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Author: Andrew Y. Glikson
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 940076328X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 149
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Book Description
When in 1981 Louis and Walter Alvarez, the father and son team, unearthed a tell-tale Iridium-rich sedimentary horizon at the 65 million years-old Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary at Gubbio, Italy, their find heralded a paradigm shift in the study of terrestrial evolution. Since the 1980s the discovery and study of asteroid impact ejecta in the oldest well-preserved terrains of Western Australia and South Africa, by Don Lowe, Gary Byerly, Bruce Simonson, Scott Hassler, the author and others, and the documentation of new exposed and buried impact structures in several continents, have led to a resurgence of the idea of the catastrophism theory of Cuvier, previously largely supplanted by the uniformitarian theory of Hutton and Lyell. Several mass extinction of species events are known to have occurred in temporal proximity to large asteroid impacts, global volcanic eruptions and continental splitting. Likely links are observed between asteroid clusters and the 580 Ma acritarch radiation, end-Devonian extinction, end-Triassic extinction and end-Jurassic extinction. New discoveries of ~3.5 – 3.2 Ga-old impact fallout units in South Africa have led Don Lowe and Gary Byerly to propose a protracted prolongation of the Late Heavy Bombardment (~3.95-3.85 Ga) in the Earth-Moon system. Given the difficulty in identifying asteroid impact ejecta units and buried impact structures, it is likely new discoveries of impact signatures are in store, which would further profoundly alter models of terrestrial evolution. .
Author: Andrew Y. Glikson
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 940076328X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 149
Get Book
Book Description
When in 1981 Louis and Walter Alvarez, the father and son team, unearthed a tell-tale Iridium-rich sedimentary horizon at the 65 million years-old Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary at Gubbio, Italy, their find heralded a paradigm shift in the study of terrestrial evolution. Since the 1980s the discovery and study of asteroid impact ejecta in the oldest well-preserved terrains of Western Australia and South Africa, by Don Lowe, Gary Byerly, Bruce Simonson, Scott Hassler, the author and others, and the documentation of new exposed and buried impact structures in several continents, have led to a resurgence of the idea of the catastrophism theory of Cuvier, previously largely supplanted by the uniformitarian theory of Hutton and Lyell. Several mass extinction of species events are known to have occurred in temporal proximity to large asteroid impacts, global volcanic eruptions and continental splitting. Likely links are observed between asteroid clusters and the 580 Ma acritarch radiation, end-Devonian extinction, end-Triassic extinction and end-Jurassic extinction. New discoveries of ~3.5 – 3.2 Ga-old impact fallout units in South Africa have led Don Lowe and Gary Byerly to propose a protracted prolongation of the Late Heavy Bombardment (~3.95-3.85 Ga) in the Earth-Moon system. Given the difficulty in identifying asteroid impact ejecta units and buried impact structures, it is likely new discoveries of impact signatures are in store, which would further profoundly alter models of terrestrial evolution. .
Author: Andrew Y. Glikson
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 331974545X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 215
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Book Description
This book presents a comprehensive overview of Australian impact structures and related mineralization, including a discussion of the significance of many of these structures for crustal evolution. The book focuses in particular on Archaean impact ejecta/fallout units in the Pilbara Craton of Western Australia, large exposed and buried impact structures, and on the geophysical evidence for possible to probable impact structures. Thanks to their long-term geological stability, Precambrian and younger terrains in the Australian continent contain 38 confirmed impact structures and 43 ring and dome structures, many of which constitute possible to probable asteroid impact structures. The impact structures have been the subject of more than half a century of studies and range from several tens of meter-large craters to buried structures larger than 100 km in diameter. Discoveries of impact fallout units in the Pilbara Craton have defined the Pilbara as one of the two best documented terrains where Archaean impact ejecta/fallout deposits are identified, the other terrain being the Kaapvaal Craton in southern Africa. A synthesis of evidence from both cratons indicates periods of large asteroid bombardments during ~3.47 – 2.48 billion years-ago, including peak bombardment about 3.25—3.22 billion years-ago. The latter period coincides with an abrupt transformation of an early Archaean granite-greenstone crust to mid to late Archaean semi-continental crustal regimes, underpinning the significance of heavy asteroid impact events for crustal evolution. Apart from proven impact structures, Australian terrains display a range of circular features, including morphological and drainage rings, circular lakes, volcanic craters, tectonic domes, oval granite bodies, mafic igneous plugs, salt diapirs, and magnetic, gravity and seismic anomalies, many of which are of a likely impact origin. Thermal and hydrothermal processes associated with impact cratering bear important consequences for the formation of mineral deposits, such as Ni at Sudbury, Pb-Zn at Siljan and Kentland. Impact structures may also provide sites for the accumulation of hydrocarbons, whereas in some instances fracturing associated with impact structures allows outward migration of oil and gas.
Author: Gordon R. Osinski
Publisher: Geological Society of America
ISBN: 0813725186
Category : Impact craters
Languages : en
Pages : 227
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Book Description
In this volume, the geologic and planetary science communities explore impact events and how they affected the evolution of Earth and other planetary bodies. these papers are the outcome of a conference held every five years.
Author: B. O. Dressier
Publisher: Geological Society of America
ISBN: 0813722934
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 361
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Book Description
Comprises 28 papers which grew out of the International Conference on Large Meteorite Impacts and Planetary Evolution, August/September, 1992 in Sudbury, Ontario. The interdisciplinary papers, encompassing diverse studies from trace element geochemistry to planetary exploration, are arranged into f
Author: Wolf Uwe Reimold
Publisher: Geological Society of America
ISBN: 081372550X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 644
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Book Description
"This volume contains a sizable suite of contributions dealing with regional impact records (Australia, Sweden), impact craters and impactites, early Archean impacts and geophysical characteristics of impact structures, shock metamorphic investigations, post-impact hydrothermalism, and structural geology and morphometry of impact structures - on Earth and Mars"--
Author: Andrew Y. Glikson
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 331922512X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 227
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Book Description
The book outlines principal milestones in the evolution of the atmosphere, oceans and biosphere during the last 4 million years in relation with the evolution from primates to the genus Homo – which uniquely mastered the ignition and transfer of fire. The advent of land plants since about 420 million years ago ensued in flammable carbon-rich biosphere interfaced with an oxygen-rich atmosphere. Born on a flammable Earth surface, under increasingly unstable climates descending from the warmer Pliocene into the deepest ice ages of the Pleistocene, human survival depended on both—biological adaptations and cultural evolution, mastering fire as a necessity. This allowed the genus to increase entropy in nature by orders of magnitude. Gathered around camp fires during long nights for hundreds of thousandth of years, captivated by the flickering life-like dance of the flames, humans developed imagination, insights, cravings, fears, premonitions of death and thereby aspiration for immortality, omniscience, omnipotence and the concept of god. Inherent in pantheism was the reverence of the Earth, its rocks and its living creatures, contrasted by the subsequent rise of monotheistic sky-god creeds which regard Earth as but a corridor to heaven. Once the climate stabilized in the early Holocene, since about ~7000 years-ago production of excess food by Neolithic civilization along the Great River Valleys has allowed human imagination and dreams to express themselves through the construction of monuments to immortality. Further to burning large part of the forests, the discovery of combustion and exhumation of carbon from the Earth’s hundreds of millions of years-old fossil biospheres set the stage for an anthropogenic oxidation event, affecting an abrupt shift in state of the atmosphere-ocean-cryosphere system. The consequent ongoing extinction equals the past five great mass extinctions of species—constituting a geological event horizon in the history of planet Earth.
Author: Burkhard O. Dressler
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Cratering
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309117178
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 151
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Book Description
Questions about the origin and nature of Earth and the life on it have long preoccupied human thought and the scientific endeavor. Deciphering the planet's history and processes could improve the ability to predict catastrophes like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, to manage Earth's resources, and to anticipate changes in climate and geologic processes. At the request of the U.S. Department of Energy, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Science Foundation, and U.S. Geological Survey, the National Research Council assembled a committee to propose and explore grand questions in geological and planetary science. This book captures, in a series of questions, the essential scientific challenges that constitute the frontier of Earth science at the start of the 21st century.
Author: Andrew Y. Glikson
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030106039
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 160
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Book Description
The permutation of basic atoms—nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and phosphorus―into the biomolecules DNA and RNA, subsequently evolved in cells and brains, defining the origin of life and intelligence, remains unexplained. Equally the origin of the genetic information and the intertwined nature of ‘hardware’ and ‘software’ involved in the evolution of bio-molecules and the cells are shrouded in mystery. This treatise aims at exploring individual and swarm behaviour patterns which potentially hint at as yet unknown biological principles. It reviews theories of evolution with perspectives from the earth sciences, commencing with the earliest observed records of life. This is followed by reviews and discussion of the building blocks of life, marine and terrestrial communities, the arthropods, birds and finally humans. It is suggested that, further to the mutation/natural selection processes established by Darwin and Wallace, an understanding of the evolution of intelligence remains little understood. A directionality of evolutionary trajectories is evident, not least the purposeful thinking process of humans as well as animals. It is not clear how directional intelligence, manifested for example by the collective intelligence of arthropod colonies, has evolved from mutation/natural selection processes. Potential clues for the understanding of life and evolution are provided by Aristotle’s dictum of “the whole being greater than the sum of the parts”, Niels Bohr’s principle of quantum complementarity and George Ellis’ theory of top-down causality. Inherent in the question of the origin of life is an anthropocentric bias, related to the self-referential Anthropic Principle and theological paradigms of man’s supposed dominion over all other species. The Anthropic Principle, however, should be capable of being circumvented using the scientific falsification method, assuming universal verified constants of physics. The phenomenon of the human mastery of fire and the splitting of the atom, leading to the seventh major mass extinction of species, remains incomprehensible.
Author: Andrew Y. Glikson
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319079085
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246
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Book Description
Archaean terrains contain a wealth of structural, stratigraphic, textural, mineralogical, geochemical and isotopic features allowing insights into the nature of the early Earth. This book is based on studies during 1964-2007 of Archaean terrains in Australia and to a lesser extent in South Africa and India, as well as on visits to Archaean terrains in Canada, the US and China, as well as petrological and geochemical studies of igneous and sedimentary rock suites from a range of terrains. The book will include a range of photographic and microscopic images, geological sketch maps and diagrams illustrating the lessons derived from field and the laboratory. Also other Archaean terrains are being reviewed. The book is intended for Earth scientists as well as broader intelligent readership.
