Investigations of a buried layer at sites from California to Belgium reveal materials that include metallic microspherules, carbon spherules, nanodiamonds, fullerenes, charcoal, and soot. The layer's composition may indicate that a massive body, possibly a comet, exploded in the atmosphere over the Laurentide Ice Sheet 12,900 years ago. The timing coincides with a great die-off of mammoths and other North American megafauna and the onset of a period of cooling in Northern Europe and elswhere known as the Younger Dryas Event. The American Clovis culture appears to have been dramatically affected, even terminated, at this same time. Speakers discuss numerous lines of evidence contributing to the impact hypothesis. The nature and frequency of this new kind of impact event could have major implications for our understanding of extinctions and climate change.

Part 1

This news conference is a watershed event for climate research. It's been a long journey from the derision heaped upon Immanuel Velikovsky in the 1950's through the 1980's when Carl Sagan famously ridiculed his cometary thesis in the PBS series Cosmos.

New research since even when the abstracts were published prior to the AGU meeting include the discovery of nanodiamonds in the layer just below the Black Mat in the deposits analyzed around North America and Belgium which can only come from a extraterrestrial impact. Here, scientists question "Just what roll impacts play with climate." And discuss the ice core evidence from Greenland and Antarctica: "There's strong evidence of massive biosphere burning." They conclude that the Younger Dryas "cooling would not have occurred without the impact."

For more information read the SOTT Focus article, The Younger Dryas Impact Event and the Cycles of Cosmic Catastrophes - Climate Scientists Awakening.

Parts 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7