[meteorite-list] More Work on the Crackpot Theory

From: Sterling K. Webb <kelly_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sun Oct 30 21:14:32 2005
Message-ID: <43657DDF.6329E7CB_at_bhil.com>

Hi, List,

    Enjoying chewing on the problem of
how to explain the isotopic anomalies
discovered by Firestone.

    You will find a complete technical
exposition of his earlier findings at
this website:
<http://www.centerfirstamericans.com/mt.html?a=36>

    This gives the full data on the
isotopic anomalies. They ARE hard to
explain.

    You will notice in his initial press
release the mention of an additional layer
of anomalous isotopes at 34,000 years ago
(besides the more recent layer at 13,000
years ago).

    Now, note in the second paragraph of
the large quotation below, the fact that
gas and dust from the "Local Fluff"
seems to have entered the Solar System,
suppressing the Solar Wind, and poured down
on the surface of the planets, including of
course our Earth, at several times in the
past.

    Since the interstellar dust is material
ejected into space by supernovae, it is an
obvious source for the anomalous isotopes.
The evidence for those dates is Be-10 enrichment
in Antarctic ice cores. Each enrichment lasts
for about 2500 years.

    The Local Fluff is called fluff because
the density is only one atom per 10 cc's.
That is 50 times more dense than the Local
Bubble the Sun enjoys. But the Local Fluff
is not even and smooth and does not exist
everywhere at this average density. Averages
can be very misleading.

    The dense cloud of interstellar gas and dust known as the
Local Fluff is not homogeneous
and will contain dense "knots" of material.
The supernovae which created this material
are recent (few million years) ones in the
Scorpius Centaurus OB Association.

    Observations by Dr. Jeffrey Linsky at
the University of Colorado of 18 nearby stars indicated that
the Local Fluff cloud
surrounding the solar system is not a
uniform cloud, but contains cloudlets of
very different internal density with one
of these located between the Sun and the
nearby star Alpha Centauri.

    If the Solar System were swallowed up
in a really dense cloud for a few thousand
years (that is a characteristic transit time
at the ~20 km/sec speed of an individual
cloudlet), the effects could be profound.

    Here's the big quote from:
<http://www.solstation.com/x-objects/chimney.htm>

    Over the last five to 10 million years, the Solar System
has been moving through the lower density region of
interstellar gas of the Local Bubble. As a result, Earth and
its lifeforms have avoided dangerous flows of cosmic radiation
and gas. Astronomers, however, have discovered a denser cloud
of interstellar gas about 25 ly (7.7 pc) in diameter called
the "Local Fluff" (or "Local Interstellar Cloud") that is
moving towards the Solar System. Stretched out towards
Constellation Cygnus, the stellar winds of young stars in a
star-forming region of the Scorpius-Centaurus Association near
the Aquila Rift (a high-density molecular cloud) have been
blowing the Local Fluff so that its denser parts may reach
Sol's heliosphere in around 50,000 years (Straizys et al,
2003).

    Some wisps of the Local Fluff's denser gas may already
have blown into the Solar System earlier (possibly 33,000 and
60,000 years ago) (Priscilla Chapman Frisch, 1997).
Astronomers hypothesize that such gas clouds can suppress the
Solar Wind so that interstellar gas and dust enters the Solar
System in quantities great enough to affect the Sun and life
on Earth. At the moment, a powerful stellar wind from the
young OB stellar associations of the Local Bubble's expanding
neighbor, the Loop I Bubble, is pushing the Local Fluff aside
(at the rate of 12 miles, or 20 km, per second). That
expanding bubble, however, is also pushing other clouds of gas
towards the Solar System..."
[end of quote]

    An abstract of the Frisch study cited in
the above quote can be found at:
<http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/9705231>
    The complete paper in PDF format can be
found at:
<http://xxx.lanl.gov/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/9705/9705231.pdf>

    If the cloudlet were denser than these
authors suppose, it may well have been a more
significant event than has been realized
heretofore. Thus, I do not regard this as merely
a confirmation of an existing hypothesis but
a suggestion that it was a major environmental
event (or series of events) for the planet.

    We do not know what the impact of being
swallowed up in an immense interstellar dust
cloud would be. It could be a lot more serious
that we tend to think it would be. In fact,
various individuals have tried to point out
how devastating it could be. Fred Hoyle, for
one.

    In fact, Hoyle's very first paper (with
R. A. Lyttleton) was on the mechanism of
dust accretion from interstellar clouds.
Ignored at the time, it is now his 10th
most cited work, and considered fundamental
in the field, even though published in
the 1930's. It describes how passage
through a dust cloud produces a concentrated
in-fall on the large body, an effect that
would greatly increase the intake and impact
of the cloud.

    It all depends on your taste in
catastrophes. Many scenarios of mass
extinction by asteroid impact rely on the
supposition of atmospheric dust clouds as
the mechanism, but others reject the
"darkness at noon" concept, as Jay Melosh
calls it. The in-fall of cosmic dust
could result in even denser clouds.

    It is also interesting to note that the
Be-10 record from Antarctic ice cores has
another spike at roughly 12,000 years ago.
This has been attributed by astronomers to
the Vela Supernova, but it could be the same
event as Firestone's 13,000 year old event
and a sign of yet another dust cloud passage.

    One might think that if we had been "hit"
by a dense cloud, all we would have to do
is turn around and look "behind" us to see
it sailing away. Not so. The Solar System
would totally disrupt the dense cloud so that
after solar passage it would be irregularly
dispersed in every direction. No evidence
would be left behind.

    It's also worth noting that the record
of eustatic sea level changes exposed by
Vail in the 1970's contains many unexplained
excursions. For periods of <10,000 years,
sea levels drop precipitously, then recover.
It is hard to imagine that anything other than
a vast increase in land based ice (a short
intense ice age) could withdraw that much
water from the oceans.

    Yet, there is no geological evidence of
ice ages at those times. Of course, a short
intense ice age of only a thousand years more
or less would hardly leave much if any
evidence behind. Neither do their dates
correspond to known impact craters, so it
has been hypothesized that large oceanic
impacts are responsible.

    These violent but poorly documented
events may well be the result of envelopment
in a dense interstellar dust cloud instead.

    Firestone ties his "event," whatever it
is, to the extinction of the mammoths. This
is awkward, since mammoths did not go extinct
all at one time, but at widely differing
times in different locations. They survived
on Wrangell Island until 4000 years ago, for
example.

    However, radiocarbon dates from frozen
mammoth carcasses cluster in two groups: one
around 30,000 to 35,000 years ago and another
about 11,000 to 13,000 years ago. Fairly
coincidental. The more recent ones are New
World mammoths; the older group are Siberian mammoths.

    The extinction at 11,000 to 13,000 years
ago is not called a mass extinction, but it
involved the loss of more than 200 species,
mostly megafauna (large mammals -- 75% were
heavier than 44 kilos). Because of that, it
is widely suspected that Man The Hunter was
the extincting agent!

    It appears to have hit North America particularly hard
although South America
(and Africa somewhat) was also hit to a
lesser degree. Australia experienced a
similar "megafauna" extinction, but at
50,000 years ago, a fact that encourages
those that believe Man was the cause
(corresponds to the time that humans
came to Australia).

    The fact that we can see "phases" in
the progress of this recent extinction may
only be an artifact of its nearness in time,
while a phased extinction seen from millions
of years away may look "unitary" from that
time distance.

    One last fiat, don't Google "cosmic dust
catastrophe." You will be rewarded with a
grand banquet of apocalyptic whacko's such
as I have rarely seen. You always turn up
some nutcases when you Google, but this
search term really calls them out of the
woodwork!


Sterling K. Webb
Received on Sun 30 Oct 2005 09:13:51 PM PST