Sub-Critical Impacts during the Holocene
by
Benny Peiser
Liverpool John Moores University

SUB-CRITICAL IMPACTS DURING THE HOLOCENE

About a dozen hypervelocity impact craters from the Holocene period have been discovered to date. The widespread ignorance of cosmic impacts during the Holocene is mainly due to the limited research focusing on crater producing events. Yet only 3surface crater on land. Tunguska-like impacts or "Super-Tunguskas" are thus taken out of the equation. Due to their catastrophic detonation above ground (or in the oceans), they often leave no obvious fingerprints behind. The relatively small number of known impact craters dating to the last 10, 00 years most certainly paint a deceptive picture of societal evolution. The fact that no large impact crater dating to this crucial period has been detected, has led to the belief that no large scale impact disaster can possibly have happened. However, this is a widespread delusion. In my talk, I will show that according to conservative estimates hundreds of small and medium-sized impacts have punctuated Earth during the last 10, 000 years. The great majority of these events have been of the Tunguska-type class of atmospheric impacts with an average energy yield of between 20 and 100 Mt TNT. However, even under the assumption that the current asteroidal and cometary flux has been constant for the last 10, 000 years, a number of surface impacts, including oceanic impacts, have repeatedly punctuated our planet. Episodes of increased cometary or meteoric activity punctuating human and social evolution should be looked upon as potential agencies determining environmental downturns and societal regressions.

Date received: March 6, 2002

Copyright © 2002 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # caiq-57.