A Massive Impact Crater Has Been Detected Beneath Greenland's Ice Sheet (gizmodo.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: An unusually large asteroid crater measuring 19 miles wide has been discovered under a continental ice sheet in Greenland. Roughly the size of Paris, it's now among the 25 biggest asteroid craters on Earth. An iron-rich asteroid measuring nearly a kilometer wide (0.6 miles) struck Greenland's ice-covered surface at some point between 3 million and 12,000 years ago, according to a new study published today in Science Advances. The impact would've flung horrific amounts of water vapor and debris into the atmosphere, while sending torrents of meltwater into the North Atlantic -- events that likely triggered global cooling (a phenomenon sometimes referred to as a nuclear or volcanic winter). Over time, however, the gaping hole was obscured by a 1,000-meter-tall (3,200-foot) layer of ice, where it remained hidden for thousands of years. Remarkably, the crater was discovered quite by chance -- and it's now the first large crater to be discovered beneath a continental ice sheet.

Comments

Date Range

[Anonymous Coward]

That's quite the range of ages: two orders of magnitude. Not an impressive estimate.

Re: Date Range

[Anonymous Coward]

It also caused climate change. We should outlaw asteroids, perhaps a bunch of world leaders could fly to Paris and sign an agreement saying that no more asteroids are allowed to hit the earth, or the US should pay for damages if one does.

Re:Date Range

[CaptainDork]

You're moms ...

We're dads.

Re: Date Range

[Anonymous Coward]

Dads gay. So what.

Re:Date Range

[Tough Love]

What's your estimate?

Re: Date Range

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hey, you know this thing we can do something about? Lets not do anything because it's possible for things we can't do something about to also do it! Lol!"

Re: Date Range

[Narcocide]

Honestly it's not a bad idea if only for the reason that we could gain a consensus on whether or not to just let one hit us.

Re:Date Range

[Anonymous Coward]

Chris, you replied to the wrong comment. You're a stable genius...

Re: Date Range

[Anonymous Coward]

Macron? Is that you?!

Re:Date Range

[Joce640k]

I think if it was only 12,000 years ago, we'd have known about it. Physical evidence, written evidence (it would be in the precursor texts to the old testament or something).

Re: Date Range

[c6gunner]

On the bright side, we now have a solution to global warming. Let's get NASA on this stat!

Re:Date Range

[angel'o'sphere]

Which we have, it is called "The Flood". And we have written texts about it ...

However written texts are not such old ... perhaps you want to google "oldest written language" or something similar.

Re:Date Range

[Joce640k]

However written texts are not such old ... perhaps you want to google "oldest written language" or something similar.

About half that, yes, but folklore is older and it gets incorporated.

You think this was the cause of the flood?

Re:Date Range

[LynnwoodRooster]

Not to mention it's claimed this impact started an ice age, and 12,000 years ago we were coming out of an ice age - and have been doing so since.

Re:Date Range

[angel'o'sphere]

Many "scientists" examinating old sites like stone henge or sites like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... believe that "the flood" happened about 12000 years ago, just before the end of the ice age. The reason is that magalitic stone sites like this have astronomic properties that point to a particular point in sky. (All over the planet big monuments point to the same point).

That is the suns rising point during the spring equinox 12000 years ago, researchers believe that this is a "time reference". Many sites also show references for water or flooding, as in pictures or smaller buildings pointing to the sign of aquarius. But why that sign would be generally associated with water, I have no idea :D

Yes, I believe that the flood myths we have have a core of truth. Otherwise not every single tribe on the planet had a flood myth. And it is plausible that we once had a civilization on the level of industrialized England 1890 or so, 12000 years ago. Just look at the difference in sea level during the last ice age and now.

Australia was connected with Asia via a land bridge from Indonesia. Japan was connected north and south with China. The mediteranean sea was mostly dry land. Great Britain was connected with mainland Europe ... If there was a high level civilization somewhere and the sea level rose rapidly (and having an impact with weeks of rain) would even be havoc for our civilization today.

Re:Date Range

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, there's no physical evidence that there was ever global flooding.

And I find the idea that an oral tradition would survive several thousand years of retelling to be...questionable.

Re:Date Range

[gtall]

"And it is plausible that we once had a civilization on the level of industrialized England 1890 or so, 12000 years ago."

And your evidence of plausibility is what, precisely? It is not plausible there are pink unicorns. Why? Fossil evidence doesn't lead to horses with horns coming out of their foreheads. But you can believe in pink ones if you like. There is also no evidence that there was anything beyond some rudimentary tools 12,000.

You don't work for the "Aliens!!" guy with the electric hair do you? He goes for that sort of thing.

Re: Date Range

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as it doesn't get their hair wet...

Re: Date Range

[Type44Q]

Dropping bombs on you're moms?

Re:Date Range

[Applehu Akbar]

The leading hypothesis for the Biblical flood is the inundation of the Black Sea basin as interglacial rising sea levels caused the Mediterranean to spill over through the Bosphorus. The timing would have been about right for the Old Testament.

We could trawl Viking sagas for traces of the Greenland impact.

Re:Date Range

[DavenH]

Yeah, there's no physical evidence that there was ever global flooding.

And I find the idea that an oral tradition would survive several thousand years of retelling to be...questionable.

Australian Aborigines have an accurate oral history that goes back over 10,000 years. Do a google search and there is much to read about. A quote:

The researchers now believe that these stories could constitute some of the oldest accurate oral histories in the world, passing through some 300 generations.

Re:Date Range

[shortscruffydave]

I think if it was only 12,000 years ago, we'd have known about it. Physical evidence, written evidence (it would be in the precursor texts to the old testament or something).

Extract from the diary of Olaf Gunnerson form Greenland....."February 27th. Sitting on the glacier looking up to the sky. There's something unusual there, and it's getting bigger. In fact, I think it's coming towards me. I think it m "

Re: Date Range

[Anonymous Coward]

How about we just dig out all the ice in the crater and spread it around the world - that'll cool it down ;-)

Re:Date Range

[Layzej]

...12,000 years ago we were coming out of an ice age - and have been doing so since.

"Have been doing so since? Only if you ignore the last 6000 years.

Re: Date Range

[Anonymous Coward]

Love the comment, "aliens", ok, not of Earth in a broader stretch? Alien? Cool.

Re:Date Range

[Amtrak]

Here, there was a giant blip in the waning ice age 12,000 years ago that coincided with a major extinction level event of the mega fauna on the North American continent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... This crater if eventually tied to 12,000 years ago may just be the smoking gun...

Re:Date Range

[Amtrak]

Viking sagas don't exactly go back 12,000 to 3 million years.

Re:Date Range

[bobbied]

Yeah, there's no physical evidence that there was ever global flooding.

That's not exactly true, there IS evidence that is consistent with this theory of a global flood and evidence that is inconsistent with the idea. However, what's missing is overwhelming evidence to prove it or consensus among researchers that it happened.

Consensus is that it didn't happen.

However, given that nobody was there to witnesses what did or didn't happen, we are left with little actual proof either way, just the evidence and all the possible ways to explain how it fits into the theory of choice. Some see it one way, others another, so the debate will rage long after I'm gone. Science by consensus hasn't been historically always right, though one would be thought a fool to ignore it.

Re:Date Range

[Anonymous Coward]

No, there is evidence of regional floods, but nothing supports the hypothesis of a global flood.

http://talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html#implications

The most obvious question is "where did all the water go?"

We know it's not in the ground, not in the ice sheets and not in the atmosphere.

There's not enough water in the oceans to cover the entire surface of the earth unless the elevation of ALL the land on ALL the continents was much lower, just a few thousand years ago.

Literally everything in geology contradicts such an extraordinary claim.

Re: Date Range

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever happens, don't suggest to Trump that he puts a 20% tariff on all nickel-iron meteorites landing in the USA to protect the american steel industry.

Re:Date Range

[Quirkz]

Interesting. I have a new contender for favorite name of event, the Bølling oscillation. Not quite as good as the Defenestration of Prague, but it's up there.

Re: Date Range

[drinkypoo]

Honestly it's not a bad idea if only for the reason that we could gain a consensus on whether or not to just let one hit us.

How's about instead we drum up interest for asteroid mining?

Re: Date Range

[Anonymous Coward]

You lost me the moment you said consensus. Consensus is not science. Science does not require, has nothing to do with, is unrelated in any way to consensus.

If you want to talk science, talk facts, evidence, repeatable experiments. Do not ever use the c word in a science discussion.

Consensus is a socio-political concept, not a scientific concept.

Re: Date Range

[Anonymous Coward]

It also caused climate change. We should outlaw asteroids, perhaps a bunch of world leaders could fly to Paris and sign an agreement saying that no more asteroids are allowed to hit the earth, or the US should pay for damages if one does.

You forgot "Put gigantic exception in for China and India to have as many asteroids as they want.

You know, out of 'fairness'

Re:Date Range

[Spamalope]

NA mega fauna extinction coincided with the arrival of humans. African mega fauna co-evolved with humans, NA mega fauna didn't. The extinction spreads north to south with the human migration.

CSB: That extinction strongly contributed to holding back civilization advances in the Americas as there were no usefully domesticatable beasts of burden and those turn out to be a big deal for food production, which is a requirement for being able to support trade specialists.

Re:Date Range

[Spamalope]

They can't use erosion to estimate because it's under a glacier. For the same reason they can't sample the crater basin to use other methods unless they get funding for core samples. It sounds like they're being honest about their inability to date the crater beyond crude 'had to have happened after this distant geological event because the crater alters that geological feature instead of the other way around', which can tell you 'it didn't happen earlier than' but doesn't give satisfying information about when it did happen.

Re:Date Range

[CaptainDork]

... stable genius ...

Know what you don't see much anymore?

Horseshit in a garage.

Re:Date Range

[cyberchondriac]

Well, there's a story of great flood associated with Sumeria's Gilgamesh, of whom the Hebrew priests might have modeled their Noah's flood story after. What seems likely is that, as glaciers receded and ice melted at the end of the last ice age, severe and extreme flooding occurred across many parts of Eurasia, giving birth to various world flood myths.

Re:Date Range

[thomst]

Applehu Akbar claimed:

The leading hypothesis for the Biblical flood is the inundation of the Black Sea basin as interglacial rising sea levels caused the Mediterranean to spill over through the Bosphorus. The timing would have been about right for the Old Testament.

Mmm - no. On both counts.

There's considerable controversy about whether the Black Sea Deluge was a sudden, catastropic event, or one that took place more slowly, forcing inhabitants of the basin to evacuate, but not instantly drowning them. There are experts of equal qualification on both sides of the debate, and it has not been resolved in any definitive way.

Meanwhile, the Flood Myth is a feature of many ancient civilizations' mythologies. The Sumerian version includes a man who overheard the gods planning the inundation in time to build a boat large enough to save himself, his family, and their chattels from the catastrophe.

Regardless, as Wikipedia notes, most academic scholars concur that what we refer to as the Book of Genesis was written after the hostages taken by Nebuchadnezzar in the 6th century BCE retuned from their captivity in Babylon with the gift of literacy. The Black Sea Deluge was therefore not even close to contemporaneous with the "record" of the Hebrew version of the flood myth - because there was none.

(Note that the much-bruited date of October 23, 4004 BCE for the Biblical creation comes from the work of James Ussher, Archbishop of Armaugh and Prelate of All Ireland, who calculated it based on the genealogy of Old Testament testament figures, as well as using Babylonian, Greek, and Roman sources to establish the starting date of Amel-Marduk's reign as King of Babylon. He also determined the birth of Jesus took place in 5 CE (because that was the year Herod the Great died). All of which was wasted effort, of course, because Methuselah (to choose only one of the figures upon which his dating scheme relied), if he ever existed, could not possibly have lived to be 900 year old. Nor could any of the other multi-century lifespans upon which his calculations depended have been accurate.)

The Old Testament, as a chronological document, is utterly unreliable. And, while the Hebrews' oral mythology certainly predates the return from Babylonian exile, the written form of the Torah probably did not exist before that time, so it's impossible to know how much of the Genesis flood story was a native Hebrew myth, and how much of it was informed by Babylonian and/or Sumerian myths to which the exiles had been exposed during their sojourn in Babylon ...

Re:Date Range

[meglon]

Sorry but you're sounding like one of those deranged nutcases on youtube making up shit to fill up their days. You're throwing a bunch of shit together and trying to make it all mean something.

There's a number of ideas as to why a "global" flood myth shows up IN CULTURES NEAR LARGE BODIES OF WATER, one of which being the collapse of the containment of Lake Agassiz. Others point to the eruption of Thera, or even a particularly bad annual flood of the Mesopotamian flood plane. The common point of all of these is that it affected LOCAL areas with catastrophic floods.

Flood myths are not planet wide, they're typically localized to cultures that are near bodies of water. It stands to reason that if something happens which causes a tsunami, a non-advanced culture still believing their god/goddess/gods are real are going to turn it into a myth. Just ask Pat Robertson how his myth creation of "everything bad happens because of gays" is going. There's way too many complete fucking idiots who believe his bullshit, and then give him more money.

Re: Date Range

[Shotgun]

You need to define the something in "do something about". Most of the "somethings" that people have proposed are more expensive than they're worth and result in vast amounts of dead people in third world nations. At least, that is so according to a recent Nobel Prize winner.

Re:Date Range

[Anonymous Coward]

At places the sea level rose over 100 meters at the end of the last ice age. Funnily enough, the area at the south of the Arabian Peninsula is called Aden, that is Eden in Arabic. The rising water swept away a significant fertile section of the land, driving people away from the area. Might there be a connection?

Re:Date Range

[greythax]

This post getting modded up to +4 interesting is a perfect example of how slashdot has jumped the shark. Or at the very least proof of mod bots.

Re:Date Range

[angel'o'sphere]

Flood myths are planet wide, and they are all cornered about rain.

Re:Date Range

[angel'o'sphere]

Yes,
but the myths are all about rain, and the retreating glaciers did not cause that.
There are assumed three floods. Two caused by volcanoes around the great lakes (which would cause a quick sea level rise and tsunamis) and the third one by an asteroid/comet impact. However that was also supposed to have happened on the north american ice shield. But Greenland is close.

Re:Date Range

[angel'o'sphere]

And your evidence of plausibility is what, precisely?
Perhaps you want to open a dictionary and check again what the words "plausible" and "evidence" mean.

If there was an civilization like my example: England around 1870/1900, somewhere e.g. in Indonesia, it is now 70m under the sea, hundreds of km off the coast, burried below sediments created over a time of 12000 years.

That is completely plausible. Is it true? No, I just made it up, obviously. It is called: "Gedankenexperiment"!

Re:Date Range

[angel'o'sphere]

You are right. It should have been modded +5 Interesting and not +2 Informative.

So: what is your mental problem?

Re:Date Range

[Darinbob]

Most people's ideas of the "world" at the time probably involved a 50 mile radius.

Re:Date Range

[Applehu Akbar]

My point is that if there is no legend of a fall of great fire, wecan exclude Viking historical times from that rather broad date range.

Re:Date Range

[kbrannen]

Flood myths are not planet wide, they're typically localized to cultures that are near bodies of water

You need to read more; @angel'o'shere has it right, there are a lot of "flood stories" from cultures all around the world, even from cultures that live in the mountains.

There's also a lot of evidence for a global flood. I live at over 700 feet above sea level and over 300 miles from a large body of water. Yet, there are all kinds of fossils of sea-dwelling animals around where I live. A perfectly reasonable explanation is the land masses used to be flatter, until something (like maybe a big asteroid hitting the earth?) caused the land masses to move in a significant way. If the land masses were flatter (little to no mountains), then a global flood is quite easy to imagine. If the continents are shoved around, it's easy for mountain ranges to pop up after. The concepts are easy if you have an open mind to consider.

Re:Date Range

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to read more; @angel'o'shere has it right, there are a lot of "flood stories" from cultures all around the world, even from cultures that live in the mountains.

Yeah: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flood-myths.html

There's also a lot of evidence for a global flood. I live at over 700 feet above sea level and over 300 miles from a large body of water. Yet, there are all kinds of fossils of sea-dwelling animals around where I live. A perfectly reasonable explanation is the land masses used to be flatter, until something (like maybe a big asteroid hitting the earth?) caused the land masses to move in a significant way.

It's funny, science actually knows how those fossils got onto mountaintops: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC364.html

If the continents are shoved around, it's easy for mountain ranges to pop up after. The concepts are easy if you have an open mind to consider.

True, it was open minds that allowed plate tectonics to be seriously considered, tested, and become the dominant theory of geological evolution.

Still, people forget it was creationist geologists who proved the great age of the earth and the falsity of a global flood - over 180 years ago.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD200.html

Re:Date Range

[Anonymous Coward]

The great fall and the great fire serpent myths of the viking age are probably about the iron meteor strike in island Saaremaa in Baltic sea. The place is named Kaali meteoriidikraater.
The event took place 2400-2800 years ago.
The main impact crater is about 110 meters wide and there are 8 smaller craters surrounding it.

Kaali crater

Whoda thunk

[sunking2]

Something not known to be there amazingly found by chance.

Re: Whoda thunk

[Anonymous Coward]

"There is no sense of decency left."
- KKK KKK KKK KKK KKK! AKA the guy who posts nazi ASCII art.

range

[segwonk]

Isn't 12,000 --3,000,000 years a pretty big window?? Or is that par for the course?

Re:range

[bonedonut]

well, the last civilization- ending nuclear war was about 12-13,000 years ago, so i guess it fits in that window.

Re:range

[SuperKendall]

Isn't 12,000 --3,000,000 years a pretty big window?? Or is that par for the course?

Their other job is Ocean Climate Scientist.

Re:range

[mikael]

If it hit slushy water, it would be hard to tell when the actual collision occurred as there isn't any Carbon to do Carbon-dating. They could take ice cores, but that would only tell when the crater was filled in, but not when it was formed.

Re:range

[mikael]

It might have been a supernova. There was evidence of neutron bombardment of chert in the North American continent.

Re:range

[ClarkMills]

<quote>
Some pre-glacial channels were seen below the ice sheet at the site of the crater, which suggests the Greenland Ice Sheet was already in place when the asteroid struck. The exact timing of the asteroid strike, however, is fairly vague, with the researchers saying it happened between 3 million and 12,000 years ago. But preliminary evidence suggests it happened relatively recently. The crater appears to be well-preserved—a surprising observation given that ice is a powerful erosive force. The crater is likely fairly young from a geological perspective.

“It is correct that the crater is not well dated but there’s good evidence that it is geologically young, that is, it formed within the last 2 to 3 million years, and most likely it is as young as the last Ice Age [which ended around 12,000 years ago],” Larsen explained to Gizmodo. “We are currently trying to come up with ideas on how to date the impact. One idea is to drill through the ice and get bedrock samples that can be used for numerical dating.”
<unquote>

Re:range

[CaptainDork]

Citation?

My hits start off with "PALEOINDIAN OCCUPATION of North America ..."

WTF.

North America is not India.

Re:range

[Anonymous Coward]

The word "Indian" has legal implications in the U.S.

https://www.archives.gov/research/native-americans/treaties

Re:range

[93 Escort Wagon]

I'm not sure what carbon dating could have to do with this anyway, since carbon dating generally involves the uptake of carbon by biologic systems.

Not to mention that 14C has a half-life of only ~ 5700 years.

Some ice cores from central Greenland have shown undisturbed annual layering (looking at the stable isotope 18O) going back to 125K years... so I would think either this impact occurred before that, or else the region affected by the impact did not reach to the center of the island.

Re:range

[Anonymous Coward]

The citation is in your ass you cock sucking shit stain.

Re:range

[Anonymous Coward]

They can detect the crater from space. It's hard to go down through a couple of km of ice to do more work and get rock samples.

Re:range

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like a day or two in between.

Re:range

[gtall]

It's under a half mile of glacier. Tell you what, we'll get you a long pole and you go up to poke around. Be sure to come back and tell us your estimate.

Re:range

[Anonymous Coward]

If we are talking about the entire history of the earth, 3 million years is a drop in the ocean. 3 000 000/4 500 000 000 = 0.0006

Re:range

[ls671]

pfff... half a mile? That's nothing!

The deepest hole my buddies and I dug was 3.5 miles and we did it with a long pole made of a string of pipes. Also, a geologist was analyzing the layers as we were doing it.

Some other dudes even went as deep as almost 8 miles...
https://www.oilandgasiq.com/dr...

Re:range

[Anonymous Coward]

It's big enough window that it might be reasonable to ask if it triggered the carving of the water area currently known as the English Channel.

Re:range

[Anonymous Coward]

Compared to what? The age of the Earth? It is a pretty narrow window compared to that.

If the error bars on the age estimate is not to your liking, what is stopping you from doing a better job and showing these scientists how it's done?

Re:range

[PPH]

No. That was Theresa May.

Re:range

[Anonymous Coward]

Mammoths and other mage-fauna in the North American continent must have wielded mammothian weapons against the puny human hunters and destroyed themselves in the process. ;)

Re:range

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that 12000-3000000 range is just at 90% confidence. For 95% you'll have to widen the range by a few million years.

Re:range

[RockDoctor]

There are a couple of perfectly serious researchers who are claiming evidence from "impact-generated" spherules to signs of radiation (what? how does that figure?) at a variety of locations in the "north east" of the American continent - and related claims that this supports models that have multiple waves of Siberians (where "palaeoindian" comes from ... [SURUG]. Probably that incompetent mathematician and lucky Italian navigator, Chris Columbus) entering the Americas at different times and by different routes. It is a reasonable claim, but I don't see it having reached anywhere near "consensus." Then again, it's not a topic I follow with any effort - there are enough Americans to get overexcited about it.

Re:range

[RockDoctor]

For a 31km (nominal) diameter crater, the nature of the substrate at the impact site is pretty much irrelevant. Any substrate with a boiling point below 5000 to 10000 K would flash to vapour due to the thermal radiation from the plasma shock wave ahead of the impactor.

Carbon dating is not the only tool in the dating toolbox. For this, I'd hope for micropalaeo, but since they don't mention that they either couldn't budget for getting seabed samples (icebreakers with a hefty over-side crane, significant tonnage of equipment ... not cheap), or there's too much bioturbation/ glacial gouging in the samples available (seabed evaluations for IODP drilling sites as well as Cairn's oil exploration of a few years ago would have possibly been usefully close), and micropalaeo didn't work.

It's unfortunate that they can't tightly constrain the impact date. But there is no actual guarantee that any particular site will [b]preserve[/b] useful data. Or, indeed, that researchers find it. Your time on site may be just a couple of working days book-ended by the times that helicopters or boats can get to your embarkation point.

Re:range

[CaptainDork]

I do swim in these waters and the "Americas" part of it is just as wrong.

Re:range

[RockDoctor]

That is, indeed, one of the lines of argument that others have been using to debate what the actual impact date was. The age of the rock cut by the (putative) impact is 1.7 to 1.9 Ga, providing a terminus post quem for the structure. And the event didn't happen within recorded history (say, several thousand years, the terminus ante quem). Narrowing the gap between those termini ... needs more data. I'd go for sea-bed sampling using a piston corer - where the water is deep enough to have floated the last few millions of years of ice above the seabed sludge. Probably only a weeks work with an ice-breaker with over-the-side or through-the-middle craneage to handle the coring equipment. Sites - I've got a long list of about 4 areas, but that'll need refinement. What's my budget for renting such a boat?

Re:range

[RockDoctor]

Stretch, is that you?

Re:range

[ls671]

Nope Rock Doctor! But I have posted about oil rigs about 2-3 times on /. since maybe 2005 and you have always replied to my posts. You are the only one that did so we must be the only persons on /. with oil rig experience :)

I believe the last time we were arguing about spinning chains and I was telling you it was pretty safe if you knew what you were doing and you had a hard time to believe that but you finally admitted that you never did spin a chain. Spinning chains is very low risk compared to other hazards that can sneak on you while working on the floor. The only risk of chain spinning a chain is if you let the chain go and you have to be pretty dumb to do that. If you let the chain go, it transforms itself into a metallic whip that clears the floor of human presence. You have to be even dumber to put your fingers between the chain and the pipe and it is pretty hard to have this happen.

For example, losing a foot when you put pipes stacked on the derrick back in the hole is order of magnitude more dangerous. It happens when the derrick man fails to close the hook properly and the pipe lifts up but then falls back on the floor. It happened to me at least 5 times and you are better keep your feet out of the way when it does. You have no time to realize it happened so you always keep your feet out of the way while holding on the pipe.

I have worked on oil rigs from 1979 to 1985 and I moved to IT afterward. I guess you could have been our geologist!

Cheers,

Re:range

[ls671]

Oh! I forgot, your argument was in favor of iron roughnecks while I was bitching about them making the whole process much slower and that they were for dummies similarly to where technology sometimes seems to be going these days.

In truth, iron roughnecks prevent a lot of injuries but very few if any that would have been caused by spinning a chain. Hints: tongs, rotary table...

The danger of chain spinning is a myth that is used to make things look scary in documentaries.

As well, iron roughnecks might be faster than humans now compared to the models I have seen back then :)

I guess those were the old days...

Cheers,

Interesting: It coincides with the Ice Age

[Anonymous Coward]

It's quite possible that the asteroid caused the Ice Age and the Earth is just now getting out of it.

That's definitely something to ponder..

Re: Interesting: It coincides with the Ice Age

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Wrong. Only humans can change climate. Stfu or you will be deplatformed.

Re: Interesting: It coincides with the Ice Age

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Wrong. Only humans can change climate. Stfu or you will be deplatformed.

Russians #PutinPrefersPink are just grouchy because they don't have any platforms of thier own.

Or enough body bags for the trains coming out of Ukraine, full of vacationing soldiers who accidentally shot themselves with the weapons they brought as conversation pieces while riding in the broken down tank they drove there. For bravado, they have their shirtless leader to tell them how brave he is and how they (not he) can win the fight. For keeping control of a fascist dystopia, and everything else, there's nukes.

#WhereIsMyPotato

Dinosaurs had feathers

[Anonymous Coward]

Scientific credibility is akin to dinosaurs not having feathers for the last 150 years of science and then *poof* magically being discovered to have had feathers.

Which to believe
      - Science has proven today that....
      - Over 100 years of science proves that....
      - Our climate models prove that ....
      - Lots of anecdotal bits and bytes prove that....
      - 4 out of 5 dentists ....
      - Polls show presidential candidate X leading by 2% with at 3% margin of error
      - Congressional Budget Office projects a deficit of $500,000,000 over the next 10 years
      - Technology X is everywhere in the news and will be the next big thing
      - Applying big data, machine learning, AI to problem X will make it on the front page of /. and will be nil better than hiring an extra few humans to do the work
      - Over the next 5 years...
      - I promise to address traffic congestion by A, B, synchronize traffic lights and D....
      - Bicycle lanes exist for cyclists (shhhh no, they exist because the federal government paid 50% of the cost for cities to re-stripe their streets)
      - Red light cameras are about public safety and no, the red light camera ticket revenue is not going to be donated to victims of drunk driving
      - Congressman X, newly elected, with a background in law, now on the Aviation Committee is an expert in aviation after 2 days on the committee...shhhhhh lets get the soundbite the newspaper agrees with and needs for the morning paper headline....

and millions more....

Re:Dinosaurs had feathers

[AlanObject]

Which to believe

Which to believe? The most obvious thing to believe is that your concept of science is drastically wrong.

What you should believe is that scientists will update their hypotheses and conclusions as new data becomes available. Try that out. Then you won't be so perplexed by the list you posted.

Re:Dinosaurs had feathers

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to lack familiarity with the process of learning.

After seeing your comment, I'm struck with a "what to believe" dilemma: are you really as dumb as your comment implies or are you smart and being a troll or purposely spreading FUD? Maybe it's both.

Re: Dinosaurs had feathers

[miekal]

you are describing debate, not science. What is to be gained by supporting an erroneous conclusion?

Re: Dinosaurs had feathers

[mapkinase]

Another point that what happened a million years ago cannot be used by himanity in any practical way. All that matters is what we have now: technoloy, experiments, verifiable and falsifiable hypotheses.

Re: Dinosaurs had feathers

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a description of religion, not science.

Re:Dinosaurs had feathers

[saider]

Note that most of those sentences come from Journalism, not Science. The scientific papers will have probabilities and distributions and often alternative explanations, but the general public can't cope with that, so the journalist breaks it down to "Science proves ..."

Re:Dinosaurs had feathers

[cascadingstylesheet]

What you should believe is that scientists will update their hypotheses and conclusions as new data becomes available.

The problem with that is that so will the OJ Simpson defense team ("update their hypotheses and conclusions as new data becomes available").

"Oh . .. so you found his DNA at the scene? Well, er, ah, he "bleeds all the time", yeah, that's it! We updated our model!"

Re: Dinosaurs had feathers

[bobbied]

That's a description of religion, not science.

Is it really?

Where I understand the argument you are making, logically if you start with assumptions and doggedly try to construct ways the evidence supports that assumption as a scientists, are you not doing the same thing as religious proponents? I think they are eerily similar in appearance from the outside observer.

This whole discussion rapidly become a question philosophy does it not? Which precludes your statement actually being provably true, but just an assumption, does it not?

Re: Dinosaurs had feathers

[Anonymous Coward]

A good general rule is: disprove your own hypothesis.

If you can't do it, publish!

Re: Dinosaurs had feathers

[careysub]

I think they are eerily similar in appearance from the outside observer.

Appear similar to someone ignorant about the subject - got it.

LEDs and stars are eerily similar in appearance too, from a distance. Must be the same thing.

Re: Dinosaurs had feathers

[bobbied]

Woosh!

But hey, that's what you where after wasn't it, missing my point.. Oh? You where making fun eh?

If that's what you tried to do, you just proved my primary point is true, in claiming to be the holder of "absolute truth" you've done the same logical thing as those you make fun of have done. Which again, WOOSH only bigger this time.

Re: Dinosaurs had feathers

[meglon]

I think they are eerily similar in appearance from the outside observer if the outside observer is a fucking idiot.

Fixed that for you. Science doesn't twist evidence to fit the hypothesis. If you find evidence that disagrees with the hypothesis, science says the hypothesis has to change... not the evidence. That's exactly opposite for religion. ANYONE with a remote understanding of the scientific process understands that.

Re: Dinosaurs had feathers

[bobbied]

Thanks for helping to make my point.

How so?

Well you display all the hallmarks of religious zealots who severely judge those with whom they disagree with rude impatience. Which is why I say they are similar. You do see the irony of all this right? Yea, I didn't think so...

Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

But I don't care. Who really cares? I sure as hell don't.

I am not saying it was caused by aliens, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

It was caused by aliens!

Fuck this garbage website

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey I just realized slashdot is a toilet that just reposts widely disseminated news and adds a dumpster-fire comments section. Was it always like this and I never noticed?

Re: Fuck this garbage website

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, the comment is one of a kind. It's gold. It's a fucked up type of alterbative reality stuck in the past with heaps and heaps of social maladaptivity and generous amounts of autism sprinkled on top.

Re: Fuck this garbage website

[jd]

It has always been a news aggregator, yes.

Re:Fuck this garbage website

[Zontar The Mindless]

Was it always like this and I never noticed?

Not always, no. For the last 20+ years, yes.

Re:Fuck this garbage website

[Anonymous Coward]

It was once a good website with well selected stories and moderately intelligent comments. Slashdot started its death spiral when the original owners left and sold it the first time around 2000, and after the third sale the new editorship dumped responsibility for everything except promoting the most clickbait stories possible. Within that spread they sprinkle a few stories taken from other tech websites that supplanted the old Slashdot after that first sale.

Re:Fudge this garbage website

[Anonymous Coward]

You *just* realized this? That's pathetic.

Nobody is making you stay. You can show yourself out.

ZIP

mass extinction...

[js290]

@joerogan Experience #961 - @Graham__Hancock, @SacredGeoInt & @michaelshermer Hunted to extinction or cataclysm? http://bit.ly/2zKU1IM

Tripods and alien spceships Dormant for now

[Anonymous Coward]

Shhh dont wake them up,
At 1km deep , lots of opportunity to sell off shards of genuine intergallactic rock.

Paris

[quenda]

Is Paris a unit of area now?
Are we talking the 105 km^2 inside the old city walls (plus east and west parks?),
or the 17,174 km^2 of present-day Paris?

Re:Paris

[snikulin]

Indeed. Library of Congress is a well-established unit and should be enough for anyone.

Re:Paris

[93 Escort Wagon]

Think of all the sidewalk cafes unceremoniously destroyed by this meteor...

Re: Paris

[Anonymous Coward]

One Library of Congress ought to be enough for everybody.

Re:Paris

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, is it Paris the city or Paris the Hilton? Also, how is it even possible to mention Paris, without mentioning the Accord on global warming?

Re: Paris

[jd]

One Paris is one megacoffee. Well known unit.

Re:Paris

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, it does say the crater is 19 miles wide, so you can use that measurement to get the square kilometer estimation.

Re:Paris

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Paris a unit of area now?
Are we talking the 105 km^2 inside the old city walls (plus east and west parks?),
or the 17,174 km^2 of present-day Paris?

I prefer to use the shark from Jaws as my main unit of distance. So, it sounds like this crater is roughly 1500 Jaws's wide. I feel this is equally valid to using Paris.

Re:Paris

[cascadingstylesheet]

Is Paris a unit of area now? Are we talking the 105 km^2 inside the old city walls (plus east and west parks?), or the 17,174 km^2 of present-day Paris?

We ran out of football fields.

Younger dryas culprit?

[Anonymous Coward]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesis

Re:Younger dryas culprit?

[MrKaos]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesis

Exactly. There is more and more evidence mounting that the 'fringe' story we're being told about human history is the mainstream view of it. Sooner or later the archeological "theories" and gradualism will collapse under the weight of geological evidence.

Re: Younger dryas culprit?

[jd]

Too small, according to the impact calculator.

build a Radio telescope

[Anonymous Coward]

In the crater, put it to work.

Paris

[hcs_$reboot]

There is Paris, Tulsa the Paris of Oklahoma and now the Greenland Paris. How romantic!

No Goatse?

[Anonymous Coward]

I miss the days when "massive impact crater" would've had the trolls chomping at the bit to get a frosty piss goatse. This site has become such a shadow of its former self.

Asteroid estimator

[jd]

https://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/Im...

So, you get a crater roughly the right size in that sort of rock if it is 2.5 km in diameter. You get 0.85 megatonnes equivalent energy, which is next to nothing. No significant global effect.

Re:Asteroid estimator

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, you get 850,000 MegaTons.

Re:Asteroid estimator

[Anonymous Coward]

8.47 x 105 MegaTons TNT is way more than 0.85 megatons.

Re:Asteroid estimator

[Anonymous Coward]

8.47 x 10^5 not 105 (copy paste failure)

Re:Asteroid estimator

[DavenH]

2.5km at 45,000mph can do a lot of damage.

Re:Asteroid estimator

[DerekLyons]

So, you get a crater roughly the right size in that sort of rock if it is 2.5 km in diameter. You get 0.85 megatonnes equivalent energy, which is next to nothing. No significant global effect.

Your math is... way, way off - 8.47*10^5 megatons is 847,000 megatons, not .85 megatons.

Re:Asteroid estimator

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you get a crater roughly the right size in that sort of rock if it is 2.5 km in diameter. You get 0.85 megatonnes equivalent energy, which is next to nothing. No significant global effect.

Your math is... way, way off - 8.47*10^5 megatons is 847,000 megatons, not .85 megatons.

He just had his units wrong, clearly he meant 0.85 gigatons.

Re:Asteroid estimator

[Anonymous Coward]

HOW are you still modded +4 FOR FUCKING UP your own source!

Is this the impact?

[execthis]

So is this the impact that caused the Caroline Bays?

Re:Is this the impact?

[RockDoctor]

Whether those are an impact field (from a near-surface airburst), or a meteorological phenomenon remains, TTBOMK, to be determined. And part of the problem of (natural) airbursts is that they don't leave a huge amount of evidence on the ground.

Crater

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that is where Kim Kardashian landed in the 50's.

Re:Crater

[gtall]

Well, it is where she sat down at any rate. I think further test will indicate a bifurcated depression.

Incorrect units used.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Come on people, the International Standards of Units and Measurements is head quartered in Paris.. But Paris is NOT a standard unit of measurement for area.

Area is always measured in Rhode Islands, volume in Olympic Sized Swimming Pools, Length in Football fields, ( = 10 school buses). Information in LoC (Library of Congress). BTW, length != distance. Distances are measured in Trips Around the Equator.

Re:Incorrect units used.

[quenda]

Area is always measured in Rhode Islands,

Much of the US is familiar to foreigners, but aside from Family Guy being set on the island, we know nothing of it.
Can't you use something more famous like Grand Canyons?

Re:Incorrect units used.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Grand Canyon is the official SI[*] unit for depth, not area.

For area we have "Size of football field (= 1 micro Rhode Island)" and "Size of Manhattan (= 1 milli Rhode Island)".

SI = Systems Idiotica

Re:Incorrect units used.

[Quirkz]

Rhode Island: more road than island. Discuss.

Re:Incorrect units used.

[nukenerd]

Come on people, the International Standards of Units and Measurements is head quartered in Paris.. But Paris is NOT a standard unit of measurement for area.

In the UK the area units of that order are the "Isle of Wight" and, next up, "Wales". Paris is obviously an EU unit, to be deprecated. However I thought that in the USA the nearest equivalent to the Isle of Wight or Paris is "The area a man can ride round on a horse in a day". Isn't that the way that Oklahoma was carved up in 1889?

Evidence for the Clovis Comet hypothesis?

[Anonymous Coward]

There has been a theory that the end of the last ice age was reversed temporarily, causing a re-glaciation and a dip in global temperatures around 12K years ago. So far no impact craters have been found. This might be the smoking gun, a big impact crater, that melted ice sheets, stopped the Atlantic conveyor system and produced shock crystals, etc. I would also link it to global flood stories (Noah, etc), but that may be pushing it.

Alternatively, when they finally dig down and analyse the crater floor, I hope they find Atlantis.

Re:Evidence for the Clovis Comet hypothesis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't a re-glaciation period lead to ~lower~ sea levels?

Re:Evidence for the Clovis Comet hypothesis?

[Anonymous Coward]

There has been a theory that the end of the last ice age was reversed temporarily, causing a re-glaciation and a dip in global temperatures around 12K years ago. So far no impact craters have been found.

This guy claims to have found a recent airburst impact zone in Mexico and crater impacts in North America, and there is a theory that observations of plasma bursts from a solar event were recorded on rock art.

Mine it

[Tough Love]

Large metallic meteor impact? Mine it. True fact: pretty much all the gold we mine got here by way of metallic meteor impact. Our own gold supplies having sunk deep into the core before the crust was formed. South Africa got its gold this way. Of course, the crater that did it for them is a bit bigger, just the lava dome in the middle is twice the diameter of this Greenland crater.

Re:Mine it

[Anonymous Coward]

Large metallic meteor impact? Mine it.

What? A large meteor isn't that big compared to a mine. Also meteors are worth far more than gold by weight. Even the shitiest meteor sells for $.50 per gram. Gold is currently $.40 per gram. An unusual meteor could go for $1000 per gram! No one is going to mine this thing.

Re:Mine it

[Tough Love]

A large meteor isn't that big compared to a mine.

Not the meteor, the crater. Look at the map.

Re:Mine it

[RockDoctor]

When a meteor impacts, most of it's material is ejected from the initial impact crater by the pressure of thousands of cubic metres of rock vapour (no, that's not a typo for "liquid") where the landscape and the impactor boiled away on contact. (Whether the impactor was "dirty snowball" or "nickel-iron" doesn't matter ; same for the impact site).

You're not wrong about there being inhomogeneity in the minor element and isotopic composition of the upper mantle - as sampled by diamond inclusions, and including extinct isotopic clocks - and much of the original complement of siderophile ("iron-loving") elements (includes gold and some PGEs [platinum group elements]) having ended up in the core. But that is most likely the result of impacts after the Moon-forming impact - which would have probably homogenised the mantle fairly well.

The Vredefort impact structure (to which I think you refer) is a billion or two years too late to have been involved significantly in that - and the impactor got fairly evenly coated over the inner solar system. It is certainly associated with PGE and gold mining - a classic area, I've had microscope training on samples from there - but whether that is actually "extra-terrestrial" in any meaningful sense : no.

The deep fracturing caused by the Vredefort impactor seems to have allowed fluids (water, carbon dioxide) to mobilise PGEs and gold from the upper mantle below the impact, which then came up towards the surface and became involved with volcanism (and volcaniclastic sediments, in running water) near the surface tens or hundreds of millions of years after the impact.

There does seem to be a relationship between the events, but it's a lot more subtle than the "gold rich asteroid buries itself". Which is a story that appeals to TV documentary producers, if not actual geologists. (Sorry - I did my Honours in mantle petrology. Fuck all use for finding oil, but far more interesting!)

Just discovered and still under ice

[sjbe]

That's quite the range of ages: two orders of magnitude. Not an impressive estimate.

They just discovered the thing and it's buried under a huge amount ice. It's going to take a minute to find the evidence to more precisely pinpoint the impact date. Furthermore, when you are talking about geologic time, a million years is barely a blink of an eye.

From TFA:

“It is correct that the crater is not well dated but there’s good evidence that it is geologically young, that is, it formed within the last 2 to 3 million years, and most likely it is as young as the last Ice Age [which ended around 12,000 years ago],” Larsen explained to Gizmodo. “We are currently trying to come up with ideas on how to date the impact. One idea is to drill through the ice and get bedrock samples that can be used for numerical dating.”

"Massive"

[Anonymous Coward]

Since a crater is a negative-space structure, for it to have mass means that the material that was blown out must have had negative mass. Ladies and gentlemen, we finally have it: anti-gravity has been discovered. Why isn't this the main headline?

Re:"Massive"

[careysub]

The impact was massive, exactly as the head line states.

Since this is a nickel-iron asteroid there will be a mass concentration below the crater, so yes there should be anomalous mass there.

Re:"Massive"

[nukenerd]

we finally have it: anti-gravity has been discovered

If the crater material had negative mass it would have flown out of its own accord. No asteroid needed.

Thousands of years before written records

[sjbe]

I think if it was only 12,000 years ago, we'd have known about it.

It would be shocking if we knew anything about it. It's in a remote and barely inhabited part of the world, far from any sizeable human settlement at the time, thousands of years before there were any written records we know of outside of a few cave drawings.

Physical evidence, written evidence (it would be in the precursor texts to the old testament or something).

Physical evidence outside of the geologic record would be extremely sketchy. The oldest written records we have are from about 4-5000 years ago so there would be nothing reliable in even our oldest texts about an event that happened at least 7 thousand years before our earliest written records.

Oral histories

[sjbe]

Australian Aborigines have an accurate oral history that goes back over 10,000 years.

They might have an oral history with some verifiable facts but you'd have to be pretty generous with your definition of "accurate" to use the word meaningfully. There might be some evidence in the information but it's deeply unlikely that any such stories passed down through that many generations survived without substantial alterations and errors. Not to mention that there is no means to go back and actually check what the stories originally said for most types of facts.

Oral histories and eyewitness testimony are terrible forms of evidence. Not to mention once religions get involved, objective evidence tends to go MIA almost immediately.

It's under an ice sheet

[sjbe]

Isn't 12,000 --3,000,000 years a pretty big window?? Or is that par for the course?

The main reason for the wide window is just that they only recently discovered it and most of the geologic record needed to pin it down more accurately is buried under hundreds to thousands of feet of ice. It's going to take them a little time to gather the evidence and narrow the error bars.

Re:It's under an ice sheet

[RockDoctor]

Actually, it's more likely to be in the mud of the seabed. But still under hundreds or thousands of metres of water, some of it solid.

Unscientific.

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, OT.

>_ Over time, however, the gaping hole was obscured by a 1,000-meter-tall (3,200-foot) layer of ice, where it remained hidden for thousands of years.

You know, some people might need the foot unit value to have an idea of the size of such a crater.

There was recently a discussion that English remains "the language of science" for the sheer number of texts written in it. Such things invalidate that remark (though in the present case there is fortunately an SI value).

First, let me start by asking: do you have different foot sizes in the USA? Because if you got different sizes, which one is the standard foot? And if you say "that's a totally different thing, don't mix two meanings of the word [foot]", I'd reply you're just making the issue worse. People from other countries immediately will think: "when is a foot not a foot?"

But the matter is not really only about using measurements based on variant human features -- and we might be thankful it's not about some other body part length!

Maybe the main problem is the unit itself. If it was called, say, "bai" (quasi-random mix of letters), a "bai" would still be a problem because of the constant need of conversion between it and the meter, or the need of conversion between it and miles or inches.

That is completely unscientific IMHO -- and also a source of problems in daily life.

Captcha: "ounces". This is why it's an uphill battle. It's not that the ideas aren't easy to grasp. It's stupid by design.

Interesting To Look At the Article Map

[careysub]

Too bad Slashdot doesn't do images (or maybe not, goatse and all). Looking at the map in the article the glacier perimeter actually follows the crater rim for about 40% of its circumference. The rim must be stabilizing the glacier right now.

Zach Patterson / ZIP "Greatest Hits" (lol, not)

[Anonymous Coward]

See how STUPID "ZIP" (Zach Patterson) the CHIMP is (tried to take credit for what I solved before him) https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... (he needs to LEARN TO READ)!

I even SHOW ways to do it YOURSELF https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... (he couldn't).

Delphi/FreePascal/ObjectPascal HAS no issue w/ null-term'd string bufferoverflows - C does, C++ can UNLESS you do what I said 1st loser.

Tell us about CODE SIGNING (which has been STOLEN & ABUSED) https://www.helpnetsecurity.co... MY METHOD CAN'T BE (upmodded +2 INTERESTING in CODING FOR DEFCON no less) https://it.slashdot.org/commen...

"I'm a much better programmer than APK" - by Anonymous Coward ZIP on Monday October 08, 2018 @11:27PM (#57449082) FROM https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...

BIG TALK - Yet ZIP has nothing to show in programs. I can https://news.slashdot.org/comm... from registered /.ers liking/using/praising my work (& 100k users worldwide too). He can't.

LIAR ZIP says he has no account "I don't have an account, so I don't have mod points" https://news.slashdot.org/comm...

Yet LIAR ZIP says he downmods my posts (IMPOSSIBLE MINUS AN ACCOUNT on /.): "I down-modded a few of your post on other threads" - by Anonymous Coward "ZIP" on Thursday October 11, 2018 @11:31AM (#57461058) FROM https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...

APK

P.S.=> KEEP IMPERSONATING ME CHIMP - this comes out every time, lol!... apk

ZIP = "better programmer" (lol, not)

[Anonymous Coward]

You said it ZIP: Where's your work everyone can see/use? It's not. It's HOTAIRWARE/NOTWARE (lol) "I'm a much better programmer than APK" - by Anonymous Coward ZIP on Monday October 08, 2018 @11:27PM (#57449082) FROM https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...

The BETTER PROGRAMMER w/ no programs, lol - @ least you can say your "code" has NO BUGS - of course, it also does ZERO (like you) since it does nothing @ all, lol!

You hotair BLOWHARD talker, lol!

You f'd up ZIP https://tech.slashdot.org/comm...

Yet 100,000++ users of my ware & dozens of even REGISTERED /.ers like/use/praise MY work https://news.slashdot.org/comm... vs. your HOTAIR talk punk!

* LMAO!

(Let's see how YOU take it when I publicly SHIT ALL OVER YOU by letting FACTS of YOUR FUCKUPS vs. ME https://science.slashdot.org/c... do the job for me)

APK

P.S.=> You STUPID & LAZY all talk chimpanzee - KEEP IMPERSONATING me - I'll expose your BLOWHARD INCOMPETENCE publicly, lol... apk

globular & and flat earth compliance dating

[Anonymous Coward]

i ish scientists would just say between 6000 and 3 million years ago just to satisfy both camps of science, but instead it is this anti-Gregorian bias towards carbon dating that doesnt help anyone since the concept of date is honoring a deity over it's known existance in comparison to inanimate objects.

  Flat earthers and hollow earthers and religious tards are congruent to tge Mississippi River floodpan of 230 thousands years of recorded mud deposits which corresponds to the 8 immortals around China not to be contradescended to the 4 immortals that gave The Book of The Changes to Ghengis Khan which rototilled the supposed 11 to 16 arch-independent organic non-gmo implementations of man (plural mannen not the competing men ir humen).

Wide spread

[exxaminer]

between 3 million and 12,000 years ago..

Re:Wide spread

[RockDoctor]

[Shrug.]

After several years of work by seismic survey boats, seabed samplers, more seismic on a different spacing, and a team of a dozen geologists working for about 5 years on "developing the prospect ... and several lawyers and bean counters working on the drilling permits and financials ... I've seen 300+million year errors assigned to a structure. And proved wrong as soon as we put a drill bit into the structure.

Re:ZIP = "better programmer" (lol, not)

[Anonymous Coward]

APK
GO the fuck AWAY!

(Everybody chant along!)

APK
GO the fuck AWAY!

APK
GO the fuck AWAY!

APK
GO the fuck AWAY!