Slashdot Mirror
Hole in Asteroid Belt Reveals Extinction Asteroid
eldavojohn writes "Further evidence for the asteroid mass extinction theory has been discovered as a break in the main asteroid belt of our solar system. From the article, "A joint U.S.-Czech team from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and Charles University in Prague suggests that the parent object of asteroid (298) Baptistina disrupted when it was hit by another large asteroid, creating numerous large fragments that would later create the Chicxulub crater on the Yucatan Peninsula as well as the prominent Tycho crater found on the Moon.""
a break in the main asteroid belt of our solar system
The Flying Spaghetti Monster was making meatballs gets my vote.
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
Ok lets all hope we don't get another visit from the hit men of our solar system, the Baptistina family.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
If you want your obscure research paper to receive mainstream media coverage and net you loads of grant money, be sure to link your work to one or more of the following "hot topics":
meteor impact
dinosaurs
mass extinction
global warming
DNA
obesity
energy efficient cars
OK, fine. There's a gap in the asteroid belt indicating that several large objects were knocked loose some time in the past few million years. And, yes, those objects will be most likely to fall towards the Sun and insect the orbits of the inner planets. That doesn't mean you've found where the infamous dinosaur-killing meteor came from. That's pure speculation! That gap could just as easily been left by the meteor that caused the P/Tr extinction or by a meteor that hit Venus.
Timing is everything, which is the main thrust of this article I gather, linking that event to interesting moon and earth geological formations during the same epoch.
But, if Chicxulub was the 8 ball, and Baptistina the combo shot, I was left wondering at the end of my reading, what was the cue ball, and where was the pool stick? Of more concern, when does the best 2 out of 3 match take place?
I hope, when they die, cartoon characters have to answer for their sins.
Let's get some logic here:
1. There are more inter-system collisions than we realize. Example: Schoemaker-Levi
2. The Sun is bigger than Earth, and therefore would probably get hit 1000% (or more) more often. Example: eclipses show this quite easily
2.a Corollary: The Sun is the center of the Solar System, not Earth. Example: Copernicus
3. The big Yucatan collision happened millions of years ago, and since then things have moved a bit. We can't predict movement 10 years from now, much less 160 Million. Example: We still use Pork-Chop plots at NASA
4. They predict an impact 160 million years ago, 95 million years off the mark. Example: Dino fossils are as new as 65 million.
Overall, this isn't the most reliable of links and summaries in recent /. history. At least I haven't seen any Global Warming scarey articles in a while. Maybe the Firehose is working afterall?
... then make a Slashdot account and submit it there. You caught me. Oh how you've ruined years of careful plotting and planning. I am not eldavojohn, I am actually a Czech researcher named Dr. David Vokrouhlicky. I have slowly been posting careful karma whoring posts and submitting story after story all in the name of eventually publishing my research and getting it on the front page of Slashdot.Yes, it was a long arduous endeavor. Gaining people's trust, making foes of others. It was an ingenious plan to boost the popularity and public acceptance of my paper
Well, the gig is up, that hole was actually created by Rumfoord and his dog, Kazak. Ohhh, no, I've wasted my life! Who would have thought such a ridiculously elaborate and circuitous plan to tilt the scientific world towards accepting my theories based on computer models could have been foiled by an internet user named Cheezymadman!?
My work here is dung.
It didn't create sunspots and the Great Red Spot? I think these folks are not imaginative enough.
Don't trust anyone under thirty.
I wonder if this means that our current strategy of tracking asteroids to see if they will impact Earth is the wrong one. Perhaps no asteroids "naturally" hit Earth on their present trajectories. If it takes a collision within the asteroid belt to throw out material that impacts Earth, maybe we should be trying to track the movements of large asteroids to see if they will intersect EACH OTHER rather than Earth.
I may be misunderstanding the data, and I would never change policy based on a single study, but this suggests that a more sophisticated approach is needed to detect potential impactors.
Make cheese not war 8:)
Do I really have to post anything but my modification to the title of original post? This is Slashdot,the home of snotty nerds who know almost nothing, and love to belittle their intellectual superiors, so I guess I have to spell it out.
Scientists look at facts and make hypothesis. They publish the ideas and facts that support them, and other scientists read them and add information that either supports or refutes the hypothesis. The sum total of knowledge increases over time.
The authors of the paper were doing simulations of asteroid dynamics. They found a possible event in the asteroid belt that may explain a known increase in meteor impacts in the inner solar system. They noted that this hypothesis fits in with two known large meteors, the proposed dinosaur extinction event and the moon crater Tycho. Their simulations add support to the earth impact hypothesis and the earth impact data indirectly supports their claim. This is how science works.
So how is this only a 'suggestion' with no real 'facts' to support it? I suggest that you 'get back to me' when you grow up and understand how intelligent people do real scientific inquiry. I know your little wee-wee got all hard when you had a chance to make a first post and trash some adults, but it just makes you look like a spoiled and nasty little child. Perhaps if you ever do anything useful in your life your attitude will change, but somehow I doubt that will ever happen.
We've actually witnessed collisions in space. And found evidence on earth for them. We've never seen any evidence for electrical arcs between heavenly bodies that would cause craters. So that at least implies that they are more rare, if they are possible. scientists discount interpretations of observations that are not supported by other observations. That is it. Only when an event cannot be explained by any existing model formed from previous observations, will they resort to wild guessing ( see string theory, multiple universe theory, etc).
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
He also created hemorrhoids.
They're using their grammar skills there.
You beat me to the pool analogy punch.
I was going to say, "Einstein was right, God doesn't play dice. He plays pool. Third planet, corner pocket!"
FLR
We'll see more holes appear in the belt as the universe expands.