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Kind of pedantic? I think everyone knows the debate is around the 'event', which caused a 'period' of geologic history which is referred to as "Younger Dryas"
by FrustratedMonky 1y ago
Kind of pedantic?
I think everyone knows the debate is around the 'event', which caused a 'period' of geologic history which is referred to as "Younger Dryas". I guess once the 'event' is known, it can be named something, like "The Younger Dryas Event".
What I'd like to know, is why just one event.
There is this paper, and also the crater found in Greenland a couple years ago. Maybe there was a more general bombardment, not just a one-off smoking gone.
- protocolture 1y agoThere doesnt have to be an event. The current accepted theory is (from the gps wiki article) "is an alternative to the long-standing and widely accepted explanation that the Younger Dryas was caused by a significant reduction in, or shutdown of the North Atlantic Conveyor due to a sudden influx of freshwater from Lake Agassiz and deglaciation in North America."
- adastra22 1y agoI'm not sure what definition of "event" you are using. What you quoted is an event. Really anything that shows up as a spike in a chart on ANY timescale, is an "event." The word has broad meaning in the sciences.
- protocolture 1y agoThe person I am replying to is using event in the terms of "Something that caused" not "Thing that happened" and then goes on to further assume more airbursting asteroids. Yes a thing happened. But theres no need for a smoking space gun.
- FrustratedMonky 1y agoI literally said "why just one event". I don't know if it was asteroid or not, that is why there is controversy. How is "sudden influx of freshwater from Lake Agassiz and deglaciation in North America" not an event? As to the derision on asteroids, not sure why, considering we find evidence of them everywhere. Why not consider it as an option. Sorry if my memory is like everyone else's. When the Greenland Crater was found, there were 100's of articles linking it to Younger Dryas. It was dated later and discounted as being too old, that did NOT get 100's of articles, so was not widely known. I didn't realize it till this exchange.
- cluckindan 1y agoThe ”event” you mention might sound like it happened instantly or at least within a day or two, but it likely took many hundreds of years. So, not an ”event” in the sense an asteroid impact is an ”event”. ”Process” or ”period” would make more sense when things are happening at those time scales.
- FrustratedMonky 1y ago100 years out of 10,000, is it an event? I understand the point. Just have had enough conversations with engineers about "is a micro second fast enough", "nothing is really happening, a whole second is plenty". Time scales can make a lot of things look long or instant.
- cluckindan 1y agoEverything depends on context, yes. But in the geohistorical context, ”events” are commonly understood as asteroid impacts, such as the Tunguska event and the Triassic–Jurassic extinction event, so the choice of word carries a heavy implication in this context.
- FrustratedMonky 1y agoIsn't part of the issue in this discussion, and maybe the controversy. Is that the knock on effects can take decades/100s of years to develop. An asteroid is 1 day, but the fallout and seasons changing can take years. So by the time you look in geologic record, it is 10-100 of years of 'evidence'. And finding a single point event is difficult.
- adastra22 1y agoYes, it can take hundreds to thousands of years or more for the impulse of cosmic event to reach a new steady state in global climate. The KT extinction wasn’t “fast” either.
- salynchnew 1y agoThere are several papers arguing that there is no "one event" a la https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012825223001915?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001282522... and others.
- MangoToupe 1y agoThe crater in Greenland has been dated to about 60 million years ago