Re: Chicxulub's Antipode (Re: cause of death at KT)

[Phillip Bigelow <bigelowp@juno.com>]

I loath responding to myself (it usually leads to a me vs me flame war),
but here goes....


> So if you were standing on land [at the Chicxulub antipode] , you would
first have been thrown up 
> in
> the air by the P-wave,


Well, maybe not.  P-waves ("compression waves") tend to get absorbed by
liquid, like what is present in the outer core of the Earth.  Since we
are talking about a seismic source that is situated directly antipodal to
the observer's locality, the P-wave would have to go through the core. 
Instead, it would have been dissipated by the creamy liquid-filled
center, never to reach the antipode.



> and then shortly thereafter, you would have 
> been
> thrown in every lateral direction randomly, probably quite violently, 
> by
> the S-waves.


Since S-waves take a different route to the antipode, this scenario still
holds true.

<pb>
--
Ummm.... Liquid-filled centers.  Ummmm....