Michael E Davias, LIDAR views of shallow "Carolina Bay" Nebraska ejecta craters from Holocene impact in Michigan: Rich Murray 2010.06.03

[Rich Murray]

Michael E Davias, LIDAR views of shallow "Carolina Bay" Nebraska ejecta
craters from Holocene impact in Michigan: Rich Murray 2010.06.03
http://rmforall.blogspot.com/2010_06_01_archive.htm
Thursday, June 3, 2010
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http://groups.yahoo.com/group/astrodeep/message/51
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Herein, I hope to introduce the reader to the details of the
evidence.


http://cintos.org/SaginawManifold/index.html

The Sagainaw Impact Manifold

Evaluating The Carolina Bays As Surface Features In A Distal
Ejecta Blanket: Geophysical Flow Analysis Predicts Bay
Orientations, Enables Triangulation To A Causal Impact Site

Abstract:

We present a novel approach to the genesis of the Carolina
bays, proposing that those enigmatic landforms are depositional
features within a 1 to 10 meter-thick blanket of hydrated ejecta
associated with a cosmic impact into the Wisconsinan ice shield
at the close of the Pleistocene era.
The ellipsoidal bays exhibit an "inferred orientation", facilitating
the use of a triangulation network to identify the associated
terrestrial impact crater.
Attempts by others to triangulate bay orientations to a causal
crater may have failed because the ballistic physics and fluid
mechanics aspects of an ejecta distribution were not
considered.
An analytical model was heuristically developed to generate
ejecta emplacement orientations that reflect large-scale
geophysical flow effects, and its results were compared to
empirically measured bay orientations at ~150 Carolina bay
"fields" (representing many thousands of bays).
Our model's predicted results correlate well with actual bay
orientations when an oblique cosmic impact across the
Saginaw area of Michigan is considered.
The great-circle distances separating the proposed Saginaw
impact crater and all identified Carolina bays also correlate
well; the bay's geographic distribution is along a narrow and
symmetrical pair of arcs, east and west of the proposed crater.
These positive correlations suggest that a unique geospatial
relationship exists between the proposed impact location and
the Carolina bays of North America.
To facilitate independent testing of the hypothesis, a
web-based version of the model was made publically available
for integration with the Google Earth GIS.

A comprehensive review of the Hypothesis and our Heuristic
Argument is discussed in this web site.


http://cintos.org/SaginawManifold/Distal_Ejecta/Nebraska_bays/index.html

19 LIDAR views with at least one ejecta crater each:

"Our ejecta blanket sheet model suggests that the bays are
present as defects (popped bubbles) in a thin layer of sandy
ejecta."

High and low elevations show very shallow craters.

Atlanta_NE
40.386159 -99.485850  2.1x1.5 km
el .708 km SE edge, .713 km NW edge

Axtell_NE
40.444485 -99.171542 2.9x1.6 km
el .670 km N edge, .680 km S edge

Kennesaw_NE
40.588706 -98.732867 3x2.1 km
el .620 E edge, .629 S edge

bladen
40.262303 -98.56760 2x.9 km
el .609 E edge, .619 W,E edges

ClayCenter_NE
40.528743 -98.083722 3x1.8 km
el .540 km E edge, .545 km N edge

With Google Maps Terrain set so that 1 km = 1 inch on a 15
inch screen, the two craters just SE and NW of Clay Center
are noticeable.
The drainage channel at the NEE end of the crater, flowing to
the E, N of Clay Center, is discernable.

http://cintos.org/SaginawManifold/Distal_Ejecta/Nebraska_bays/ClayCenter_NE/index.html

"Here is a SHV-shader map of the Clay Center area.
The image is linked to a higher resolution version."

ClayCenter_NE is the green crater near the bottom center
of this view, just NW of Clay Center.

http://cintos.org/ge/Portraits/Clay_Center_Detail_Large_72dpi.jpg

Geneva_NE
40.410949 -97.669857 5.6x3.4 km
el .491 km S edge, .499 km N edge

Aurora_NE
40.850019 -98.131775 3.2x1.9 km
el .556 km S edge, .562 km N edge

Arborville, NE
41.012978 -97.701995 2.1x1.8 km
el .515 km low, .524 km W,N,E edges

Surprise_NE
41.104996 -97.457497 4x2 km
el .491 km low, .502 km W,N,E,S edges

Utica_NE
40.914481 -97.343654 2.9x2.3 km
el .479 km center, .494 km W,E edges

Buffalo_NE
40.863550 -99.120861 3.85x2.3 km
el .684 km center, .702 km W edge

Grant_Twp_NE
41.059782 -99.940563 2.1x1.2 km
el .845 km S edge, .866 km E,W edges

Miller_NE
40.96069 -99.397254 1x.7 km
el .723 km center, .730 km S edge

Arnold_NE
41.457925 -99.973406 1.6x1.3 km
el .894 km center, .915 km E edge, oval, flat bottom

Merna_NE
41.486351 -99.711282 1.7x1.2 km
el .840 km center, .865 km S edge

Garfield_Twp_NE
41.507481 -99.441786 2x1 km
el .781 km center, .799 km E edge

Davis_Creek_Twp_NE
41.405314 -98.987933 1.8x.9 km
el .691 E edge, .713 W edge

Akron_NE
41.758959 -98.257190 3.7x2.5 km
el .622 center, .645 W,S edges

Elgin_Twp_NE
42.03413 -98.088159 5.2x4 km
el .566 km E edge, .597 km W edge


http://cintos.org/SaginawManifold/Distal_Ejecta/SearchBays/index.html

"Finding Carolina bays in the Carolinas is easy, given their
plentiful quantities and solid identification, but as the ejecta
butterfly arc is walked northerly and southerly, the search
becomes more challenging.
Some of this is due to the more rounded shapes seen above
Maryland and down in Georgia.
An additional challenge is the increasingly rough terrain seen
when moving inland from the costal plains.

Our ejecta blanket sheet model suggests that the bays are
present as defects (popped bubbles) in a thin layer of sandy
ejecta.

These can persist over the thousands of years of erosion only
under special circumstances.
If the landing area is relatively flat and moist, they will be easily
stabilized as bays.
If the area is level but very dry, the blanket will be reworked by
the wind into a generic dune field, obliterating any bay formation.

When the landing field is in rough terrain, we propose it is
quickly sloughed off in erosion.
Any bay formations that are drapped over elevations that
exceed the bay's rim height can not hold moisture for
stabilization.
Thus in hilly areas further inland on the east coast, we have
pursued the search for bays by identifying areas which exhibit
level terrain.
These can usually seen as plateaus in the digital elevation
maps (DEMs) we are using.
The plateaus could be indications of a plateau extent present
when the ejecta landed, or be merely the surviving remnants of
a larger plateau that has been invaded by erosional valleys.
In the latter case, we see that bays which once were stabilized
were later compromised by encroaching erosional valleys."


http://cintos.org/SaginawManifold/Distal_Ejecta/Planforms/index.html

"Carolina Bay Planforms

The recognition of the existence of "Carolina bays" was driven
by their distinct and persistent geometric planforms and their
sheer numbers, in combination with their sharing a common
alignment in any one area.
The visual photography available since their identification in the
1930's only told a part of the story.

With the availability of today's LIDAR (Laser Imaging and
Range Detection) systems, the true extent and planforms of
these enigmatic landforms are brought to life in a stunning
manner.
Interpreting these ovoid landforms as being derivatives of
well-understood wind and water-shaped dunes cannot be
supported by evidence of similar processes elsewhere in
the world."

http://perigeezero.org/ge/Portraits/Carolina_Bays.jpg

"The primary planform seen as a bay in this discussion is the
oval.
Their characteristics have been reviewed extensively by other
workers.
Most prominent, we feel, are the sharply-defined closed
ridge which surrounds the structure, the persistent repetition of
a common shape within a locale, the common alignment of
those shapes, a predisposition to possess a higher, thicker ridge
on one of the major axis ends of the shape, and finally the vast
diversity of sizes they are generated in.
Dune fields often generate structures with some of these
characteristics, but never all of them simultaneously.

Our hypothesis that the ovoid shape represents a blemish in a
distal ejecta sheet leads to a corollary principal that the inferred
alignment of arrival is displayed in the planform as a momentum
artifact.

We propose that the alignment is along the major axis, with the
higher ridge being at the down-range end.

To measure and capture this inferred alignment, we employ a
"Bearing Arrow" with a graticule as an overlay in the Google
Earth GIS visualization tool.
The overlay is manually rotated so that it aligns with the user's
interpretation of the bay's orientation.
Since the bays are rarely perfect ellipsoids, the interpretation is
better qualified by comparison with numerous companion bays
as a "best fit"."


http://cintos.org/SaginawManifold/Distal_Ejecta/index.html

"Distal Ejecta Discussion

The Ejecta Depositional Conjecture holds that a sheet of ejecta
debris -- a slurry of water and sand/silica -- was deposited
across an arc downrange of the Saginaw impact.
The sheet exhibits a surface texture of "splatter" marks, which
have evolved into today's Carolina bays.
The sheet of material is proposed to be quite "thin"; only a few
meters of ridge around our splatter mark will hold water.
We emphasize that our conjecture does NOT suggest that the
bays are either primary or secondary impact structures, but
rather exist within a blanket of ejecta material.

Using the Carolina bays and the Goldsboro Ridge as examples,
we propose set of physical characteristics for the manifestation
of these ejecta landforms.
The characteristics are tightly constrained by the formative
processes and circumstances, resulting in a simple, well-defined
and unique set of identification criteria to describe these
formations.
The stylistic geometry and anomalous, unstratified, and
homogeneous nature of these landforms are presented as being
most indicative of set membership.

The typical ejecta landforms are visualized as a pear-shaped,
oval or elliptical landform, which sets above the surrounding
landscape as a lake rim, ridge, knoll, hill, or island.

The figure below demonstrates the emplacement dynamics.
The graphic is hyper-linked to a flash demonstration."

"Co-located Bays seen at significantly different elevations

The situation is similar out to the west.
The Clay Center, Nebraska area has a significant
emplacement of "Carolina bay" ejecta structures.
In this case, the elevation differenes are even more striking.
In the graphic below, we see bays of similar alignment
spanning an elevation difference of 40 meters in the range of
30 km.
Obviously these are not likely former oxbows in a lazy river."

"With an incoming velocity of close to 1,000 km/hour, the slurry
surged forward at impact and created slightly higher rims on the
SE end of the splash bay.
The ground speed difference effect driven by the latitude delta
between the Michigan ejection point and the deposition location
would have subtracted from any west-to-east velocity
component.
The result would be expected to distort the surficial bay
features along the E-W axis, which has been reported:

"Many bays, however, lack true bilateral symmetry along
either the major or minor axis. ..the northeast side bulges
slightly more than the southwest side. : (1)
(1) A Re-evaluation of the Extraterrestiral Origin of the
Carolina Bays, by J. Ronald Eyton & Judith I. Parkhurst

Along with the compression, we believe the inferred orientation
of the bay becomes skewed from its expected arrival direction.
This effect is referred to by us as "systematic by latitude", as the
effect is a function of the latitudes involved.

Here are a few photos showing this very common
compressional artifact."

"Other supportive details include the well-understood fact that,
universally, the soil layers containing the bays are superimposed
on underlying strata at a sharp and "abrupt comfortable"
interface that shows no interbedding.

Much of the current research identifies the strata as consistent
across wide areas, both within single and multiple bays.
No variation in the heavy mineral suite was found along a
traverse of the major axis of one South Carolina bay; even
though samples were taken from the bay floor, bay rim and
the adjacent non-bay terrace (Preston and Brown, 1964)."

Our conjecture holds that a major component of the ejecta
slurry was terresterial strata from the Michigan Basin area.
This quote from a web page at Clemson University (discussed
in more detail in subsection) makes some interesting comments:

"While the surface color can be bright enough to appear almost
white, the color of the "B" horizon layer is often brown or black,
like topsoil, but it is found about four feet below the soil surface.
[Soils of this type are usually found in northern regions, like
New England, Northern Michigan, Minnesota, and Canada.]
For several reasons, including acidity and possible aluminum
toxicity, this is not a good soil for plant growth and is only
sparsely covered by scrubby pines, blackjack oak, and turkey
oak.""


http://cosmictusk.com/
George Howard, Raleigh, North Carolina

See also:

[ Note the amazing Google Earth and LIDAR view in the
YouTube video by George Howard of North Carolina's
thousands of overlapping Carolina Bays:

http://cosmictusk.com/page/3

Google Earth video of Carolina Bays 4:35 minutes
February 24, 2010

A couple of months ago I was having some fun with
Google Earth Pro and put together this little video
demonstrating the ubiquity of Carolina Bays
in Eastern North Carolina.
This is one of those projects where you swear you will
return and do a "second draft" in the near future -- and
ever do.
So it is still kinda rough.
But people unfamiliar with the Carolina Bays should find it
interesting.
I'd enjoy hearing what you think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vNS27eXD60
438 views

A Brief Tour of the Carolina Bays on Google Earth
(expand to full screen)

See also: http://georgehoward.net/cbays.htm ]
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Dennis Cox confers on phone with William M Napier re
obvious Google Earth evidence for widespread 13 Ka BP
vertical ablation from multiple airburst barrage high pressure
plasmas: Rich Murray 2010.05.23
http://rmforall.blogspot.com/2010_05_01_archive.htm
Sunday, May 23, 2010
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Dennis Cox, amateur extraordinaire, with 6 views given via
Google Earth by Rich Murray of 360 m high mountain E of
Fresno, CA, with uphill and then downhill ejecta melt flows --
informative book with 92 color images: 2010.03.25
http://rmforall.blogspot.com/2010_03_01_archive.htm
Thursday, March 25, 2010
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/astrodeep/message/45


ground views of over 100 .1-.5 km shallow (ice comet
fragment bursts) craters, Bajada del Diablo, Argentina
(.78-.13 Ma BP) [42.87 S 67.47 W] Rogelio D Acevedo
et al, Geomorphology 2009 Sept: Rich Murray 2010.03.28
http://rmforall.blogspot.com/2010_03_01_archive.htm
Saturday, March 27, 2010
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/astrodeep/message/47
_______________________________________________


Rich Murray, MA
Boston University Graduate School 1967 psychology,
BS MIT 1964, history and physics,
1943 Otowi Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505
505-501-2298 [hidden email]

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