Recent News on the K-T Extinction Event

Most of us are aware of Luis Alvarez’s theory that the extinction of the dinosaurs was caused by a massive asteroid striking off the coast of what today we call the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico some 66 million years ago. This event has a few names, including the K-T extinction event.

With a 10 million dollar grant, scientists from the US and the UK have set up shop on an oil drilling rig about 17 miles off the Mexican coast, just above the peak ring of the Yucatan impact crater, and are drilling through to the impact’s peak ring in hopes of learning more about what happened that fateful Earth shattering day.

You can learn about their objectives by clicking here, and about their recent results by clicking here.

The above video is designed to show what a K-T event would do to the Earth and everyone on it today.

To see a cross section of the actual K-T event using the oil rig data, watch this:

You are also free to destroy the Earth yourself, by using the impact calculator supplied by Purdue University scientists:

Synthetic Photosynthesis?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFlBYb3N5jg

The BBC reports that research by Dr. Stephen Long of the University of Illinois reveal that genetic modification of tobacco plants can increase their yields by an astounding 14 to 20%.

Plants turn off photosynthesis when exposed to too much sunlight, but when shade returns, it takes from 10 minutes to an hour for the plant to return to active photosynthesis.

Dr. Long thinks that it will be easy to implement this genetic modification on other seed based plants, like rice, soy bean, wheat and corn, but cautions that large scale implementation of this photosynthesis breakthrough is at least 15 years out into the future.

Antimatter Detected in Gamma Ray Flashes Produced in Thunderstorms Here on Earth

Much to my surprise, NASA’s Fermi Gamma Ray Telescope confirm that matter and antimatter are created by events called gamma ray flashes that occur relatively often in regular thunderstorms here on Earth.

Some of the antimatter is hurled into near Earth orbital space where the Fermi telescope in uniquely suited to detect it.

Additional information can be gleaned from the Goddard Space Center’s website.

Remember, Climate Change Is a Chinese Hoax

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_z4T5qTooY

Climate scientists are reporting that Arctic sea ice is at a record low for November of this year, with an average temperature in the Arctic region an insane 36 Fahrenheit degrees (20 Celsius degrees) warmer than in recent years past.

This temperature anomaly may be in part due to a drop in the Earth’s polar albedo (or fraction of the Sun’s radiation reflected back into space) over the last decade or so, but this is a contentious assertion.

Here is a nice video from NOAA showing monthly variation in the Earth’s albedo worldwide, over the period from 2001 to 2013: