In which work did ibn Arabi wrote: the universe is a mirror in which God contemplates His own beauty? Reference online?

The quote "The universe is a mirror in which God contemplates His own beauty" is often attributed to the influential Sufi mystic Ibn Arabi (1165–1240). While the exact phrasing may vary in translation, this idea is a central theme in his works, particularly in:

1. Fusus al-Hikam ("The Bezels of Wisdom")

   • This is one of Ibn Arabi's most famous works, where he discusses divine wisdom through the perspectives of various prophets.
   • The concept of the universe as a reflection of God's attributes is key to his metaphysics.

2. Al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya ("The Meccan Revelations")

   • His monumental work elaborates on the idea that creation is a manifestation of God's names and attributes.

Online References:

• You can find discussions of this concept in Ibn Arabi's works on sites like:
  • The Ibn Arabi Society (which provides translations and commentaries).
  • Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Ibn Arabi (for philosophical context).

Note on the Quote: While the exact wording may not appear verbatim in his texts, the essence is clearly present in his teachings on "Tajalli (Divine Self-Manifestation)" and the idea that the cosmos reflects God's beauty. If you're looking for a direct citation, checking Chapter 1 of Fusus al-Hikam (on Adam as the mirror of Divine Names) or sections of Futuhat on Divine Love would be helpful.

Would you like help locating a specific passage?

YouTube. The Music of the Spheres: Pythagoras & the Cosmic Symphony

Documentary: The Younger Dryas Comet Impact: An Investigation

21 Jan 2025

A deep dive into the strength of the hypothesis that a comet hit the earth 12,800 years ago and wiped out megafauna and human societies.

Introduction: What is the YDIH?

0:00

for regular videos on ancient cultures and forgotten civilizations Please Subscribe I've been making videos for

0:07

this channel since 2019 and from the very beginning I've looked into evidence presented by those

0:13

who wish to establish that there existed a lost Advanced civilization in the last ice age that was destroyed in a

0:20

worldwide cataclysm because my area of interest and expertise is in ancient

0:25

historical times beginning with the Advent of writing around 5,000 years ago

0:31

I focused chiefly on the evidence relating to ancient artifacts and archaeological sites commonly dating to

0:38

that time but I've received countless requests for me to consider evidence relating to what is commonly called the

0:45

younger dest impact hypothesis abbreviated yd which is used by many if

0:51

not most proponents for the existence of A Lost advanc Civilization as evidence

0:57

for the cataclysm that they believe destroyed it I've avoided getting into it because this is a huge and complex

1:03

topic that is outside of my own field and to be honest evidence for a cataclysm is not evidence for a lost

1:10

Advanced civilization it doesn't change the dates of ancient artifacts so it really hasn't been a priority but I'm a

1:17

curious fellow and the repeated int treaties that I do a video about it finally persuaded me to wade into the

1:23

waters and look into the subject more deeply so I have contacted various

1:28

experts in the field relating to this question to get their thoughts on the matter so that I can determine whether

1:34

there is something to this hypothesis this video is about this research it's a

1:40

long one but if you're interested in matters relating to this proposed cataclysm stick around

2:00

welcome to the myths of ancient history series in which I examine widely believed misinformation about ancient

2:06

history on the internet and in popular literature does the younger dest impact

2:11

hypothesis fall into that category is this impact a myth well most subject

2:17

experts seem to think it is they haven't found the hypothesis persuasive and I

2:22

wanted to find out why do they have good reasons or are they just resistant to new ideas let's dig in I guess we should

2:30

start by going over some of the key Concepts involved here what is the younger dras it's a period of time in

2:37

the earth's geologic history and it ran from about 12,900 to 11,700 years ago or

2:45

I should say years before present BP in scientific terms before present means

2:50

before the year 1950 the younger dras is notable because it was a colder period

2:56

than what had come before or after it began with a relative L fast cooling and ended with a relatively fast warming but

3:03

this happened only in the northern hemisphere in the southern hemisphere warming occurred it's interesting

3:09

because in the preceding time period the opposite was occurring the Northern Hemisphere had been warming while the

3:15

southern had been cooling but from what I understand this seesaw effect is

3:20

natural however the younger dras impact hypothesis yd proposes that at the beginning of the

3:27

younger dest period there was a c MC event of some kind the exact kind of

3:32

event has changed in the papers over time but the current view is that a

3:38

giant equal or greater to 100 km diameter Comet entered an earth Crossing

3:43

orbit in the inner solar system and began a Cascade of disintegrations numerous commentary

3:49

fragments from the debris stream entered Earth's atmosphere about 12,800 years

3:55

ago and detonated above in or collided with land

4:00

ice sheets and oceans across at least four continents in the northern and

4:05

southern hemispheres these are proposed to have triggered extensive wildfires as well as massive flooding sufficient to

4:12

alter major ocean currents leading ultimately to the younger dest cooling

4:17

many megaphon extinctions and significant changes to human populations

4:23

and cultures as you might imagine alternative history enthusiasts who believe in a lost Advanced civilization

4:29

have latched onto this Theory and indeed several of the people contributing to the papers on the yd are sympathetic to

4:36

Alternative history you see if a mass extinction event occurred then we have an explanation for why there is no

4:43

archaeological proof that the Lost Advance civilization existed mind you the theory doesn't fit perfectly with

4:49

their ideas for example the yd does not propose that there was a single mass

4:55

extinction event but rather that there was a ripple effect that caused Mass extinctions over time during the younger

5:02

dest period the ancient myths about a great flood that we find In some cultures which occurred in one day or in

5:09

one month or in one year according to the stories which alt history proponents want to associate with the yd do not

5:16

line up that well with a ripple effect when these myths provide dates for the event these also do not line up so for

5:22

example Plato's date for the destruction of Atlantis is a thousand years after

5:28

the date for the impact event so alt history proponents have to fudge a bit to make it work and that's why it's

5:34

ancient apocalypse because because we know that there was a global cataclysm a

5:39

slow one 1,200 years long between 12,800 and 11,600 years ago called the younger

5:45

dryers that's a 1200 year Gap go go slow

5:50

catastrophe well no no goly Tey we to be very clear about about the younger Drass

5:56

one of the puzzling things about it is that you have C CSM at the beginning and This Global temperature slump is surely

6:03

cataclysmic by any standards and you have cataclysm at the end you have uh a

6:09

massive spike a huge increase in global temperatures and you have meltwater pulse 1B you have a lot of water going

6:16

into the ocean at that time so both ends of the younger drus are cataclysmic and it's at the recent end of the younger

6:22

drus 11,600 years ago that we see gobec tee mysteriously popping up the focus of

6:28

the science has been on 12,000 800 years ago but there's a lot of interest in the 11,600 years ago as well and the

6:35

strongest suggestion of what caused that that sudden rise in temperatures

6:40

accompanied by meltwater pulse 1B was a second encounter with more fragments of

6:46

the debris of the Comet this time the impacts not being on the North American ice cap but in a major ocean probably

6:53

the Pacific and that that then put puts a huge plume of water vapor into the upper atmosphere and shrouds the Earth

7:01

and creates the greenhouse effect that accounts for the radical rise in temperature that occurred 11,600 years

7:07

ago more science needs to be done on that an additional difficulty for alt history purveyors is that when we are

7:13

talking about a series of Extinction events rather than one big one there's the problem of having to explain how a

7:19

lost Advanced civilization that was spread around the globe could not have survived this series of Extinction

7:25

events would need to have happened in relatively quick succession otherwise wise there would have been time for the

7:31

civilization to bounce back but even though the impact hypothesis doesn't fit their story all that well they still are

7:37

enamored with it and one reason is because it is a rare thing when they can use actual published science papers to

7:43

back up their claims most of their evidence can be found only on the internet and in pop books so when there

7:49

are actual scientific studies this is something to put up on a pedestal but we cannot forget that the impact hypothesis

7:55

has no direct bearing on whether a lost Advance civilization exist existed this is even admitted by some they are not

8:02

saying that it also wiped out a l Advanced civilization of prehistory I'm saying that yeah the only way to know if

8:09

there was an advanced civilization back then is to find it but I think we should still look into the matter of impacts if

8:16

there was a series of mass extinction events then this could explain why evidence of the Lost advanc Civilization

8:21

is lacking maybe I just got these new earbuds

8:27

they're called the raycon everyday ear earbuds and I have to tell you they're

8:32

fantastic I've always hated putting earbuds in my ears because they're usually uncomfortable after 5 minutes I

8:38

want to just toss them but these ones don't bother me at all and one of the reasons is because they're designed so

8:45

ergonomically well and they have several different size gels so I just picked the

8:50

one that fits my ears the best and now I can listen with no pain I can also choose between awareness mode or active

8:57

noise cancellation and there are touch controls right on them so I can just tap to adjust the volume or navigate tracks

9:03

or whatever I like to use them when I'm writing I'll put on some music and get me in the right mood or when I'm walking

9:08

the dog in the morning I'll listen to a podcast anyway I thought you might want to know about these in case you wanted

9:14

to get a pair they're high quality waterresistant dust proof and at the same time very affordable you can hook

9:21

up two devices on it and it will automatically switch to whatever device you're playing there are two mics on

9:27

each earbud that work very well and so you can also use them to make calls the battery when fully charged has 32 hours

9:34

of life and the part about charging that I really like is it charges fast with 10

9:39

minutes of charging I can get like an hour and a half of battery life so I contacted raycon and I said if I tell my

9:45

viewers about the earbuds can I give them a discount and they said yes so if you click the link I left below the

9:51

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earbuds or any of the other Recon products there's also a 30-day satisfaction guarantee so for any reason

10:02

you don't love it you can return it for a full refund or an exchange but I think you'll love

Uniformitarianism vs Catastrophism

10:08

it one of the criticisms of modern geology that you will hear alternative history proponents give is that today's

10:14

geologist do not give enough consideration to the idea that catastrophes have shaped Earth's

10:20

geological history many many scientists have got a vested interest in what is called uniformitarianism or gradualism

10:27

and they they don't like to hear about C Ms having any major impact on the story of life on Earth there's a denial um of

10:34

the role of cataclysms in the human story and there there is even a word for that in in science and it's called

10:41

uniformitarianism and and this is a particular philosophy of science where the view is that everything as we see it

10:47

in the world today is how things have always been so if we don't see cataclysms today and they're not playing

10:53

a major part in our story today then there weren't cataclysms and they didn't play a major part in our story in the

11:00

past Adam sedick Roderick merch we could go through the list of those they all

11:05

were almost to a man catastrophist they believed that the features and things

11:10

that they were seeing in the landscape could only be explained by means of catastrophic outsize type events what

11:17

happened when you get sort to the mid 19th century is you had Playfair Lyall and Hutton were the three who

11:23

essentially codified the uniformitarian interpretation of Earth history and again like I said it was very potent

11:30

very powerful for understanding sedimentary processes understanding erosional and depositional processes all

11:36

of these things but it came became codified as Dogma by the time you get to

11:41

the establishment of theology as an academic discipline in the late 19th century they wanted to basically come up

11:47

with this textbook framework that could be codified and taught as Dogma I always

11:53

thought that today's geologists accept the ideas of both uniformitarianism and catastrophism so the first thing I

12:00

wanted to do was to consult with a geologist to talk about the idea of catastrophes and mass extinction events

12:06

in general so I reached out to Rachel Phillips a geologist and professor at the University of South Carolina she has

12:14

a great YouTube channel called Geo girl that you should check out Rachel Phillips thank you so much for joining

12:20

us today I just have some questions I want to ask you and I'm hoping that you can clear a few things up for us uh

12:26

because this area is not really uh Forte so I I wanted to know from someone who

12:32

actually knows geology knows about mass extinctions and what they could tell us

12:37

about this so thanks again for joining us yeah absolutely in my travels uh I

12:44

hear people talking about this um sort of rivalry between two different ways of approaching geology

12:51

uniformitarianism and catastrophism and uh well first of all can you tell us a little bit about the

12:57

difference between the two and how they play into geology and then uh as I I

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want to ask you the question if there's any truth in the claim that some people make that uh catastrophes aren't really

13:11

considered by modern geologists today they don't really think about catastrophes and what their effect on

13:17

the geological record are yeah of course so for the first

13:22

thing the uniformitarianism versus the catastrophism um basically uniformitarianism is kind of like

13:29

fundamental thing that geologists think about which is you know the geological

13:35

processes that occur on Earth today like sedimentation deposition just rock

13:40

formation the rock cycle basically uh those have occurred throughout Earth history that's the idea and that

13:47

basically helps us understand I mean the way people summarize it is the present is the key to the past so with the

13:54

knowledge that you know these processes have been occurring throughout Earth's history about the same rate and you know

14:00

the same way uh we can reconstruct kind of how Earth has been shaped over time

14:06

geologically and that's kind of how we can use uniformitarianism and and it works really well um but then you know

14:14

catastrophes the catastrophism part of it is kind of instead of gradual slow

14:21

you know geologic time scale processes taking place and slowly forming Earth um

14:27

you know it's this idea a that you know rapid abrupt catastrophes kind of have

14:33

punctuated our history and those have largely caused you know how Earth has

14:39

ended up I think early on more so than now these two ideas were more so Rivals

14:46

and now um I think the PE the mo the geologists that I surround myself with

14:51

in modern geology we tend to think that both of these things played a big role and and continue to play a big role in

14:57

shaping Earth um over geologic time of course and you know I think that if

15:04

anywhere the idea that catastrophes don't um you know can be dismissed or

15:11

don't play a role and it's just uniformitarianism if anywhere that idea I guess in my you know the way that I

15:18

think about it that might have come from kind of just a fuzzy line between the two definitions because you know when we

15:24

first thought about these ideas they seemed you know radically contrasting each other but um when you think about

15:31

it you for example mass extinctions uh I you know I talk a lot about mass

15:36

extinctions on my channel and I think of them as catastrophic events but um you

15:41

know if you think about it they've happened so regularly throughout Earth's history that one could argue that

15:48

there're this regular patterned process that occurs on earth that could fall

15:54

under the category of uniformitarianism because there this uniform kind of almost predictive type thing that will

16:00

happen and has Contin happen so catastrophes happen sort of at at intervals throughout Earth's history so

16:08

they're they're not um unusual is that what you're saying no

16:14

not at all and and yeah they might be you know abrupt and punctuated and not

16:19

predictable per se but they happen I mean they've happened throughout Earth history over and over again there's a

16:25

few very famous mass extinction events in Earth history that get a lot of attention but there's been hundreds I mean

16:31

probably thousands that have occurred so it's not you know thousands of

16:36

catastrophes yeah yeah I mean there's like background Extinction which is one thing and then there's big spikes and

16:42

and those are the mass extinctions and of course there's local mass extinctions there's Global it depends what you're

16:47

talking about but there's been I mean it's 4.5 billion years there you know millions of years apart but they happen

16:54

all the time on geological time scales you know the way you hear some people talk like oh those geologists all they

17:00

all they seem to think about is everything's uniformitarian it's all gradual there's never any

17:06

catastrophes um but you're saying that's not true I'm not in the circles that I

17:11

you know heard that it may just be that there's a particular catastrophe that

17:17

they want to promote and because that one isn't accepted then they have to have a reason oh well it's because they

17:22

they are all gradualists over there ah yeah yeah I I do think that sometimes people get so wound up in their

17:30

hypothesis they kind of get blinded to other data but all right well and I want

17:35

to talk about then some of these mass extinctions and and catastrophes in history um can you tell us a little bit

17:42

about the ones that have happened in the past uh the big ones especially yeah of the ones that we have recorded and and

17:50

well defined in the fossil record in the last 500 million years there's five big ones that people talk the most about um

17:57

that were seemingly according to our current data the biggest five and these

18:03

include the Endor division mass extinction which occurred around 445 million years ago and this was caused

18:12

you know spoiler alert all of them have been caused by climate change the

18:17

triggers for that climate change have differed for each event but all of them ultimately the extinctions were caused

18:24

by climate change the Ovis one specifically was caused by a cooling trend that initiated because of

18:31

biological evolution actually which basically the evolution of land plants for the first time in our history caused

18:38

an increased cooling because they were taking up carbon dioxide which is greenhouse gas and they led to more

18:44

carbon burial which I won't get into but it caused Cooling and this major and

18:49

sharp rapid climate change caused extinctions and likewise the rest also

18:56

were um caused by climate change the late ionian is the next one and that happened around 365 million years ago

19:04

that one was also caused by a sharp cooling Trend again caused by evolutionary advancement of plants um

19:10

the or divition was nonvascular plants like mosses and stuff and then the devonian was caused by huge big trees

19:17

and forests evolving for the first time and so that again caused this big the appearance of new types of Life are

19:24

affecting the climate oh yeah big time I mean that's kind of early Earth history um that's kind of

19:32

just the way that things were happening because biology was making these huge advances and when those are so

19:40

beneficial that they spread globally like plants did then that causes major

19:45

change I mean can you imagine going from no trees to trees covering the world so it it did it caused really you know

19:52

extreme climate shifts and that is never good for um for life because life

19:58

doesn't like Fast Change um the next three and the big five are all not

20:04

caused by cooling they were caused by global warming uh shifts I mean either way you go anything that's rapid is

20:10

harmful to life but the next one was actually the biggest one in the last 500 million years which was the in perian

20:17

mass extinction around 250 million years ago that one was caused by Major vulcanism that one and the in Triassic

20:25

so the third and fourth one were both caused by Major vulcanism that led to a sharping so uh Mr Spock and a bunch of

20:32

people were coming from uh no this is a terrible Tad

20:38

joke okay volcanism Oh you mean volcanoes okay yeah yes yes volcanoes um but yeah

20:48

so both the end perian and the ENT Triassic so 250 and then again at 200ish

20:54

million years ago uh those two mass extinctions were both caused well caused by global warming which was triggered by

21:01

major vulcanism and you know a lot of people think like oh big massive

21:06

volcanic eruption could cause you know mass extinction yes but when we're talking about volcanism that caused

21:13

these events we're talking about like not just one volcano like a big field of volcanic activity that erupted for like

21:19

two million years so huge amounts of Volcan vulcanism leading to huge amounts

21:25

of greenhouse gases emitted to the atmosphere and very sharp Waring and that you know is what caused those

21:31

extinctions the last of the five is the kpg mass extinction around 65 million

21:37

years ago which took out the non-avian dinosaurs and that one at the end of the Cretaceous was also caused by sharp

21:44

global warming but instead of being triggered by vulcanism alone uh it was triggered by an impact so like

21:52

vulcanism an impact of you know big asteroid impact could cause similar

21:57

climate changes so if you think about a volcano or many volcanoes going off they

22:04

might initially cause um kind of a a ash blocking sunlight winter type scenario

22:11

um whereas you know in the long term the greenhouse gases will take effect and it'll cause longer term warming the same

22:18

thing is true for impact it throws up all this Ash and dust and initially there's a very intense heating period of

22:25

the terrestrial environment where Heat beting upon the immediate impact and the

22:31

re-entry of material through the atmosphere um causes just you know intense burning and and you know at the

22:37

surface and then longer term several months to years after the kpg impact we

22:43

had the impact winter so blocking of sunlight because of the dust that was still in the atmosphere and then longer

22:49

term after that we had the warming caused by all the carbonaceous material

22:54

that it impacted which was released to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide sulfur

23:00

dioxide all these greenhouse gases that led to a longer term warming Trend which

23:05

caused the most the majority of extinctions at the time so common trend

23:11

is climate change but triggered by other things I see yes triggered by volcanism or

23:17

impacts mostly okay okay now the most recent you said was 65 million years ago

23:24

right uh there are some people who are are arguing for a more recent mass

23:30

extinction uh it's usually in the context of of arguing that there was a great Advanced civilization that got

23:36

wiped out by a combet impact and this would be uh during the Stone Age um so I

23:43

wanted to ask you is it theoretically possible that a comet impact could cause

23:51

a mass extinction from what you've been saying it sounds like yes but I just wanted to get your thoughts on that yes

23:56

absolutely I think the crous kpg boundary is a great example I will say

24:02

that again you know I think a lot of people initially might have misunderstood that Extinction or even

24:09

other events that were quote unquote impact caused to be due to the impact

24:14

directly but again it's not the impact per se but the climate changes that it causes but in terms of indirect causes

24:22

yes an impact could 100% theoretically cause a mass extinction okay okay um so

24:30

let's say we wanted to determine whether there was a comet impact on Earth in the

24:37

past how would we go about ascertaining that yeah of course so you know aside

24:44

from the obvious which is an impact crater um you know a lot of times you

24:50

can have an impact and an impact crator can even though it's huge be eroded so that's not unheard of but there are

24:57

other things that are less easily erased that we can look for and these things include you know in the rock where we go

25:04

and we you know take big sections of of rock and we look for things like shock

25:09

metamorphosed rock or shocked quartz often it's called um basically this is

25:14

when so metamorphism in geology is the process where rocks are altered by high temperature and pressure and this can

25:21

happen upon impact because the impact is you know in the rocks that it's impacting causing really intense heat

25:29

and really intense pressure at that moment and that kind of immediately

25:34

melts and and partially melts and Alters a bunch of the Rocks both in structure and composition and the way that impacts

25:42

occur kind of Alters or Metamorphoses those rocks in a way that's distinct

25:48

from other metamorphic you know alterations so we can sometimes see these things and we call that structure

25:53

that it forms shock structure or shocked rocks and times when we see these in the

25:59

Rock record we can say that that was caused by an impact um another thing is

26:04

um well similar to that would this be just where where the impact would have occurred or would it be more

26:11

widespread no this would be local you know in proximity to the impact it would

26:16

be kind of you know you could you should be able to see a gradual shift toward

26:22

less metamorphosed rocks going away from the proposed impact site um there's of

26:28

course you know after things solidify there's of course like tectonics and erosion and weathering

26:34

that can cause them to move out of the place they were originally but you know they shouldn't move across the globe so

26:41

you should have it relatively in proximity to where you think the impact occurred um oh I probably should have

26:46

asked this before but um would would um could a mass extinction occur uh if the

26:55

U the Comet or whatever Heavenly Body there was but if it broke up in the atmosphere and impacted in in uh in more

27:04

minor ways all over the planet yeah I I think again you know

27:09

every answer in Sciences it depends but but it does because one it depends on

27:15

the size of the object and um you know how many fragments how large the

27:20

fragments are you know when they broke up in the atmosphere and of I think

27:26

mostly where they impact um whether it's in water whether it's on land whether it's you know at the

27:33

equator or toward the poles because that greatly affects then how you know they

27:39

affect climate oh and especially whether so one example with the Cretaceous impact was that it impacted rocks that

27:47

were really rich in um you know a type of rock called evaporite rocks which are

27:53

basically rocks that have a lot of carbonates and sulfate minerals and those carbonates and sulfates upon

27:59

impact immediately like vaporized into carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide so those gases are then greenhouse gases

28:06

and so if it had impacted an area where there was less carbon and sulfur then

28:11

maybe it wouldn't have caused such you know extreme global warming you know so it really depends on the composition of

28:18

the Rocks too that it's it's in impacting so you know yes but but it depends I see okay what a um what an an

28:27

impact in um uh in certain areas cause

28:32

enough warming where it could like melt the ice caps and cause major floods yeah yeah that would be it could

28:43

um yeah I'm trying I mean you know all my knowledge comes from like things that have happened um well specifically uh I

28:51

mean like um there are some people who say that um all the world's flood myth

28:59

uh about you know catastrophes with floods are relating back to this event

29:05

this is one of the the theories out there relating back to this event um when uh the comet impacted the Earth or

29:13

fragments of a comet and this melted the ice caps and C caused um a worldwide

29:19

flood I want to know geologically how likely that would be

29:26

worldwide I don't I mean the thing is with comets even if they fragment I mean

29:32

it's still a localized event I mean unless literally it's all happening at once Sur Earth which I wouldn't at that

29:40

point you wouldn't get a flood you would get like massive like magmatism and I

29:45

mean you'd be back in the hadian like when Earth was molent it just if it's localized which it has been since but I

29:52

mean what about the overall climate change could could the warming of the globe cause major

29:59

um it would cause a rise in sea level right what if it would cause a rise in sea level um but this would be gradual

30:05

or or quick no gradual oh be gradual thing is with the impacts is all of the

30:12

immediate effects are relatively local so like the metamorphism or the intense heating everything there is relatively

30:19

local because that's all associated with the impact and its ejecta that is all

30:24

proximal to where it landed and then the impact when would also kind of hinder the process of any melting because that

30:32

would lead to Cooling and then over the long term which is much more gradual you would get warming but that wouldn't be a

30:38

quick thing you know so you know it' be on geologic time scales if we're talking

30:44

about so the Cretaceous for example which is the one you know that I know that one was over millions of years so

30:50

so no not not with thousands or hundreds MH okay okay um so again uh uh I don't

31:00

know if we finished this but as far as what Clues we would look for in the geological record to show that there had

31:06

been uh well first of all there had been a common impact but also that there had been uh uh climate change that could

31:14

cause a mass extinction what Clues would we find yeah so again with the impact so

31:21

things like shocked you know rocks and um other impact you know hinting rocks

31:28

would be things like uh ejecta which are kind of these glass balls or teardrop

31:34

shaped rocks that form by the immediately melting upon impact and then being thrown through the atmosphere and

31:40

cooling while they're traveling through the atmosphere so things like that um and also a big one that we talk about at

31:47

the Cretaceous boundary is aridium so idium is something that's really it's a common uh or it's not common it's very

31:55

rare metal on Earth but it's very much more common in extraterrestrial material comets asteroids Etc and um it you know

32:04

there's a big layer of it around where the Cretaceous pale Gene boundary is because after impact that was all laid

32:11

down um after everything the dust settled per se um and then another kind of then you have instead of immediate

32:18

impact evidence you have like contextual evidence which is like you know were there fires or tsunamis which you'd

32:25

expect proximal to the impact um it landed in or near water it probably

32:30

caused tsunamis the intense heating around it would have caused fires so you you expect to see those things preserved

32:36

in the Rock record if you have a good rock section from that area um and so

32:42

those would kind of give you an idea of the impact um the climate I mean you know this comes to

32:51

like are you looking for climate are you just looking to reconstruct paleo climate in the rocks

32:57

or are you looking for impact specific climate change if you're looking for impact specific climate change you would

33:04

probably look for some sort of order of events like hints of warming and the the

33:10

immediate you know time after very shortlived intense warming by the way GE

33:17

geologically how do you determine uh whether warming is fast and or slow is well that would just be the

33:26

measure of the section kind of so you know the thicker The Rock deposit the longer you know something was the case

33:34

you know whether those rocks indicate a cooling Trend or a warming Trend you know they you know the thicker it is the

33:41

longer it happened but um yeah the the immediate intense warming right after impact would almost be just I hardly any

33:49

thick just no thickness but you get like a tiny little layer maybe in some areas proximal to impact where you might see

33:56

evidence for um iridium or fires or tsunami deposits which are a little bit

34:02

thicker but you have to also have the context of this is a tsunami so a lot more is deposited than in terrestrial

34:10

environments where dust is just settling so sometimes thickness isn't exactly you know related to timing but you have to

34:17

also have the context of what you're looking at as in the geological record um but then you know thereafter you'd

34:25

expect to see evidence of impact winter um and and Cooling and then longer term

34:32

warming um and and there's I mean I don't know there it's hard to list one thing we look for when we talk about

34:39

cooling or warming evidence because there's so like hundreds of proxies that we look for most of it not visible to

34:45

the naked eye we look at the chemistry the composition of the Rock and that tells us a lot about you know whether it

34:52

was cooling or warming so that's kind of harder to go into detail because there's nothing physical really you'd see but

34:59

the more the more evidences that you have the stronger the case that it occurred oh yeah there's you know

35:05

there's no case made when there's only like one of these things found they kind of all have to overlap for then there to

35:12

be like a really good case for an impact caused climate event okay since we had

35:18

this conversation Rachel has done a ful length video on the younger drias impact hypothesis called what caused the

35:24

younger dest cooling megaphon extinctions and Clovis disappearance which covers points I do not cover in

35:30

this video so be sure to give it a watch over at the geog girl channel anyway it sounds to me like today's geologists do

35:38

incorporate catastrophes in the geological history of Earth but hypothesis about catastrophes need to be

35:44

judged on a caseby casee basis according to the geological

Impact Evidence

35:54

evidence now I want to get into the younger drias impact hypothesis is specifically this theory is the special

36:00

interest of an organization called the comet research group who have been organized specifically to promote the

36:06

hypothesis and to research Comet impacts in General on their website they offer

36:11

this description of themselves think our last space attack was 65 million years ago from the dinosaur killer asteroid

36:19

think again killer comets are more common than you've been taught at crg

36:24

our mission is to find evidence about Comet impacts and raise awareness about them before your city is next they have

36:31

a convenient overview page where they describe the yd in detail and speak in very positive terms that it actually

36:38

happened why should we care they ask because they can change climate suddenly

36:44

because they often cause great tsunamis because more will hit us in the future they provide funding for research on the

36:50

yd listing 63 scientists whose work they have supported but noting that some

36:56

scientists listed support the younger Dy impact hypothesis and some do not they

37:01

don't say how many there have been a plethora of papers published on various aspects of the yd so for someone just

37:07

waiting in it can be confusing especially if you're not familiar with all the jargon but there are some papers

37:13

that we can go to to get the basics laid out for us perhaps no one has been a bigger defender of it than Martin

37:19

swatman a professor of chemical engineering at Edinboro University do you remember him he's the fellow who

37:24

came up with the theory about pillar 43 at Quebec teepe being a time stamp that records the younger dest comet impact on

37:32

it I've already done two videos examining that idea which you can check out later if you're interested he wrote

37:37

a defense of the impact hypothesis called the younger drias impact hypothesis review of The Evidence which

37:43

was published in earth science reviews in 2021 and is a handy reference guide to the state of research at least up to

37:50

that year mind you Sweatman is not a specialist in comets or planetary impacts or geomorphology or gey ology

37:58

and he has a vested interest in this topic because his proposal that pillar 43 at gbec Lee records the impact event

38:05

depends on there being an impact event but his paper conveniently lays out all their arguments for you people who are

38:11

specialists in the science involved have written a lengthy reference guide as well a team of 13 wrote a paper in 2023

38:18

called a comprehensive reputation of the younger D impact hypothesis also

38:24

published in earth science reviews we'll be talking to two of the authors in this video if you are waiting into this topic

38:31

these two papers are probably the first two you should read the pieces of evidence usually given for the impact

38:36

include these impact markers consisting of microscopic debris magnetic iron-rich

38:42

spals glassy silic spheral high temperature melt glass Nano diamonds

38:49

soot ainor carbon ferin containing helium 3 you might wonder about craters

38:56

as far as I've been able to to tell proponents of the yd have not been able to positively identify any craters

39:03

saying that airbursts would not have made craters and if there were any ground impacts this would have been on

39:08

the ice sheets and would have melted away as far as this list goes my understanding is that not all of these

39:14

are generally accepted by scientists as evidence of impacts but I had to talk to someone about that to get details and

39:21

find out for sure so I reached out to Mark bosow research professor of Earth and planetary science at the University

39:27

of New Mexico he is a physicist and an expert in planetary impacts and catastrophes he is one of the authors of

39:34

the comprehensive reputation paper here's what he had to say okay everyone I have here with me Mark

39:40

baslo uh from uh UNM and he is going to tell us all about planetary impacts and

39:48

catastrophes so uh Mark thanks for uh taking the time to be with me today to answer some of my

39:55

questions sure happy here uh can you tell me a little bit about your area of

40:01

expertise what and what Drew you into this discussion about the possible comet impact during the younger dras period

40:07

yeah well good question i' I've been interested in impacts actually since I was a kid um we used to camp out in the

40:15

backyard and watch meteors during the persed meteor meteor shower every August

40:21

um I almost experienced a major Fireball on a family vacation

40:28

1972 probably seen the movie the home movie of it flying over the Tetons we

40:35

were there at the time and we didn't know what it was of course that was pre-

40:40

interet pre YouTube pre everything and I didn't even read about it for several years until I was in college um and

40:48

there was an article about it um and it was actually observed by space based

40:53

sensors um which turned out to be something that I worked on many years later at sanyia National

41:00

Laboratories um and and actually knew the guy that designed the centers that were aboard you know these satellites

41:07

that were there to observe possible nuclear explosions um and rocket launches and

41:13

other things that that generate light and then I got very interested in Impact

41:19

cratering I went to Caltech um started working in a Jew

41:25

physics lab with a two-stage light gas gun that fires projectiles at very high speed and did experiments high pressure

41:33

experiments both impact cratering and shocking minerals to very high pressures

41:39

um to determine how they behave at very deep depths in the Earth's

41:44

mantle um and I got to do some experiments at the NASA AMS Research Center two-stage light gas gun that aims

41:51

vertical gun making craters and then I got a job at Sandia and spent spent my

41:57

time as an experimentalist doing more impact and explosion experiment before I

42:02

switched in the mid 90s uh to doing computational impact physics so my

42:09

interest switched to the Computing side but I was very interested in remained

42:16

interested in the experimental part because that's how we validate you know check to make sure our

42:23

computational simulations are right so I was very grounded in actual experimental data wow well it

42:31

doesn't sound like you have anything against impacts in general uh so not at all no I I took you know one of my

42:39

favorite professors when I was at celtech was Jean Shoemaker who you know he basically was the guy who you know

42:47

LED what was the time or prior to when I was there but during his time pretty

42:53

much of a paradigm shift in you know the importance of impacts and impact

42:59

cratering on the moon other planets and even the Earth okay all right well about

43:05

this younger dras common impact hypothesis is it your position that it it definitely did not happen or that it

43:13

could have happened but they just haven't presented sufficient evidence for it well uh you know their hypothesis and

43:22

it's not just one hypothesis they've got multiple versions of the hypothesis that

43:28

actually contradict one another but none of the ideas that they published um

43:35

could have possibly happened because they're physically impossible what they describe as physically impossible

43:40

explosions in outer space Comet explosions 500 kilometers above the

43:45

surface of the Earth that created these firestorms in North America impacts and

43:51

airburst just don't work that way it's it's just not a physically viable hypothesis

43:57

well like are you saying like breaking up in the air that doesn't happen or it doesn't happen the way that they're saying it happened it doesn't happen the

44:04

way they say and and their original Firestone 2007 paper described a 5

44:12

kilometer diameter Comet breaking up in outer space and exploding in outer space

44:17

and that doesn't work now other versions yeah they describe things exploding in

44:24

the atmosphere but that's something different and a different physical

44:29

process that is viable but now they're you know they're claiming that there were thousands of

44:36

these things and I don't really see any evidence for that I mean something like

44:41

that less than 13,000 years ago the evidence would be obvious and undeniable

44:46

and it wouldn't have taken until 2007 for people to figure that out Jean Shoemaker would have figured it out and

44:54

probably somebody before him well as I understand you've done some research on the comet research group um yes and I I

45:02

want to hear a little bit what you found can you tell me a little bit about you know how it came together and uh and

45:07

what your assessment of this group is yeah so that I mean they didn't create this comment research group until

45:15

I think it was 2016 um you know they started publishing

45:20

this group started publishing and and their first you know publication in the

45:25

scientific literature was this 2007 paper but they had already published some stuff going back to 2001 there was

45:33

a paper by the lead author was Firestone Firestone and topping and it was in a newsletter um called the mammoth trumpet

45:40

and they first started putting their ideas out there at that time and then they published a book in 2006 but the

45:48

scientific Community wasn't paying they published a book before they published a scientific

45:54

paper yes yeah and it Firestone West

45:59

and some other guy whose name I can't remember who was like the public their publicist and I think who worked for the

46:06

publishing company that they they published in which was known for publishing sort of pseudo scientific

46:13

stuff um uh uh bar uh new tradition

46:19

inner Traditions Baron company and if you go to their website you can see all sorts of kind of alternative stuff death

46:28

um not scientific so that was their entry into this um and and most of the

46:36

content of the Firestone 2007 paper which was in the proceedings in the National Academy of

46:42

Science that research was done in support of this book for our inner

46:48

traditions and and so it didn't really have it never really had a scientific basis peer-review papers have come out

46:56

by them right several of them have passed peerreview surely that must count for something they got actual scientists uh publishing

47:04

peer-reviewed papers that's right and and we were unaware of this but or at least I was

47:10

unaware of this when the Firestone paper came out in 2007 we all assumed that it had been

47:18

peer-reviewed by the normal process but it you know somebody at some point started looking into this and realized

47:25

that no uh proceedings of the National Academy of of Sciences has more than one track for

47:32

peer review and if you are a member of the academy you can kind of Bypass or end run the normal review process get

47:40

one of your pals to act as a pre-arranged editor and send out your paper to some

47:46

pre-selected friendly reviewers and so it appears that that's what happened with all their early papers at least

47:53

seven papers went through a process that was either that or something very

47:58

similar to that with the same pre-arranged editor or or communicating um member in in every case

48:06

somebody who had actually expressed um the opinion that it was their job to get this stuff published

48:13

which is not normal peerreview normally an editor it's not their job to get it

48:19

published it's their job to make sure that it's right that it you know doesn't violate any principles and that it's l

48:27

peer-reviewed so I don't think any of these early papers were properly peer-reviewed I see um more recent ones

48:35

perhaps have been or no well yeah yeah there were papers published in the journal geology

48:42

and scientific reports uh and and several other journals GL Journal of glaciology but

48:50

but here's the problem I see I think by the time it got into being submitted to

48:56

those journals you know the reviewers and the editors saw these pnas papers and they they

49:02

hadn't been clued into the fact that those weren't properly peer-reviewed so they assumed that like a lot of the

49:09

evidence that was presented in those papers or the claimed evidence really didn't have any true evidence to back

49:15

them up so in some sense I think the you know the evidence was laundered into

49:21

peerreview it was never properly peer reviewed and then once it was perceived

49:26

to to have been peer-reviewed it became accepted and repeated and through

49:32

repetition started thinking that it was yeah that it was legitimate evidence and I mean one

49:39

example of this is their very one of their very first major claims and that was the discovery of ferin with

49:46

extraterrestrial helium they have never published any evidence for that they

49:51

made a claim in the Firestone 2007 paper it's been repeated and repeated again

49:58

and again but they've never coughed up the actual evidence nobody I know has ever seen it and I'm guessing that most

50:03

of the co-authors have have never seen any evidence they're taking it on faith what in your opinion are the biggest

50:10

weaknesses of the evidence for the younger dest comet impact well the biggest weakness is they

50:18

haven't let us see it oh it's like that's not normal in

50:24

science when people ask can can I see the your your what is your evidence for

50:30

ferins with extraterrestrial helium and it's like they either ghost you you know

50:36

they they won't reply or they get angry that you would dare ask them like you

50:42

would challenge their their honesty or but we we haven't seen the evidence

50:49

and the evidence we have seen is more consistent with more mundane

50:55

explanations like they found what they call scoria like objects scoria and slag

51:02

are basically indistinguishable they use it you know in in candidacy you know

51:09

oral exams for candidacy for to allow graduate students to become PhD

51:15

candidates you know that's one of the tricks it's like bring in a piece of slag and ask them what it is what kind

51:20

of rock it is you know it looks like a rock and and and so scoria is the

51:25

natural version slag is the is the you know human made version and they have

51:33

found this stuff like right next to Historic railroad tracks and they've been told this is railroad slag this is

51:40

not you know you're calling it scory likee and you you know you think it's formed by some mysterious airburst

51:47

process it's railroad slag I mean that that is repeated over and over

51:54

for a lot of what they are identifying as created by some kind of mysterious

52:01

airburst process that even people who model and study airbursts and have

52:07

published on airbursts don't really understand because it's not consistent with the way we understand how airbursts

52:13

work oh okay all right there are there's there's

52:19

mundane things like carbon spirals those those are you know you burn coal you

52:25

burn wood you get get that kind of stuff coming out of smoke stacks and that's a probably the simpler explanation for

52:33

carbon spals with anomalously young ages is that the ages aren't anomalous they

52:38

really are only a couple hundred years ago and they came out of locomotives that were burning wood in the Firebox so

52:46

there's simpler explanations for everything they're finding I see um uh

52:52

so in a nutshell um you're saying that where you need evidence to show that it

52:59

was actually an impact that's where they don't have it but the other evidence they have that they say it's for an

53:04

impact could be evidence for something else yeah and and then you know they

53:10

always interpret everything this isn't nor the normal way people do science you

53:15

know most of us who do science are always asking what could we be getting wrong is there a simpler explanation are

53:22

we misinterpreting this but for example when the hawaa crater was covered under the ice in

53:28

Greenland you know all their money was on this is going to be 12.9 th000 years

53:33

ago this is our impact crater and all of us the Skeptics were saying you know the

53:39

probability that there was an impact you know it it it's in one it's inconsistent

53:44

with anything that young and the pro probability that there would be that big of a crater that was that young or

53:50

infinitesimal it's got to be older and it turned out to be older way older I

53:56

think 58 million years old or something like that nothing to do with the younger

54:02

dasas and you know some of it some of them have moved on it's like well that just me you know that just proves that

54:08

it really was an airburst it didn't hit the ground and others are saying oh they got the dates wrong so you know there's

54:14

a lot of special pleading that goes on too yeah you could when I when I read uh

54:21

their material I get the impression that they just really really really want it to be true

54:27

you know they really want it to be true they want to be doing Paradigm changing research but ironically you know they

54:34

appeal to Shoemaker they appeal to Alvarez as having done Paradigm changing

54:40

research you know involving impacts and it's true they did but now that's the

54:47

Paradigm that they're now overthrowing it's like well Shoemaker was wrong you

54:53

you know if they're right Shoemaker was wrong Alvarez was wrong impacts and

54:58

airbursts are nothing like those guys are you know were claiming thought and

55:04

in fact Carolyn Shoemaker who discovered Comet Shoemaker levy9 is one of or was

55:09

she passed away recently she was one of their biggest critics and and very vocal about

55:15

it do you do you think any part of their research uh has been valid or increased

55:22

our understanding of this period you know that's a good question and and there's

55:29

one element and and a lot of my colleagues will disagree with me on this

55:35

um and that is the possibility of a resonant swarm so there's this idea and

55:41

and in my opinion they carry it by orders of magnitude to the extreme and

55:46

but the idea that there was an object a comet that was in orbit around the sun

55:54

and it shed pieces pieces broke off and those pieces got trapped in a resonance

55:59

so there's a cluster of this stuff that's in an orbit that occasionally

56:05

crosses Earth's path path and and and there can be an increase in the Flux Of

56:13

impacts or Air Bursts and I think that could be true but at a at a much smaller

56:21

scale it you know if it if it's true then it for a short period of time in on

56:28

certain years and certain times of year the increase in the probability of a tungus like explosion and that was the

56:35

1908 explosion in Siberia there's an increase in the probability of events like that and

56:42

there may be Fireballs you know an increase you big meteor showers with

56:47

exploding Fireballs but up high in the sky that don't do any damage that may be

56:53

true some of my colleagues even reject that I don't think we have the evidence to say that that is wrong but the idea

57:00

that you know every so often there's a shower of kilometer 5 kilometer size

57:06

objects like they're claiming for the younger dras that's that can't be true because

57:11

we would have seen them we're doing you know uh Sky surveys and have been doing

57:16

for decades looking for potentially hazardous objects Comet fragments

57:23

asteroids whatnot that are in orbits that could intersect the Earth we would have found those by now so those do not

57:31

do not exist and they if they didn't if they don't exist now they didn't exist

57:36

13,000 years ago because where would they have gone they didn't all collide

57:42

with the Earth if if that's the idea so so that would be the grain of truth but

57:47

a lot of you know falsehoods and big stories have a have a grain of Truth at

57:53

the center and if there is a grain of truth it's that and and the airburst you know the the idea of air burst airbursts

58:00

are a real thing and things do explode before they hit the ground tunguska is

58:05

our prime example of that there are other um there's some evidence in the geologic record and as there should be

58:13

that other Air Bursts have and bigger Air Bursts have happened in the past and one example of that is the Libyan Desert

58:21

uh glass um there's this strange I have some I can grab some out my file cabinet

58:26

behind me right now and show you um that I collected in Egypt I went there for

58:32

shooting of a documentary in 2006 which is kind of when we figured out that it was from an airburst oh interesting so I

58:40

published that idea and that you know that came out right about the same time as firestone's

58:47

paper um now uh right after the the comprehensive reputation paper came out and I mean like right after um actually

58:56

M them come out slightly before it was finally published was a reputation uh of

59:02

your reputation or rebuttal I guess you could say by Martin swatman James Powell and alen West uh I think one of whom was

59:10

maybe um somebody that could really comment on this but uh it was in their own well there was a small a shorter

59:16

version in earth science reviews but then they had the full version in their own paper airburst and cratering impacts

59:22

I think they are also the editors of that Pap paper which they yeah

59:28

anyway yeah I do want to bring up some of the objections just a few that were maybe per to what you study and to see

59:36

what your thoughts are about them so the first thing that they complained about was that uh the comprehensive reputation

59:43

paper that you wrote ignored the fact that the hypothesis has been updated and

59:49

you were attacking old ideas okay and that the current idea is that there was

59:54

a giant uh great G than 100 km diameter Comet that entered the an earth Crossing

59:59

orbit in the inner solar system and began a Cascade of disintegrations numerous cometary fragments from the

1:00:06

debris stream entered Earth's atmosphere and detonated above or collided with land and ice sheets and so forth um and

1:00:13

uh that this caused um megap fonal Extinction events and human depopulation

1:00:20

events um that's the current theory and you didn't really talk that much about

1:00:25

that one well I mean we already have I mean we've talked about that I mean numerous times

1:00:32

and we did talk about maybe not the specifics but I mean this this 100

1:00:40

kilometer diameter object that entered the solar system inner solar system in I

1:00:46

guess an earth Crossing orbit broke up into pieces some of which hit the earth

1:00:52

and that involves Comet eny which is a real Comet but it's I think five

1:00:57

kilometers in diameter or something but you know they're talking about a swarm of air burst type objects but you know

1:01:06

think of a 100 kilometer diameter Comet that broke up okay how many pieces would

1:01:14

it have to break up to you know where if the biggest ones were kilometer in

1:01:19

diameter I mean that's easy math it's like a million 1 kilometer diameter

1:01:25

objects where are they did they all hit in the younger dras if so where are all

1:01:31

the craters those are crater forming events if they didn't all hit we should see them they'd still be in orbit but

1:01:38

there's only like we've only found about a thousand one kilometer and greater

1:01:44

diameter objects that cross Earth's orbit and and we're running out we're

1:01:50

you know if they were out there we would have found them we would have found a lot mean 1000 just in for any period is

1:01:57

that what you mean or yeah and they're not correlated yeah they're not correlated with any particular orbit

1:02:02

they're pretty much just random um so yeah the you know that can't be true

1:02:10

because they couldn't have just disappeared they couldn't have all run into the Earth or the Earth would have a

1:02:15

lot of really fresh steaming craters right now and they'd still be they some

1:02:21

of them wouldn't have hit yet because this is a you know random process in space is really big and if they if they

1:02:28

broke up if they broke up in the atmosphere and burned up then they wouldn't leave a crater right yeah but

1:02:35

they don't do that I mean a one kilometer diameter object is not going to burn up get used up before it hits

1:02:41

the ground I see I mean that just doesn't work that way I mean that doesn't conserve momentum you know

1:02:47

there's there's there's no way that can happen the next thing I wanted to mention and maybe it's a side point but

1:02:53

um uh they took is isue with the fact that uh your paper called coherent

1:03:00

catastrophism uh a speculative hypothesis uh a Preposterous Fringe idea

1:03:06

but you cite no evidence to support this View and fail to acknowledge that the giant Comet origin model for the torid

1:03:13

meteor stream is the working model for cometary scientists and that's consistent with

1:03:19

not catastroph okay I know a lot of commentary scientists and no that's not

1:03:25

the except working model there are a few people who who think that and they're

1:03:30

all in the comment research group and or associated with with that idea what is

1:03:36

coherent catastrophism just for the audience everything is on a on a timer

1:03:41

is that the idea that it's not random but it's it comes back at certain times kind of yeah yeah so yeah so so it's

1:03:49

kind of all in this resonance so there's there's like a 3.3 year resonance that's

1:03:55

associated with commet Inky and it's in resonance with Jupiter's orbit so Jupiter keeps kind of pumping it and

1:04:02

keeping it constrained in this orbit and it comes around occasionally and there's some orbital Dynamics effects that you

1:04:10

know changes its its relationship to the Earth so every once in a while the Earth

1:04:16

passes through this swarm and gets hammered and that's what they are claiming happened um at at the the

1:04:22

beginning of the younger drives um but the but those would be observable there would be you know it wouldn't be based

1:04:30

on finding like you know railroad slag or or you know pollutants coming from

1:04:37

Smoke Stacks it would be there would be stronger evidence than than that so you

1:04:43

don't have anything against the uh general idea of it but that they're

1:04:48

taking it to the extreme yeah and they took it to the extreme from the very beginning but the

1:04:54

the mathema a guy named David Asher who who actually did the the comput the

1:05:00

orbital computations you know he had something right there really is a

1:05:06

resonance there you know a mathematical resonance and it's really possible that

1:05:12

stuff could be trapped in it but probably not to the ex I mean certainly

1:05:17

not to the extent that they say and probably not to the extent that it adds significantly to the risk but it could

1:05:24

be there and there is some evidence evence that it is there there have been occasions where there have been

1:05:29

bombardments of very small objects that don't make it deep enough into the

1:05:34

atmosphere to do damage at the surface but there have been swarms of fireballs there in 1975 there was seismic activity

1:05:42

on the moon that seemed to correlate with the time that this resonance came

1:05:48

around which would be objects hitting the moon and being picked up by the seismometers that were placed there by

1:05:54

Apollo Astronauts so so I I hesitate to call that coherent catastrophism though

1:06:00

because there weren't any catastrophes there's no Global catastrophe associated with that and it's possible that even

1:06:07

the tunguska object was one of these and yes that would be a catastrophe if you

1:06:12

were an aink uh person living in the area near Siberia hurting reindeer at

1:06:18

the time if your family members were killed or if your reindeer herd was killed that would be a catastrophe but

1:06:25

not in the sense that those guys are using the word catastrophe they're talking about global catastrophes so and

1:06:32

I think when you know when Duncan steel coined that that term he was talking

1:06:37

about kind of global catastrophe level stuff so I would call it a coherent you

1:06:43

know a coherent swarm or a coherent uh addition to the risk or something like that but I wouldn't even

1:06:50

call it coherent catastrophism and they do they they you know the comment Search

1:06:55

Group and their supporters the GM Hancock followers and so forth they're always talking about catastrophism

1:07:03

versus uniformitarianism and that is you know

1:07:08

that is so old it's like we're not stuck in uniformitarianism those of us

1:07:14

especially who study impacts understand that there are very

1:07:19

rare catastrophes and that is what I would call what Duncan described a CO

1:07:26

I'm sorry stochastic catastrophism catastrophes do occur they're rare there's a kind of a power law

1:07:32

distribution but they do occur that's true in volcanoes too and tsunamis and earthquakes you know every once in a

1:07:39

while there's a big catastrophe floods you know there's really big events that happen that somehow sometimes dominate

1:07:47

what you see in the geological record but that doesn't negate The uniformitarian View it's in in a way

1:07:54

it's completely consistent it okay yeah um now uh another thing

1:08:01

that they complain about um is that uh they say or you guys say uh that um the

1:08:10

radio carbon dates don't match up for these various things that they're trying to line up at one particular time and

1:08:17

they say you don't take into account the uncertainty principle of the radiocarbon

1:08:22

dates and they it's possible that they match up if you take into account uh you

1:08:28

know that we have a range of possible dates for the radiocarbon uh so that it it's

1:08:33

possible sure yeah you have a bunch of you have a bunch of big sets of air bars

1:08:39

and you can draw any line through it you want and they drew the line that they wanted but there's you know who knows

1:08:46

how many other lines that you could draw through at different dates or you could

1:08:51

just say you know the the simplest explanation is when they find a layer of

1:08:57

of stuff you know for one thing they don't look throughout the entire stat

1:09:02

statgraphic column they only look where they think it is right and you know if

1:09:08

they looked up a meter or down a meter they might find another layer of this stuff because Cosmic spals Cosmic stuff

1:09:15

is always falling from the sky so it's not always industrial but in some cases it is industrial like in sediments that

1:09:22

are bioturbated they've got roots or you know they've been in fields that have

1:09:28

been farmed or construction or they're Rock qu you know you you look at the

1:09:35

list of their sites where they've actually um collected their samples from a lot of them have been Disturbed so so

1:09:42

there's a problem with the dating and so they're they're finding the one the one

1:09:47

layer that they think might be younger dras boundary but they don't know and

1:09:54

then you know they date it and there's huge uncertainties on the age and then it's like oh well it must be because

1:10:00

this is our hypothesis so they're putting the hypothesis um before their interpretation of the age of of the

1:10:06

layer that they find and and they basically admitted this I mean I've been told this by co-authors of these papers

1:10:15

they don't know and so one you know you know one analogy would be you know

1:10:20

somebody who does like me who doesn't have very good eyesight and they they're doing Target shooting and they're

1:10:26

claiming you know that they're hitting the bullseye every time because they can't see the Target that well and it's blurry and so it's like well you know

1:10:34

it's like within the uncertainty of the blurriness of my vision so it has to be in the bullseye because that's where I

1:10:41

wanted to be yeah yeah um the the argument almost seems to be like they're saying well you haven't proved it's

1:10:49

impossible therefore you know uh it still stands you haven't refuted it like

1:10:54

you said refuted it uh sure it might be unlikely but it's still

1:11:02

possible that seems wrong about a lot of other things too like how our our

1:11:09

understanding about how how much air heats up when you compress it that would have to be wrong too and there's a lot

1:11:16

of evidence that we know how much air heats up when you compress it yeah the

1:11:23

other thing they have is um they say in your paper that you claim that microsphere evidence alone cannot be

1:11:31

used to establish an extraterrestrial impact event but they say this contradicts a paper by French and cobber

1:11:37

in 2010 and they say that it is possible uh it is can be used as evidence of a of

1:11:43

a ET impact event what do you have to say about that well I mean you said French and

1:11:51

cobal but cobal was a co-author of this paper this reputation

1:12:01

so I I I I I trust that he knew what was in his own paper ah okay but they even

1:12:08

if they you know claim that okay these spirals also have other evidence

1:12:13

associated with him like these unambiguous signatures of high pressure

1:12:20

impact you know the mineral coside or shock zircons or or whatever

1:12:25

show us just let us see them you know distribute I mean if you're finding if this stuff is so abundant then you

1:12:32

should have enough to share with your Skeptics or some neutral Independent

1:12:38

party who can look at these and say oh yeah the you know these are definitely

1:12:43

come from a shock event but even then it doesn't mean it came from a bombardment of thousands or however many comets

1:12:50

their latest version says hit the earth um you know because we do know there are

1:12:56

impacts on Earth and there there are shocked minerals on Earth so it does

1:13:02

happen it just doesn't mean that it did what they claim that it did I see yeah

1:13:08

um they uh they say that um your papers uh claims that a Sudden Impact winter

1:13:14

can be ruled out through analysis of low-resolution paleoclimate data however

1:13:20

they say only high resolution subannual data can be used to investigate this issue

1:13:26

um holiday at all's argument that the suggested impact winter must have lasted for several years is based on an

1:13:32

understanding of volcanic eruptions not extraterrestrial

1:13:39

impacts yeah I think there's a lot of wrong stuff in there one it's like why would aerosols or greenhouse gases

1:13:48

caused by volcanos act differently in the atmosphere than aerosols or greenhouse gases generated by impact I

1:13:54

don't I don't understand that I mean there's an analogy there and and my colleagues in the planetary defense

1:14:00

Community who do risk assessment and publish about impact generated climate change do compare it to volcanoes and

1:14:08

second I didn't realize that their impact winter lasted less than a year that you know that's not you know that I

1:14:17

don't know if they published that anywhere until now I I don't know um I I

1:14:22

haven't seen yeah I mean if I mean we had a volcanic

1:14:29

winter I mean the the year without a summer um which was what year

1:14:35

1812 or some or somewhere there about I mean that La that that wiped out you

1:14:43

know a summer of Agriculture and a lot of people died but as far as I know there weren't any mass extinctions I

1:14:50

wanted to ask where do you think this is going like in the next 20 years where do you think the Y the IH will

1:14:57

be I think it'll be pretty much where uh The piltown hoax is now I mean I think

1:15:03

it's inevitable so and I'm not the first to have said that okay so you think it's

1:15:11

not only it's not going anywhere you think it's gonna Crash and Burn yeah I'm surprised it hasn't yet

1:15:18

and crash and burn in this context is an excellent good

1:15:23

words yeah to sum up what I've learned so far here are the issues we have with each of the

1:15:29

evidences presented by impact proponents magnetic iron rich spheral and glassy silica Rich spheral the peer reviewers

1:15:36

argue that micros ferals alone are not diagnostic evidence for impact events

1:15:42

because similar objects can form through various natural and anthropogenic processes they emphasize that the

1:15:48

identification of these ferals as impact products requires additional evidence

1:15:53

such as high- press minerals siderophile element anomalies or isotopic ratios

1:15:59

without this context spheral cannot reliably indicate a younger dous impact high temperature melt glass the peer

1:16:06

reviewers acknowledge that high temperature melt glass like ladite can form during impact events however they

1:16:13

caution that melt glass is not unique to impacts and can also result from volcanic activity or anthropogenic

1:16:19

processes they cite multiple studies demonstrating that such glassy materials can be misinterpreted without clear

1:16:26

geochemical and geological contexts Nano Diamonds the peer reviewers are critical

1:16:31

of Nano diamonds as evidence for an extraterrestrial impact they argue that Nano diamonds are not unique to shock

1:16:37

induced processes and can form in other conditions including biological

1:16:42

diagenetic and anthropogenic environments studies claiming Nano diamonds as impact markers often fail to

1:16:49

demonstrate their exclusive association with impacts soot ainor carbon the peer

1:16:55

reviewers reject soot as conclusive evidence for an impact explaining that soot and carbon-rich materials are

1:17:00

common in sediments and cannot be linked definitively to a cosmic impact they argue that widespread biomass burning

1:17:08

has many potential causes such as natural wildfires triggered by lightning or human activity there's no compelling

1:17:14

evidence that the soot observed at the younger dest boundary was globally synchronous or caused by an

1:17:20

extraterrestrial event while proponents of the younger dri impact hypothesis claim black black mats resulted from

1:17:26

catastrophic fires the peer reviewers describe black mats as common stratagraph features that form under

1:17:33

diverse environmental conditions including Wetlands or organic Rich

1:17:38

sedimentation and argue there is no definitive link between black mats and impact processes radiocarbon dating

1:17:45

inconsistencies further weaken this claim ferin containing helium 3 the peer

1:17:50

reviewers say that ferins with extraterrestrial helium 3 have not been sufficiently demonstrated as evidence

1:17:56

for an impact ferin are highly controversial as impact markers as they can form in non-impact environments such

1:18:04

as through industrial or natural chemical processes the authors note that claims of extraterrestrial helium 3

1:18:10

within ferin often lack robust supporting evidence or independent

Extinctions

1:18:21

replication when I began this study I was most interested in the evidence that impact proponents have provided for the

1:18:28

extinction of the megap and the extinction of human populations they focus on The Disappearance of the Clovis

1:18:35

culture in North America what did the peer reviewer say about that I rung up Vance Holliday retired professor of

1:18:41

geosciences from the University of Arizona he is one of the authors of that second paper I mentioned and he

1:18:47

specializes in the anthropology and archaeology of North America in this period here's what he had to say thank

1:18:53

you for joining me today advance I really wanted to uh pick your brain a little bit if that's okay sure thing

1:18:59

yeah good to be here uh first let me ask you this um what were your specific contributions to this paper I know

1:19:05

everyone kind of put uh put in a little you know of their own expertise in here well there's a lot of people put in a

1:19:12

lot of time and a and a lot of expertise uh well my and everybody had something

1:19:19

to say pretty much I mean some of the geochemistry was a bit beyond me but um

1:19:26

the aspects I guess the main things what I know the most about in the context of

1:19:32

this is is archaeology um the issue of

1:19:38

extinctions uh climate paleoclimate and climate change uh I'm I'm not a

1:19:44

paleoclimatologist and and we had some of those folks involved as well but I'm because of my other interest I've I know

1:19:52

enough about paleoclimatology to weigh in uh uh radiocarbon

1:19:57

dating uh soils stratigraphy basic late Pine

1:20:04

stratigraphy so it it touches on a lot of things I have interest in and

1:20:09

experience in is which I guess is the reason why I followed it since since it's first sort of appeared in in in the

1:20:17

news Science News anyway in 2007 okay all right just generally

1:20:24

speaking uh do you think an impact of this kind is possible and just simply

1:20:31

not demonstrated or would you go so far as to say say that it is unlikely to have

1:20:38

occurred I've seen no evidence for it let's put it that way I I just I don't

1:20:43

think there's a case one of my colleagues years ago at a conference made a comment that if if there was an

1:20:50

extraterrestrial impact it had no terrestrial impact in other words maybe maybe something hit

1:20:58

the Earth but it if it did there's precious little

1:21:05

evidence that I've seen just based on what I know about these these topics you

1:21:11

know maybe it happened and but I don't if it did I don't think it had the it wasn't catastrophic and that's that's

1:21:16

the issue because it's described over and over and over as a catastrophe as

1:21:22

catastrophic absolutely not okay based on who I know how how would

1:21:28

you characterize the level of scholarship and scientific robustness of

1:21:34

the papers proposing this

1:21:40

hypothesis they vary um depends on who's writing and what the topic is

1:21:47

um it's sort of stunning to me that that some of the the comments about archaeology about the key issue

1:21:54

Extinction of this uh artifact type called the Clovis point and and and and

1:22:01

archaeologists are are guilty of this but too but we often conflate the term Clovis with people versus artifacts when

1:22:08

you get right down to it we're talking about the appearance and disappearance of an artifact style and the argument is

1:22:14

oh this artifact style quit being made at 12,800 years they must have been

1:22:20

wiped out they must have been extinct forgetting completely ignoring that artifacts come and go you know as well

1:22:27

as yeah the people can remain yeah right they all come and go and you can never

1:22:32

find the exact Endo of when a particular artifact style evolves another I mean

1:22:38

and and and you know why do they vary I always bring up a bit factiously but you

1:22:43

know Tail Fins appeared on cars in the late 50s and then they

1:22:48

disappeared yeah Styles evolve you know that's what that's what you and I deal

1:22:53

with culture it went extinct right yeah so uh but anyway that's even more

1:23:00

complex because some some of the the best dating for Clovis shows that kis persisted after so the thing boy you

1:23:08

know that's a really good question that you ask but it's a really difficult one to answer um because um what I don't

1:23:16

understand is why why the people and and most of them from what I could tell they good

1:23:22

Scholars they don't they don't deal with the questions that we keep raising for example there's

1:23:31

recent dating on Clovis that shows clis persisted after the time of the supposed

1:23:36

impact they haven't confronted that uh relatedly extinctions now the late Pine

1:23:43

extinctions is a very complicated topic and people have been debating it for decades and we still don't know why it

1:23:50

happened but that their their argument would have you believe all these megap

1:23:56

Mammoth and all these others all went away all disappeared exactly at 12,800

1:24:01

years and that's that's just blatantly not true there's there's paper after

1:24:07

paper after paper that showed the extinctions were stagered different species became extinct at different

1:24:13

times in different places continent to continent it varies so yeah in in North

1:24:19

America Mammoth did in fact become extinct at about that time but lots of other animals were extinct beforehand

1:24:26

and they they they we've brought this up over and over and over in our papers and it's it's ignored or in fact they just

1:24:35

keep persisting with this notion that it happened and I I don't understand and

1:24:40

that's the frustration is and normally you would not expect it from uh from uh

1:24:46

Scholars of this caliber yeah I guess that's a good way to put it yeah I it it's beyond me I

1:24:52

don't I don't understand it uh why why do you think your paper the comprehensive reputation paper uh needed

1:24:59

to be published well it started as a commentary on a a paper that was

1:25:07

published in 2021 it was we were bunch of us were working on a commentary because the

1:25:13

paper had a lot of problems and we spent about a year which paper was that Well

1:25:18

swatman swatman published a paper in 2021 I I didn't know who he was first time he came on the scene in this

1:25:26

context uh he's an engineer as far as I know and this paper was just it

1:25:32

was let's put it this way it was not from my perspective it was not well informed and uh uh quite a few of us

1:25:40

decided in variety of fields how many authors are there 12 or something and cover all sorts of fields from

1:25:46

archaeology to impact physics so we started writing a commentary and and you

1:25:52

know we all had other things to do and after about a year and we had this big paper and we finally thought well this

1:25:58

is this is crazy to spend our time writing a commentary let's refocus it as

1:26:04

a an uh the other side of the argument and that's the that's the argument I to

1:26:09

the journalist is look you guys published this big comprehensive paper it's got a lot of problems we think we

1:26:14

should have equal time and so then it just evolved as the dozen or so of

1:26:20

us was it a was it something that one person uh invited other people to join

1:26:26

in on or was it kind of uh it just kind of formed uh naturally

1:26:32

well both initially see there are several of us that have co-authored

1:26:37

these sorts of papers before um I I was part of a big one in

1:26:42

2014 uh I was part of a big commentary in 2016 and and this and it keeps coming up

1:26:50

that was the thing is the frustration we all see that the same issues keep coming

1:26:55

up over and over and we thought okay look Let's gets a lot of press too right and what was that it gets a lot of press

1:27:01

as well yeah exactly there's there's that that too the popular press and so uh we just a number of us must have been

1:27:10

five or six who who are in touch fairly regularly on this and let each other

1:27:16

know when papers come out and then we got some other people involved so it was a little of both um or it sort of

1:27:22

evolved organically because several of us have been commenting on this for a long time MH and it seems to no avail it

1:27:31

seems um so would you say that the uh the general um approach of the paper is

1:27:36

to analyze the strength of the uh others arguments rather than presenting

1:27:43

evidence of your own that it didn't happen probably more the former you know

1:27:51

you can't prove a negative right right no that it's a what we're doing is testing

1:27:58

the hypothesis with the data that is already out there and and I guess that's the

1:28:04

thing is is all the that most of the data that we cite in the papers is available it's been out there with

1:28:11

extinctions there's there's a huge literature on extinctions and so we're pointing that out there's a big

1:28:17

literature on archaeology that's one of the things very early on in the 27 in

1:28:23

the 200 seven paper the first well-known paper but there was some other Publications that preceded it I was just

1:28:29

stunned uh at some of the comments authors are making about archaeological sites that I've worked on that I've been

1:28:36

to that I know intimately and they they're saying stuff that is it isn't

1:28:43

true they're not paying attention to the published literature and so that's what

1:28:48

raised the my skepticism initially because I was seeing these comments about Clovis archaeology in the Clovis

1:28:54

site there's archaeological site in Clovis New Mexico or near there called the Clovis site I've worked there and I

1:29:01

know that story and I know the extinction story pretty well and it's just was it was very

1:29:08

frustrating so a lot of what we've written is Raising all this information

1:29:13

bringing it up synthesizing all this information that's for the most part already out

1:29:19

there okay yeah as a as a way of testing the hypothesis which is that's as far as

1:29:26

I'm concerned that's what you do in time in science if there was an impact as I said

1:29:31

I we haven't I don't see the evidence uh it's very poorly as far as

1:29:37

I'm concerned it's it's remains very poorly presented okay what would you say are the biggest weaknesses of the hypoth

1:29:46

okay uh well in part no there was no Extinction of cloest people uh the the

1:29:53

the animal exp Extinction is very complex and varied as I was just saying

1:29:59

uh another issue that again we've brought up the dating to make this case

1:30:05

you have to you you should have accurate High Precision dating mostly it for this

1:30:12

time period it's based on carbon 14 right there there's some other dating methods have been used but carbon 14 is

1:30:18

the main one and so they should have uh the proponents should have accurate

1:30:24

precise dating of exactly the time period involved but also throughout

1:30:31

their stratagraph sequences and then the other part we haven't even gotten into are the indicators there are a variety

1:30:38

of of chemical and geochemical and particulate indicators that are supposed

1:30:46

indicators that are that are proposed as as being the result of comet impacts and in fact there is no single indicator

1:30:54

that's a Smoking Gun for an impact that's that's a weakness uh that that's

1:31:01

that issue has been debated endlessly and um and finding those in

1:31:08

the field and dating them and when you dig into the different sites literally and

1:31:16

figuratively uh go into the literature the dating is not very good in most cases uh

1:31:25

it's rarely related directly to the zones where these indicators are coming

1:31:33

out in these archaeological sites so the and the whole argument is there was this

1:31:40

event at 12,850 years ago or 12,800 so the whole issue is proving

1:31:47

that these indicators occur at exactly that same time period And The Dating the dating isn't that good uh

1:31:56

there there are over 50 sites now that have been proposed that have supposedly

1:32:01

have these markers and the the the dating is at most of them in some cases it is

1:32:08

literally non-existent it's just asserted and in other cases it's it's a very poor

1:32:15

stratagraph provenience you know just like iological provenience which you're familiar with you know geological

1:32:20

provenience is the same thing um there are at most a half a dozen sites

1:32:26

where they have decent dating for their The Zone where they're getting these

1:32:32

impact supposed impact indicators so that that for me that's one of the wor and they've never the the the proponents

1:32:41

this has been going on for years we've keep re raising this issue one article one of my colleagues published in

1:32:48

2014 um they went through all the sites at the time very extensive

1:32:55

discussion of the dating at every site that was then proposed showing how how

1:33:01

poor the age control is and the the impact uh proponents have never dealt

1:33:08

with those criticisms they've never countered and said oh you know you're wrong or we have better dating they

1:33:15

frankly they just ignore it I see and you know the Sweatman paper that came out 2021 just accepted all the dating as

1:33:23

as proven to go back to something we were talking about before proving that all these

1:33:29

indicators line up uh using using

1:33:36

statistics we're accused of not understanding error in statistics and the problem is

1:33:44

what we're talking about is error in radiocarbon statistics which is anyway U

1:33:50

we don't have to get into that but well I do want to get into it a little little bit um because uh Martin swatman on his

1:33:57

blog made some responses to your the paper oh yeah yeah uh and I want to if you if you don't mind I'd like to bring

1:34:03

up he said about it and I I'd love to hear what you have to say about it he

1:34:08

says uh that there are eight sites uh consistent with the yd impact date with

1:34:14

a 95% uncertainty that's less than 200 years 10 more sites with an uh 95%

1:34:22

uncertainty of less than 400 years and nine sites uh under 1600 years I don't

1:34:29

know if that's right but this is what he says it's I have to look okay

1:34:35

um but again that that's low Precision that's the that's part of the

1:34:40

issue the early on several of the key players in this debate were the ones

1:34:47

that said you've got to have high quality dates a low very high Precision

1:34:54

less than 100 years standard deviation directly from the Zone with

1:35:02

the impact markers this was this was impact proponents making this argument

1:35:07

and they're correct that's what it takes accurate High Precision dates and and a

1:35:12

lot of the dates going back to what I was saying earlier a lot of the dates that he's citing H either have problems

1:35:19

in their stratagraph context or other problems of accuracy and quite a few of

1:35:25

the sites um that are dated oh I counted them up once

1:35:34

um very few have standard or have a the radiocarbon dating has standard

1:35:41

deviations of within a 100 years you know plus or minus 100 quite a few of them as you just read out like 400 years

1:35:48

standard deviation yeah that means now it depends on whether it's one

1:35:54

or two standard deviations but that means uh a 400 year 800 year time span

1:36:01

well if you're trying to approve that event happened at 12,850

1:36:06

years having a 400 year or or more standard deviation isn't proof for most

1:36:13

of us he uses a a probability argument he says that um since these are caused

1:36:20

by tongus like events and those events are so improbable uh that it is more likely

1:36:27

that it would all be caused by the same event than that there would be many tunguska like events well he's assuming

1:36:35

that all these indicators are produced by extraterrestrial events and we don't know

1:36:40

that we don't know that in fact there's a site that I've worked on it's probably the site I know best in love of Texas

1:36:48

and swatman even accepts the data from this site there's a huge Spike in Nano

1:36:54

diamonds and a hugee spike in micros ferals at less than 11,000 years well

1:37:01

after the supposed impact and no indicators at

1:37:07

12,800 and we're only 100 miles from clobas New Mexico and and so

1:37:14

it's are these are there multiple impacts that we all missing and aren't showing up in the geologic record I mean

1:37:20

again the the argument they're proposing this so the burden of proof on is on

1:37:27

them to demonstrate the uniqueness and to demonstrate that all of these indicators are in fact telling us that

1:37:34

there supposed indicators are telling us that there was an impact and that hasn't been shown yeah he's making a

1:37:40

statistical argument but you know 400 years you know U again the burden of

1:37:47

proof is on them to show that all these things are lining up yeah they don't they just don't any other uh closing

1:37:54

thoughts about this or what you'd like to tell the general audience about it

1:38:02

um you know it would be one thing if this argument was being made over uh uh

1:38:08

back back and forth about specific kinds of evidence and the the the responses we

1:38:15

invariably get are focused on little bits and pieces of the issue and they

1:38:21

have the impact hyp is people have yet to deal with all the criticisms all the

1:38:28

problems all the things that you and I just talked about all the problematic dating the issue of extinctions the

1:38:35

archaeological record uh well another thing too is the uniqueness of the younger dras is a

1:38:41

climate shift and I I think in what I just read

1:38:47

I believe that's swatman said in this reply or and other people that it was

1:38:53

near return to near glacial conditions no it wasn't return to near glacial conditions had not

1:38:58

remotely but it was probably the last gasp of the last ice age and there were

1:39:04

a lot of these very dramatic flip-flops cooling at high high

1:39:10

latitudes and high altitudes but not the younger D was not even a global cooling

1:39:16

event and and also another thing uh is on the landscape there's just no

1:39:22

evidence for any kind of cast rophy you don't see it in glacial records you don't see it in stream records um you

1:39:28

know you should see if there was this Global catastrophe I would expect some evidence of some

1:39:35

dramatic changes and it's just not there to sum up the peer reviewers reject the

1:39:41

claim that the megaphon extinctions were abrupt synchronous or caused by a single catastrophic event like the proposed

1:39:48

impact they note that the extinction timelines for many species were staggered with some disappearing before

1:39:54

the onset of the younger dras and others persisting well into or beyond the younger dras for example mastadons in

1:40:01

the Great Lakes region and some South American megap survived into the early holine this variability contradicts the

1:40:08

notion of a singular impact induced Extinction event or series of Extinction events in a narrow time period the

1:40:15

peer-reviewers also argue that there's no evidence for widespread human population decline linked to the younger

1:40:20

drias impact hypothesis claims of a post post Clovis population decline are based

1:40:25

on flawed analyses such as misinterpreting gaps in the archaeological record or radiocarbon

1:40:32

plateaus they emphasized that most paleo Indian archaeological sites reflect natural sampling limitations rather than

1:40:39

evidence of population collapse so it would appear that the younger D impact hypothesis fails to provide robust

1:40:46

evidence for a direct cause a link between an impact event and the extinction of megap or disruptions in

1:40:52

human population ations these extinctions and cultural shifts could very well have been caused by a

1:40:57

combination of environmental changes climate variability and human

Catastrophic Floods

1:41:08

activity there is one more subject related to all this that I needed to examine in more detail and that is

1:41:14

matters related to the pieces of evidence given by people like Randall Carlson for catastrophic flooding in

1:41:20

North America around the time of the proposed impact event here are some of the things he has said about it we did a

1:41:27

fantastic research trip across the channel scaps of Washington state which Randall has been walking the walk on for

1:41:34

decades and he just showed me the absolute irrefutable evidence of cataclysmic flooding in that in that

1:41:41

area what we did was we traveled from Portland to the Twin Cities and what we did was essentially followed the

1:41:46

southern margin of the great ice sheet for the most part and what we were looking at was this evidence that the

1:41:53

whole ice sheet had undergone this massive catastrophic sudden meltdown and

1:41:59

basically what we could what we saw in the landscape was evidence that was Oceanic level currents flowing off the

1:42:08

ice sheet I reached out to an expert in North American Ice Age flooding to see if there's any truth to what Carlson has

1:42:13

been saying his name is Vic Baker and he is Regent professor of hydrology and atmospheric sciences geosciences and

1:42:21

planetary Sciences at the University of Arizona if anyone is going to know something about this subject it will be

1:42:27

him can you tell uh everyone a little bit bit about what your area of research is and what you've been studying

1:42:32

particularly in relation to the Ice Age floods okay

1:42:39

um this is always a tricky question because uh my uh career is long and uh

1:42:49

it uh went in many different directions I basically finally decided on what kind

1:42:56

of geologist I wanted to be in graduate school back in the late

1:43:03

1960s and the problem that I got to that

1:43:09

uh led me into basically all my subsequent science was the problem of

1:43:18

the origin of the channel scab land in Washington State uh which had been

1:43:25

proposed by a uh scientist who fortunately was still alive and be began

1:43:32

his intensive work on that problem uh just about a hundred years ago his name

1:43:38

was Jay harand bretts and uh I got I I had this idea that that was the

1:43:46

right kind of science for me to do be involved in so I got involved in that

1:43:51

problem uh br had uh tried to argue against many

1:43:59

critics in science for the merits of this idea that cataclysmic flooding had

1:44:06

produced the landscape in Eastern Washington and as I subsequently learned

1:44:12

from him and from studying how he did this he was absolutely and totally

1:44:18

invested in this investigative approach to science I mean for him this was

1:44:25

something he would defend but only because the facts were overwhelming for

1:44:34

this regard and he had a long history of

1:44:39

arguing his point but it was not because his theory was so great a actually he

1:44:45

had huge doubts about his theory as he went along it was just that every time

1:44:51

he looked at it more and more new facts came about and these new facts that were

1:44:57

completely surprising to him were consistent with this idea that in some

1:45:04

sense he was worried was crazy and so he stuck to it he had a

1:45:10

kind of stubbornness but he felt his stubbornness was

1:45:16

being uh made it was just being shown by Nature itself and so he assisted and

1:45:24

finally when I got involved he had uh achieved uh kind of respect for this

1:45:31

idea but the there were those who thought oh well this is so immense these

1:45:37

floods there's no way that they could it could physically work well I had been

1:45:43

studying as a hydrologist and as a uh person interested in uh engineering

1:45:50

applied science the technique that you use to evaluate the mechanics of erosion

1:45:57

and deposition so that was my thesis I I applied those techniques and they were

1:46:03

completely consistent with what Bretz was saying the uh other scientists had

1:46:09

ignored doing that so that uh kind of was an impetus to my career I got a

1:46:16

faculty position even before I had finished grad school I was an assistant professor University of Texas at Boston

1:46:23

to work in this area of applied science and studying U mechanics and things like

1:46:30

that but then something completely unexpected happened a spacecraft Mariner

1:46:38

9 returned images from the surface of Planet of the planet Mars and the images

1:46:44

showed immense channels that had been cut into the surface of Mars billions of

1:46:51

years ago well those channels had aspects that were like the channel scale

1:46:57

plan that I had just been studying so I started working in planetary geology

1:47:04

particularly the planetary geology of Mars and I also continued my studies of

1:47:09

floods well ultimately my planetary work uh induced me to move to the University

1:47:16

of Arizona in 1981 which has arguably the best

1:47:22

planetary science department the best hydrology Department one of the best geology

1:47:28

departments so it was a perfect place for me to go I left Texas I went to Arizona and I continued working in these

1:47:36

diverse areas but with a focus on understanding what nature presents to us

1:47:44

about the most extreme kinds of floods that have happened anywhere Earth Mars if they were on

1:47:52

other planets I would be studying them so in a sense uh I didn't have a

1:47:58

particular plan for my program what I have done was

1:48:05

basically nature presented it and I just followed where that went and that so I

1:48:11

became um a a scientist of uh studying

1:48:17

the biggest floods that have happened including ones that are damaging to human beings and I studied the tohoku

1:48:25

Oki tsunami in Japan because that was just a fantastic uh example of a flood it was a

1:48:34

flood of seawater coming across the land that had incredible impact on human

1:48:39

beings uh so my whole career has been about

1:48:45

studying these kinds of extreme phenomena particularly associated with flooding now you might be familiar with

1:48:53

Carlson um one of his things is to look at the scabs he even takes tours to the

1:48:58

scablands um and he says this all shows um proof of some kind of

1:49:04

massive single event cataclysm which wiped out uh the

1:49:11

megap uh in all in North America basically reset culture there

1:49:18

um it wiped out the Clovis culture things like that I wonder what what the

1:49:24

evidence actually points to in regard to that uh was there a single event that we're talking about here well one one of

1:49:31

the problems is the the timing here here we have to talk about multiple lines of

1:49:38

uh sort of technical evidence about the ages of the flooding we we

1:49:44

have multiple techniques that show that this flooding did not occur at least the most

1:49:52

massive kinds of flooding in the time frame that uh is being claimed by uh

1:49:59

Carlson it it there were some larger flows than uh exist today during the

1:50:06

younger dest time but they were incredibly smaller than the really big

1:50:12

flows which occurred much earlier and there is so much evidence for that

1:50:19

relationship that it is completely unproductive to think about it in a way

1:50:25

that relates to the younger D completely unproductive scientifically that's why

1:50:30

scientists don't uh uh really pay much attention to that relationship because

1:50:36

there's there you know nature would have to be incredibly perverse and

1:50:43

intentionally misleading us to have produced all the kinds of evidence that shows that that time frame is different

1:50:51

it isn't just evidence in terms of various radiometric techniques and things that have been criticized by

1:50:57

creationists and others this is actually things where something is in placed on

1:51:04

top of or eroded into something else ah so you know the order of events the

1:51:10

order of things is completely inconsistent with that idea also we know

1:51:18

that there were big cataclysmic floods in many parts of the world associated

1:51:25

with the uh late Pine large ice sheets now those I sheets reached their maximum

1:51:33

at about 18 to 22,000 years ago a little bit different in different parts of the

1:51:40

world and uh associated with those near

1:51:45

maximum times we had many different ways that cataclysmic flooding was generated

1:51:51

in different parts of the world uh but they didn't all occur at the same time they had different ways that they

1:51:58

occurred some of them we understand fairly well like uh ice Stam Lakes which

1:52:04

is uh one of the let's say best uh

1:52:09

understood mechanisms for the channel scab land uh Mega flooding not

1:52:15

necessarily the only mechanism but really one that has been well documented

1:52:20

is the failure of an ice damp Lake and that as I said many kinds of evidence

1:52:26

show that U that definitely occurred 16,000 years ago but even the flooding

1:52:33

at 16,000 wasn't the biggest uh new work only partly documented in papers but

1:52:42

which I am you know part of teams working on it suggests that the really big flooding was a little bit earlier

1:52:48

than that maybe 18,000 maybe 19,000 years ago uh and anything that was occurring in

1:52:55

younger D's time and there were uh situations that led to larger

1:53:02

flows than we have today was incredibly smaller than uh than that and the same

1:53:08

kind of story is uh shown in other parts of the world uh in in many ways the scab

1:53:15

lands being an early area of study Brett's taking it back a 100 years uh

1:53:22

has received more attention but there's many places that have had these cataclysmic floodings some some of them

1:53:30

would surprise people like the English Channel was carved by catastrophic flooding but it wasn't carved by

1:53:36

catastrophic flooding 12,000 years ago the English Channel was carved by catastrophic flooding much older than

1:53:44

the last it was carved in an earlier glaciation uh and the evidence is pretty

1:53:50

clear for that even in the scab lands there was phases of uh catastrophic

1:53:56

flooding that occurred as much as a million years ago and uh in fact I just

1:54:02

two weeks ago I was leading a one-week uh field course for advanced graduate

1:54:10

students from the University of Arizona where we were out looking at all of the evidence and one of our stops was uh uh

1:54:19

had to do with some of this uh very ancient flooding that occurred in the channel scab land and the evidence for

1:54:27

that is that the flood deposits uh are rather different in some

1:54:33

ways they're clearly catastrophic flood deposits because they include big boulders they're in settings that showed

1:54:39

the water had to be very deep to produce them but they are deeply weathered and

1:54:45

that weathering uh the alteration of the chemistry of the rocks from the surface

1:54:51

the development soils and profiles on that uh that all showed that the uh the

1:54:58

deposits are very old uh radiometric dating on the uh calcium carbonate

1:55:05

deposits showed that these are at least hundreds of thousands of years old paleomagnetic studies of the uh polarity

1:55:14

of the Earth's uh uh you know magnetic field was reversed and that reversal

1:55:20

occurred uh 790,000 years ago so those flood deposits which are in the scab

1:55:28

land area they're much older now we don't have as much data on those older

1:55:36

deposits but uh and all of this is work that is currently in

1:55:42

progress but to claim in absolute terms the even the age of the flooding

1:55:51

and then to try to relate that to all of this other kinds of evidence that may be

1:55:56

completely independent of uh of that is telling it a appealing story but it

1:56:05

isn't Nature's story so scientists don't take it

1:56:10

seriously because of this that's one of the issues here um what it is to be a

1:56:16

careful scientist yeah how would you how would you uh differentiate between a

1:56:22

care scientist and a not careful scientist well

1:56:28

ultimately a scientist is not someone

1:56:35

who should be absolutely claiming Authority and absolute claiming the

1:56:42

truth of things that is inconsistent with

1:56:47

science science um you know EX exactly what their attitude should be is under

1:56:55

discussion I I actually had uh discussions about this with the late Carl Sean because I also work in the

1:57:03

planetary science area and Carl was a an advocate of what's called skepticism

1:57:09

that one should always be exceedingly skeptical of things now I your own ideas

1:57:16

right yeah it well including your own ideas and that's the key part

1:57:23

uh my view is that the important an important element of science is called

1:57:30

fism fism which people don't um maybe haven't really heard about it's a

1:57:36

philosophical idea and I'm as you may know I'm into philosophy of science uh

1:57:42

it it is the recognition that it's exceedingly exceedingly difficult to

1:57:49

know in absolute terms that you are completely correct that you always have

1:57:54

to be willing to admit there may be a possibility that you are

1:58:00

wrong and that's absolutely essential to science because science is not about

1:58:07

claiming that you have absolute truths science is about the process the

1:58:14

absolute dedication to searching investigating seeking the truth and to

1:58:22

do that with the sense of humility

1:58:27

before the entity that has that truth

1:58:32

and the entity that has that truth is nature reality whatever you are studying

1:58:40

the reality of that is where the truth lies and ultimately whether you are

1:58:47

somebody who is a a theorist and trying to say the best things you can say about

1:58:54

nature things that sound good to others you have to go to Nature to see

1:59:01

if that's correct but the other kind of Science and it's the science that I

1:59:06

ultimately came to uh invest my career in is the one that starts with nature

1:59:13

itself it tries to interpret what nature is presenting to us it's more like an

1:59:21

investigator an investigator doesn't go to a crime scene and say I've got a

1:59:26

theory about how this works and I'm going to see if my theory is right that gets investigators into a lot of trouble

1:59:34

investigators go there looking for Clues looking for evidence looking but if you

1:59:42

know who did it you could just plant evidence you know and then it'll make your of course you have to be careful of

1:59:47

that but nature and Einstein said this nature is subtle but not

1:59:56

malicious nature may make it difficult but it the truth is always there nature

2:00:04

doesn't have a uh agenda to be evil or uh it it is magnificent wonderful

2:00:13

beautiful human beings have a sense of that and that sense unfortunately is

2:00:20

manipulated by those who don't have the kind of attitude that I've talked about

2:00:26

yeah now you know talking about people's attitudes is a bit

2:00:32

psychological uh we we have to uh understand their motivations and it's

2:00:38

and it's uh tricky to do that with regard to individuals

2:00:43

but when one is in the community of people of

2:00:49

scientists what one has a sense of is that the people in that Community the

2:00:57

ones that you can trust the ones that you uh have experience with are the ones

2:01:05

that have this sense that it's the world that's ultimately going to give us the

2:01:11

answer and that we have a kind of humility relative to that not an

2:01:18

arrogance that we can actually find the truth but a kind of optimism that it's

2:01:24

there and that ultimately we will make progress in the process of looking for

2:01:31

it and that's why the science Community is important it's it's not like it's a

2:01:37

uh evil cohort that's preventing new ideas from coming into uh existence uh

2:01:45

this is something manipulated by those who feel that they have this Grand

2:01:51

theory that uh the rest of the science Community isn't paying attention to it

2:01:56

is much more subtle than that uh and that's a reason why uh the What's called

2:02:04

the scientific consensus is important not because the scientists have the

2:02:10

absolute answer but we can trust that the people who have this ethic of

2:02:17

looking for the truth of things that if they are members of the community that does that that's the best thing we can

2:02:25

trust because people can always go to sources that claim absolute truth uh we

2:02:33

we are in a crazy political world now where such things are being talked about

2:02:40

that's not science it is it is completely uh different that but it feels good you know it feels good yes it

2:02:48

feel wild ideas feel good extravagant ideas that when someone says

2:02:56

they've got all the an you know they've got this model you know and oh you know this is and it it makes it uh history or

2:03:03

prehistory more exciting it's uh you can understand why people might like it yeah

2:03:10

but I know it there's definitely an appeal and there is also an appeal and

2:03:18

some scientists like the late Carl Sean uh tried to uh convey the uh The Wonder

2:03:27

of uh of the natural world the the absolute Wonder in what Nature has to

2:03:36

present which is in many ways much more magnificent than what people can invent

2:03:44

but we're in a terrible State now where people have a misunderstanding of

2:03:52

science it it's it they have a misunderstanding that science is this monolithic thing of

2:04:00

absolutes unfortunately manipulated by those that want to claim Authority they

2:04:06

claim science as an authority um Einstein once said all my life I have

2:04:13

questioned Authority but in my old age uh in punishment for this I have become

2:04:19

an authority it you know the authority in science is

2:04:25

not the people who are saying it the authority is nature the author nature as

2:04:31

the Absol is the absolute so the truth

2:04:36

of one's dedication to searching that uh

2:04:42

that in an honest way is the truth that science has to convey the answers are

2:04:50

provisional but they are trustworthy and I would say they're more trustworthy than the uh people who claim

2:05:00

Authority and claim to speak in absolute terms even if those are great sounding

2:05:07

stories human beings uh love stories they you know there's there's something

2:05:13

you know in The evolutionary genetics of people that has led to uh their Rel

2:05:21

relationship to stories as ways they cope with the world yeah that's definitely there speaking of that that

2:05:29

fallibility what better story is there than what has really happened and what is the case and that is magnificent it's

2:05:37

a true story right yeah yeah yeah um some people have come to me and and uh

2:05:43

talked about how the fallibility of science is a mark against it you know like well science has been wrong before

2:05:50

look at they changed their mind about this you can't trust them and actually do you want to do you

2:05:58

want to trust anybody that claims an absolute Authority where does that come

2:06:03

from do they have some special insight into nature have they done the hard work

2:06:11

of trying to get nature to reveal herself uh they make a good story they

2:06:19

make money off of it they they get a claim U all of these are they can use

2:06:27

logic in their story they can cite facts in their story they can cite lots of

2:06:32

scientific work facts uh citing knowledge that is not

2:06:38

science unfortunately in our education system uh people are are being told that

2:06:46

science is uh a collection of facts it's a collection of truths about the world

2:06:52

or it's a methodology a kind of you pose hypothesis you do experiment and you

2:06:58

discover the truth because you match your model to the world the world is consistent with your model and that's

2:07:04

correct I won't get into it but there's logical problems in Spades with all of

2:07:12

that that is not science by itself more important than that is this

2:07:20

what I've called f iism which is this honest openness but incredible hard work like a

2:07:29

incredible detective in figuring out what's going on because nature is subtle

2:07:39

nature uh isn't uh sort of advertising her facts the S the the proper scientist

2:07:47

has to work exceedingly hard with many techniques and much modern technology to

2:07:54

extract what is really going on and what has really happened Nature's not on

2:08:00

social media right oh no social media is

2:08:05

propelling uh stories H and people are looking for the best sounding story yeah

2:08:13

well sounding good is not the same as being good being good is what nature

2:08:20

presents and that is what science is really about what do you say what do you

2:08:26

say to people who uh say well we're just saying keep an open mind you know maybe

2:08:32

our idea could be right and you know the Graham hancocks of the world the Randle Carlson that say we're just saying keep

2:08:38

an open mind we're just questioning Authority that's all uh we're not saying

2:08:43

we have absolute truth of course but if you are going to

2:08:48

be a scientist you want to have a protective a a uh a not protective a uh

2:08:58

productive inquiry into the possibility of finding the truth yes you are open to

2:09:06

facts but you are also not looking at every possibility just because it sounds

2:09:13

good you are looking into things that are leading you on a productive pathway

2:09:21

way toward truth if the and this is very important science is a process that is

2:09:29

trying to productively seek truth we sometimes talk about our ideas being

2:09:35

fruitful there's an even more uh obscure word for what we are trying to do the

2:09:42

idea is having a kind of U ousness to it

2:09:48

this is an Old English word and it is not just that the idea is simply

2:09:55

productive but it's part of a whole uh line of inquiry that is uh telling us as we go

2:10:05

along that we are on the right path and that's an attitude that you

2:10:12

take not that the story sounds good but that in the process of doing it you

2:10:19

discover things that are leading you more productively along that path so you

2:10:26

have to be open to those discoveries but you also have to be able to evaluate

2:10:34

them relative to whatever is being discovered and has gone before so that

2:10:40

you have a whole body of things that are consistent and leading productively on

2:10:47

this path if you ever think oh I have the answer now it's so wonderful all these aliens came and did it and uh

2:10:55

and I have all these things uh you know um I've been uh kind of interacting with

2:11:01

people telling those stories for a long time uh one of the early ones I

2:11:06

encountered my career was uh Eric vanan oh yeah who published quite a few books

2:11:13

on um sort of Ancient Aliens and how they were uh coming to the Earth in the

2:11:20

time of the dinosa SS and you know mixing up all kinds of things that geologically we knew were completely uh

2:11:28

inappropriate but one thing I will say for danan is he was very honest he uh

2:11:34

pointed out that he was yes he was writing about these things but he was he was an Entertainer that he was doing

2:11:42

this to make a good story uh I remember uh one of my paleontology colleagues at

2:11:49

University of Texas where I was uh many years ago before I was at uh uh Arizona

2:11:56

he took me out in the field to look at some of the uh dinosaur tracks in the

2:12:01

Glenn Rose formation Cretaceous in Central Texas where Von Gan had a

2:12:07

picture in his book of um human Footprints he claimed human footprints

2:12:12

that were uh along a pathway adjacent to these three-toed dinosaur footprints

2:12:20

that probably a Bill dinosaur they they swam in shallow water and there's other

2:12:25

indications in the deposits that this was shallow water so comparing What

2:12:30

dayan's photograph showed and the footprints it was very clear what was going on because the actual marks on the

2:12:38

uh on the rocks that had been preserved were singular uh linear traces they

2:12:46

weren't three to they weren't five toed Footprints what

2:12:51

danan had done was he had wet the marks so they would be more visible but he added five little dots at the end of

2:12:58

them his picture yes uh and U he would say well you know this is uh to make the

2:13:05

story good but but it's very likely that what was going on is these three-toed

2:13:11

dinosaurs were swimming and they have a longer toe in the middle and as they pushed themselves along one of these

2:13:18

these would uh scrape the water bottom and these would go along a bit at another scrape just about in the same uh

2:13:26

sort of distance as human Footprints would be and the track had the same distance as human Footprints but it was

2:13:33

it was formed in a completely different way now this is an investigation that

2:13:39

you do to figure out what was really going on and and you use all the tools

2:13:46

you can to figure that out it's not about finding things that are consistent

2:13:52

with a story that you were trying to tell that that's called uh sham

2:13:57

reasoning where you know the answer and you are piling up a lot of you know good

2:14:04

sounding evidences logical argument Etc that is uh going to look like it's

2:14:12

consistent with your story that kind of reasoning is uh

2:14:18

easier to find as I said V again there's another kind of defect in reasoning that

2:14:25

is a little more difficult to deal with called fake reasoning this word has been

2:14:30

thrown out and used improperly but fake reasoning is when your motivation and

2:14:37

now we're talking a psychological motivation is not to find the truth of

2:14:42

what nature presents your motivation is to make money to be on uh podcasts or

2:14:49

you know to get uh attention uh it's not a scientific

2:14:54

motivation so it's you know not up to me uh to know the motivations of the people

2:15:01

who are uh doing this kind of stuff uh but one has to be somewhat

2:15:09

suspicious that maybe uh this is a uh a motivation problem uh and like bonan you

2:15:19

know if it's entertaining and it's uh you know people can enjoy the story just

2:15:25

like a fiction book there's nothing inherently wrong with that it but it

2:15:32

should not be claiming to be science the claim to be science has to

2:15:38

do with the things I've talked about and unfortunately what I've been saying

2:15:44

about the nature of science even by many scientists isn't how they convey it this

2:15:50

is this is something I've uh in a very long time because I I

2:15:59

probably you know became a scientist as

2:16:05

soon as I was walking and and talking uh because I was curious about things and

2:16:11

the things I was curious about were rocks uh I like as a you know

2:16:17

kindergartner I told my parents in Connecticut that I wanted to be a

2:16:22

geologist so it kind of crazy but um I've had now

2:16:30

uh you know close to to uh eight Decades

2:16:35

of U experience with this and I'm kind of reflecting on it not just the the

2:16:42

process but also my experience with many many

2:16:48

individuals so are you seeing like some scient uh they they weren't trained properly

2:16:53

they went to the wrong school or why are they like this uh they are dedicated to this

2:17:03

process of doing science uh they would like to be taken seriously they're

2:17:08

they're human beings like other human beings and as individuals thinking about it they have

2:17:15

their own motivations as well they you know they have to have money they have

2:17:20

to you know live their life uh but as I

2:17:25

said science an important element of it is not just that these are isolated

2:17:33

individuals they are part of a community a whole sort of you

2:17:40

know whole bunch of people that are absolutely dedicated to the same sort of

2:17:46

thing when some of those people get into trouble like the falsification of data or

2:17:54

whatever like that that Community instinctively they come down

2:17:59

on bounces on them and they suffer science is a very special thing and uh

2:18:07

so this is why scientists are you know it it might be said that that the

2:18:15

scientists are concerned that these people with these um ideas like

2:18:21

uh Hancock and uh and others uh that they're stepping into the role of

2:18:28

scientists and that scientists don't want them to take take over uh there may be some that feel that way I don't I you

2:18:37

know I I think they are you know they have their motivations but in terms of what I was

2:18:45

saying they just aren't scientists they they can be like denigan um you know

2:18:54

entertainers purveyors to uh public interest in in a way though they

2:19:00

are creating a misrepresentation as to what science

2:19:05

really is and what it really is about and that that's a problem that that I see but it's a

2:19:13

bigger problem it has to do with public understanding and this gets into the

2:19:19

relationship of science to many public issues like climate change and uh you

2:19:25

know all of the issues that get talked about a lot there's a huge body of

2:19:31

scientific evidence that is not being uh you know

2:19:39

considered they're not being fists they're not thinking

2:19:45

seriously that they could be wrong they may be showing a a kind of G

2:19:51

of presenting Alternatives acting as though they have

2:19:56

considered those but at least as far as the science Community is

2:20:02

concerned there's no indication that they have have done that seriously and

2:20:08

therefore they're not going to be taken credibly by the science Community notice I'm not saying the science Community is

2:20:14

claiming they have an absolute truth the absolute truth is in nature itself all the scientists can claim is that they

2:20:22

are absolutely and totally dedicated to this search for the truth and they are

2:20:28

using the best techniques and everything they can to get to it while also being humble enough to admit that they don't

2:20:35

really have the final answer one could say that this is something we need more of in our

2:20:42

society but uh it's certainly something that is a part of science it's something

2:20:47

that made me uh feel that uh I have always wanted to be a scientist I just

2:20:54

intrinsically uh you know haded a kind of affinity toward this whole way of

2:21:01

looking at the world yeah uh I don't know if this is an area that you you you

2:21:07

studied all that much but um do these floods would they have contributed at all to extinctions of of uh animal

2:21:15

species and things like that they certainly would have had huge

2:21:21

impacts on the local area where they occurred uh we we have uh you know the

2:21:29

the um remnants of carcasses of mammoths that were

2:21:34

probably you know uh in the flooding uh and these are being excavated from flood

2:21:42

deposits so the those that were there uh certainly were impacted but mammoths

2:21:49

were all over North America around the ice sheets and not all the margins of the ice sheets had catastrophic flooding

2:21:56

nor were the floods all at the same time in fact mammoths survived until a few thousand

2:22:03

years ago this is a fact there were on islands

2:22:09

off of the uh off of Siberia pygmy

2:22:14

mammoths that were the relatives of the

2:22:20

big mammoths that had uh existed during the ice AG now obviously something

2:22:26

happened where most of the mammoths were exting went extinct but there were

2:22:34

probably genetically smaller mammoths that were able to survive in this isolated Place

2:22:42

uh one of the theories that for the extinction which was developed by a uh

2:22:48

now deceased colleague of mine at the University of Arizona Paul Martin was

2:22:53

that human Hunters who developed Advanced Technologies at this time that were

2:23:01

capable of killing mammoths the so-called Clovis culture uh were a big factor in uh the

2:23:09

extinction of the late PL toine meapa now that's a was a kind of outrageous

2:23:15

idea when it was presented but it was pursued in a very powerful scientific

2:23:23

approach Vance holiday can tell you more about that because he's very closely

2:23:28

involved with it but it's it's an example of an idea when Martin proposed

2:23:34

this it was an outrageous idea that human beings you know it created the extinction but it was a productive idea

2:23:43

regardless of whether it was right or wrong pursuing it and looking at it in

2:23:48

detail in different places around the world led to new discoveries some of

2:23:54

which were inconsistent with that idea but others that were and and we do have

2:23:59

examples of extinctions uh let's say in uh Australia

2:24:05

where uh Aboriginal the ancestors of Aboriginal people arrived I think they

2:24:12

now think about 50,000 years ago we had massive extinctions of certain marsupial

2:24:18

that were readily able to be uh you know accessed by these human

2:24:23

hunters and the the animals had never had that before so there there are

2:24:29

productive ideas about these issues and I'm I'm not the person to talk to about

2:24:38

the uh all of the archaeological and Geo archaeological

2:24:43

evidence there are others to talk to about that but the general idea is back

2:24:49

to my original point about what what is an

2:24:55

authentic uh way of doing science and that uh that

2:25:02

way which is a little complicated and not as well understood by the general public is what seems to be at the heart

2:25:10

of this problem we have with uh some of the ideas that are you know floating on

2:25:16

the internet and getting lots of attention uh uh to me it's it's sad

2:25:23

because there's much more fascinating and interesting things that do have a

2:25:28

close relationship to our uh approach to understanding the world that could be

2:25:34

talked about uh and would be as interesting as these fanciful

2:25:39

extravagant ideas that I think are motivated by things other than uh this

2:25:46

uh absolute and true search for the truth it's interesting because um you'll

2:25:52

hear them often complaining that oh geologists they don't believe in

2:25:57

catastrophes you know they they're gradualists everything's gradual uh but they don't believe in cat cat

2:26:05

catastrophism um but actually uh you're one of the big proponents of cataclysms

2:26:11

you believe in more cataclysms than they do they want to combine them all into one right

2:26:17

so it was a big mistake by some geologists to think they needed

2:26:24

a unifying principle for Geology that principle uh was called

2:26:32

uniformitarianism even most geologists don't know that uniformitarianism is a

2:26:37

word invented by a Critic of the idea a

2:26:43

philosopher who understood geology he invented the word uniformitarian ISM for

2:26:51

this idea that the only processes that we could know about for certain were the ones

2:26:58

that we observe today and today we don't

2:27:03

see Ice Age floods we don't even see an Ice Age today we see a limited sample of

2:27:11

what the world is about the most common planetary surface

2:27:17

modifying process in the universe including in the history of Earth is

2:27:22

impact cratering it is totally catastrophic impact craters are created

2:27:28

by processes which can be hundreds or thousands of times more energetic than

2:27:35

thermonuclear bombs okay they are more catastrophic than catastrophic floods

2:27:42

that is a common process the whole surface of the Moon is evidence for that

2:27:47

and the Moon is as old as the Earth that happened on the early Earth so

2:27:53

catastrophism we know it there's so much of it that it

2:27:59

isn't even a an an issue uh no geologist

2:28:04

today would be a uh and and I've studied the history of this there were reasons

2:28:11

why geologists embrac this because they had a kind of a worry that their science

2:28:18

didn't seem as uh absolute and authoritative and this is a

2:28:24

big mistake as safe physics you know Isaac Newton came along in the 1700s and

2:28:31

he had models that could be absolutely predictive about forces and energy and

2:28:38

that and one of Newton's ideas was well to have this uh model we have to be

2:28:46

absolutely sure of our assumptions about not just that we have the right

2:28:52

equations to figure things out but we're applying the equation to the right thing

2:28:58

and he he had a word from Latin of how we have the right thing he called it Veri that we know the true causes of

2:29:05

things so how can you know the true causes of things you can do an experiment where you manipulate the

2:29:12

causes and you get certain results that are follow from those causes in geology

2:29:18

do you do an experiment on the whole earth do you do an experiment on a whole

2:29:24

river that is Flowing from the interior of North America to the ocean or a

2:29:29

glacier that is covering an entire continent you can't put that in a laboratory and do that so uh a very

2:29:36

famous geologist uh Charles lyel said okay what can we be certain about we can

2:29:41

be certain if we see it today okay if we see it today then we can be certain and

2:29:47

the process is we don't see impact craters we don't see catastrophic floods so

2:29:53

he stupidly he wasn't stupid but he made a big logical mistake and he generalized

2:30:02

this to a method to tell geology that they should be doing this that was highly controversial at

2:30:10

the time and the person as I said the guy who invented the word

2:30:15

uniformitarianism used it not to ridicule but to point out the flaw of it

2:30:21

and uh this is this is tied to the story of Jay Harem bretts which I'm lecturing about now at the University and a uh

2:30:29

program for uh people from the general public uh

2:30:35

so the pendulum has swung back the other way in more recent times right no

2:30:40

geologists realized what I have been saying it is it's all about what nature

2:30:47

presents and nature is filled with catastrophic processes so there's no

2:30:53

dispute anymore uh it's a red herring that is being uh promulgated by those

2:31:01

yeah they can go to Old literature and say that uh you know geologists are you

2:31:07

know stuck in the mud over this thing and and there have been others who've done this Emanuel velikovsky um who was

2:31:16

kind of a interesting character he uh you know promoted uh uh catastrophic

2:31:23

ideas he he had a fascinating approach where he felt that these things had all

2:31:30

been sort of embodied within ancient uh texts like the Bible and uh certainly

2:31:37

there's descriptions of uh things in the Bible uh that look very catastrophic

2:31:44

and there probably are phenomena that were being described by the sages that

2:31:52

were the source of writings one of my favorites is uh is uh uh immense Flames

2:31:59

that are emerging from the interior of the earth shooting up into the sky uh

2:32:05

and uh you know this is thought well uh there's no examples of this uh-uh that

2:32:13

has happened geologically we know that Flames shoot shot up in the sky from the

2:32:20

New Madrid earthquakes in the early 1800s and there's a completely logical

2:32:27

physical reason why these big Flames shot up in the sky because the uh

2:32:33

organic material in the uh sediments in placed by the Mississippi River uh Decay

2:32:39

and produce a combustible gas called methane and during the earthquakes there

2:32:46

were explosions of the methane that threw logs into the air and pillars of

2:32:54

fire that came out of the ground uh so there are phenomena that have actually

2:33:01

occurred that lead to uh to descriptions but the important thing in science is to

2:33:09

understand these things and that requires using the best techniques we can to see how nature brings certain

2:33:17

things about so it's not about the initial explanation it is about the

2:33:24

investigation and the absolute dedication to to honestly investigate

2:33:29

that problem which is not what these people do they as I said it you know I'm

2:33:37

not the one to judge but it certainly has the appearance of a lot of fake and

2:33:42

Sham reasoning that is motivated by something different than what I've been

2:33:48

talking about which I think is intrinsic to science notice that I am not being a

2:33:56

skeptic if things are noticed that are odd and are not explained there is

2:34:04

possibility of doing important science on that these are called anomalies and

2:34:10

they are absolutely critical to doing science but just to say that science

2:34:17

does not you know is skeptical about this that's not an appropriate thing if

2:34:23

they are worth pursuing some scientist will pursue them and as in the case of

2:34:29

Jay harm Bretz and the channel scabland the science Community will come to the

2:34:36

conclusion that he was absolutely correct it may take a little while that

2:34:42

tools may have to be developed to do this but it will AB it will definitely

2:34:48

come come into play so it's a it's a much more subtle and

2:34:54

interesting in some ways line between this non-science that has to do

2:35:02

with attitude and real science much more uh subtle and interesting than how the

2:35:08

public thinks of it as science as Authority so the verdict on the scab

2:35:14

lands is that much as is the case with the purported evidence for an impact there is no synchron ity there were

2:35:21

catastrophic floods all right but these floods simply do not line up in time so that they can be referred to as a

2:35:27

universal catastrophe not even in North America now I just want to address a possible objection that impact

Conclusion

2:35:33

proponents might have about synchron which we touched on earlier recently they have fallen back to a position that

2:35:40

asserts synchrony is not necessary if we assume that the catastrophe was prolonged maybe there was an extended

2:35:47

series of events and in such a case things don't need to line up exactly but

2:35:52

all that really does is water down the hypothesis to make it less falsifiable

2:35:57

the more nebulous your proposal the easier it is to get the evidence to fit into it it seems like a cheat but at the

2:36:04

very least it makes the hypothesis less clear specific and testable which is what all hypotheses should be and this

2:36:11

watered down hypothesis unfortunately is not great for Lost Civilization proponents because it makes the complete

2:36:17

destruction of a continent spanning Advanced civil Iz ation less likely so where does that leave us well the

2:36:23

impression I get overall is that the people who are advocating for a younger dest comet impact and an accompanying

2:36:30

worldwide catastrophe that resulted in the extinction of megap and human populations simply don't have the

2:36:36

necessary supporting evidence to put any faith in it is it possible that more evidence will be forthcoming and that

2:36:43

these researchers will one day be Vindicated if that happens I am more than willing to accept it but it does

2:36:49

seem unlikely from what I have gathered anyone who truly believes in science and the scientific method would never

2:36:56

believe in something until after sufficient evidence was gathered if you already believe in it ask yourself why

2:37:04

and even if the impact however unlikely ultimately gets proven it's a whole different Enterprise altogether to argue

2:37:11

that this event wiped out an advanced continent spaning civilization for anyone to believe that you would need to

2:37:17

find evidence for the civilization and that would require more than just going around the world pointing at artifacts

2:37:23

attributed to other civilizations and claiming that they are actually from this Advanced civilization on the basis

2:37:29

of the argument that in your opinion the known civilizations were too primitive

2:37:34

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