At www.cosmictusk.com/deep-time-impact-induced-volcanism-a-colloquy is an exchange between Hermann Burchard and Han Kloosterman – with George Howard in the middle. Han calls Veilkovsky a ‘scholar’ rather than a ‘scientist’ and physicist Peter Warlow, a Velikovskian who came up with the tippetop theory, a valid model. Warlow was supposedly debunked by Slabinski and his paper was uncritically accepted – especially by Leroy Ellenberger (known to both Burchard and Kloosterman). The two catastrophists differ over Velikovsky – and Warlow, and the latter thought, aka Velikovsky, a fly-by might cause a reversal of the earth (flipping over). Physicist Stig Flodmark of Stockholm University calculated that internal energy would be sufficient -which contradicts Slabinski in a big way. Velikovsky found 25 earth reversal myths and Han Kloosterman has continued with that research and the number currently stands at 60 world wide myths of the earth reversing (or so he says). Peter Warlow’s tippetop model is the perfect mechanism for geomagnetic reversals, he adds, the mantle turning over around the nucleus which keeps it’s position to the ecliptic (the planet within a planet model is academically acceptable since the 1990s he adds). Kloosterman informs Burchard, ‘I might be rather more alternative than you are … ‘. Burchard says he will forward his communications to George Howard – and Leroy. He then asks about impacts caused by LIPs and clearly still thinks impacts caused pole reversals. He goes on to claim an impact event occurred at the end of the Triassic (see earlier post on In the News) which caused extinctions – and split apart four continents to form the proto-Atlantic (somewhere near the Azores). Kloosterman responds, ‘Hermann, I have no trouble with tippetop mechanics – I don’t believe impacts caused pole reversals’. He then goes on to suggest the term pole reversal should be avoided because most people then think of axial shift. With an 180 degree axial shift N becomes S, yes, but E and W continue to be E and W. With a tippetop reversal N becomes S and E becomes W. The Sun will then rise in the west. Perhaps some impacts might result in reversals but Kloosterman favours geomagnetic events and reversals per Flodmark. This is then followed by a piece on Impact Volcanism. Comet and asteroid impacts striking oceans and regions with thin continental crust (such as Yellowstone) are capable of excavating deep initial cavities that may penetrate into the mantle. Magma might then erupt and create flood basalt geological formations – and create what has become known as hotspots. The older theory is that hotspots sit on top of mantle plumes that rise from the core-mantle boundary but this cannot be proven in spite of research using seismic tornography. Seismic tornography, however, has proved the Yellowstone hotspot is shallow – which fits the impact theory.
Impact craters, as such, can be obscured by flood basalt intrusions, and later orogenies, plate tectonics, or simple erosion. Large Igneous Provinces (those LIPs) of magmatic lavas, cover a large area of the planet. Examples, Burchard suggests, are i) the Azores (no crater is apparent but could be buried under eruptive material from volcanoes), ii) central Atlantic Magmatic Province, the largest of all the LIPs, iii) Impact at Mumbai/Seychelles at end of Cretaceous, contemporary with Chicxulub, the Shiva fragment (date is controversial), and the LIP he suggests is the Deccan Traps. iv) Siberian impact end of Permian (LIP is the Siberian Traps and Patoranu Plateau), v) Hawaii hotspot – created the ancestral Pacific, a huge basin that covers half the planet, and vi) the Modoc Plateau in NE California (bordering Nebraska), early Miocene. The LIP includes the Columbia River flood basalts, and vii) the Kerguelen and Southern Ocean (see earlier post on In the News).
A fascinating exchange by two catastrophists.