earlier [Kring, 1995], there is no chemical or isotopic evidence of a mantle component involved in the impact melts produced by the Chicxulub impact event, consistent with the results here that indicate it is unlikely that the mantle was involved."

 

E.Pierazzo et al 'Hydrocode simulation of the Chicxulub impact event and the production of climatically active gases'

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/98JE02496/epdf

 

The authors are not just arguing that the impactor failed to penetrate the mantle, but that "the intensity of the shock decays as it moves away from the impact point, and at the Earth's mantle the maximum shock pressure is not high enough to induce melting in any of the runs, with the exception of the largest impacts, in particular, for the comet ones."

 

What evidence (simulation, field data, logical argument, etc.) can you bring to the table to support your assertion that the impactor penetrated the mantle? I think it would be important that such a demonstration showed that the penetration was quantitatively significant.

 

To anticipate a perfectly reasonable objection you might make - have I cherry picked my research to support a counter argument? No. I selected the first paper I came across that suggested the mantle had not been penetrated. You have obviously already done some extensive reading on the subject. (My own reading on the event is restricted to the book by Alvarez and half a dozen papers.) There may be several research items out there that contradict a twenty year old paper. But if you cannot bring to the table such papers or present other evidence in support of your hypothesis then I fear it will be seen as an interesting idea that failed because of inadequate evidence.

 

Deccan Traps Eruptions

 

You state that when the antipodal " shock waves meet they push magma up through convergent pressure". This was not my understanding of the mechanism proposed for the Deccan Trap eruptions. The Deccan trap eruption began before the impact event and continued after it. There was no "pushing up of magma" but , as phrased in this excellent paper, "a change to the plumbing of the magma chambers".

 

You therefore need to do one of three things.

 

Produce evidence to support your "magma push" mechanism.

 

Accept the current explanations, in which case, while they do not contradict your hypothesis, do not exclude the conventional theory.

 

Propose and demonstrate a mechanism for changing the character of the Deccan Trap eruptions that could only occur as a result of mantle penetration by the impactor.

 

Stylistic Considerations

 

You have put a lot of work into this. I am sure you want to be taken seriously. If you are addressing this hypothesis to a bunch of adolescents who get their science from Discovery Channel documentaries then comparing the Deccan Traps to a zit and talking about assassination are perfect. However, if you wish this to be considered as a genuine contribution to an understanding of events at and around the KT boundary, then you need to lose the graphic candy floss.

 

You say "God help me if this is seized upon by conspiracy theorists. Not sure what I could do to stop that happening tho."

 

Easy - don't give them ammunition to assassinate your idea, exploding it like a giant, thermonuclear zit.

 

Thanks

 

I love planets. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to talk about one. In preparing this reply I've already learned much I didn't know yesterday.

Edited March 21, 2017 by Argent

[studiot]

Reconstruction of past events and periods can be difficult and complex.

Sometimes different indicators point in different or even opposed direction.

 

First here is an extract about Chicxulub from a book that is a masterpiece of balancing all the conflicting evidence.

This suggests that there is definite geophysical evidence for the activity reaching and affecting the mantle, though there is no suggestion that the meteorite survived even partially intact, like a bullet.

 

 

 

Now to suggest that shock waves from this event which was effectively instantaneous somehow initiated up to a million years of successive lava flows require that it occurred before the lava.

 

These recent references suggest otherwise.

 

The impact

 

http://www.livescience.com/26933-chicxulub-cosmic-impact-dinosaurs.html

 

The Deccan

 

https://www.princeton.edu/geosciences/people/schoene/pdf/Schoene_Deccan-Traps_Science2015.pdf

 

Returning to the book I referred to unfortunately it is mainly about the Permian/Triassic boundary extinction but does provide an unbiased examination of the available evidence at its time of writing for other significant extinction effects, including the KT one in question.

The techniques and trains of thought are worthy of examination.

 

Paleontological, paleobotanical and so on evidence should be examined in both land, sea and air enviroments as well as evidence from inert matter both in type, disposition and mechanical, chemical and or thermal disruptions.

 

Any proposed mechanism should be tested against the known geographical distributions of the land masses at the time of invocation of that mechanism.

Are you talking an S or P wave?

I can see the idea of an S wave temporarily opening a preexisting weakness to allow the exudation of magma, which then forced a widening of the breach and further outflow.

Do you mean a true shock wave, which is the result of something material travelling fast than the local speed of sound, or something different?

 

I agree with Argent the language is rather over dramatic for a scientific discussion.

Remember also that the proposal is a hypothesis; a theory is rather more.

Edited March 21, 2017 by studiot

[DangeRuss]

Now we're talking, this is exactly what I am looking for as challenges to my theory are far more productive than praise.

 

Mantle Penetration:

 

Thank you for referring to Kring 1995 as that is renowned and respected paper.

I have not challenged Kring's findings for 3 reasons:

1. Kring refers to "impact melts" which are only created when a projectile hits the Earth's surface and is destroyed, leaving a meteorite crater. Quote the Planetary Science Institute: "...so much melt is produced that it forms in the central parts of an impact crater to form cater-fill deposits." My theory is Chicxulub is not a classic impact crater but an "entrance wound" where the comet punched through the Earth's crust. The material in the centre of the Chicxulub crater is not classic impact melt but more closely resembling basalt that cooled over a long period of time. This, to use simple analogies again, is more similar to a wound healing than the surrounding Earth being melted and re-solidifying.

2. To quote your quote: "... the intensity of the shock decays as it moves away from the impact point...". Fring accepts this line of research because the benchmark is the impactor hit the Earth, was destroyed, created a crater and the shock waves moved away from the impact point through 360 degrees. Only if the comet pierced the Earth, entered the mantle and stopped inside the planet could it then have obeyed the laws of ballistics whereby instead of shock waves decaying as they moved away from a central impact point the projectile's momentum was converted into a pulse of energy that moved forward and through the centre of the Earth.

3. More recent research, my paper quotes Hector Durand-Manterola and Guadalupe Cordero-Tercero's research but there are other examples, has discovered the meteorite/asteroid/comet that hit the Earth at Chicxulub was bigger, traveling faster and of a more dense material than thought by Kring. This research points to the projectile penetrating the Earth's crust.

 

The Deccan Traps:

 

The general consensus today for the creation of the Deccan Traps is a giant magma plume from deep within the Earth. There have been questions around the Deccan Traps beginning 1 million years before the Chicxulub impact. However, more recent modeling by internationally known Dr Paul Renne at Berkeley has pushed the impact back a million years so both events did occur at the same time, 66 million years ago.

The exact science of how and why magma plumes are created deep within the planet and then find their way to the surface, as at Hawaii today, are inconclusive. There are many theories. I am just adding another theory. If, as the research suggests, a comet did pierce the Earth's crust and enter the mantle then it would obey Newton's laws. Ballistics is clear: when a high speed projectile comes to a stop inside an object the kinetic momentum is transferred directly forward. Not out in all different direction like a meteorite impact but straight ahead. This is a pressure wave. For me, the pressure wave in this case created the magma plume by traveling through the centre of the Earth and pushing up the magma from below.

 

So while the Chicxulub impact could be seen as an entrance wound so the Deccan Traps can be viewed as where the pressure wave exited.

 

Style:

 

Thank you for identifying this. The real problem is a solution. Yes, some of the language is sensationalist but there is years of research, backed up by research from renowned scientists around the world, in this paper.

 

But here's the problem. You can only be published one of two ways: By being a world renowned name - which I am not. Or by grabbing people's attention. The theory could easily be The Kinetic Energy Transfer from the Chichxulub Impact created the Deccan Traps. If I could co-operate with a leading geophysicist then it may become so but at the moment I need the sensationalism so people read the paper and I can work with their feedback, like yours, that is so essential at present.

 

Thanks again, all best

 

 

Edit:

 

Cheers Studiot. Some of your points are discussed in the paper but you are correct that the "Earth Assassination Theory" needs to change as it is, in fact, the "Earth Assassination Hypothesis".

 

Any better title suggestions welcome....

Edited March 21, 2017 by DangeRuss

[Velocity_Boy]

Anyone fancy some "light" reading?

 

I have just finished this research paper and would love any, honest feedback.

The theory is new although based on established research: the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs did not just hit the Earth like a nuclear bomb but was more like a bullet to the head: "The Earth Assassination Theory".

Had some excellent pointers from a Nobel Prize winner but what is that compared to the forum.

 

Earth Assassination Theory:

 

Abstract

 

The Cretaceous-Tertiary, or K-T, extinction event is the most widely known mass extinction event in Earth’s history due to its nom de plume “the death of the dinosaurs”. Occurring approximately 66 million years ago, the K-T led to the mass-extinction of three-quarters of all plant and animal species on the planet. The reasons for such devastation to life are linked to increased volcanic activity and climate change caused by a meteorite impact or mass lava flow that occurred at the time. The meteorite impact has been identified at Chicxulub on the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. The mass lava ejection occurred at the Deccan Traps, off the coast of Western India.

 

The Chicxulub collision created the same amount of energy as 100 teratonnes of TNT, a billion times the power of the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Research confirms the incoming projectile created giant firestorms and tsunamis that vaporized much of the Americas. A dust cloud formed in the atmosphere reducing sunlight for up to ten years devastating plant and marine life. Across the other side of the world, the Deccan Traps exploded out of the Earth, as basalt lava flowed out of the mantle for tens of thousands of years covering up to 1.5 million km², approximately half the size of modern India. Both of these events lead to the extinction of 75% of all species of plant and animal life on Earth.

 

The fact both events occurred 66 million years ago, at the time of the K-T extinction, supports many research hypothesis. However, there is a further geographical correlation between Chicxulub and the Deccan Traps. The locations are approximately the opposite side of the planet from one another taking into account plate tectonic movements over 66 million years. It is the hypothesis of this paper the kinetic energy the Chicxulub impact created the Deccan Traps with the single event acting as an assassination of life on the Earth. A simplified analogy is a gun shot to the head - a high velocity projectile enters one side of a pressurized sphere, as it slows to a stop inside the enormous kinetic energy is transferred forward and explodes out of the far side. A further hypothesis is this type of event has occurred multiple times throughout Earth’s history and each time has led to a mass extinction event.

 

Introduction

 

The mass extinction event at the margin of the Cretaceous and Tertiary Periods, or K-T boundary, is widely studied and researched. The prominent cause involves an asteroid impact. However, there are many conflicting hypothesis for such wide-spread plant and animal extinctions that include increased volcanism, mass lava ejections, sea level regression and climate change.

 

The Chicxulub impact, on the present-day Yucatan peninsula, Mexico, is considered the most likely location of the asteroid impact. This impact has also been extensively and accurately modeled by Los Alamos National Laboratory1 and the University of Arizona2. While these models prove the devastating power of the impact they assume the meteor was flattened or destroyed in the initial collision.

However, studies by Adrian Jones and David Price at University College London3 suggest meteorites 10km or larger could punch through the Earth’s crust and enter the mantle. Using the minimum factors for the Chicxulub asteroid on the Imperial College London “Earth Impact Effects Program”4 a 10km diameter object traveling at median asteroid speed of 17km/s would make a crater 30km deep. The Earth’s outer surface at Chicxulub is continental crust at 10km - 20km thickness.

 

The Chicxulub asteroid could have been even larger. Hector Durand-Manterola and Guadalupe Cordero-Tercero at Cornell University5 have confirmed the physical parameters of the impactor are not limited. Based on concentrations of iridium and the mass of the object, they found the asteroid was a minimum 10.6km in diameter up to a maximum 80.9km in diameter. Their calculations also concluded that the impactor wasn’t an asteroid at all but a comet.

 

Asteroids travel at approximately 10 - 30km/s. Comets travel at approximately 50 - 70km/s. It is the hypothesis of this paper the Chicxulub impact punched through the Earth’s crust and entered the mantle.

 

The Earth’s crust “floats” on top of the mantle; however, the mantle is a very viscous liquid that is predominantly solid. Only very high pressures and temperatures can melt the mantle to create magma plumes. These are seen around the world’s surface as lava running like a river. Geology and physics show the Chicxulub impact created extreme levels of heat and pressure when it crashed through the crust and entered the mantle. This paper contends ballistics play a crucial role. The Chicxulub comet would have acted as a “kinetic energy penetrator” (K.E.P.) on the Earth. In the military this is an ammunition that does not contain explosives but uses its speed and mass to penetrate, and destroy, a target. Durand-Manterola and Cordero-Tercero5 have calculated the kinetic energy of the Chicxulub impact was up to 5.8x1025 Joules, the single, most powerful event to ever occur on the Earth.

 

When a “kinetic energy penetrator” hits a solid object the enormous energy transfer forces the solid to behave like a liquid. This means the K.E.P. can penetrate further. As the K.E.P. enters it creates cavitation through a high pressure heat wave. Ballistics could model how far the Chicxulub comet could penetrate the mantle.

 

The Chicxulub comet would only travel so far into the mantle and then come to a stop. This action is the most destructive in ballistics as it leads to a “high energy transfer”. When a high speed projectile penetrates an object and comes to a stop it transfers all of its kinetic energy into the object in the form of a shock wave. That shock wave travels onwards, along the entry path, with devastating effects.

 

Therefore in ballistics, exit wounds, where a projectile comes to a stop and a shock wave has travelled through an object to explode out of the opposite side, are much larger and have a longer lasting effects than entry wounds. The Deccan Traps, where plumes of magma exploded from inside the Earth at approximately the same time as the Chicxulub impact, cover an area up to 1.5 million km² while the Yucatan crater is 25,450 km².

 

The theory a comet impact on one side of a planet could result in damage on the opposite side, the “exit wound” being antipodal to the “entry wound”, has been proposed based on research on other planets in our solar system. P. Schultz and D. Gault6 proposed disruption to the moon as early as 1975. D. Weber, T. Bennett and C. Weber7 demonstrated the correlation between magma bulges and volanoes on Mars and Mercury with large impact craters on the other side of the planet.

 

It would be disingenuous not to mention that antipodal theory has been proposed for our planet. Mark Richards, at UC Berkeley, has published research on the “uncomfortably close coincidence”8 between the Deccan Traps and Chicxulub crater. However, the Berkeley team’s hypothesis focuses on the impact energy splitting, traveling around the planet’s crust and then coming together antipodal to the collision and forcing lava up from below.

 

The Berkeley team’s research highlighted an issue with antipodal theory - the Deccan Traps are 5,000km from the exact, opposite spot of the Chicxulub crater. Two issues can challenge this. The first is this fact relates to their positions today. It does not take into account 66 million years of continental drift. The second relates to ballistics. The angle at which the comet hit, and penetrated, the Earth’s surface, would determine where the antipodal position would be created, not just the location.

 

This introduction demonstrates a strong correlation between the Chicxulub impact crater and the Deccan Traps. Combined with studies in ballistics, the hypothesis would be a comet traveling at very high speed impacted the Earth like a bullet, the kinetic energy penetrator smashed through the crust, it continued moving into the mantle, when it stopped the kinetic energy was transferred into a shock wave that continued on through the Earth and exploded out of the other side of the planet.

 

As antipodal theory has been seen multiple times in other planets in our solar system, a further hypothesis would be this same event has occurred at other moments in the history of the Earth. Research at Ohio State University9, links the Wilkes Crater in Antarctica with the Siberian Traps in the Arctic. These events occurred at the time of the “Great Dying” at the Permian-Triassic, or P-Tr, boundary mass extinction event 252 million years ago. This paper postulates a link between start of the Central Atlantic magmatic province and the Bedout impact in Australia. Both events occurred around 200 million years ago, are antipodal and are linked to the Triassic-Jurassic extinction event 201.3 million years ago.

 

In the sections below, we look in greater detail at the proposals. The crucial role ballistics may have on geological impact theories is investigated more thoroughly. The physics of impacts is also explored in greater detail including the use of Sir Isaac Newton’s “approximation for the penetration depth of a projectile at high velocity”. The hypothesis of this paper remains consistent - the kinetic energy of the comet impact at Chicxulub was an entry wound where a projectile shot through the Earth’s crust, into the mantle and the shock wave exploded out of an exit wound that we know as the Deccan Traps. It was an assassination in all but name.

 

Discussion

 

The scientific debate on the Cretaceous-Tertiary, or K-T, mass extinction event has focused on a meteorite impact since 1980. Physicists Luis and Walter Alvarez, with chemists Frank Asaro and Helen Michel, produced the first evidence of an impact10. Across the globe from Italy to New Zealand the team found a layer of iridium in the geological sedimentary layers of the K-T boundary. This has become known as the “iridium anomaly”. Iridium is extremely rare in the Earth’s crust but abundant in meteors, asteroids and comets. The conclusion was the concentration of iridium at the K-T boundary, up to 160 times normal levels in one sample, had to have been from an extra-terrestrial source.

 

Iridium is also derived from a terrestrial origin or more precisely a sub-terrestrial source. Christian Ganter, in his 1986 paper11, showed iridium is only present in the mantle at significant depths and I. Olmez, D. Finnegan and W. Zoller (1986)12 demonstrated modern volcanic eruptions fed by magma plumes from deep inside the planet, like at Kilauea in Hawaii, contain high levels of iridium. The Deccan Traps rate of eruption was at least 30 times the rate of the Hawaiian eruptions today and estimates of the fire fountains generated by eruptions on the scale of the Deccan Traps suggests that aerosols and ash would easily have been carried into the stratosphere. The iridium anomaly at the K-T boundary could have been created by a single or multiple asteroid impacts or the massive eruptions at the Deccan Traps that lasted for approximately a million years.

 

While the asteroid impact theory was radical and contentious at the time, an impact event has come to be one of the most prominent hypotheses for the mass extinction of plant and animal life 65 million years ago. In 1990 Alan Hildebrand and Glen Penfield identified the Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan peninsula, Mexico, as the possible K-T boundary impact crater13. Discovery of the 180km/110mi diameter crater led to universal acceptance of the impact hypothesis. This has been further strengthened in 2013 by Paul Renne’s high-precision dating technique on tektities14 - pebble shaped rocks formed during meteorite impacts.

 

Sankar Chatterjee at Texas Tech University calculated in 2004 the Deccan Traps abruptly began erupting a million years before the Chicxulub impact15. The fact the research points to the Deccan Traps erupting before the Chicxulub impact has led many to conclude one could not be as a result of the other. A million years discrepancy when taken in reference to geological time, when life first began on Earth 4 billion years ago, and present day gives a coincidence correlation of 0.025%. There is a 1 in 4000 chance of those two events occurring at relatively the same moment in relation to the time life has been on this planet. While probability can create anomalies, Paul Renne’s Berkeley Geochronology Center provide more conclusive proof14, dating the impact event tektities to 66.043 million years ago. This is almost a million years earlier than previously thought and brings the impact to exactly to the date the Deccan Traps abruptly began erupting.

 

After variations in time, the predominant reason for the Deccan Traps not being connected to the comet impact is the site of the traps is not on the direct opposite side of the world from Chicxulub, Mexico. The Deccan Traps are approximately 5,000km from the antipode of the Chicxulub crater. The Introduction to this paper sited movement of tectonic places over 66 million years as one of the reasons the site could have moved but extensive modeling of this scenario is inconclusive. This is an unsolved problem for antipodal pressure wave research. This theory relies on wherever the comet hit creating vibrations that travel through the Earth’s crust and meeting on the other side of the world creating a lava plume. However, the lava plume must be on the exact opposite side of the world for this to be true.

 

The Introduction to this paper touched on another crucial element that has been overlooked: ballistics. When a projectile hits and enters a target the ‘angle of attack’ is crucial in determining the exit point. In the case of a comet hitting and entering a planet angle of attack would have a significant impact on an antipodal ‘exit wound’ lava plume. An angle of attack penetrating the Earth’s crust at exactly vertical, or 90 degrees to the horizon, would create a lava plume on exactly the opposite side of the world. However, this cannot be conclusively proved. The Chicxulub angle of attack, according to L. A. W. Watts, R. Greeley and H. J. Melosh (1991)16, was between 20 and 30 degrees off vertical. In context of the Earth, 20 degrees off vertical would create an exit wound up to 4,800km from an exact antipodal point and 30 degrees would create an exit wound on the other side of the world of up to 7,200km away from an exact antipodal point. Only if the Chicxulub impact entered the Earth’s crust could it have created the Deccan Traps.

 

The initial discovery of the Chicxulub crater shifted the focus away from theories involving increased volcanic activity and marine regression. There is clear evidence that sea levels fell dramatically in the final stages of the Cretaceous. The removal of the continental shelf, the most species-rich area of the sea, would have caused mass marine extinction. There is no clear cause for the regression so this paper will not have it as a focus. However, this paper will postulate a link between the impact event and the extreme sea level drop. In 2010 Kevin Pope, Steven D’Hondt and Charles Marshall17 concluded the Chicxulub impact created a dust cloud in the atmosphere that blocked sunlight by 50% for up to a year and created a 7℃ drop in global temperature. Smaller reductions in global temperature have created ice ages and a hypothesis would be an ‘impact winter’ formed after the Chicxulub event. This ‘flash ice age’ quickly formed giant ice sheets, removing large amounts of water from the oceans and led to an extreme drop in sea level.

 

Temperature is an important factor to the Earth assassination theory. An asteroid impact on the surface of a planet that vaporizes the extraterrestrial body upon contact creates a “heat pulse” (D. Robertson, 201218) similar to the explosion of a nuclear bomb. On a much larger scale, the surface impact at Chicxulub is calculated to have released 100 million megatons of energy or 8,000 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb. Dr D. Robertson’s 2012 model18 projected the heat pulse from the Chicxulub surface impact baked the atmosphere to 2,700F/1,482C, “igniting every living thing not shielded underground or underwater”.

 

The global firestorm theory model was tested in a heat furnace at Exeter University and Dr Claire Belcher’s report19 states “if there were any firestorms they were likely to be local rather than global”. Living plant material was exposed to temperatures similar to a surface impact and conclusively proved not to have been destroyed on a planetary scale. Dr Belcher’s 2015 study is unequivocal the Chicxulub asteroid impact occurred but it did not create a global firestorm. This paper proposes the reason there was no global firestorm is the Chicxulub impact was not a surface impact but one that penetrated into the interior of the Earth.

 

As explored in the Introduction, Durand-Manterola and Cordero-Tercero’s work at Cornell University5 points to the Chicxulub impactor in fact being a comet, instead of an asteroid, and a comet with the credibility to penetrate the Earth’s crust to enter the mantle. This creates a simple question: why is there a crater at Chicxulub rather than a hole in the Earth’s crust?

 

In ballistics the morphology of an entrance wound is characterized by the following characteristics created after impact: a central defect, a ‘ring of dirt’ and an abrasion ring (Thali et al, 200220). The Chicxulub crater has all of these. A central defect in ballistics is an area formed after impact that corresponds to the diameter of the penetrating projectile. Chicxulub’s inner ring, inside the crater, measures 70km in diameter, similar to Durand-Manterola and Cordero-Tercero’s predictions5. The outer ring at Chicxulub was described in 1978 by Glen Penfield21, the geophysicist who first discovered the crater while working for the Pemex oil company, as 180km across and tangenital to the inner ring. Entrance wounds have abrasion rings that are symmetrical, concentric circles around the central defect and are over twice the size of the projectile entrance.

 

The ‘ring of dirt’ in an entrance wound is a depression between the inner, central defect and the outer, abrasion ring created from internal matter exposed during impact. Many meteorite sites have a trough between the inner and outer craters. However, Chicxulub is unique with a lava dome, uncharacteristic of the region’s geology, between the central defect and abrasion ring. Lava domes are created by the slow solidification of viscous lava through exposure over a long period of time. It is the hypothesis of this paper that while the inner and outer craters at Chicxulub could have been created by any meteorite impact, the lava dome is a ballistic ‘ring of dirt’ for the comet’s entry into the Earth’s mantle.

 

Projectiles entering objects at high velocities are subject to Newton’s ‘Approximation for Penetration Depth’. An impactor carries a given momentum and to stop this momentum energy must be transferred from the projectile to the impacted object and by the time it stops, the projectile will have penetrated to a depth that is equal to its own length times its relative density with respect to the target material. Newton’s ‘Approximation for Penetration Depth’ is cited as a final reason why a comet could not penetrate the Earth. The comet would be composed of material approximately twice as dense as the mantle and, according to Newton’s approximation, it could not penetrate more than twice its own length of 80km.

 

However, modern ballistic research into hypervelocity compact energy missiles discovered very high speeds have a greater penetration potential than mass alone. Modern anti-tank weapons are constructed from high mass material, like depleted uranium that has a similar density to a comet, but it is their speed on impact that determines penetration depth. A K.E.P. (Kinetic Energy Pentrator) made of depleted uranium can pierce tank armour to a depth up to 3 times its length as it is traveling at a hypersonic speed up to 12,000km/h or 3.33km/s. The Chicxulub comet’s impact speed was up to 70km/s. This would give a maximum penetration potential of 60 times its length or 4,800km into the mantle. This hypothesis requires further research but demonstrates a comet could penetrate deep into a planet’s centre.

 

Terminal ballistics is the study of projectiles after they have hit their target. The central principle states the more energy that is transferred to the target, the greater destructive potential. The Chicxulub impact was one of the highest energy events ever to occur on our planet. When the comet came to a stop in the mantle all of that energy was directed forward, towards the antipodal side of the planet, in the form of a pressure wave. It is not this paper’s intention to investigate whether this interfered with the Earth’s core. The liquid core generates the natural magnetic field surrounding our planet. Yong Wei, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, concluded in 2014 the geomagnetic reversal rate doubled at the KT boundary which led to a drop in atmospheric oxygen, another possible reason for the mass extinctions seen at the time22.

 

Exit wounds in ballistics are created by the internal pressure wave meeting the opposite point from impact. The pressure wave does not dissipate but focuses directly forward until it reaches the exit point. Here it explodes outwards, most famously in the John F. Kennedy assassination, creating a wound that is much larger than the entrance with an irregular outline and everted edges. Mantle plumes, discovered in 1971 by W. Jason Morgan23, are narrow, rising columns of magma that stream from the outer core, through the mantle and crust, to the surface of our planet. The Hawaiian island chain is the type example that has been continually erupting for many years. The hypothesis of this paper is when the Chicxulub comet penetrated the mantle and slowed to a halt, the massive amount of kinetic energy it was carrying was transferred forward to create one of the largest mantle plumes the planet has experienced as the Deccan Traps.

 

The Deccan Traps are one of many flood basalt events, where magma from deep within the mantle has poured out the crust on a continental scale, to have occurred during Earth’s history. The Siberian Traps is a large region of volcanic rock in Siberia, Russia. It was formed by a massive eruptive event, one of the largest volcanic lava flows the world has ever seen, about 250 million years ago at the Permian-Triassic extinction event when approximately 90% of all life died out. The Siberian Traps have been linked to the Wilkes Land crater in Antarctica by Ralph von Frese et al. (2009) through antipodal coincidence24. The theory faces the same challenges as any Chicxulub/Deccan Traps antipodal concept. When ballistics research is utilized the difficulties with a 15 degree misfit for the antipodal location, Markus Fraenz’s revelation of geomagnetic reversals at the same time and less surface impact evidence for the Wilkes Land crater are reduced. Ballistics research supports the von Frese’s Siberian Traps/Wilkes Lane crater antipodal theory and strengthens the proposal that colossal Earth impacts penetrate the planet’s mantle and create giant magma plumes.

 

 

Conclusion

 

Evidence for a comet impact at Chicxulub and flood basalt event at the Deccan Traps is well researched. The two incidents occurred at approximately the same time in Earth’s history, 66 million years ago, and were paramount in the K-T mass extinction event or ‘death of the dinosaurs’.

This paper has proposed using ballistics as a further tool in the research regarding both events.

 

Ballistics research answers many of the issues surrounding the K-T extinction event and even proposes possible solutions to unanswered problems like geomagnetic reversal.

 

It is the conclusion of this research paper that a large comet traveling at extra-hypersonic speed hit and penetrated the Earth’s crust 66 million years ago. The comet traveled into the mantle and when it came to a stop it created a massive energy wave. This giant pulse of energy powered through the centre of the Earth and created a magma plume that exploded out of the planet on the opposite side of the entrance site.

 

The Chicxulub comet was, in effect, a bullet entering the skull of the planet and the Deccan Traps were the catastrophic exit wound. The K-T mass extinction was a global assassination.

 

 

Book marks:

 

1. https://www.lanl.gov/discover/publications/national-security-science/2013-april/_assets/docs/killing-asteroids.pdf

2. https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/maps/article/view/14975/14946

3. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, vol 202, p 551

4. http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects

5. https://arxiv.org/abs/1403.6391

6. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00577875

7. http://charles_w.tripod.com/dweber/mars_volcanos/mars_volcanos2.html

8. http://gsabulletin.gsapubs.org/content/early/2015/04/30/B31167.1.abstract

9. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008GC002149/abstract

10. http://earthscience.rice.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Alvarez_K-Timpact_Science80.pdf

11. http://www.icr.org/article/chicxulub-demise-dinosaurs

12. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/JB091iB01p00653/abstract

13. https://pangea.stanford.edu/courses/ges57/pdf/chicxulub_hildebrand.pdf

14. http://news.berkeley.edu/2013/02/07/new-evidence-comet-or-asteroid-impact-was-last-straw-for-dinosaurs

15. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4095032

16. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/91JB00308

17. http://www.pnas.org/content/95/19/11028.full.pdf

18. http://www.livescience.com/28582-asteroid-extinction-firestorm.html

19. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/giant-asteroid-unlikely-to-have-created-firestorms-big-enough-to-kill-off-dinosaurs-scientists-say-9996049.html

20. Analysis of patterned injuries and injury-causing instruments with forensic 3D/CAD supported photogrammetry (FPHG): an instruction manual for the documentation process'

21. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/a-tale-of-two-rocks-151643588

22. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2014/06/10/earths-magnetic-flips-may-triggered-mass-extinctions/#.WMaFZRBdU7A

23. https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth520/content/l2_p14.html

24. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008GC002149/abstract

 

 

 

That is not a theory, as it has never had any of its ideas tested and verified.

 

Rather, it barely qualifies as a hypothesis. And one which has thus far yielded any observable supporting physical evidence.