Might the new antarctic meteor crater cause the Permian-Triassic extinction by causing the Siberian volcanos?

Question

Ohio State University geologist Ralph von Frese reported on a 300 mile wide crater in Antarctica that may have the same age as the Permian-Triassic extinction, from which the dinosaurs supposedly arose in dominance. If the common cause previously reported with extreme vulcanism in Siberia (cooling from ash, noxious vapors, etc. killing 90% of life on earth), what if the antarctic crash caused the Siberian volcanos. Remember reports recently that meteor impacts on the far side of the moon may have caused the lava flows that made the lunar "seas" we see on the near side--might the south pole area impact have sent a shock wave through the earth and caused the eruption in the near north pole area we now call Siberia?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060608/ap_on_sc/antarctica_massive_crater;_ylt=AhAHwDcI0n407mp.fH5QtasPLBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--

Answer 1

I think that's a very interesting idea, and I think there hasn't been enough research done in this area. However, just by my "gut" feeling, I'd have to say it sounds plausible.

Let's think about the Yucatan impact site at the K-T boundary event that killed the dinosaurs. If you move the plates back to their position at 65Ma, the crator is roughly diametrically opposite to the Deccan Traps, which erupted at roughly the same time (within analytical uncertainty - although some workers have claimed the Deccan Traps began erupting roughly 1Ma earlier than the impact event).

Because seismic waves from such an impact would create points of positive and negative interference, the interference pattern on the surface of the spheroid would appear as nodes and antinodes - areas where the stresses from the waves travelling in 3D would interact to either cancel or become stronger. In such a way, you could concentrate the seismic stresses at one of the nodes to create intense fracturing/rifting in the crust.

So in order to find out if this new crator may have caused the Siberian traps, it would necessary to reconstruct the tectonic arangement at the time of impact, to see if the traps were roughly diametrically opposite the impact. If not, it may still be possible, but it would mean that the intereference of seismic waves at the surface positively interacted at that point.

Some calculations would be necessary to answer this question: the kinetic energy of the impacting body; how the crust would respond to such an impact (ie. high strain, short time scale - it should fail brittly), and how much of this energy would be transferred into different seismic waves, and then how would these seismic waves have interacted in a heterogeneous 3-D earth model. Sounds like we need to put some computational geophysicists to work!

Answer 2

Dont jump to conclusions just yet it will take much more study and many more geological papers before it even becomes a plausiable explination. However, at the moment the one idea that remains more convincing and has worldwide appeal is the lowering of sea levels by a snowball earth and the decaying of plankton.

I have attached a web page which has some nice small articals regarding the above and as some stuff about the meteor crater that you suggest.

Answer 3

There are a minimum of two pernicious components at interaction concerning mass extinction: the 1st is human over-fishing in the worlds oceans the place many species have been decreased with as much as ninety% in some a protracted time. the 2nd is the better acidity in the international's oceans that originates from the becoming CO2 ranges in the ambience. regrettably the acidification is taking place way too speedy for species to be waiting to evolve to the diversities.

Answer 4

Its still not certain this is actually a meteor crater, or how old it is. Remember it is buried deep below the ice. It sounds plausable but really needs better supporting evidence.

Answer 5

I'm not a geologist but it sounds plausible