Did a Prehistoric Asteroid Breakup Shower Earth With Enough Dust To Change the Climate? (cnn.com) 24
Applehu Akbar writes: CNN reports this week on a paper describing a hypothesis that the breakup of a large asteroid 466 million years ago generated enough dust in Earth's orbit to substantially change the terrestrial climate for an extended period. This would have triggered an 'Ordovician icehouse' climate event, with major effects on biology.
"The 93-mile-wide asteroid was in the asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter when it collided with something else and broke apart, creating a wealth of dust that flooded the inner solar system..." CNN reports. "To understand how this process unfolded, the researchers found evidence of space dust locked in 466-million-year-old rocks that were once on the sea floor."
The paper argues that to this day, that collision "still delivers almost a third of all meteorites falling on Earth."
"The 93-mile-wide asteroid was in the asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter when it collided with something else and broke apart, creating a wealth of dust that flooded the inner solar system..." CNN reports. "To understand how this process unfolded, the researchers found evidence of space dust locked in 466-million-year-old rocks that were once on the sea floor."
The paper argues that to this day, that collision "still delivers almost a third of all meteorites falling on Earth."
Re: (Score:3)
Graham Hancock needs to go away. Seeing his name associated with a theory that may have merit immediately discredits it for many, many people.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm not sureof your point. Would you like a list of the numerous hoaxes Hancock has jumped on board with in order to fleece the naive and gullible? I'm interested in the comet theory but once I saw Hancock espousing it on Rogan's show it made me doubt it just because I know his history. I'm not alone in that. He has so destroyed his own credibility over the years that he damages everything he touches now.
Re: (Score:2)
Graham Hancock needs to go away. Seeing his name associated with a theory that may have merit immediately discredits it for many, many people.
I had never heard of Graham Hancock before, and have no idea what association he has with this theory (if any), but the paper is in a reputable journal here and Hancock's name is not on the list of twenty co-authors.
Re: (Score:3)
Mis-typed the link closing for the journal article [sciencemag.org].
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: It is a better explanation. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
That was poor writing - if you read the preceding paragraph, it's clear that they mean 10 million semis worth of dust *per year*:
>"Imagine multiplying that by a factor of a thousand or ten thousand."
You're also either a troll, or deeply misunderstand climate science. There's LOTS of widely accepted reasons for climate change incorporated into all the major climate models - responsibility for the current destabilization is laid at human's feet because all the other causes combined don't explain the chang
Re: It is a better explanation. (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
The source paper is linked right in the summary; you tell me if this [sciencemag.org] looks like a 1.005x change or a 10,000x change.
None of this has anything to do with modern climate change. It occurred in the mid-Ordovician, 466 million years ago. Any dust still infalling from that isn't going to change overnight.
Re: (Score:2)
The science is settled. The only possible cause of [the current] climate change [event] is human activity. .
FTFY.
Re: No, AGW is the only cause of climate change (Score:2)
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Space dust is one of the causes of climate change. There are many other causes. Sometimes we get hit with more than one cause at a time.
Re: No, AGW is the only cause of climate change (Score:2)
Don't be confused by your own rhetorical terms (Score:1)
Everything causes climate change. It is impossible for there to be any time or situation anywhere where the climate is not changing. Corresponding to that there will always be causal reasons for that.
If the intent is to manufacture usage of terms for manipulative purposes, for which using one sense of the term is unarguable, and switching to another sense with wholly different motives and criteria, at least reset to rationality when it's completely necessary, like here.
Yes, the asteroid caused climate cha
So, like the best of hipsters (Score:3)
No, but... (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
"...the asteroid involved in the event has been baptised Betteridge-1 [wikipedia.org]"
Dammit, you beat be by minutes.
Lets steer 99942 Apophis toward us (Score:2)
Lets try to steer a medium-large asteroid like 99942 Apophis [wikipedia.org] (300m) toward one of our enemies. Iran would be a popular target at the moment. Then we can see if it causes a nuclear winter and a new ice age. Just to prove the warmists wrong. Will it cause a new ice age and make global warming a distant hope rather than a fear? The only way to know for sure is to try it and see what happens.
Now that is real science. An additional benefit would be that our military power would be feared by all and it would begi
Was curious how they knew the size so precisely (Score:3)
Then I realized 93 miles = 150 km. It's probably an estimate based on the volume of debris. This is the sort of thing where the science editors at CNN (probably nonexistent) should've rounded it to 100 miles to maintain (logarithmic) significant figures.