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How Australia was born

Frank Walker
June 4, 2006

SCIENTISTS believe they have finally solved one of Earth's greatest mysteries: what caused the great extinction of life hundreds of millions of years ago.

The answer was revealed yesterday when an American team announced it had discovered the world's biggest meteor crater almost two kilometres under the ice in Antarctica.

They say a meteor almost 50 kilometres wide caused a 500-kilometre-wide crater deep under the Wilkes Land region of Antarctica, directly south of Australia.

The massive explosion from the impact probably created the continent of Australia, forcing it to break away from the existing land mass.

The incredible discovery caused huge excitement among Australian scientists last night. It could be the missing link in the geological formation of the continents. It would also answer why life on Earth was almost completely wiped out hundreds of millions of years ago.

The meteor the size of Sydney struck 250 million years ago and must have been the biggest explosion ever seen on the planet, far bigger than the 10-kilometre-wide meteor which hit east of Mexico 65 million years ago, wiping out the dinosaurs.

Ohio State University scientists who found the crater said the massive Antarctic crater could explain the global extinction in the Permian-Triassic period when all animal life on Earth died out, clearing the way for the dinosaurs.

The massive impact probably broke up the ancient continent of Gondwanaland, pushing Australia out on its long drift north to its current position. The landmass that became India shot off first, while Africa and South America broke off later.

"This Wilkes Land impact is much bigger than the impact that killed the dinosaurs, and probably would have caused catastrophic damage at the time," said Ralph von Frese, professor of geological sciences at Ohio State University.

Professor von Frese and Laramie Potts, a postdoctoral researcher in geological sciences, led the team of Ohio University, NASA, Russian and Korean scientists that discovered the crater.

They reported their preliminary results yesterday to the American Geophysical Union joint assembly meeting at Baltimore.

The scientists used gravity fluctuations measured by satellites to peer beneath Antarctica's icy surface, and found a 321-kilometre-wide plug of mantle material - a "mascon" in geological parlance - that had risen up into the Earth's crust.

Mascons are the planetary equivalent of a bump on the head. They form where large objects slam into a planet's surface. When the scientists overlaid their gravity image with airborne radar images of the ground beneath the ice, they found the mascon perfectly centred inside a circular ridge 482 kilometres wide.

"Based on what we know about the geologic history of the region, this Wilkes Land mascon formed recently by geologic standards - probably about 250 million years ago," Professor von Frese said.

Professor Michael Archer, dean of the Faculty of Science at University of NSW, said the crater could prove to be the missing link science has been waiting for.

"A meteor that size would have punctured right through the crust of the Earth and caused enormous damage to the planet," he said.

In that period 95 per cent of life on Earth was destroyed, he said.

"It's possible this is the missing key to what caused it."

For example the water vapour thing: this is not scientifically correct* and has been widely debunked, yet is is still circulated as the "Number 1 thing the scientists don't want you to know about."

* Water vapour is in a natural equilibrium. Adding more doesn't cause a long term increase in level, because the atmosphere cannot hold more water so it falls back as rain. Adding CO2 does cause a permenant increase in level, so it's not comparable.

I guess there's not much chance of a sequel

I can sum this all up in one sentence...

The fact that humans consider the fact that their presence on this planet has anything whatsoever to do with the statistical vagaries of the vast thermodynamic system that they refer to as 'The Climate', is clear proof of their utter arrogance as the dominant species.

So there!

Blimey! and I thought I was paranoid!

So let me get this right. Most governments round the world are controlling their populations by the use of fear of global warming / climate change / call it what you will except America which is trying to comfort them by not really believing it so they are controlling their population with the fear of terrorism instead and Tony Blair has a foot in each potential apocalypse just to hedge his bets...

Most governments are only funding scientists who say that global warming IS happening as a result of man's activities except the US who are funding them to say that it's NOT.

It's hard to know what to believe really!

The hole in the ozone layer hasn't frazzled everyone in Australia to a crisp but they do seem to have an increased incidence of skin cancer. Acid rain hasn't actually completely deforested the Northern half of mainland Europe but they do have a few skanky looking pine trees.

Maybe the truth is that this is a real effect and it is happening and it is (partly) to do with man but not as much as the authorities think?

Either way, surely getting away from being so heavily dependant on a fuel source that seems to predominantly lie under the most politically or climactically hostile parts of the world can probably only be a good thing, can't it?!

This might be a really silly question but who said that oil would run out, and on what basis? When did dead vegetation, animals, pressure etc stop becoming oil? What does it become now?