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Re: Meteor...

I found many reactions to the article of G. Keller. You disproved her
conclusion.
I'm waiting your denial of my following article.


OK, I'll try...

(Sorry, Science didn't published without comment.)

Of course not. It's in a wrong format, and it's your business, not theirs, to bring it into the correct format.

And I'd like remind you my earlier article where I wrote: "A powerful
tsunami would have devastated the eggs in the seashore sand, the living
creatures and ovules on the coast and in the shallow water, etc.

Where are the huge amount of fossil records of such drifted and buried
living things?"

This is a mistake in thinking. All those organisms would have died within the next 100 years or so anyway. Now I wish you lots of luck in trying to distinguish 100 years from 100 seconds in 65 _million_ year old sediments.

WHAT CONCLUSIONS CAN BE DRAWN FROM THE EVENTS THAT HAD HAPPENED IN THE
REGION THAT IS TODAY THE MOODY CREEK MINE, NEW ZEALAND?

Your paper

This is used for "newspaper" and for "article", but never for "(scientific) journal".

According to their findings, the sudden disappearance of the earlier
vegetation was followed by a fungal layer that, in turn, gave place to a
basically different type of vegetation in a short time. This change
happened very quickly. The whole process is contained within a few
centimeters wide layer. The iridium concentration of these layers shows a
significant rise and fall.

The authors have taken for granted in their evaluation of the findings that
an impact of a bolida took place on the K-T boundary, which caused mass
extinctions all over the Earth. Based on this hypothesis, they considered
the changes in the Ir concentration a proof of the simultaneity of the
studied events and the impact.

But these findings do not prove this. Rather, they disprove it!

1. The timing of the events

Presently, there is no known method for determining the date of a 65
million years old event with an accuracy of even a few hundred years. This
is also true for the exact date of the K-T boundary. The most we can know
about these findings is that they happened somewhere around the supposed
K-T boundary, give or take a few hundred years.

This would only be true if there was any proof that these events happened
approximately 65 million years ago.

The changes of the Ir concentration do not prove this. (I have developed
this argument in a couple of articles written 3 years ago.


You should have cited them.

Suffice it to say that the reason behind the so-called Ir
anomaly might be a drawn-out
falling of Ir. It does not contradict the selectivity of the extinction of
animal life, while the selective effect could not have taken place in the
case of an impact.)

The authors have not given the dates of the studied events. They must have
failed to do so because their findings did not yield this information. The
speed with which these layers were formed is unknown. It could have been
only a few months, a few years (or possibly just a few weeks) while the
fungi dominated the place.

So we do not know when, nor for how long, these layers were being formed.

The Ir anomaly is a _global_ _event_. It follows that it must have taken place simultaneously all over the world.

2. The events

The complete cycle of the rise and fall of the Ir level took place in an
approx. 2.3 cm thick layer, of which 1 cm is below the K-T boundary.
Allowing for the dead line correction,


What do you mean?

this section has more than 20
percent of the total increase. Also, there is a low peak 3 cm below the K-T
boundary.

How did the Ir concentration get higher before the time of the supposed
impact? The impact theory does not explain this.

But basic sedimentology explains it. Some Ir compounds are soluble in water (as we pointed out to you a few months ago). And water moves -- through sand, through mud, through practically all sediments before they lithify, and often later as well. We don't even need bioturbation to explain this smearing-out.

By the end of the process, the Ir level fell to between one half to
three-fourths of the original value.

Why was the Ir concentration lower after the process, than before? This is
also left unexplained by the supposed impact.


Perhaps the sedimentation speed changed?

Another argument against the impact theory is that the Ir concentration
increased and decreased relatively slowly. In case of an impact, the Ir
concentration jumps suddenly to a higher level then returns slowly to its
original value.


See above.

The vegetation seems to be undisturbed by the almost 2.5 times increase of
the Ir level, but perished due to the increase above that.


"Due to the increase"??? Why do you _start_ with your _conclusion_?

Why?

The fungal layer is only 3 cm thick and precedes the Ir peak.

This is wrong. It precedes the highest point of the peak, but not the entire peak. See above for why the peak has a vertical dimension.

Why did the fungi disappear before the peak, and why did new plants show up
as early as that? If the amount of particles containing Ir was
characteristic of the amount of bolida residue falling back upon the
surface of the Earth, then why did these events happen during the strongest
falling and not later, after the falling had stopped?

Again, see above: because not every atom of Ir stays where it fell down. Remember -- we are talking about parts per billion.

3. The amount of Ir

Presently, about 2-6 kt. of bolida fragments falls on the Earth each year,
resulting in an approx. 0.1 ppb Ir concentration in the crust. This means
the Ir falling is 0.2-0.6 g per year. (That is, if no Ir gets to the
surface from within the Earth. Allowing for that, the correct figure is up
to 0.2-0.6 g.)

The elevated Ir concentration in the above mentioned 2.3 cm thick layer
averaged at 1.1 ppb.

And here you cannot continue to calculate -- because you don't know how much time those 2.3 cm represent!!! They aren't 2.3 cm all over the world, _of course_.

The result is 1.3e-5x2xe10 t
or
260,000 t.


In how much time???

The supposed chondrit bolida was approximately 1,700 Gt. 

Chondrite, chondritic bolide.

The following are possible:

3.1 The Ir concentration of the bolida was the same as those of our times. 

I'm sure not all chondrites have precisely identical Ir concentrations...

3.2 All of the Ir originated in the bolida.

In that case, the Ir concentration of the bolida was about one and a half
thousand times higher than that of an average bolida today.


An average bolide? Or an average chondrite???

4. The generalization of the findings

The studied material originated from a mine in New Zealand. The authors
based their speculations about the whole Earth upon this one site. (To be
correct, Tschudy and colleagues did find a so-called fern peak - a sudden
rise and fall of the amount of fern spores immediately succeeding the K-T
boundary - in the Western region of North America dating from the same
time. So the short lived appearance and disappearance of a transitory group
of plants around the K-T boundary has happened in more places than one.)

The fern spike was not limited to (several sites in!!!) North America. It has also been found in Japan -- and in another site in New Zealand.

Can you draw a conclusion about the whole Earth based on the findings of
one single site?

It's the best we have. It's the only one that has millimeter-level resolution so far. Besides, a global fungal spike is (as the authors point out) known from the Permian-Triassic boundary, so we already know that such things exist.

If that site conforms perfectly to the average, then maybe yes. But there's
nothing in this case that would support this.

How wrong can you be?

Let's see an example.

Unnecessary. Everybody knows about the dangers of doing statistics with a sample of 1. Like most journals, Science has extreme space restrictions.