Holocene Impact Working Group

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The Holocene Impact Working Group is an association of scientists who postulate that there were more major meteor impacts on Earth in the Holocene than previously assumed. The group includes:

  • Ted Bryant, geomorphologist, Wollongong University, Australia
  • Dallas Abbott, research scientist, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, New York
  • Slava Gusiakov, Novosibirsk Tsunami Laboratory, Russia
  • Marie-Agnès Courty, Soil Scientist, European Center for Prehistoric Research, Tautavel, France
  • Dee Breger († 2016), Drexel University, Philadelphia
  • Bruce Masse, archaeologist, Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico

One of the group's theses is the impact of a double asteroid about 1,500 years ago off the north coast of Australia. To find such underwater craters, the HIWG uses the fact that meteorite impacts in the oceans always trigger very large tsunamis, which are able to wash ocean rocks and debris particularly far into the interior of the adjacent coasts. Based on the thickness and orientation of these tsunami deposits, their origin can be localized very precisely. At the position determined in this way off the northwest coast of Australia, two neighboring, crater-like structures were found, which were named by the HIWG Tabban (12 km diameter) and Kanmare (18 km diameter) and which, according to the scientists involved, were also based on mineralogical structures Traces (impact glasses) give the possibility that it could be the point of impact of a small double asteroid. Further underwater crater structures found by the HIWG based on tsunami deposits are:

Grendel (North Sea, 18 km diameter), Quetzalcoatl (Caribbean, 10 km diameter), Burckle (Indian Ocean, 29 km diameter), Kangaroo (Indian Ocean, 5 km diameter), Joey (Indian Ocean, 4 km diameter) and Judge ( Long Island Sound, 1 km in diameter).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://tsun.sscc.ru/hiwg/hiwg.htm
  2. ↑ Drexel University - Materials Science and Engineering , October 28, 2016, " Remembering Dee Breger " (accessed: August 5, 2017)
  3. ↑ https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2006AM/finalprogram/abstract_113233.htm
  4. ↑ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/02/100203-asteroid-collision-earth-global-cooling/