Did a 'Forgotten' Meteor Have a Deadly, Icy Double-Punch?

[ScienceRocks]

Did a 'Forgotten' Meteor Have a Deadly, Icy Double-Punch?


ScienceDaily (Sep. 19, 2012) — When a huge meteor collided with Earth about 2.5 million years ago and fell into the southern Pacific Ocean it not only could have generated a massive tsunami but also may have plunged the world into the Ice Ages, a new study suggests.

Did a 'forgotten' meteor have a deadly, icy double-punch?

A team of Australian researchers says that because the Eltanin meteor -- which was up to two kilometres across -- crashed into deep water, most scientists have not adequately considered either its potential for immediate catastrophic impacts on coastlines around the Pacific rim or its capacity to destabilise the entire planet's climate system.

"This is the only known deep-ocean impact event on the planet and it's largely been forgotten because there's no obvious giant crater to investigate, as there would have been if it had hit a landmass," says Professor James Goff, lead author of a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Quaternary Science. Goff is co-director of UNSW's Australia-Pacific Tsunami Research Centre and Natural Hazards Research Laboratory.

"But consider that we're talking about something the size of a small mountain crashing at very high speed into very deep ocean, between Chile and Antarctica. Unlike a land impact, where the energy of the collision is largely absorbed locally, this would have generated an incredible splash with waves literally hundreds of metres high near the

 

[Old Rocks]

Interesting.