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A NICKEL PICKLE

/The Problems of Building High-Tech From a Meteoroid Wreck/

*/by Bob Kobres/*

Part B

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*There is though, another agent which could destroy civilization and do
great harm to the environment, a large consignment of elements from
space.* Such deliveries are not as uncommon as was previously thought,
particularly during the past twelve thousand years <comfever.html>. Much
evidence suggests <clube90.html> that humanity witnessed, and was
affected by, the break-up of a very large comet <bigeoco.html> over this
time period. Astronomers, using data gathered on meteor showers, have
established that this debris had about the same orbital characteristics
five thousand years ago as it has today. The stuff orbits the Sun in
roughly three and a third years and while doing so crosses our planet's
orbital path twice. *Clearly the potential for collision is real and has
been realized a number of times in the past--most recently in the eight
year of this century.*

*Study of the "**Tunguska event* <tungmet.html>*" has shed considerable
light on the subject of impact phenomena. Interestingly this
illumination would probably be much weaker were it not for the value of
nickel and other metals that often comprise a meteorite.* The newly
established Soviet government was strapped for funds in 1921; warfare
had ravaged their homeland over the previous six years and it was now
time to rebuild. Any plan that held promise of producing a lot of rubles
quickly must have seemed attractive to Soviet officials. American
geologist/mine engineer Daniel Barringer's quest to extract the five to
fifteen million tons of meteorite metal that, he believed, was buried
beneath "meteor Crater" in Arizona had attracted considerable attention
about the world. The prospect of finding over a billion dollars worth of
metal in the bottom of a hole was quite intriguing--a natural "pot of
gold" story. Also, much scientific debate had been sparked by
Barringer's activity. Most geologists favored a more down to earth
explanation of this crater--the planet had simply blown off a bit of
steam there.

Barringer had finished his first boring episode in July of 1908, totally
oblivious (as was most of the world) to the fearful excitement
<evenkiv.html> that still gripped those who had witnessed a terrifying
arrival of space debris only weeks earlier. *Though the outside world
would remain ignorant of the Tunguska fall for two decades, there were
reports, printed in several Russian newspapers, of some unusual
phenomena which occurred in remote Siberia on the last morning of June
(1908). One of these stories must have later seemed extremely attractive
to the cash poor Soviets.* This particular report stated that all the
commotion had been caused by the landing of a large meteoroid which fell
very close to a railway. The story indicated that the meteorite was only
partially buried and might be as much as six cubic sagines in size. Six
cubit sagines translates into a twelve foot, nine inch cube of meteorite
material--a hunk of potentially valuable stuff that could be hoisted
onto a railcar and pulled to wherever. *Barringer was drilling away
again in 1921 and largely due to the publicity this activity received,
it was now widely known that meteorites often contained, in addition to
nickel, diamonds, platinum, gold and other materials of high monetary
value. These baubles from space could also fetch a good price from
museum collectors who would pay dearly to keep such valuable pieces of
information out of a furnace. In light of the circumstances, it is easy
to see why the Soviets chose to fund, as one of their first scientific
expeditions, a search for meteorites.*

As it turned out the only people in North American or the Soviet Union
that made a lot of money from a meteorite in the twenties were those who
had no idea they were digging up space debris--the Canadians mining at
Sudbury.

*The real value of these searches proved to be in the wealth of
information uncovered.* Much to Barringer's disappointment it was
learned that a relatively small object would excavate a lot of earth and
rock as it slammed into the planet. This prospector saw his five to
fifteen million ton jackpot shrink at least ten fold. Furthermore, he
was informed that most of the one-and-a-half, to half-million ton mass
which created his crater had been liquefied in the process. This meant
that what celestial material had not splashed out of the feature was
widely distributed within it, making a profitable mining operation very
doubtful. Barringer did not accept astronomer Forest Ray Moulton's
conclusions, however, he could not disprove them. Financial backers of
the mining project, who had commissioned Moulton's study, withdrew their
support. Barringer, whose tenacious spirit helped prove that large
craters could result form meteoroid impact, died of a stroke after three
months of heated debate over Moulton's 1929 papers. This
researcher/prospector contributed much to science over his sixty-nine years.

*Soviet scientist Leonid Kulik was not so much frustrated by what his
research was revealing as he was perplexed.* Though the news clip which
justified Kulik's 1921 expedition to remote Siberia had proven to be
almost totally inaccurate, the trip had been intriguing. Descriptions
given by actual witnesses of the 1908 event piqued Kulik's curiosity to
the point where he had to find out what really happened in this sparsely
populated region of the world. *This researcher dug in, and after six
years of fact gathering he finally persuaded the Soviet Academy of
Science that it was time for another expedition.*

Much of the information Kulik had been compiling came from fellow
researchers doing work in that part of Siberia. Most intriguing were
stories relayed back from scientists working among the native Tungus
people. This had posed somewhat of a problem for Kulik, as few
scientists in the academy gave credence to tales told by those they
considered to be primitive, backward people. *What finally tipped the
scales in Kulik's favor was a report prepared by a former head of the
Inkutch Observatory, A.V. Vognesensky.* Vognesensky combined the data
Kulik had gathered with 1908 seismic data recorded at Irkutsk and
concluded that:

*. . . it is highly probable that the future investigator of the
spot where the Khatanga [Stony Tunguska] meteorite fell will find
something very similar to the meteorite crater of Arizona;* i.e.,
from 2 to 3 kilometers around he will find a mass of fragments that
were separated from the main nucleus before it fell and during its
fall. The Indians of Arizona still preserve the legend that their
ancestors saw a fiery chariot fall from the sky and penetrate the
ground at the spot where the crater is; the present-day Tungusi
people have a similar legend about a new fiery stone. This stone
they stubbornly refused to show to the interested Russians who were
investigating the matter in 1908. However that may be, *the search
for and investigation of the Khatanga meteorite could prove a very
profitable subject of study, particularly if this meteorite turned
out to belong to the iron class.*

*This is why Kulik was a bit dumfounded when, in 1927, he actually found
the spot he had sought. The devastation was quite obvious; over seven
hundred square miles of dense Siberian forest had been scorched and
flattened. There was, however, no crater.*

*Kulik's find revealed that colliding space debris could do a great deal
of damage yet leave little long-term detectable evidence to indicate
that an impact had occurred. Some implications of this fact were
recognized by a few investigators almost immediately.* Astronomer C.P.
Olivier, writing of Kulik's discovery for Scientific American, stated in
the July 1928 issue:

*In looking over this account, one has to admit that many accounts
of events in old chronicles that have been laughed at as
fabrications are far less miraculous than this one, of which we seem
to have undoubted confirmation. Fortunately for humanity, this
meteoric fall happened in a region where there were no inhabitants
precisely in the affected area, but if such a thing could happen in
Siberia there is no known reason why the same could not happen in
the United States.*

*Olivier's statement would have certainly invoked a nod from any reader
who had perused an essay published the year before by Franz Xavier
Kugler.* Kugler was a Jesuit priest who had devoted much of his life to
the study of ancient cuneiform astronomical tablets. Like other
philologists, Kugler had earlier in his career decided that some of the
unearthed tablets he deciphered were purely fictional. This scholar's
1927 essay, /Sybillinischer Sternkampf und Phaethon in
naturgeschichtlicher Beitrage/ <http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/kugler/>
(The Sybilline Battle of the Stars and Phaethon Seen as Natural
History), was published two years before his death. *Apparently the
emerging realization of how destructive a meteoroid impact could be,
combined with his life-long study of ancient astronomical texts,
prompted Kugler to re-evaluate his earlier interpretation of some of the
clay tablets deciphered by him. The importance of Kugler's work stems
from the fact that he was reading unearthed documents, not handed down
tales.* Researchers are, understandably, reluctant to put much faith in
stories that have been passed along over many generations. Both the
Sybylline Oracles and the story of Phaethon fall into this category.
Though other sources establish these traditions as ancient, no really
early written version of these works has been found. *By pointing out
features that such stories had in common with unearthed cuneiform texts,
Kugler was able to shed some light on the original core of these tales.
In Kugler's opinion, the destructive impact, around thirty-five hundred
years ago, of a sun-like meteor, which he found chronicled on clay
tablets, provided the inspiration for the Sibylline Battle of the Stars
and the Phaethon legend.*

*Actually, as we learn more of the phenomena an impact event is capable
of producing, many ancient accounts are appearing less incredible. For
instance, several cultures about the world have retained legends which
associate cold weather with fire coming down from the sky.* Only a
decade ago if any credence was given to such a tale, the assumption
would have been that the story was inspired by vulcanism. While it is
certainly possible that some legends do stem from volcanic activity it
is no longer "scientific" to make such an assumption. Researchers now
know that an impact event could produce a darkening of the sky and so
cause a steep drop in temperature.

The Sibylline Oracles employ less metaphor than many ancient accounts
and so provide some rather succinct lines for the reader to ponder:

And then in his anger the immortal *God who dwells on high shall
hurl from the sky a fiery bolt on the head of the unholy: and summer
shall change to winter in that day. *And then great woe shall befall
mortal men: for He that thunders from on high shall destroy all the
shameless, with thunderings and lightnings and burning thunderbolts
upon his enemies, and shall make an end of them for their
ungodliness, so that the corpses shall lie on the earth more
countless than the sand.

The above is from a 1918 translation by H.N. Bate
<http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/sib/>. Reverend Bate, as did most
scholars of that time, perceived these lines as nothing more than
eschatological embellishment of the apocalyptic theme. *The phrase, "and
summer shall change to winter in that day," did not need to make sense
from his point of view; Bate simply noted that in another version (Book
VIII) of these oracles, a parallel passage has God changing winter to
summer. The interesting factor here is that to someone with no knowledge
of impact phenomena, the notion that it should become cold as a result
of God throwing fire from heaven is absurd. From a "logical" perspective
it would be easy to assume that a scribal error produced this nonsense
and a simple swap of word position would correct it.* In a translation
by Milton S. Terry, published in 1899, a reader can thumb to Book V and
find essentially the same lines as those quoted above from Bates'
translation. *The only real difference in Terry's version has: "And in
the place of winter there shall be in that day summer."* This
"correction" was probably not made by Professor Terry but by a Venetian
scholar, Aloisius Rzach. Terry based his English translation on Rzach's
Greek version, published in 1891, because it was in his words, "The
latest and most improved edition of the Greek text of the twelve books
now extant . . . ." *However, Terry does caution his readers that
Rzach's ". . . work has not escaped criticism, especially on account of
its numerous conjectural emendations, . . ."*

*The assumption or premise that our ancestors were only referring to
phenomena which we, also, are familiar with has produced considerable
distortion in **our view of the past*
<http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/korea/>*.* Consider the term
thunder-bolt. A large stony meteoroid will often break up violently in
the atmosphere. If the object is large enough to reach into the lower
atmosphere, an observer will see a blinding flash of light followed by a
loud crash of thunder. Often a large dark cloud composed of oxides of
nitrogen and debris from the object will appear. This cloud can be
highly charged and so cause conventional lightning to ensue. Scientists
call such an arrival a bolide. Technically the Tunguska object falls
into this classification because its energy was released several miles
above our planet's surface. *A problem is that most people who have
translated ancient texts had never witnessed a large bolide and until
fairly recently, few, if any, would be aware that such a phenomenon
could occur. A term like **thunder-bolt* <iceoxy.html>*, to people
unfamiliar with impact phenomena, easily equates with lightning bolt. As
a result, many ancient accounts of impact phenomena have been read as
descriptions of jolly good storms.*

*At present the academic community is in the process of a major
alteration of world view. The picture of a placid, slowly changing
environment is being replaced by the image of a biosphere periodically
thrown into chaos by major impact events.* Though debate continues on
the degree of influence, it is now widely accepted that past collisions
with extraterrestrial objects have played a role (likely a major one) in
biological evolution. *What has yet to be adequately investigated is the
part past impacts have played in human social evolution.*

The assertion that cosmic collisions have affected society is not new.
*Plato, in his **Timeaus* <timaeus.html>*, makes it plain that he
believed impacts to be responsible for losses of history.* By way of
dialogue Plato has an aged Egyptian priest inform his Greek visitor,
Solon, that *the story of Phaethon, known to the Greeks as a fable, is
in reality, true, as " . . . it expresses the mutation of the bodies
revolving in the heavens about the earth; and indicates that, after long
periods of time, a destruction of terrestrial natures ensues from the
devastations of fire."* The priest next points out that the Gods
(heavenly bodies) also cause great floods which take the lives of many
people. He then explains to Solon that, due to the Nile, Egypt has fared
better than most nations and so has retained its ancient history,
"[w]hile, on the contrary, you and other nations commit only recent
transactions to writing, and to other inventions which society has
employed for transmitting information to posterity; and *so again, at
stated periods of time, a certain celestial defluxion rushes on them
like a disease; from whence those among you who survive are both
destitute of literary acquisitions and the inspiration of the Muses.*
Hence it happens that you become juvenile again, and ignorant of the
events which happened in ancient times, as well among us as in the
regions which you inhabit."

Until very recently, there was little evidence to support Plato's
contention, particularly his assertion that these events occurred "at
stated periods of time." What has now moved the words of this old Greek
philosopher from the improbable to plausible realm is a contemporary
awareness of the numerous large objects that cross our planet's
path--especially the debris mentioned earlier <clube90.html> that is
associated with comet Encke.

British astronomers Victor Clube and Bill Napier present, in The Cosmic
Serpent (1982), a strong astronomical based argument which contends
that, due to its orbital characteristics, the progenitor of comet Encke
quite likely caused humanity a great deal of grief in the past. *How
large this comet was when it first fell into an Earth-orbit-crossing
path is not known. It is possible that this object had more in common
with a beast like Chiron than it did with the normally small,
long-period comets.* Chiron's size is about one-hundred miles across. It
presently has an unstable fifty-one year orbit which keeps it between
the paths of Saturn and Uranus. The object has exhibited comet-like
activity to astronomers and because Chiron's orbit is not stable it
could be pulled into our region of the solar system a few thousand years
from now.

*It is difficult to truly appreciate the visual phenomena that such a
large object could produce as it neared the furnace of our solar system.
Gases from such an object might produce a coma as large as the Sun and a
tail which would span the orbits of the inner planets. In close
proximity to Earth, the size of such an apparition would make the Sun
and Moon appear as dwarfs. Combined evidence suggests that our ancestors
witnessed such mega-comet activity and were influenced psychologically,
as well as physically, by the ensuing phenomena such a large interloper
could, and apparently did, produce.*

*One way the reader can realize the collective ignorance, and yet
appreciate how fast things are changing in this area of research, is by
comparing the number of objects Clube and Napier associated with comet
Encke in 1982 to the number known presently. In The Cosmic Serpent, the
authors list only one object,* Hephaistos, as having once been part of
the still active comet Encke. Hephaistos was discovered in 1978 and is
one of the largest Earth-orbit-crossing objects found so far. Its six
mile diameter (about the same as the hypothetical dinosaur slayer) is
actually larger than comet Encke's estimated girth. *As of now (late
1988), five objects in addition to Encke are identified with this group,
with two more orbiting bodies seen as likely members.*

*The rapid population rise of recognized objects in the Encke group is a
result of a stepped up effort to locate Earth-orbit-crossing objects in
general. Prior to the 1979 discovery of hard evidence which indicated a
link between mass extinction and impact generated phenomena, few
researchers were working in this area.* Most astronomers were studying
features far removed from our solar system such as black holes and other
galaxies, while geologists and paleontologists, in the main, were
comfortable with the long held idea of an Earth that changed very
slowly. *What is presently taking place constitutes a change of view as
radical as the altered picture which came from proving the Sun does not
orbit about the Earth.* Naturally, not all researchers are happy with
what is transpiring--abandoning long-held assumptions is not pleasant,
particularly when these beliefs served as corner stones to your
research. This is though, where the true value of the scientific method
comes into play. Once enough evidence is found to show a prior
assumption false, that earlier belief will become passé, no matter how
familiar and comfortable it had been. Understandably, a bit of verbal
battling takes place before there is a general acceptance of a new world
view and this process of hashing it out can appear quite confusing to a
casual observer. One article might convey to the reader that, though
impacts can cause mass extinction, our time period falls safely between
such periodically recurring events so there is no reason for us to
worry. Another paper might state: Yes major impacts occur, but they do
not cause extinction because . . . Actually, a consensus has emerged
among scientists who are in the forefront of this research. These
investigators agree that mass extinction has been caused by impact
phenomena, and that major impact events increase in frequency at thirty
to thirty-three million year intervals. They also concur with evidence
which indicates that the last bombardment episode spanned a few million
years, around a date which occurred thirty-four million years ago. A
recent (over the past two million years) rise in the rate of crater
formation combined with the evidence for periodicity leads these
scientists to conclude that we are presently within such a bombardment
episode. Their contention is further strengthened by the contemporary
presence of a larger than normal population of Earth-orbit-crossing
objects. *Stated simply, these researchers agree that the chance of a
major impact happening in the near future is much, much greater than it
was thought to be only a decade ago. This also means, of course, the
probability that there have been fairly recent past impacts is also
greater. In fact, the orbital characteristics of debris associated with
comet Encke basically guarantees that significant collisions have taken
place within the last fifteen thousand years.*

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