K-T event did NOT wipe out dinos

[Rokcet Scientist]

how long does it take to cover 4,800 meters at Mach 2?

6.4 seconds.

[Digit]

Nope!

Roy.

[Minimalist]

Okay....dragging this back kicking and screaming to comet impacts, a new study coming out supporting the 12,900 BC north america strike.

http://uonews.uoregon.edu/archive/news- ... age-comets

EUGENE, Ore. -- (July 20, 2009) -- A 17-member team has found what may be the smoking gun of a much-debated proposal that a cosmic impact about 12,900 years ago ripped through North America and drove multiple species into extinction.

[Rokcet Scientist]

Okay....dragging this back kicking and screaming to comet impacts, a new study coming out supporting the 12,900 BC north america strike.

How long does it take a comet to impact?

In the blink of an eye: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8161723.stm

Jupiter's orbit has been known with mathematical precision for over a century. Yet nobody had the faintest clue this was coming!
Anyway, there are probably millions, if not zillions of house sized rocks, and (a lot!) bigger ones, screaming through the solar system at any one time. And even if we could detect some of 'm we would never have enough sensing and computing power to detect all of them, to compute and track them, and to project/predict their orbits. Thus we will not be able to predict (all) impending collisions. At least not for the next few centuries, imo. So let's not even try – and futilely waste ginormous resources in the process. Instead let's go from the assumption that Earth will be hit, and then work at mitigating it's effects. Creating a "backup plan".
E.g. getting out of the way before the shit hits the fan! I.o.w. interplanetary colonization.

Nevertheless quite a few dinos may have survived the K-T event by hibernation: http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_ne ... 144199.stm

[E.P. Grondine]

Thus we will not be able to predict (all) impending collisions. At least not for the next few centuries, imo. So let's not even try – and futilely waste ginormous resources in the process. Instead let's go from the assumption that Earth will be hit, and then work at mitigating it's effects. Creating a "backup plan".
E.g. getting out of the way before the shit hits the fan! I.o.w. interplanetary colonization.

Nevertheless quite a few dinos may have survived the K-T event by hibernation: http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_ne ... 144199.stm

RS, what you don't know about impact detection and deflection would fill a book. The project that you're trying to support is wasting $100,000,000,000 flying a few men to Mars RIGHT NOW.

You're ignorance is so vast I do not know where to start. The best detection system possible was determined several years ago by a group of engineers working at NASA Langley. It's called CAPS, and based on the observed impact rates, it is cost effective at the margin.

Perhaps if NASA had its priorities right, the massive comet which impacted with Jupiter would have been detected before it hit.

In any case, as there's a small fragmented comet headed our way right now, there's even less reason to waste any detection/deflection money on manned Mars flight.

[Digit]

And I doubt that hibernation would have made much difference if the food chain was kaput .

Roy.

[Minimalist]

Perhaps they gathered acorns and nuts, first?

[Digit]

Going by the soot layer that claim that wouldn't have been possible Min, but to be honest I think the whole idea falls flat on its face, here....

I took my handkerchief from my pocket and wiped my brow, the sun streaming through the windows was making the room uncomfortably hot, though no one else seemed to notice. “In areas close to ground zero, everything would be destroyed, by impact, by heat, and by blast. Further away survival would be determined mainly by chance. Well away from any impact the winds should lessen to survivable levels, but as the dust and water vapour spread around the planet the sun could be blotted out to the equivalent of moonlight at noon we believe. All green things would then die!”
I paused to take another sip from my glass before continuing. “With the loss of the plant life the food chain would be destroyed, all fungi, all insects, all birds, all animals that depended directly on the plants for their food would also die. All carnivores that depended on the plant eaters would also perish as their prey vanished. The food chain in the oceans would be similarly disrupted. Survivors, when they climbed out of their shelters, would be faced with unending darkness with perhaps just enough light for them to move around during the middle of the day. Then there would be the cold,” I added.
“The cold?” Kennedy repeated.
“We estimate perhaps as low as minus fifty degrees Celsius,” I told him, “so anything that could survive the other conditions would probably die of thirst. As the sunlight returned, seeds that had lain dormant should begin once more to grow. Animals that were able to hibernate successfully should also survive if the temperature rises soon enough, but if their food had vanished, they too would then perish. The loss of the ozone layer could result in large numbers of mutations till the layer rebuilds itself.”
My words were greeted with a shocked silence broken only as the Home Secretary noisily cleared his throat.
“Just how much of this are you and your colleagues certain of Doctor?”
“Frankly Sir, not much. I’m sure you followed my reasoning on the destruction of the food chain,” I suggested, then continued as he nodded in agreement, “and yet, if each deduction follows logically from its predecessor, then the scenario I have just presented would seem to condemn every living creature on this planet to certain extinction. But, statistically, the Earth must have suffered a similar fate on a number of occasions in the past. But there was survival!” I stressed.
“The Dinosaurs?” The P.M. suggested.


from one of my novels.

Roy.

[E.P. Grondine]

Hi digit -

The only species that survived the KT impact(s) appear to have been ground burrowing: mice, alligators, turtles, birds (buried nests); perhaps they were meat eating/root eating.

By the way, there's a small fragmenting comet headed our way.

E.P. Grondine
Man and Impact in the Americas
(Which at least a few people think is a "great book" - you know, as in "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" great. Perhaps you might want to consider it. )

[Digit]

According to one report I read EP the upper limit in size was 50 kilos! Seems a bit big for burrowing animals, also with claims of burrows being discovered 'reputedly' dug by Dinos why did no small Dinos appear to have survived?
At the moment I lean towards the idea, backed by some researchers, that Dinos did survive the impact but were reduced in number and eventually just disappeared over the next few thousand years.

Roy.

[Rokcet Scientist]

It's moot, Roy, because "there's a small fragmenting comet headed our way".
So say your prayers and enjoy life while you still can.
When it's all over I'll see you, and Min, in hell (of course).

[E.P. Grondine]

According to one report I read EP the upper limit in size was 50 kilos! Seems a bit big for burrowing animals, also with claims of burrows being discovered 'reputedly' dug by Dinos why did no small Dinos appear to have survived?
At the moment I lean towards the idea, backed by some researchers, that Dinos did survive the impact but were reduced in number and eventually just disappeared over the next few thousand years.

Roy.

Why did no dinos survive? Probably lack of oxygen. The burrows had to be self contained.

[Minimalist]

The real reason dinosaurs went extinct.

[Rokcet Scientist]

Luckily we have a protector! There is a god. Was all along:
Jupiter!
(Those darn Romans, eh Min?)

Is Jupiter Earth's Cosmic Protector?
July 26, 2009

"Last Sunday, an object, probably a comet that nobody saw coming, plowed into Jupiter's colorful cloud tops, splashing up debris and leaving a black eye the size of the Pacific Ocean — the second time in 15 years that this had happened, after Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 fell apart and its pieces crashed into Jupiter in 1994, leaving Earth-size marks that persisted up to a year.

'Better Jupiter than Earth,' say astronomers who think that part of what makes Earth such a nice place to live is that Jupiter acts as a gravitational shield, deflecting incoming space junk away from the inner solar system where it could do to humans what an asteroid apparently did for the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. 'If anything like that had hit the Earth it would have been curtains for us, so we can feel very happy that Jupiter is doing its vacuum-cleaner job and hoovering up all these large pieces before they come for us,' says Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley, who first noticed the mark on Jupiter.
But others say the warm and fuzzy image of the King of Planets as father-protector may not be entirely accurate. In 1770, Comet Lexell whizzed by the earth, missing us by a cosmic whisker after passing close to Jupiter. The comet made two passes around the Sun and in 1779 again passed very close to Jupiter, which then threw it back out of the solar system."

http://jupiter.samba.org/jupiter-impact.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/weeki ... .html?_r=1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Lexell

it may have been hundreds of metres wide

:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8168403.stm

Hey, worshipping Jupiter could be more cost effective than E.P.'s desired budgets. Basically because Jupiter actually does have a beneficial effect in "the war on the asteroids". However coincidental.

The vindication of the gods!

Makes a nice title for a book, a movie, and a TV series...

[Rokcet Scientist]

And now good old Saturn joins the divine fray and raises his fist too, punching through the F-ring:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badas ... angry-god/

The ancient gods are making a strong comeback!