The final chapter may yet be written with the new discovery of a 135km wide astrobleme in central Alabama along with major episodes of orogeny immediately following only weeks or months of impact.
Some time ago, a huge asteroid, or bolide, crashed into central Alabama. According to some estimates, the huge chrondite would have been at least 10 kilometers (6 miles) in diameter and explode on impact with the energy of approximately 100 trillion tons of TNT. The exact timing of this event is not known at this time, but will need to be determined later. The preliminary evidence associated with this impact points directly towards the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event.
This impact would leave a central core of devastation 26 kilometers (18 miles) in diameter with a mean center located at 86.240 degrees west longitude and 33.070 degrees N latitude near the small township of Stewartville, AL, just south of Sylacauga along highway 231.
Shock waves radiating along the impact site would range as far north as Double Oak Mountain and as far south as the northern edge of Montgomery, AL, thereby giving the total diameter of the astrobleme to at least 135 kilometers (83 miles).
This huge astrobleme has lain undiscovered all this time amid some of the closest scrutiny mankind has ever examined this planet with. There are several reasons why it has yet to be found until now.
A.) The entire eastern part of the astrobleme has been erased by massive tectonic flows devastating the area and resulting in an entirely separate episode of orogeny in eastern Alabama.
B.)The western part of the astrobleme suffered from the same conditions as tectonic flows began to fill the breached crust and almost uniformly raised the area's sea level approximately 1,000 ft.
C.) Large fossils are almost non-existent in the effected areas due to all this activity and the entire area must be considered as reworked.
D.) Such an expanse covers so many different geographic areas from the Ridge and Valley region through the Gulf Coast Plains that events in any one place seemed to have little bearing on the others.
E.) The lack of any discernable terrestrial signature.
In filling of the huge crater, mainly when calcium carbonate material became complete, it made it unrecognizable. This was a direct result of an impact into a weak spot seething with igneous activity.
Only asteroids of such huge size do so much damage to the planet. There have certainly been much larger impacts as well as many smaller ones and if it had not struck into the thin oceanic crust side of a convergent plate margin, breaking through the lithosphere and releasing molten material into the breach, the K-T event might not have occurred.
Before proceeding further, an examination of the evidence collected step by step is in order.
| Introduction/Main | The Sylacauga Astrobleme | Photographs | Conclusion |
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