UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

If you were a commercial or private pilot flying one of those long trips across the Pacific Ocean and you saw UFOs in the form of bright lights high over the plane traveling in oval patterns, would you report them to your upper management or the FAA? Would you discuss them with other pilots? If the lights were in the sky long enough to record, would you record them? If the lights seemed to be following each other in this oval pattern, would you think you were watching a UFO racetrack? Believe it or not, all of these events have been occurring regularly and were witnessed by seasoned pilots, many with military experience, and they collectively are baffled by what they’re seeing. Baffled … but not afraid to record and report these sightings. Before you say “Meh … more drones,” the pilots have been told by their higher authorities not to discuss these sightings. Fortunately for us, they ignored the orders. Before you make up your minds, read some of the testimonies of pilots puzzled by the “Race track UAPs.”

“The other airlines were saying, “Hey, are you seeing what we're seeing?” They were lights that would come on very bright, you would see them move, then they would go out. It had to be in a very, very high orbit, or actually even out in space quite a ways away from anything that a satellite would be, because every time we were seeing it, it was in the lower right hand corner of the Big Dipper, no matter where we were in the world. It lasted for such a long time that it actually became boring, almost.”

(pilot and UFO witness Chris Van Voorhis to The Daily Mail)

Chris Van Voorhis, a veteran pilot with 32,000 hours of flight experience, says he was flying from Honolulu to Los Angeles in August 2022 when his eye caught sight of as many as five bright objects standing out against the surrounding stars of the Big Dipper. Yes, he knows what the SpaceX Starlink satellites look like and these were not satellites. Van Voorhis claimed they faded in and out rather than blinking, and the oval pattern they seemed to be traveling in reminded him of a “race track.” That’s how he knew they weren’t Starlink satellites because those follow each other in a straight line. As he indicated to The Daily Mail, Van Voorhis contacted other pilots who traveled this route and found many of them had seen the same UFOs around the Big Dipper.

“(Pilot) We've got a few aircraft to our north here and he's going around in circles, much higher altitude than us. Any idea what they are?

(Air traffic controller) Uh, no, no I do not,' the baffled controller responded. 'You're not entering any [military] airspace or anything. I am not sure.”

“(Pilot) There’s now like seven of them.”

Gulfstream charter jet pilot Mark Hulsey reported his sightings in the same August and September timeframe to air traffic control, which could not identify what he was seeing at an estimated “5 or 10,000 feet above us.” This conversation was broadcast on YouTube (watch the video here) by Ben Hansen, a former FBI agent and current UFO researcher, who obtained the conversation and many others using Freedom of Information requests for Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCC) recordings from the FAA. Hulsey later says to the controller:

“They just keep going in circles. I was an F-18 pilot in the Marine Corps, and I'm telling you, I've done many intercepts, I've never seen anything like this.”

That is a key statement – Mark Hulsey is a former military pilot. Had he had this encounter, which took place by Santa Catalina, an island off the LA coast and near many military UFO sightings -- in a Marine fighter jet, he would have had a rigid set of instructions to follow to report this incident up the chain of command. He would also likely have ships with radar controllers following his moves and potentially tracking the UAPs. Hulsey and Van Voorhis are commercial pilots – they have looser guidelines to follow when encountering such phenomena, and often don’t because they don’t believe the FAA will follow up with an investigation … even of events seen by multiple pilots. They also fear losing their jobs. Van Voorhis said his unnamed employer told him to “cease and desist” mentioning the incident in public. Fortunately for us, many other pilots continued to report them and Mark Hulsey has their recordings.

“Many of these pilots are very confident that the lights were not just going in one direction, but in both directions, which is very unusual for satellites. In Mark's case they would go from the north and then actually go above his craft, where he had to crane his neck to see them from the canopy. It was seen by upwards of 15 different commercial flights. And at least six pilots are willing to go on record with their names and everything if asked to do so by any investigative agencies. In this case, we have a global phenomena from as far west as Japan, to as far east as possibly Miami. Whatever it is, pilots are seeing it from halfway across the world.”

In his video, Hansen reveals names of airlines -- Southwest Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines, among others – whose pilots saw the same “race track UFOs” between August 6 and September 23, 2022. While only Hulsey and Van Voorhis are willing to go public, the others may soon follow because there has been no investigation or explanation of these lights. And there are more, according to Van Voorhis.

“Out of my pilot friends, at least 50% have seen some type of an anomaly.”

The Defense Department now has the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) – an official UAP Task Force tasked with investigating military UFO encounters. While the FAA can share its pilot-reported sightings with the AARO, there is no guarantee they will be investigated.

Kudos to Ben Hansen for doggedly chasing down these reports. On his YouTube page, he mentions that these latest reports are in addition to “previous sightings reported in the two preceding videos in this playlist.”

These “race track UFOs” have been seen by experienced pilots around the world at altitudes high above theirs, and they are convinced the phenomena are not satellites. Then … what are they? Don’t hold your breath waiting for a Pentagon or government response. Get out there yourself, look up in the sky, have your cellphone charged and ready, file FOI requests, bug your congressional representatives, do the legwork. Like politics, the best UFO investigations begin at the grass roots.

RELATED VIDEOS ( peter2011 )

There are all manner of UFO and alien encounters within the realm of ufology, coming from a wide variety of witnesses from all walks of life. There are those in rural areas, suburban areas, at airports, urban areas, and everywhere in between, but one type of case that really catches the attention are those that have supposedly gone down at military installations. Here we have highly trained observers who have made themselves ready for a lot of things, but not for something like this. A lot of these reports are even more bizarre than most, and here we will look at a handful of extremely weird alien and UFO encounters at Air Force bases in the United States.

On May 1, 1952, a Major Rudy Pestalozzi was out an airfield with an airman at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base (AFB), in Tucson, Arizona on duty when they noticed something very odd about the B-36 bomber that was flying overhead. According to the witness, two shiny metallic discs sped in out of nowhere to overtake the plane and then move into positions on each side of it, after which they paced it for a time before suddenly tearing off at an angle of 70-80 degrees from the flight path of the B-36 and shooting off out of sight. The crew of the B-36 was apparently so unnerved by the whole experience that they performed an early landing, after which they were heavily interrogated by Pestalozzi on what had happened up there. They would explain that each of the discs has measured an estimated 20-25 feet in diameter and had remained silent when the plane attempted radio contact. What were these objects and what did they want? Who knows?

Another very bizarre event was mentioned in the book They Knew too Much About Flying Saucers, by Gray Barker, and allegedly took place In April of 1954, at Edwards AFB, formerly Muroc AFB, in the Palmdale/Lancaster area of California’s remote Mojave Desert, California. The bonkers report begins with 5 crafts approaching the base; 3 disks and 2 cylinders, each one about 30 feet in diameter, which the Air Force wasted no time in firing upon with live ammo. The blistering assault allegedly had no effect on the objects, and they proceeded to land near one of the large hangars. After some time of just sitting there freaking everyone out, the objects then disgorged a procession of diminutive humanoids, which were about 3 feet tall, without helmets and with large heads and eyes, typical “grey aliens.” These aliens could rather creepily turn themselves invisible at will and spoke English through some sort of translator devices on their silvery suits, and rather than express any anger over having just been fired upon, they had quite the tale to tell.

They supposedly explained that they were from a dying world and that and that they also had a genetic disorder, and therefore needed Earth’s help to provide underground bases for them to live in peace for a time and try to find a cure. They promised that in exchange for this they would provide various technologies to the human race, and that they would leave behind one of their flying saucers. An agreement was reached and the saucer was then moved to one of the hangars, where it proved to be very light and able to turn invisible. It would allegedly be kept at Muroc for some time before being placed underground at the North Edwards base for many years. Rather surreally, the then President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, was at the base at the time and supposedly witnessed everything, and after convening a meeting of world leaders the aliens were allegedly given an island in French Polynesia as a base on Earth, after which numerous projects were funded to build subterranean bases for the Greys. This would supposedly kick off a long term exchange with these aliens that the government has kept a secret and which all began that day in 1954 at Muroc AFB. Pretty strange stuff, indeed.

From 1975 we have a another case from Edwards Air Force Base. On October 7 of that year, 12 luminous UFOs allegedly came right down low and just over a secure military runway, and were clearly observed by both witnesses on the ground and on radar. The alarmed Air Force scrambled several jet fighters, worried about the threat to the nuclear materials stored at the base, but the planes were never able to follow or even hope to match the extreme maneuverability and speed of the crafts. Then, just as the base was considering a more significant military response, the objects all flew off in formation to places unknown. The film producer and ufologist Samuel M. Sherman would claim that he had managed to cobble together the lost tapes of what he says were about 40 hours of recordings that were made of the incident, and he says of it all (caps not mine):

What makes this historic intrusion and visit so important is that the US Air Force thoroughly documented it and even gave it a code name: “The Incident.” The entire incident was additionally documented with written reports, radar photos, and AUDIO TAPES made by Air Force personnel while they were actually SEEING the objects, FLYING AFTER the objects, and considering taking SERIOUS MILITARY ACTION against what they might imply as a threat.

From my calculations at least 40 hours of recordings were made (a five hour event recording from at least 8 locations). However, only six hours of tapes were de-classified many years ago as a mass of noise and unclear voices, which truly defied interpretation. They had SCRAMBLED the tapes into what they felt was a hopeless jumble of random pieces of conversation utterly out of sequence and logical progression. When I realized what had been done, it presented a challenge which made me determined to find out what was hidden within that chaotic mass of sound. After many months and countless hours of laborious research, cataloging, and editing the snips and pieces of the audio tape, I was able to organize the sound so the conversations could be understood. The resulting reconstructed tapes are now ironclad documented proof of the existence of extraterrestrial UFO visitation to this planet.

I have sent copies of my finished product directly to a number of major Government Agencies and have received NO NEGATIVE COMMENTS! Not a single Official Agency has tried to debunk or discredit the event, or my presentation of the tapes. Furthermore, The CSETI organization has used my tape presentation in meetings with members of Congress with the aim of having our government tell the public the truth of ET involvement on the Earth. And yes, the plane spotters at Edwards KNEW that UFOs or UFOBs, as they called them then, were not our “black” projects, Soviet bombers, or any known aircraft – they were unknown, fabulously high-tech craft with capabilities beyond any known technology.

What to make of all of this? Very odd. Edwards AFB has often been the center of strangeness like this, and yet another incident supposedly happened there in 1971 that is every bit as bizarre. In the summer of 1971, A small mushroom-shaped craft allegedly actually came down to crash close to Edwards AFB, and was described as being metallic with greenish lights, with no windows or seams and seemingly molded out of one piece, but what was even weirder than this was that there were apparently three grey alien humanoids in the craft, two of which were dead and one that was alive but badly injured. Making it even more bizarre still was that there was also found a human woman in a tight-fitting pink body suit, an apparent abductee by the name of Lorraine Dvorak Cordini, who was also alive but injured.

Cordini would supposedly later claim that although her memories of what had happened to her were fuzzy, she remembered travelling aboard the craft from a massive “mothership” in space, and the next thing she remembered was being in the wreckage and being arrested by military personnel. As she was being led away, she also recalled that there had been the image in her mind a “Captain,” who was a different type of alien that was tall and dressed in white robes, who apologized to her that they could not be helped. She was then led away to a hangar and ufologist Anton Anfalov has written of what happened next:

Lorraine was then thrown into the backseat of a black limousine. Her next memory was what surfaced in the hypnosis session. Lorraine was lying on a cold metal table in a hangar. Three military persons stood to the left of the table. One may have been an officer because he had a different cap than the fatigue uniforms of the other two persons. Another uniformed military man was at Lorraine’s head and to the right and to his left was an alien whom Lorraine described as having a pumpkin-shaped head. He had appeared in a childhood experience that previously surfaced during the same hypnosis session. In the childhood experience he was in a spacesuit… Lorraine’s child’s mind saw him dangling outside the window in a deep sea diver’s suit. This alien was about 4 ft tall, his body bulbous and brown. His head bulbous and pumpkin like. Lorraine “heard” the alien thinking how great he felt about himself and how proud he was to be in the service of the earth military men… he had a smug attitude and the military man next to him showed contempt towards the alien. She was very confused and disoriented. Her next memory was of being yanked off the table and being dragged outside the hangar. There she saw many flashing red lights and screamed, “My God, that isn’t a space ship that is the police, my God it is the police.” The military men then sat her on a bus and she ended up in San Francisco stranded and lost.

Very strange, to be sure. Moving along into 1976, there is a rather intense report from the Cannon AFB, which is located a few miles outside of Clovis, New Mexico. In January of that year, four bright saucer-shaped objects, each one estimated as being at least at least 30 to 50 feet in diameter, allegedly dropped right down from the night sky from out of nowhere and started darting around in a threatening manner above the base, which was enough for the Air Force to scramble jets to send up to engage. Brian Vike, Director HBCC UFO Research, has said of what happened next:

The jet aircraft began trying to intercept the objects. As the aircraft got close to the vicinity of the unknown objects, the objects, at an incredible rate of speed, would shoot across the sky making 90 degree turns leaving the fighter aircraft trailing way behind as they just weren’t able to keep up with the strange craft. As the objects made unusual turns a plasma type glow could clearly be witnessed by the group of people watching the event. The cat and mouse chase between the objects and jets went on for approximately 45 minutes. Because the witnesses were on one of the tallest buildings in Portales, New Mexico, they could clearly see the flight-line at the Base. One of the men had brought a 150 power telescope which enabled the fellows to see the objects fly at a low altitude over the flight-line. As the objects passed over the lights running down the flight line, all the lights went out. Eventually the objects shot up and were gone in a second, or so, and the F-111’s were recalled back to the Base and landed safely.

According to Vike, a journalism student called “Bruce” was there at the time, and actually managed to take some photos of the incident, but that he had a disturbing experience not long after appearing on the Jeff Rense national radio program about what had happened. Vike explains of the spooky incident:

It was around 1:30 a.m., Bruce and his wife had turned in for the night and were sound asleep when his cell phone started ringing. Knowing that he had his work cell phone turned off he knew it was a call from one of his children, and of course being a parent, he worried as he grabbed for the phone. Bruce answered with a hello and a voice spoke back saying, “Mr. Bruce (last name). Bruce said there was a very professional sounding gentleman on the other end. The man said he needed to talk to him about a matter of utmost urgency! Bruce still half asleep asked the man who he was, what was this call was all about, especially at this hour of the morning. The fellow said this is about your recent radio appearance and discussion about some photographs that you took back in New Mexico.

At this point in the conversation Bruce said to the man,”you have to be kidding me,” thinking this had to be some kind of hoax, asked who was this. The man said there is no need for you to know who I am. He went on to say, “it would be in your best interest to discontinue this line of discussion and do away with those photographs. Destroy them!” Bruce at this point is in shock about this man. He looks on the cell phone to see what phone number is displayed and it shows “number not available”. The man told Bruce that “this is no joke and ‘we’ feel that this would be in your best interest, and for the sake of your family, that all of this go away.” Bruce told the man that if he wasn’t willing to reveal himself then the conversation would be terminated. The man then went on to tell Bruce what his children were involved in, meaning their daily activities, where they lived, etc.., what Bruce’s wife was doing, such as personal activities within the family, etc… and said that he could fax Bruce his life’s history within a few seconds. That was it, Bruce hung up and that ended the call with the stranger.

After this incident took place and some weeks had gone by, a neighbor of Bruce’s caught up with him outside one day and told him that they had been seeing alot of traffic in and out of Bruce’s property. Cars would pull up and stay for a while and then drive off. Other times the cars would pull into the driveway, stop, and men would get out and walk around the home. Then they got back into their cars and drove off. These cars that were coming and going had government license plates on them. One other interesting fact to this story is that Bruce put together a package for me, Jeff Rense, George Filer and Peter Davenport. In this package there was a copy of the photo he had taken over the AFB. Bruce mailed out the packages to us all and not one of us have received the information. Bruce says he is going to try again and send it through a different means.

Pretty sinister, indeed. From the following year these is a bizarre incident from Ellsworth AFB, located around 7 miles southwest of Nisland, South Dakota. On the evening of November 16, 1977, two security personnel were dispatched to investigate an alarm activation at one of the warhead storage facilities on the base, and as they approached they observed a bright light shining vertically upwards from the rear of the fence line. One of the men stayed in the vehicle while the other went to check out what this strange light was, and as he approached he would report seeing “an individual dressed in a glowing, green metallic uniform and wearing a helmet with visor.” The security officer ordered the mysterious trespasser to stop, and when he did not he aimed his weapon at him. As the weapon was trained on him, the stranger produced some sort of object that emitted a “bright flash of intense light” that disintegrated the weapon and caused severe burns to the guard’s hands.

When his partner arrived to help, they then saw two more intruders dressed in the same uniforms, who seemed to phase through the fence and walk completely through it. When their orders to halt went unheeded, they fired at the intruders with an M-16 rifle and both fell to the ground. They didn’t stay down long, however, and the two base personnel had to take cover as the intruders fired beams of light at them. The two figures then proceeded to hurry off to a nearby hill, where a saucer shaped object bathed in green illumination appeared, which picked them up and then climbed vertically upwards and shot off over the Eastern horizon. Rather strangely, an examination off the site would show that the nuclear components of the warhead had gone missing. Were they stolen by those enigmatic strangers? Who knows?

If a shootout with aliens sounds strange enough as it is, our final case here is perhaps the most spectacularly weird of all, involving an alien allegedly killed by base personnel. The incident supposedly happened at Fort Dix/McGuire AFB, New Jersey, on January 18, 1978. At around 3 a.m. that morning, a Jeffrey Morse had been on patrol as a security policeman for the base when he was notified about UFO activity over Fort Dix, which is an army base that adjoined McGuire AFB, and there were calls for assistance from a Ft. Dix MP who was pursuing a low flying object which had then hovered over his car. Morse would explain of the incredibly bizarre series of events:

He described the UFO as oval shaped, with no details, and glowing with a blueish green color. His radio transmission was cut off. At that time in front of his police car, appeared a thing, about 4ft tall, grayish, brown, fat head, long arms, and slender body. The MP panicked and fired five rounds from his .45 Cal into the thing, and one round into the object above. The object then fled straight up and joined with eleven others high in the sky. This we all saw but didn’t know the details at the time. Anyway, the thing ran into the woods towards our fence line and they wanted to look for it. By this time several patrols were involved.

We found the body of the thing near the runway. It had apparently climbed the fence and died while running. It was all of a sudden hush-hush and no one was allowed near the area. We roped off the area and AF OSI came out and took over. That was the last I saw of it. There was a bad stench coming from it too. Like ammonia smelling but it wasn’t constant in the air. That day, a team from Wright-Patterson AFB came in a C141 and went to the area. They crated it in a wooden box, sprayed something over it, and then put it into a bigger metal container. They loaded it in the plane and took off. That was it, nothing more was said, no report made and we were all told not to have anything to say about it or we would be court martialed.

Morse would go on to claim that all witnesses to the event had been interrogated and sent off for duty at other bases. UFO investigator George Filer would claim that he had been summoned to the base that evening, and had witnessed strange red lights on one of the disused runways. He also alleged that he had heard chatter among the base personnel that an alien had been killed and that UFO activity had been picked up on radar at both Fort Dix and McGuire AFB. It is just one more case to throw on the pile of very odd encounters that have supposedly gone on at Air Force bases. What were these entities and what did they want? Where did they come from? Were they ever even really real at all? The answers remain unclear.

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For decades, scientists have theorized that a massive impact caused the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event. This event occurred about 66 million years ago and caused the mass extinction of about 75% of all plant and animal species on Earth (including the non-avian dinosaurs). With the discovery of the massive Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan Peninsula (southern Mexico) in the 1970s, scientists concluded that they’d found the impact responsible. Based on all the available data, the Chicxulub Impact event is believed to have been as powerful as 100,000 billion metric tons (110,231 U.S tons) of TNT.

This blast was more powerful than all the nuclear devices in the world combined and sent an estimated 25 trillion metric tons (~27.5 US tons) of hot dust, ash, and steam into the atmosphere, creating a global winter. But according to new research led by the University of Michigan, an international team of geologists has determined that the impact also created a global tsunami. According to their findings, this tsunami was 30,000 times more powerful than the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, one of the largest and most devastating tsunamis on record.

The team was by Molly M. Range, a with the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She was joined by an international team of researchers from the NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Lab (PMEL) and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL), the Institute of Environmental Geosciences (IGE), the Geophysics and Spatial Oceanography Studies Laboratory (LEGOS), the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), the PALEOMAP Project, and multiple universities.

The maximum sea surface perturbation heights of the global tsunami.

Credit: Range, M. (et al.)/AGU Advances

To recap, evidence of the Chicxulub Impact is traced to the crater buried beneath the Yucatan Peninsula of southern Mexico. The crater measures 180 km (110 mi) in diameter and 20 km (12 mi) in depth and is centered offshore near the community of Chicxulub (from which it takes its name). Based on the crater’s dimensions, scientists estimate that the meteor that caused it measured about 14 km (8.7 mi) in diameter. Evidence of the impact is also found in the geological record in the form of deposits of iridium and other impact ejecta that were globally distributed.

This led to the scientific consensus that the impact that led to the Chicxulub crater was responsible for the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction and possibly the volcanic activity that created the Deccan flood basalt in India. For the sake of their study, Range and her colleagues sought to determine the effects this impact had on the world’s oceans, from the initial moment of contact to the point where it became a global tsunami. To do this, the team created the first global simulation of this impact using hydrocode (which models fluid systems in 3D) and a shallow-water ocean model.

As study co-author Brian Arbic – a researcher with the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), the IGE, and LEGO – told Universe Today via email, the simulation involved three steps. In the first step, the hydrocode was run by co-author Brandon Johnson (Purdue University) and simulated the first ten minutes of the impact. During this time, explained Arbic, the effects were nothing short of cataclysmic:

“[M]aterial from the asteroid, the underlying bedrock of the Earth, sediment, and ocean was displaced tens of kilometers above the atmosphere and (in the other direction) tens of kilometers below the Earth’s surface – in other words, a great big hole was dug out of the Earth. A massive crater was created by this impact, as well as an outward propagating “rim wave”. Most of the energy in the tsunami is due to the rim wave, but there is also a significant secondary effect due to water rushing back into the crater that the impact created.”

The maximum flow velocity of the global tsunami at each grid cell (b).

Credit: Range, M. (et al.)/AGU Advances

The second step was performed by Range as part of her Master’s Thesis at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. This consisted of putting the output of the hydrocode into two global shallow-water tsunami propagation models. These included the Modular Ocean Model 6 (MOM6), developed by co-author Alistair J. Adcroft (a research oceanographer from Princeton University), and the Method of Splitting Tsunami (MOST) developed by co-author Vasily Titov – a senior tsunami modeler at the NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Lab.

“Vasily simulated the tsunami with MOST, and the results are fairly similar to those obtained with MOM6,” said Arbic. “Obtaining similar results from two different models gave us more confidence in our results. We will examine differences between shallow-water models and other models in future work.”The third step consisted of co-author Ted Moore – a Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor – examining the geological record of the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary for signs of sediment erosion. This revealed that more erosion occurred in the North Atlantic and South Pacific basins than in the South Atlantic and North Pacific. In short, the geological record shows that the seafloor in these regions was eroded and scoured more aggressively, with flow velocities of about 100 meters per second (360 km/h; 224 mph).

Moreover, the model showed that the wavefront propagation velocities, the speed at which waves formed on the surface, were about 200 meters per second (720 km/h; 447 mph). This is consistent with what the team’s model predicted and constitutes the best observational evidence of a global tsunami at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary. Their results also indicate that the Cretaceous-Paleogene tsunami was several orders of magnitude more powerful than any observed in recorded history. As Range described it, the effects of the impact were seen worldwide:

“It was a global impact. The tsunami was seen across the globe in 48 hours. Most coastal regions saw waves hit the coastline. Depending on where you look, wave heights could be from 1 meter to hundreds of meters tall. At ten minutes post-impact, the wave that had formed in the Gulf of Mexico was 1.5 km tall. This tsunami has 30,000 times the energy of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami.”

Plate reconstruction and drill site locations (circled) at the age of the K/Pg boundary, showing continental blocks (gray), and modern continental outlines (red), where the K/Pg tsunami was most violent (green).

Credit: Range, M. (et al.)/AGU

This research provides additional insight into one of the most important events in geological history. In addition, said Range, the research has significant implications for planetary defense:

“The Chicxulub event had many important impacts, which have been previously documented – fires, wild swings of temperature (both very hot and very cold), destruction and eventual resetting of the predominant forms of life on Earth, and more. The tsunami was another important impact, and we plan to continue studying this tsunami and its impacts on the geological record that we can still examine. Impacts from large asteroids and meteors could happen again, which is why NASA recently ran the DART mission to see if they could be deflected.”

The paper that describes their findings, titled “The Chicxulub Impact Produced a Powerful Global Tsunami,” recently appeared in the journal AGU Advances.

Further Reading:

AGU Advances

Op sommige plekken zouden zelfs meer dan een kilometer hoge golven zijn ontstaan.

Zo’n 66 miljoen jaar geleden sloeg een enorme ruimtesteen op aarde in. De inslag leidde tot het uitsterven van tal van planten- en diersoorten, waarvan de dinosaurussen veruit de bekendste slachtoffers zijn.

Tsunami
De afgelopen jaren is er veel onderzoek gedaan naar de inslag en de gevolgen daarvan. Zo gaan onderzoekers er bijvoorbeeld van uit dat de inslag grote hoeveelheden stof in de atmosfeer bracht, waardoor zonlicht werd tegengehouden en de temperaturen wereldwijd sterk daalden. Maar behalve een jarenlange winter kregen de organismen die de inslag in eerste instantie overleefden nog meer voor de kiezen, zo wijst nieuw onderzoek uit. Zo zou de inslag ook een monstertsunami hebben voortgebracht die zelfs duizenden kilometers verderop grote schade aanrichtte.

Model en geologische data
De onderzoekers trekken die conclusie – eerder deze maand gepubliceerd in het blad AGU Advances – onder meer op basis van modellen. Die modellen werden ingezet om het pad en de kracht van de tsunami te achterhalen. Vervolgens gebruikten de onderzoekers geologische gegevens, verzameld op meer dan 100 plaatsen wereldwijd die de tsunami volgens het model heeft aangedaan, om na te gaan of ze sporen van die tsunami konden vinden. En dat lukte, zo vertelt onderzoeker Molly Range. “De tsunami was sterk genoeg om de sedimenten in de oceaan te verstoren of eroderen.” Het resultaat is dat onderzoekers op plekken die de tsunami heeft bezocht door elkaar gehusselde sedimentlagen aantreffen of zelfs complete sedimentlagen missen. “De distributie van de erosie en hiaten in de mariene sedimenten daterend uit het einde van het Krijt, zijn in lijn met de resultaten van ons model,” aldus onderzoeker Molly Range.

Superkrachtige tsunami
Het model en de geologische gegevens schetsen zo samen een vrij eenduidig en angstaanjagend beeld. “Onze simulaties laten zien dat de tsunami zo groot was dat metershoge golven het leeuwendeel van ‘s werelds kustlijnen bereikten,” vertelt Range aan Scientias.nl. “Het is dan ook bijna onmogelijk om deze tsunami te vergelijken met moderne tsunami’s.” Maar als we dat dan toch willen proberen, komt eigenlijk zelfs de krachtigste tsunami uit de recente geschiedenis niet eens in de buurt; in vergelijking met de tsunami die in 2004 in de Indische Oceaan ontstond en honderdduizenden levens eiste, was de tsunami die zo’n 66 miljoen jaar geleden ontstond nog eens 30.000 keer krachtiger.

Golven
Zo’n 2,5 minuut nadat de ruimtesteen insloeg zou ejecta – door de inslag weggeslingerd materiaal – als een soort gordijn rond de plaats van inslag hebben gehangen en een muur van water bij de inslag vandaan hebben geduwd. Die muur van water zou heel kort tot wel 4,5 kilometer hoog zijn geweest, maar zijn ingestort toen ook het ejecta weer naar beneden stortte. Het ejecta stortte daarbij deels in het water, waardoor weer nieuwe, zeer chaotische golven ontstonden. “Na tien minuten was al het ejecta gevallen en bleef er op zo’n 220 kilometer van de plaats van inslag een 1,5 kilometer hoge, ringvormige golf over die zich door dieper water bleef verspreiden,” zo schrijven de onderzoekers.

Ongeveer een uur na de inslag had deze golf zich tot buiten de hedendaagse Golf van Mexico verspreid en het noordelijke deel van de Atlantische Oceaan al bereikt. En zo’n vier uur later was ook de Stille Oceaan door de tsunami beroerd. 24 uur na de inslag hadden de golven de Atlantische en Stille Oceaan al doorkruist en – dus van twee zijden – de Indische Oceaan bereikt. Zo’n 48 uur na de inslag hadden flinke golven bijna alle kustlijnen wereldwijd aangedaan.

Overstromingen
In de Golf van Mexico zouden de golven in open water een hoogte van meer dan 100 meter hebben bereikt. Op het moment dat de golven de kustlijnen langs het noordelijke deel van de Atlantische Oceaan en het zuidelijke deel van de Stille Oceaan naderden, zouden de golven al flink lager zijn geworden, maar nog wel altijd meer dan 10 meter hoog zijn geweest. Maar doordat de nog altijd hoge golven bij het naderen van de kust door ondieper water bewogen, zouden ze kort voor ze aan land gingen juist weer aanzienlijk hoger zijn geworden. “De meeste kustgebieden zouden in zekere mate overstroomd en geërodeerd zijn,” stellen de onderzoekers.

Regionale verschillen
Hoewel dus sprake was van een wereldwijde tsunami, was de impact die deze op de kustgebieden had overigens niet overal even groot. Zo moeten de kustlijnen langs het noordelijke deel van de Atlantische Oceaan bijvoorbeeld veel meer te verduren hebben gehad dan de kustlijnen langs het zuidelijke deel van de Atlantische Oceaan en de Middellandse Zee. “Dat deze (laatstgenoemde, red.) gebieden enigszins gespaard werden, heeft alles te maken met de ligging van het land,” legt Range aan Scientias.nl uit. “Landen of continenten vormen een blokkade wanneer de golf door de oceaan reist. Zo zie je bijvoorbeeld dat wanneer de tsunami van de Golf van Mexico vandaan reist, er landbarrières zijn tussen de plaats van inslag en het Mediterrane gebied.”

Vervolgonderzoek
Hoewel onderzoekers in grove lijnen dus wel een beeld hebben van de impact die de tsunami op kustlijnen heeft gehad, is meer onderzoek hard nodig. Zo willen de wetenschappers bijvoorbeeld gaan uitzoeken in hoeverre de tsunami op verschillende plaatsen tot overstromingen leidde. “We zijn daarbij met name geïnteresseerd in hoe ver de tsunami de Western Interior Seaway (een voormalige zeestraat die het huidige Noord-Amerika in tweeën splitste, red.) in wist te reizen.”

Het onderzoek moet uiteindelijk meer inzicht geven in de wijze waarop die enorme inslag 66 miljoen jaar geleden van invloed was op onze planeet en alles wat daarop leefde. “De inslag had veel belangrijke gevolgen die eerder al zijn gedocumenteerd,” vertelt Range. “Grote branden, enorme fluctuaties in temperatuur (zowel heel warm als heel koud), vernietiging en herschikking van overheersende levensvormen op aarde, enzovoort. En de tsunami was een ander, heel belangrijk gevolg.”