"Terminal Clovis Event" Bandwagon Gains Steam
The University of Cincinnati is trumpeting results that are said to support the TCE, but I don't understand the press release: "Samples of diamonds, gold and silver that have been found in the region [Ohio and Indiana] have been conclusively sourced through X-ray diffractometry in the lab of UC Professor of Geology Warren Huff back to the diamond fields region of Canada." I'm not an expert in any of this, but I think this technique only applies to crystals, which would be the diamonds and not the two metals. And I'm not aware of diffractometry being used to source diamonds, a very difficult task as I've pointed out in the context of conflict diamonds. Also, the press release doesn't say why the current theory—that Canadian diamonds were carried to Ohio by the Ice Age glaciers—is wrong in this case. Indeed it says something quite unconvincing: the results just happen to match another researcher's unpublished conclusion that the TCE impact was over a Canadian diamond region.
Where is all this published, or even just presented at a science meeting? It isn't; the release says it might be some day. But the Cincinnati researcher just happens to be a TV star in the National Geographic series "Naked Science," and his discoveries will be part of two more upcoming TV specials.
This is not how good science is advanced; rather, it is how hypotheses get a bad reputation.
Comments
It does seem strange to make an announcement about supposedly detailed work that is nowhere near the publication stage.
Apparently what you can do with x-ray diffraction and gold is to determine the silver content, because the size of the crystal structure changes. One reference: here - although I’d think more could be done with trace elements in the gold for sourcing the area it came from, which I don’t think would be done using x-ray diffraction.
hmmm … that is an odd press release … good call. I also need more info to really understand how this tests that idea.
Does this seem like “Cold Fusion” all over again?
My own research into a totally unrelated subject suggests an event so severe it reorientated the Earth or its surface around the ‘TCE’. Stonehenge, which archeologists appear hell-bent on placing in the late Neolithic period, is only functional when aligned nort-south at latitude 45N. That would place the original geographic North Pole at 57 22′N 79 17′E somewhere in Siberia. The Bluestones at Stonehenge have been dated to 14,000 years, which is more in keeping with the geological date of the Bank. The pattern of destruction at the site also points to a large inertial force.
We (graduate students) used XRD in Dr. Huff’s lab to analyze clay samples so it is not just for “crystals”. XRF and SEM EDAX can be used to get elemental analysis.
As a graduate student in geology at UC, I am working on analyzing lake sediments for evidence of a massive wildfire event (in the form of charcoal) at 12,900 yrs ago.
Dean, can you tell more about your research?
Thanks
Joanne
(4) Dean
14,000 years ago, Mammoths roamed the productive grassy steppes in North Siberia. Hardly a place where you would put a North Pole. If something like that happened the climatal North Pole would have been situated in North Canada
Joanne, x-ray techniques are used to find the spaces between the constituent sheets of clay minerals, which are (nano)crystals, so that reinforces my point. But the real point was that the press release didn’t say enough for any of us to tell what the guys in Cincinnati actually discovered and what their evidence really was.
And I agree, Andrew.