EARLY IMPACT; BELOW - 2004 `SUICIDE' MISSION 'Smoking gun' evidence of giant meteor collision Evidence is mounting that 251 million years ago, long before the dinosaurs dominated the Earth, a meteor the size of Mount Everest smashed into what is now northern Australia, heaving rock halfway around the globe, triggering mass volcanic eruptions, and wiping out all but about ten percent of the species on the planet. The "Great Dying," as it's called, was by far the most cataclysmic extinction event in Earth's history, yet scientists have been unable to finger a culprit as they have with the dinosaur extinction. A new paper published in Science, however, claims to identify the crater made by that meteor, and it builds upon an ongoing body of evidence by researchers at the University of Rochester and the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB), that points the finger for the Great Dying squarely at the heavens. "This is very likely the impact site we've been looking for," says Robert Poreda, professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Rochester. "For years we've been observing evidence that a meteor or comet hit the southern hemisphere 251 million years ago, and this structure matches everything we've been expecting." In 2001, Poreda and Luann Becker, research scientist in geological sciences at UCSB, announced that they had detected in 251-million-year-old strata, specific isotopes of helium and argon trapped inside buckyballs -a cage-like formation of carbon atoms -that could only have come from space. It wasn't until Becker caught wind of the "volcanic" find in 251 million year old rock that the team members began to think they'd found their smoking gun. Poreda and Becker investigated the core samples first hand. "They were unlike any volcanic rocks I've ever seen," says Poreda. "In a volcanic explosion you may find angular pieces of rock that are broken apart mixed with the volcanic melt. In these samples, though, the rocks were shock melted from an impact. We left convinced Bedout was our crater." Coincidentally, the Bedout crater, at 120 miles across, is almost exactly the same size as the Chicxulub crater in the Caribbean that has been identified as the impact site of the meteorite that dealt the dinosaurs their death blow. It's likely that the bodies that struck at each site were of the same size and traveling at similar speeds. Along with both impacts correlating strongly with two of the greatest extinctions in Earth's history, the team has found that massive lava flows in two different parts of the world have similar corrolations. Basu showed that massive lava flows in India date back precisely to the Chicxalub impact, and recently he also reported that similar giant lava flows in Siberia coincide exactly with the Bedout impact. "There have been five mass extinctions throughout the Earth's history," says Poreda. "Now we have very strong evidence that massive meteor impacts happened precisely at two of those extinctions." The research was funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER NEWS RELEASE Posted: May 14, 2004 http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0405/14impact/ ----------------------------------------------- Crash mission to deflect Earth-bound asteroid Europe 's space chiefs have backed a suicide mission which will end in a head-on collision with an approaching asteroid. Astronomers so far know of about 1,200 objects in space more than half a mile across which might one day collide with Earth. An impact with a large object from space 65m years ago helped wipe out the dinosaurs. Even a much smaller object could cause widespread devastation. But so far, the interception of asteroids has happened only in Hollywood disaster movies. The European Space Agency's near-Earth object advisory panel has recommended high priority for a Spanish mission to smash into a distant asteroid. The mission, named Don Quijote, will use two spacecraft. One, called Sancho, will head for a target asteroid 500 metres (1,540ft) in diameter and go into orbit around it for at least seven months. It will drop detectors to measure the asteroid's internal structure. The second spacecraft, Hidalgo, will be launched at the same time but approach on a longer orbit - and smash into the asteroid at more than 22,000mph, while the first spacecraft watches the fireworks. The collision would hardly stop the asteroid in its tracks but it might slow it on what could be a collision course with Earth. Tim Radford, science editor Friday July 16, 2004 The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/space/article/0,14493,1262516,00.html ----------------------------------------------- Early extinction www.perceptions.couk.com/thumlate.txt Meteor Impact Database www.unb.ca/passc/ImpactDatabase/ Terrestrial Impact Craters www.solarviews.com/eng/tercrate.htm Reclassification www.perceptions.couk.com/uef/thump.txt Reclassification www.perceptions.couk.com/uef/thump2.txt Higher Risk www.perceptions.couk.com/uef/thump7.txt A plea www.perceptions.couk.com/uef/complasens.txt Calculate the mega-tonnage odds per year www.perceptions.couk.com/chance.txt ----------------------------------------------- Our crowded Solar System http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/OuterPlot.html http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/InnerPlot.html http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/InnerPlot2.html ----------------------------------------------- FURTHER REFERENCES GO - "search perceptions" - in SEARCH-ENGINE file-ID www.perceptions.couk.com/uef/thump3.txt