Re: Mount Toba and extinction

[David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Simonyi" <huibm012@attglobal.net>
Sent: Friday, January 02, 2004 5:47 AM

> Mount Toba produced 2,000 and isn't 800 cubic km of ash. This volume is
> four times greater then the K-T impact was.

You seem to mean "4 times greater than the impactor was". What do you think
happens when a rock measuring 800 km³ falls down at cosmic speeds? Its
kinetic energy is turned into an explosion. We're not talking about a
billiard game here!!! This explosion produced a primary crater some 100 km
across and tens of km deep. _This_ volume was thrown into the air (partly as
vapor, partly as ejecta). _This_ volume -- if we take 30 km as the radius of
a hemispherical primary crater, and pi = 3: _108,000 km³_ (no typo: one
hundred eight thousand cubic kilometers) -- is what you have to compare to
the total ejecta of Toba.