Richard B. Firestone

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Richard B. Firestone (born September 19, 1945 in Los Angeles ) is an American chemist.

Firestone grew up in Evanston, Illinois and studied chemistry at the University of Michigan with a bachelor's degree in 1967 and a PhD in nuclear chemistry from Michigan State University in 1974 . After that he was employed scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , where he was group leader of the Isotope Project.

He became known for the impact hypothesis first presented in his book in 2006 , which in his opinion is said to have caused the cold snap in the Younger Dryas, including the end of the Clovis culture and the extinction of large fauna (mammoth, saber-toothed tiger). He thinks he has found evidence of this in a layer at the beginning of the Younger Dryas with iridium enrichment, carbon spheres and other combustion aerosols, platinum enrichment, nanodiamonds, vitreous carbon with fullerenes and indications of large-scale global forest fires, which in his opinion lead to a Indicates impact in the Laurentian Ice Sheet in North America 12,900 years ago. In a modified thesis, he and colleagues (such as chemistry professor Wendy S. Wolbach) assume several impacts from a broken part of asteroid with predominant atmospheric explosions (airbursts). The thesis is controversial, well-known critics include the impact specialist Mark Boslough . Firestone published support for his thesis in 2018 with colleagues.

From the fact that the accumulation of radioactive C14 isotopes was higher in the last 50,000 years, Firestone concludes that at least four supernova explosions in the vicinity of the earth (distance less than 250 parsecs ) during this period also had an impact on the disruption of asteroid orbits with a higher probability of impact on earth.

He should not be confused with the physical chemist Richard F. Firestone (* 1926).

Fonts

  • Editor: Table of Radioactive Isotopes, Wiley 1986
  • Editor with Virginia S. Shirley: Tables of Isotopes, Wiley, 8th edition, multiple volumes, 1996, 1998 update
  • Editor: Handbook of Prompt Gamma Activation Analysis, Kluwer 2004
  • with Allen West, Simon Warwick-Smith: The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes. Flood, Fire and Famine in the History of Civilization, Bear and Company (Inner Traditions), Rochester / Vermont 2006

Individual evidence

  1. Firestone et al. a., Evidence for an extraterrestrial impact 12,900 years ago that contributed to the megafaunal extinctions and the Younger Dryas cooling, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 104, 2007, pp. 16016-16021, online
  2. Wendy Wolbach, Firestone et al. a., Extraordinary Biomass-Burning Episode and Impact Winter Triggered by the Younger Dryas Cosmic Impact ∼12,800 Years Ago, 2 parts, J. of Geology, Volume 126, 2018, doi : 10.1086 / 695704 , Research Gate
  3. ^ Biography given on the occasion of a lecture, North Carolina Geological Society February 2009