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More Evidence For a Clovis-Killer Comet
Posted by
kdawson
on Fri Jan 02, 2009 09:52 AM
from the speak-nanodiamonds dept.
from the speak-nanodiamonds dept.
fortapocalypse sends word that a new paper was published today in the journal Science on the hypothesis that a comet impact wiped out the Clovis people 12,900 years ago. (We discussed this hypothesis last year when it was put forth.) The new evidence is a layer of nanodiamonds at locations all across North America, at a depth corresponding to 12,900 years ago, none earlier or later. The researchers hypothesize that the comet that initiated the Younger Dryas, reversing the warming from the previous ice age, fragmented and exploded in a continent-wide conflagration that produced a layer of diamond from carbon on the surface. While disputing the current hypothesis, NASA's David Morrison allows, "They may have discovered something absolutely marvelous and unexplained."
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Did an Exploding Comet Doom Early Americans? 89 comments
New Scientist outlines a new theory on the demise of the Clovis people in the southwest US over 10,000 years ago. A group of 25 researchers speculates that a comet exploded over ice-covered Canada 12,900 years ago and triggered a firestorm across North America that not only wiped out the Clovis people but also forced a number of large land mammals into extinciton and kicked off the Younger Dryas climate change. However, geologists are pretty conservative folks, according to the article, and some of them are not buying it.
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12,900 years ago? (Score:4, Funny)
12,900 years ago? That's over twice the age of the Earth, you heathens!
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I would laugh, but I live around too many people who would say exactly that.
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You mean it's plastified and thus waterproof?
Mine has an invisibility cloak!
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Re:12,900 years ago? (Score:4, Insightful)
didn't you get the memo? Barack H. Obama is the new messiah. HE has brought forth HOPE. HE will pay for our cars and houses. HE will create 3 million new jobs. And HE has totally ripped abs.
I used to think this was a joke, but a journalist on NPR recently stated: "[description of economic woes ...] Is there any light at the end of this darkening tunnel? Where is what the Greeks called the deus ex machina -- the god who descends at the critical moment to sweep all our troubles away?
That could be President-elect Barack Obama [...]"
NPR says he's a god now, not just Limbaugh.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98912392 [npr.org]
Parent
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You're replying to a guy named "bigblacknigger". I wouldnt get too worked up.
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Mark 6:3 "This is the carpenter the son of Mary and the brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon, is it not? "
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Interesting. What's the SI unit of religious zealotry, and what type of apparatus is used to measure it?
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The Jihadi. It is nominally defined as the rate at which the zealot can destroy knowledge.
1 Jihadi = 1 Burning Library of Congress (BLoC) per fortnight.
Re:12,900 years ago? (Score:5, Funny)
How many Burning Libraries of Alexandria are there in a Burning Library of Congress?
Parent
Re:12,900 years ago? (Score:4, Informative)
The Jihadi. It is nominally defined as the rate at which the zealot can destroy knowledge.
1 Jihadi = 1 Burning Library of Congress (BLoC) per fortnight.
Would that make the Crusade the Imperial unit? And if so, what's the conversion equation?
Parent
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Yes, the Crusade is the Imperial Unit. Of course like most other Imperial Units it is out of favor world-wide except in the US.
As for conversion, they both start out
Re:12,900 years ago? (Score:4, Insightful)
I heartily disapprove of this "play nice" rhetoric.
A few points:
1) Apologists like you prefer to think that the literalists are a small minority. A third of the people I know are young earth creationists, and I live in Massachusetts. 48% of the US public are young earth creationists. 16% of high school BIOLOGY teachers [plosjournals.org] are young earth creationists. If you only get one thing out of this, let it be this: have some fucking intellectual integrity and stop understating the issue. Please.
2) You're right to suggest that an argument can't be productive if there's no common ground from which to argue. It is, however, insulting to assume that there is no such common ground. To suggest that the concepts of Bayesian inference, justifiability, history and psychology are not inaccessible to a deeply religious person is condescending to the extreme -- certainly far more condescending than the comments of the GP.
3) Your comment implies that there is no merit to demonstrating intolerance to bad ideas. That's a very popular conception, and I think that, as a liberal policy, it's been utterly disastrous. Now, clearly, it can be effective in a discussion or argument to assume that the other person is capable of meaningfully participating in that discussion or argument, but that's not the same as tolerating bad ideas. Cultural pressure is one of the great factors in meme progression and suppression, and it needs to be used.
When you don't believe in apodictic truth, it's easy to have reservations about sharing your ideas, because they aren't so much correct as "merely" good. Secularists need to sack up and realize that good is good enough to be loud. Timidity is not a good policy.
Parent
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Very good points. I want to emphasise the target audience that you are discussing.
Telling a religious nutcase that he's an idiot, nay, even proving it to him, will never convince him to change his mind. Only the wise will change their minds after being shown that they are wrong. Yes, even if you show a religious person that Ockham's Razor makes a god nigh-impossible, he will usually fall back to "Probability describes only what you can infer given your data. I know that God is real, so your calculatio
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I think the greatest tragedy of the whole evolution/creation/ID mess is the confusion of these two stances. It's a tragedy started by the anti-religious types, but the anti-science types did a lot of work dragging the rest of Religion in it themselves. But you can be pro-science witho
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No, you can be pro-science without being anti-religion, and you can be pro-religion without being anti-science.
For any system of understanding, even scientific ones based on pure logic using facts supported by data, you have to begin w
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If I had a child, I'd be tempted to teach him or her to respond "my father taught me to be respectful toward people who believe in biblical horse shit".
I think we're right in the middle of a flood myth revival: the flood of data, genetic data. Unlike that blogging outfit, Adam and Eve made a *lot* of off-orchard backups. with some diligence, we might yet recover much of the original.
This time, however, the bible thumpers will paddle for 40 days and 40 nights, and the flood will not recede. This time the
Re:12,900 years ago? (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean, like slavery? One group decides to continue to tolerate it, and another group decides not to. A big bloody fight ensues. One side wins. The intolerable idea becomes insignificantly present in the resulting, altered culture. Or are you suggesting that we should tolerate it, because it's gosh darn socially awkward to tell someone that they're wrong?
Liberal policy of live and let live is really all about the first part. You will never be left to live in peace unless you're willing to do the same to others
Yeah, except for the part where there are some people who consider the very act of you living the way you want to, peacefully, with things like daughters who are allowed to read and write, and marry who they choose... to be sufficient grounds to kill you. And your family. Can you really find moral comfort in that scenario by just physically removing yourself far enough away from the person who considers the nature of your day to day life to be an abomination requiring your death? Does your eager embrace of tolerance for every point of view include tolerating someone who doesn't tolerate you, and feels a religious duty to erase you from the planet?
You do realize that suppressing a meme requires oppressing the people who would pick it up or keep it
Or simply demonstrating in very plain, obvious ways that it's wrong. Or that embracing and pushing an incorrect world view or bad piece of information has consequences. Are you really equating a solid science curriculum that actively looks to shut down absurd superstitions in its students with Stalinism? Man, it must be exhausting to work so hard at moral relativism.
Parent
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But you're ignoring the fact that the fight was necessary, and had the result of ending the applicability of the bad idea. The bad idea wasn't tolerated, and now it's gone. Tolerating the bad idea is tacit approval of it.
I don't think anyone's argued that you should tolerate people trying to kill you.
How about tolerating them moving into your neighborhood, and changing the laws under which you live
Re:12,900 years ago? (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't just leave it alone can you. You need to retake you statistics class again. And for religious zealotry it usually falls along the normal distribution curve. (...) You wonder why the radical evangelics fights so hard against science. Because the scientist want to mock them and prove them wrong.
Funny, I thought it was because when you do prove them wrong time and time again, people might start to question the rest too including the belief parts. That people have an incredible capability of cognitive dissonance and explaining away anything the parts that lead to conflict is fairly well known though. It's not just to mock, but it's to point out that it's sort of a package deal - you can't believe in half the commandments, the odd pages of the Bible or whatever. Far too many people simply cherry pick the parts they want, so that they don't have to deal with all the things that are flat out wrong and still believe that everything else is accurate. There's always a good excuse for why some parts shouldn't be taken literally or seriously which happens to fit your own opinion.
Parent
Re:12,900 years ago? (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone goes up to you and tries to open a religious flame war, just respect their beliefs
You know, I'm sick and tired of being told I have to play nice with religious people.
Why? Why do I have to respect their beliefs? Why do I have to pussy-foot around the fact that they're choosing to believe in an imaginary friend with absolutely no empirical evidence?
Sure, that's your choice... But why do I have to respect you for it?
If you tell me that you can fly, do I have to respect that belief too? What if you tell me that paper isn't flamable? What if you tell me that cyanide is a healthy supplement to have with breakfast? At what point does it become acceptable for me to call you a flaming idiot?
People kind of grin and chuckle at the Invisible Pink Unicorn and Flying Spaghetti Monster... But religions like Christianity are just as ridiculous. The only reason Christianity gets any kind of respect is because it has been around longer. So, in a couple thousand years, are people going to have to respect the beliefs of a Pastafarian? Or will they still be allowed to grin and chuckle?
And, of course, this respect only goes one way. We're all supposed to respect the beliefs of the religious folks... But they don't have to respect ours.
Religions are constantly trying to impose their beliefs on anyone and everyone around them. I'm not just talking about evangelists who just won't take no for an answer... Take a look at the big battle of Proposition 8 in California.
It doesn't matter whether I believe that you should be able to marry whoever you want...the religious folks think it should just be between a man and a woman. Are they willing to respect my beliefs? Are they willing to let atheists and agnostics and whoever else go around marrying who they want to, and just worry about keeping their own flock on the straight-and-narrow? Nope! No same-sex marriages for anyone!
Parent
Lonsdaleite (Score:5, Informative)
This is a type of diamond that seems to form when meteors enter the atmosphere and it a called Lonsdaleite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonsdaleite [wikipedia.org]
This material is of interest as a replacement for structural steel since it can be formed in a simple manner using chemistry. http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2008/01/anaximenes-way.html [blogspot.com]
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Tunguska event had no crater (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Tunguska event had no crater (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
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I thought it was the biggest inter-dimensional cross rip of its time?
oldest event preserved in history? (Score:4, Interesting)
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does Gilgamesh remember big flood? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:oldest event preserved in history? (Score:5, Informative)
Gilgamesh is older than that. It was handed down from before the pictograms that preceded cuneiform.
First, that 3500 BC date includes the pictogram phase. The characteristic cuneiform wedges didn't come until later.
Second, there's not any evidence that the Gilgamesh epic was handed down from earlier. The earliest versions of the Gilgamesh legend date from the third dynasty of Ur, beginning roughly 2150 BC. There is some historical evidence for an actual Gilgamesh, who is mentioned in the Sumerian king list. There's also some contemporary evidence for some of the other kings mentioned in the epic. If he did exist, he probably dates to around 2700 BC.
To be fair, the epic of Gilgamesh could certainly be based on older legends. There's just no evidence for it.
Parent
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I wouldn't say there's no evidence for it. The strong connections between the Gilgamesh epic and other, generally dissimilar mythologies, the best example perhaps being the connections between the flood myth in Gilgamesh and other flood myths around the world at the same time, is evidence of an earlier common connection.
7000 years? (Score:3, Interesting)
That is not writing or oral but interesting.
Re:oldest event preserved in history? (Score:5, Funny)
Need new club? Go to Ug! Only one bearskin. Bad credit no problem, one egg now, one each moon change one hand fingers times.
(YMMV, Where taboo, no go)
Parent
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Which is utter horseshit. You don't have to have records through the entire cycle to measure the length of a cycle - all you nee
Very true (Score:2, Interesting)
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An event that could create a lethal environment for early civilization won't necessarily have the same 'impact' on modern civilization. The scenario described here is that the impact caused weather patterns to change dramatically which lead to widespread famine. These people relied upon natural weather for their survival (rainfall for irrigation, etc.) and while this would cause huge issues for any society today it's not likely that it would be nearly as widespread or as long lasting.
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True, because they had to hunt and gather whereas we get our food from supermarkets.
So I can tell the girlfriend... (Score:5, Funny)
Sure... (Score:2)
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Clovis people didn't produce enough CO2 (Score:2)
More CO2 would have enveloped them in a cloud of heat-trapping gas that would have prevented them from freezing to death in the younger dryas ice age. Time to throw another log on the fire and look at all of that DAMN SNOW!
The solutrean hypothesis (Score:5, Interesting)
Just to point this interesting, if far fetched, hypothesis [wikipedia.org] about the origin of Clovis people, based on the striking resemblance of their stone tools and that of those found from the Solutrean [wikipedia.org].
A friend who's studying archaeology told me about this. He's learned to make stone tools, and that made the connection quite appealing. The particularities that both techniques are not found in any other stone using culture.
Again, it's far fetched, probably not true but makes for a captivating story to get started in studying the paleolithic.
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Goddamnit, not that hypothesis again. The paper in question that proposes the connection was authored by Bradley & Stanford, published in World Archaeology 36(4), and is titled "The north Atlantic ice edge corridor: a possible Palaeolithic route to the new World.". They propose a north Atlantic warm water current that would push solutrean tech users from the spanish peninsula to the new world. They base this on a hypothetical similarity between the clovis and solutrean points. There is no such thing. Th
Re:The solutrean hypothesis (Score:4, Funny)
You know, I first read that as based on the striking resemblance of their stone tools and that of those found from the Soul Train [wikipedia.org]. and went WTF is he talking about? Picks and platform shoes?
Parent
If it Reverses Global Warming... (Score:4, Funny)
...then hell, why not?
Please be careful when taking excerpts (Score:5, Informative)
From the slashdot heading:
>> While disputing the current hypothesis, NASA's David Morrison allows, "They may have discovered something absolutely marvelous and unexplained."
From the article:
>> he said: "They may have discovered something absolutely marvelous and unexplained. But the impact hypothesis just doesn't make sense."
(bolds mine)
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Enough with the Area 51 crap, guys (Score:4, Funny)
Ok, I'm not from New Mexico myself, but what is it about the southeastern part of the state that attracts these crazy theories? Roswell, Area 51, aliens, and now you say a killer comet is going to take out Clovis [wikipedia.org]. Geez, can't the state get a break? Sure, it's rugged and arid, but can't people just drive through there without making up some sort of crazy story? Or is there something about those hundred-mile drives with nothing on either side of the road but yucca and cactus that messes with peoples' heads?
Killer comet in Clovis. Next, you'll be telling me you've got a bottle of White Sand [nps.gov] from Alamogordo on your shelf, and it's grown by an eighth of an inch just since you came back.