Shaun Saunders sent me this interesting piece that was published in the Guardian Unlimited science magazine. The article postulates that a comet may have exploded over the northern hemisphere of Earth some 13 thousand years ago killing off many primitive human cultures as well as many of the large land animals. Here is an excerpt:
>Scientists uncovered evidence that suggests a comet exploded over the Earth nearly 13,000 years ago, destroying many primitive stone age cultures and populations of mammoths and other large land animals. The blast also caused a major bout of climatic cooling that lasted 1,000 years and seriously disrupted the development of the early human civilisations that were emerging in Europe and Asia. Arizona geophysicist Allen West states that 'It was about 2km-3km in diameter and broke up just before impact, setting off a series of explosions, each the equivalent of an atomic bomb blast. Scientists report that they have found a layer of microscopic diamonds at 26 different sites in Europe, Canada and America. These are the remains of a giant carbon-rich comet that crashed in pieces on our planet 12,900 years ago, they say. The huge pressures and heat triggered by the fragments crashing to Earth turned the comet's carbon into diamond dust.<
>Scientists uncovered evidence that suggests a comet exploded over the Earth nearly 13,000 years ago, destroying many primitive stone age cultures and populations of mammoths and other large land animals. The blast also caused a major bout of climatic cooling that lasted 1,000 years and seriously disrupted the development of the early human civilisations that were emerging in Europe and Asia. Arizona geophysicist Allen West states that 'It was about 2km-3km in diameter and broke up just before impact, setting off a series of explosions, each the equivalent of an atomic bomb blast. Scientists report that they have found a layer of microscopic diamonds at 26 different sites in Europe, Canada and America. These are the remains of a giant carbon-rich comet that crashed in pieces on our planet 12,900 years ago, they say. The huge pressures and heat triggered by the fragments crashing to Earth turned the comet's carbon into diamond dust.<
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2 comments:
This story caught my eye because I'm currently reading Niven and Pournelle's 'Lucifer's Hammer'.
(some of the general ideas and execution in that book remind me of the much later movie 'deep impact')
exactly!!!! Lucifer's Hammer was the book that I was trying to remember. I read the book perhaps 20 years ago and have always put it on my favorites list...but for some reason I just couldn't make the connection. I kept thinking....oh this is so much like a book I read....
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