I recently noted that another writer has recently mentioned Iceland as a prospective asteroid impact zone.
When I first investigated the conjecture several years ago that the crust had shifted thirty degrees, I went looking for a lever in the way of a significant asteroid impact. I had no reason to also postulate human intervention as I have since come to appreciate. That inevitably led me straight away to Iceland.
It was in the right location and was certainly big enough and perhaps even small enough. Importantly, there were no other recent geological events that came close to matching it. And a quick check of geological reports indicated an extraordinary youth to the rocks on Iceland. The closest estimate that I came across was well under 100,000 years. Anyone familiar with the travails of geological aging would immediately rewrite that figure as 100,000 plus or minus 500,000 or so. The island has no old rocks.
That is impossible in practice because older rocks will get themselves cut off and isolated and then exposed for investigation. So if older rocks fail to exist, then they never existed. Some will want to argue the point, but the evidence to date is lack of evidence and in geology lack of evidence really is evidence. I become a little deaf when a clear cut Triassic is been argued as part of a Precambrian suite for which there is no other evidence. In geology, you really do come from Missouri.
Iceland was formed yesterday in terms of geology.
What disturbed me at the time was that the structure was sitting dead center on the mid Atlantic rift and was surely generated by the rift. It would be an astounding coincidence for an errant asteroid to hit such a target like that and I had no reason five years ago to conjecture human intervention. In fact, it was clear negative evidence of an asteroid event. Needless to say I was hesitant in forwarding Iceland, but as the only available prospect, I still wrote it up. Sometimes you have to go with what you have and that we had something at all was compelling.
Accepting the human intervention postulate changes everything and also justifies the choice of impact zone. An impact centered on the mid Atlantic ridge is on a zone of weakness and derivative shock waves will propagate along the ridge. The crust will also bend easiest here and deliver maximum energy to the slip plane itself. (read my earlier work on this).
The incoming asteroid was on a flat shallow trajectory that likely sent ample debris into the ice cap and exploded a lot of the cap itself producing the telltales that do exist.
It makes a pretty picture and also suggests extreme tsunami events hitting the European coast. The sea level was 300 feet lower though, but the worst of it should still have left traces.
In the event if you ever wanted an energy source able to produce forty days of rain if not decades of rain this surely does the trick. Of course, it took centuries for sea levels to rise as a result. However we certainly have a package of events that sort of conform to the ancient legends.
The problem is that right now no one is looking for confirmation in the evidence and a lot of good evidence has been explained away as much as possible. Piecing a good geological support structure together is not a minor enterprise and wrong opinions hang around for many decades.
The best evidence would be to discover unambiguous multimillion year old rocks on Iceland that is not a remnant from underlying ridge geology. That would possibly eliminate this conjecture. Otherwise, it is time to catalog possible tsunami remnants throughout Western Europe and see if it all hangs together. Certainly supporting anomalies have already been noted and commented on.
When I first investigated the conjecture several years ago that the crust had shifted thirty degrees, I went looking for a lever in the way of a significant asteroid impact. I had no reason to also postulate human intervention as I have since come to appreciate. That inevitably led me straight away to Iceland.
It was in the right location and was certainly big enough and perhaps even small enough. Importantly, there were no other recent geological events that came close to matching it. And a quick check of geological reports indicated an extraordinary youth to the rocks on Iceland. The closest estimate that I came across was well under 100,000 years. Anyone familiar with the travails of geological aging would immediately rewrite that figure as 100,000 plus or minus 500,000 or so. The island has no old rocks.
That is impossible in practice because older rocks will get themselves cut off and isolated and then exposed for investigation. So if older rocks fail to exist, then they never existed. Some will want to argue the point, but the evidence to date is lack of evidence and in geology lack of evidence really is evidence. I become a little deaf when a clear cut Triassic is been argued as part of a Precambrian suite for which there is no other evidence. In geology, you really do come from Missouri.
Iceland was formed yesterday in terms of geology.
What disturbed me at the time was that the structure was sitting dead center on the mid Atlantic rift and was surely generated by the rift. It would be an astounding coincidence for an errant asteroid to hit such a target like that and I had no reason five years ago to conjecture human intervention. In fact, it was clear negative evidence of an asteroid event. Needless to say I was hesitant in forwarding Iceland, but as the only available prospect, I still wrote it up. Sometimes you have to go with what you have and that we had something at all was compelling.
Accepting the human intervention postulate changes everything and also justifies the choice of impact zone. An impact centered on the mid Atlantic ridge is on a zone of weakness and derivative shock waves will propagate along the ridge. The crust will also bend easiest here and deliver maximum energy to the slip plane itself. (read my earlier work on this).
The incoming asteroid was on a flat shallow trajectory that likely sent ample debris into the ice cap and exploded a lot of the cap itself producing the telltales that do exist.
It makes a pretty picture and also suggests extreme tsunami events hitting the European coast. The sea level was 300 feet lower though, but the worst of it should still have left traces.
In the event if you ever wanted an energy source able to produce forty days of rain if not decades of rain this surely does the trick. Of course, it took centuries for sea levels to rise as a result. However we certainly have a package of events that sort of conform to the ancient legends.
The problem is that right now no one is looking for confirmation in the evidence and a lot of good evidence has been explained away as much as possible. Piecing a good geological support structure together is not a minor enterprise and wrong opinions hang around for many decades.
The best evidence would be to discover unambiguous multimillion year old rocks on Iceland that is not a remnant from underlying ridge geology. That would possibly eliminate this conjecture. Otherwise, it is time to catalog possible tsunami remnants throughout Western Europe and see if it all hangs together. Certainly supporting anomalies have already been noted and commented on.
