Rethinking Chicxulub

[Mushroom]

I will admit, this is something that has long bothered me.

I watch a lot of documentaries, especially about geology. And almost every time it is more or less like this one:



In other words, placing the asteroid impact as if it was on top of our planet today.

However, that is dead wrong. Because our planet did not look like that 65 mya. Because if they were really "accurate", this is what they should be showing the planet as looking like when the asteroid hit.

Which is a vastly different planet than we live on today. South America and Africa had only "recently" split apart, and Asia and Europe were still two very different continents. And if one looks at the large island to the east of Madagascar, that is India. It had yet to collide with Asia.

I was thinking of this, because I have long noticed that humans seem to have a 'fixed" position of them in the Universe. And that is where and how they are at this moment. They picture the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, and just automatically place it on the Earth today. Not the Earth as it was back then. And I was reminded of this when reading somebody stating that they would love to be here and see the collision with the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies.

Nice thought, but not possible. As that is still around 4.5 gy in our future. At that point, our sun will be a Red Giant, and the Earth will literally be on the outer edges of the solar atmosphere.

Our planet will only be a charred cinder at that point, no life here to witness that. The "Habitable Zone" will actually be out near Jupiter and Saturn, so maybe there will be life on one of their moons to see it.

 

[mamooth]

Geologists have always known that the impact occurred in a shallow ocean. From the wiki page ...

Chicxulub crater - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

---
The site of the crater at the time of impact was a marine carbonate platform. The water depth at the impact site varied from 100 meters (330 ft) on the western edge of the crater to over 1,200 meters (3,900 ft) on the northeastern edge.
---

 

[Mushroom]

Geologists have always known that the impact occurred in a shallow ocean. From the wiki page

I know that. But how many "videos" or drawings of it are ever seen that show that?

Because 99% of images I have seen show things like this.

Not the reality, which was very different.

I shake my head any time I see an image or animation of the event, and see things like Florida or Mexico in it. There were no ice caps at all in that era, so there was no Florida. Or Cuba. Or any of the islands there that we see today. I even laughed as one report I read a few years ago discussed the tsunami it would have raised in coastal Louisiana. Nice, except there was no Louisiana, it was already underwater.

 

[westwall]

I will admit, this is something that has long bothered me.

I watch a lot of documentaries, especially about geology. And almost every time it is more or less like this one:



In other words, placing the asteroid impact as if it was on top of our planet today.

However, that is dead wrong. Because our planet did not look like that 65 mya. Because if they were really "accurate", this is what they should be showing the planet as looking like when the asteroid hit.

Which is a vastly different planet than we live on today. South America and Africa had only "recently" split apart, and Asia and Europe were still two very different continents. And if one looks at the large island to the east of Madagascar, that is India. It had yet to collide with Asia.

I was thinking of this, because I have long noticed that humans seem to have a 'fixed" position of them in the Universe. And that is where and how they are at this moment. They picture the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, and just automatically place it on the Earth today. Not the Earth as it was back then. And I was reminded of this when reading somebody stating that they would love to be here and see the collision with the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies.

Nice thought, but not possible. As that is still around 4.5 gy in our future. At that point, our sun will be a Red Giant, and the Earth will literally be on the outer edges of the solar atmosphere.

Our planet will only be a charred cinder at that point, no life here to witness that. The "Habitable Zone" will actually be out near Jupiter and Saturn, so maybe there will be life on one of their moons to see it.

Mankind will have either migrated to the stars, or died off in 4 billion years. You are correct about modern man and their static view of the planet.

It is a sad reality, and one of the reasons the climate change fraud has been so successful, humans only consider their experience, and ignore the history that occurred prior to their existence.

 

[Mushroom]

Mankind will have either migrated to the stars, or died off in 4 billion years. You are correct about modern man and their static view of the planet.

It is a sad reality, and one of the reasons the climate change fraud has been so successful, humans only consider their experience, and ignore the history that occurred prior to their existence.

Like the fact that in the not too distant past, there were palm trees growing in Alaska. And at the time Alaska was actually farther North than it is today.

Or even what the planet will be like in the future. Because in a few million years, Antarctica will start its race North, until it ends up close to the equator. Once again united with Australia and not that far offshore from Africa.



This is a video I have watched for around 2 decades now. And it is how I see the planet, constantly changing and never remaining the same for long.

 

[westwall]

Like the fact that in the not too distant past, there were palm trees growing in Alaska. And at the time Alaska was actually farther North than it is today.

Or even what the planet will be like in the future. Because in a few million years, Antarctica will start its race North, until it ends up close to the equator. Once again united with Australia and not that far offshore from Africa.



This is a video I have watched for around 2 decades now. And it is how I see the planet, constantly changing and never remaining the same for long.

Where the continents end up in the future is always a question. Assuming the Hotspots remain active in the mantle, where they are now, then yes, those models work.

However, if one of the Earth's Hotspots shuts off, for whatever reason, then the whole puzzle changes.

What we can say for certain is that in about 5 million years the coast of California will be added to the southern coast of Alaska.

And I say good riddance!

 

[Mushroom]

However, if one of the Earth's Hotspots shuts off, for whatever reason, then the whole puzzle changes.

Actually, hotspots never "shut off". All that happens is that they give the appearance of moving, and they appear to stop and start again somewhere else, but that is all an illusion.

One of my favorite lecturers is Nick Zentner with Central Washington University. He is a geologist, and one of his favorite topics is the Yellowstone Hot Spot. And tracking all the various calderas from where it is now, to where it gets lost in Oregon-Nevada. And other hot spots in the region. And as that is the area I grew up, I know a lot of the areas he talks about in his lectures.



If anybody is interested in geology, his lectures are a great place to start. Most are about an hour, but he has a shorter series of blurbs called "Nick on the Rocks" that are about 5 minutes.

I remember over 40 years ago a teacher trying to explain to us the radical idea that the area we lived in in Western Idaho was shaped by the Yellowstone Volcano. And that was so radical at that time, that most had yet to really recognize that Yellowstone was a supervolcano caldera, let alone that it had been moving for millions of years. But in reality, it remained in one place and the North American Plate was moving over it. But some were already noticing the Snake River followed a plain that was a low valley, surrounded to the north and south by high mountains. And it pointed like a finger directly at Yellowstone.

And there are still questions even so. I used to regularly collect rocks and fossils in the area of the Owyhee-Humboldt Caldera (14mya) and Bruneau-Jarbridge Caldera (12 mya). But there are still questions even now that have yet to be explained.

Like the calderas seem to continue South and West. And one can trace the newer ones running North and East all the way through the state.

Yet, just north of Bruneau-Jarbridge, there is yet another flat plane angling North and West. Where there are no calderas, where the city of Boise is today. Why? And to the South you have the Owyhee Mountain Range, the Boise Mountain Range extends to the north. But why that wide flat plain even with the Snake River, that cut through at one time was a single mountain range?

A real oddity, that geologists have yet to really explain or understand. But one thing that Nick brings up is the fact that the plate is rotating, and there are other calderas that have been in central Oregon and Washington. I found it fascinating at the start of the plate movement video pitting my mouse over where the Yellowstone Hot Spot is today, and when going back in time indeed it follows the path of the older calderas.

But even more fascinating, do the same thing when it tries to predict future continental arrangements. And keeping the mouse in the same place, it will in a few million years start to race South and East. To where in about 50 million years it will be somewhere in Florida. But the hot spot never moves, just the crust resting on top of it. And if people think an eruption is bad now, it will be many times worse when it punches through the thinner crust East of the Rocky Mountains. And it appears to pass under the New Madrid region. I do not want to even think of what that will be like, a hot spot passing under a crustal rift.

 

[mamooth]

I do not want to even think of what that will be like, a hot spot passing under a crustal rift.

The earth has a current example of that, Iceland. On average, a significant eruption every 3 years.

 

[Mushroom]

The earth has a current example of that, Iceland. On average, a significant eruption every 3 years.

Not really.

That is sitting right on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and is not a "hot spot" like Yellowstone. Simply a spot on the ridge between spreading plates where it is actually at the surface instead of deep underwater. It is not a hot spot in the same way Yellowstone is..

However, the New Madrid Fault is a unique thing, one of multiple "failed rifts", stretching from at least the Great Lakes down to the New Madrid area. Commonly called the "Midcontinent Rift System", they all date back about 1-1.1 billion years ago. To a point where the Continent tried to rip itself apart, but failed. And many geologists think that is why the "Great Lakes" have vanished and reformed over and over again in the same place. It is a natural depression left over from the billion year old scars from that rifting.

So literally what we have at New Madrid is a still slightly active segment of that ancient rift. And mid-continental rifting is not new, and does not always result (that we know of) in volcanic activity.

There is a hot spot similar in Eastern Africa, that is the cause of the "Great Rift Valley". The Somali Plate is slowly being ripped away from the African Plate, and that is still active. And it is actually a series of rifts, reaching all the way up to at least Lebanon. The Red Sea sits in part of that rift where it is below sea level and was met by the Arabian Sea.

However the rift in the middle of the North American Plate is long dead. And it even happened at an interesting point in the history of our planet. Commonly called the "Boring Billion", as the thin crust on top of the hot mantle was cooling and thickening, not like the consistency of clay geologically speaking as it was before. So there were no real plates yet as we know them. But as the mantle cooled in the Archean, the crust got thicker, so by the time we reached the Ptoterozoic ("the "Boring Billion"), we finally started to see the formation of the continents as we recognize them today. Starting with Columbia (Nuna) (1.5 to 2 GYA), then Rodinia (.9 to 1.1 GYA).

Nick actually did a fascinating lecture on the topic. Even explaining how North America and Australia were once part of a single continent back then.