- There may be no other plot of ground so often used to illustrate many of the geologic processes espoused in textbooks than the Grand Canyon. Geologist talk about it like they have the processes all figured out. Is it just possible that they have gotten it all wrong? This presentation is going to suggest unimaginable cratering was responsible for everything we see there, from the rocks, the sequence, the faults, and the actual canyon. None of it got there by geological processes we can see happening around us today. We will question if some of the processes even work the way everyone has assumed they worked. Gentle reader, do not be afraid to questions the rocks, the processes, even my model, but above all, question the assumptions both you and I have made. Our God is a God of mystery, but He is also a God of Knowing. And in knowing, He is worthy of our praise.
- In the previous two parts I have covered a little of how I arrived at my model of crater formation, and the cratering events that shaped some of the strata exposed in the canyon. Now we want to understand the cratering events that led to the formation of the canyon.
- Figure 60: Redwall Cavern, a prominent landmark on the river trips is a great place to deal with the ubiquitous red color that coats much of the inner gorge. Many just say that it is Iron Oxide, but do not specify the type. Iron (Fe) has three oxidations states and forms three oxides: rust that requires water in its molecule, magnetite that is black, and hematite that is red. To form hematite requires removing three electrons from the Fe ion, which requires almost twice the energy of removing only 2 electrons (Chapter 12.). If it were rust it would keep forming and flaking off, like rust does on a piece of iron. It did not come from the Supai above that washed down as the rangers try to tell you, because it covered the ceiling of Redwall Cavern, and it could not have washed onto the ceiling all the way to the back of the cavern. Also, the hematite in the Supai Sandstone is trapped as crystals between the grains of silica sand. The black you can see on some of the far wall is not “dirt,” but chemist have identified it as oxides of magnesium, and tungsten, and it requires high temperatures to form also. All of these oxides require very high temperatures, ~1,000 degrees C (1,832 degrees F), to form. Note, the Cavern formed at the same time as the rest of the canyon and all of the other alcoves into the Redwall, which are also covered with hematite.
- Figure 61: It was Aristotle who recognized that streams move material, and Seneca recognized the power of streams to wear away valleys. Leonardo da Vinci believed that valleys were a result of their streams, but Unaweep and Grand Valleys of Colorado and the Grand Canyon are extreme examples of under-fit streams. The water flowing through them could never start to produce the vast amount of erosion that has taken place there. In the Grand Canyon it is made even worse. It is not one channel, but, a maze of side channels covering about 2,000 sq. miles (5,200 sq. km.). I have classified the Unaweep and Grand Valleys as Release Valleys (Chapter 1) from the Unaweep crater. Could the Grand Canyon have the same origin??
- Figure 62: Let’s start with one small but pronounced feature of the erosion, the Butte Fault. It is up to the east, telling us the shear center is to the west. The west side it thrusting up-and-over the east side. Comparing this in a diagram of the expected cratering faults, the only expected movement of earth in a cratering event would be thrust movement, reverse faults, outwards in all directions as a result of shock compression at the impact site. The formation of Normal Compensation faults would be expected as the compression drops down into the Release Valley at the adiabatic conversion site on the inside of the compression wave. Faults are not a matter of plate growth/extension or contraction/foreshortening. Horst and Graben systems and Transverse Faults do not exist (Chapter 19A). There are several things in geology that will have to be relearned, and faults are one of them.
- Figure 63: The Bright Angel-Phantom Creek-Eminence Break Fault is a second continuous linear that Huntoon and Sears first recognized in 1975. It is first seen at the Bright Angel trailhead, and forms the canyon to the river. From there the linear continues following the Phantom Creek canyon out over the North Rim where it corresponds with the Eminence Break on the north eastern edge of the rim. Do linears appear at random (Chapters 3-7)? Or, can their source of shear be traced back to the supposed direction of plate convergence?? Over vast reaches of the Pacific Northwest multiple authors have traced the Euler Pole for several sets of faults. They assume the Euler Pole is a pole of plate rotation, but I find their location of the pole corresponds with my location of cratering centers (Chapter 19). We are finding the same thing, and identifying it according to our different models.
- Figure 64: (A) One map of Butte Fault that may have been taken from an old map or estimated from the terrane. I highlighted their designation of Butte Fault as two linears using corresponding labels to Figure 66. (B) Linears I located in the area using topographic clues, CGRS in white and short concentric linears shown in red. Labels as in Figure 65.
- Figure 65: Craters found to correlate with linears around (A) Butte Fault and (B) Bright Angel-Phantom Creek-Eminence Break Fault. Butte Fault is up to east and Davidson, Molokai, and Salsipuedes craters all center in the Pacific Ocean. Red oval encircles a topographic high parallel to Ipojuca linear (Chapter 15A). The Ipojuca linear extends through Nankoweep Butte, Figure 62B. Ipojuca center is in the southern Atlantic Ocean. Huntoon and Sears identified the Bright Angel Fault as a normal fault (compensation fault) with west side up, meaning its center is to the southeast. I correlate it with the Gulf of Mexico crater. Additionally, they identify it as faulting between the deposition of the Unkar and Chuar Groups. This means that the Gulf of Mexico crater arrived between the Tatanka and Gorda craters. But in fact, the Gulf of Mexico is east of the Tatanka and would arrive first, but its CGRS may not have arrived here until after the Tatanka’s CGRS. This type of associations allow sequence and timing to be established for craters outside of the Grand Canyon.
- Figure 66: Top of the Crystalline Basement under the Grand Canyon and some of the earliest mapped faults (Precambrian). Butte Fault designated in blue as separate linears: (A) CGRS from Molokai crater, (B) CGRS from Salsipuedes crater, (C) CGRS again from Molokai crater, (D) CGRS again from Salsipuedes crater, and (E) CGRS from Ipojuca crater. Bright Angel-Phantom Creek-Eminence Break Fault designated in red. Two portions of the more southerly Mesa Butte Fault also appear to correspond with CGRS from the Gulf of Mexico crater. Faults are often made up of segments from different shear centers that have become associated in the mind of the geologist because they seem to form a continuous line on the ground. This reflects the observation in the Paradox Basin, made by Gay (2012) that faults and other structures exhibit “straight line segments with corners” where they meet other segments. They are largely not one continuous linear.
- Figure 67: What do the Sevier Orogeny and the Alvord crater have to do with what we can now see in the Grand Canyon? Remember the Gravity Map of the farside of the moon? The distinct bull’s-eye appearance of high and low, red and blue, gravity? If cratering did this to the moon, it also did this to the earth. In spite of all the later cratering, we can see that the Grand Canyon (red oval) lays in a broad blue band that extends well beyond the canyon. If it is dark blue, it was filled with a less dense version of the rock. As I have suggested the Alvord crater deposited the Chuar Formation, so that formation in this area is less dense than the alternative. If that formation is less dense, it will be preferentially eroded by the adiabatic conversion forming release valleys in subsequent cratering. What are some of these larger subsequent craters, and what did they each contribute???
- Figure 68: When evaluating what each crater contributed, we have to recognize how the dark blue rings conform to the white rings of that crater. I have already emphasized how the Alvord and Blowout Mountain have a similar foot print and how they both contributed to the Sevier Orogeny. In the Grand Canyon area, the Blowout Mountain produced a couple of additional small up-thrust. I suggest that these up-thrust were smaller because they were working against the low gravity left in the area by the Alvord. The blue ring of the Winnemucca crater extends well beyond both ends of the Grand Canyon’s area. Again the dark blue seems to hug the white rings, strongly indicating that it is a low gravity ring of the Winnemucca crater. The white ring just beyond the canyon did thrust up some mountain ridges, so it would be a compression wave, and the canyon just behind it would be part of the associated release valley. The general line of the canyon appears to mimic the curve of the Winnemucca’s rings.
- Figure 69: The Chilili and Gandy craters have one very important aspect in common, both of them include the Grand Canyon within their original crater rim. We saw on the moon’s highlands, the continent of the moon, all of the craters, except the mascons in the largest, have blue centers. The fallback into the crater leaves a less dense lithology. On the Chilili crater the third ring displaced the mountain ridge down Baja California. A larger view would show that slight arc certainly originally aligned with California’s Sierra Nevada, further to the east. The original crater ring on the Gandy crater is outside the edges of the image.
- Figure 70: While the Grand crater included the Grand Canyon within its original crater rings, both the Grand and Navajo craters also contributed to the release valley the Colorado River flows through in the Canyon. With the Grand crater the white arrows point to sections of the river channel that follows the rings. The Yellow arrows indicate other locations that it contributed to the gravity pattern, but the river does not follow it. The river channel southwest of both Kaibab Plateau (K) and Shivwits Plateau (S) are release valleys from Grand crater, while the raised plateaus themselves were produced by the Navajo crater. The inner ring of the Navajo crater is especially easy to see (red arrow) as it is a ridge of high gravity making almost a half-circle. Walhalla Plateau on the southeast pointed end of Kaibab Plateau. It is a nearly isolated plateau surrounded by steep slopes to the Colorado River. I propose it remained a plateau because it was harder, denser because of the added energy put into it by the Navajo crater. Its added density may not reflect different mineral content, but only denser, more tightly packed particle matrix.
- Figure 71: The Alaskan crater produced a CGRS just southeast of the white arc that highlights the release-wave response on its backside, The CGRS is accentuated by a second arced linear to the northwest. The red line indicates the shock/compression ridge and the dark blue linear behind it was produced by the following release/expansion wave. The Aguj de Anahuac crater being a smaller crater than the Alaskan, I assume arrived a couple days later. It left a CGRS in a very similar location, but I think the exact location of its release valley better corresponds to the low gravity area connecting the Kaibab and Shivwits Plateaus. A careful examination will show the low gravity linear that makes this central portion of the canyon also had an expression on both the Kaibab and Shivwits Plateaus forming small valleys in its paths across them. This expression on the plateaus is not a feature of the Alaskan craters linear. The Alaskan CGRS probably arrived earlier about the time of the Chuar or Tapeats, while Aguj de Anahuac arrived about the time of the Redwall or Kaibab and left a release valley much higher in the strata.
- Figure 72: Now that we have accounted for some of the sedimentary layers from cratering, how did the canyon form? Could it also be cratering? Some readers will object, but I place the entire canyon as a Release-Valley Canyon formed with the help of the Flagstaff crater. The Flagstaff crater shows up as the blue ring inside the first white ring on gravity. In the Grand Canyon vicinity, the blue ring is diverted to the Canyon which is a dark blue, very low gravity path. That there is little indication of the Flagstaff crater at this resolution on Landsat is not surprising.
- Figure 73: Do you see the similarities between the dark blue path of the Grand Canyon and this wiggly canyon I showed you previously in Mare Orientale? The low gravity paths were already formed by the individual adiabatic responses of all of these craters and probably even more. The Flagstaff crater, because of its size I would place late in the 40 days of cratering, maybe between days 35-38. The adiabatic conversion from the Flagstaff crater would have blown much of the sediments out in one puff, and the fast moving water flowing all the way through it would have quickly washed any remaining loose sediments towards the California coast. Some of them may have dropped out of suspension, but I would not look for a “California River” as some papers have proposed. This flow coastward, would have taken place continuously for several days at this time, and would have been rapid but not highly erosive. Note: many of these lines account for the direction of faults within the canyon, and would make an interesting study.
- Figure 74: Let us look again at the Flagstaff crater’s rim in topography. The edges of the “crop circle” (“Gulf of Mexico to Turner Gulch” slide show) are marked with the inside end of the yellow lines. I do not believe the “crop circle” would have been recognized if the Flagstaff crater had not been identified first, but it is real. How many other obvious indications of craters occur but are ignored because we are using a different model? One you have seen some of it, it becomes obvious.
- James was writing about the need to practice what we know in our spiritual lives, but it is not an absurd stretch to apply it to everything we know. Is knowing enough? The picture is a poor pun and a tired joke, but you now have new information. Think, what are you going to do with it? Discard it because it can’t possibly be true? Investigate it more? Ignore it because you don’t want it to be true?
- Figure 75: Can you apply what you have learned to this figure and locate comparable topographic clues in this region for these CGRS. I see clues for each, and clues for many, many more.
- Figure 76: One other form of erosion which played a major role in the canyon we see today was small erosion craters that continued throughout the Flood year and into the Post-Flood period. This probably involved secondary impactors which were chunks of lithology that was shot into orbit by the first LARGE impactors. Secondary impactors may have continued till Sodom and Gomorrah. Horseshoe Mesa is a famous landmark with its horseshoe shape and two arms. Can you see the many fracture linears with dark plant growth. How many of them are indicated in the earlier image for cratering fracturing and the Flagstaff crater? At the end of its west arm . . . . . . .
- Figure 77: Is a series of circular lineaments in the plateau’s surface. Only the middle of the circles are on the Plateau surface, but I see them very clearly on Google Earth, and they are equally visible on the ground surface. It would be an interesting study to compare limestone in the circles and that more distant. In the second yellow ring, where the purple arrow points on the “thumb” peninsula some very curious minerals are exposed.
- Figure 78: This is the trail out onto the thumb. Around the small tree, along the path and in the distant wall barite is visible. If you ever get down there, the barite is easy to identify. It is white, like cloudy quartz, but four times the density. It feels very heavy. The geologist tell us, barite replaced the quartz chert in these locations. How does chert/quartz melt out of the limestone and make a void barite can fill? It is only about a 6 foot wide band of barite with the quartz chert still present on either side. I suspect either the compression wave or release wave vaporized the quartz in this ring and mobilized the Barite. It would be a great project for some chemistry major’s thesis.
- Figure 79: This obvious crater is not so obvious from the ground. It is referred to as Phantom Creek Valley, and I believe I have camped in an overhang on the south wall of the crater. I wish I had known about its total shape when I was there. I spent a day climbed all over it. This would be a great location to see specific characteristic of secondary craters. Note the red near the center of the crater. I will assume it is cutting down to the liver red Hakatai Shale. The Hakatai shale is a far reaching red formation, like the Supai and Moenkopi formations. They are red from distinct red crystals of hematite scattered among the white sand and gray shale particles. Distinct hematite crystals require ~1,000 degrees C (1,832 degrees F) to form in the air. They cannot grow between the sand grains. That is why I propose a vapor condensate to form the sediments in the air, not erosional degradation.
- Figure 80: Looking at the area surrounding that circle in Phantom Creek, I see it as only one of many circles. Should I be misunderstood, I am saying much/most of the topography is shaped into circles produced by secondary impacts that makeup the majority of erosional craters. They continued landing after the 40 days, until the days of Sodom and Gomorrah. This would produce the soil for the earth, but could also produce major post Flood catastrophes.
- Figure 81: One more look at Hematite. This is the south edge of the Tonto Platform with Cheops Pyramid and Utah Flats in the background. Something turned the normally white Tapeats Sandstone alternating layers of red and white, in a circular shape. Is it the small center of a secondary erosional crater? I believe so.
- Figure 82: Many of the side canyons to the Colorado River are still banked with large deposits of “river rounded” cobbles. I would suggest from the image that many are rounded not from tumbling but ablation and show good indication of a heat rind from going through and being spit-out from the adiabatic conversion. I would suggest this happened in the formation of a release valley. The release valley we now call the Grand Canyon.
- Figure 83: In a rare glimpse inside a heavenly court room where “gods” set in condemnation before God as He recites their failing, Psalm 82 says, because of their actions “all the foundations of the earth are shaken.” Not covered with water, or filled with fire and smoke, although we have seen that is true in other places, but the very foundations of the earth/ continental shelves are shaken. If we are not going to believe this is pure hyperbole or metaphor, it would take quite a large force. That force would be consistent with impacts of the size I am suggesting. Psalms 29 qualifies as a scene out of such a courtroom: The Psalm is not addressed to the Lord, but about the Lord. It is addressed to the “heavenly beings”/ mighty-son. Assuming, Jehovah includes the portion of the Godhead called the “Son/ Jesus,” we must assume an angel (“sons of God”) is being addressed. Because he is mentioned as a “mighty” son, I will suggest a specific angel, Lucifer, because he is commander of other angels. He is being instructed to give Jehovah glory and strength, which Lucifer refused to do when he said, “I will be like the most High (Isaiah 14:14).” Preferring KJV in verse 7, the voice of Jehovah “divideth the flames of fire.” “Flame” not only denotes the burning, but also refers to the “head’ of a spear, the piercing part. Blazing spears are acting upon, piercing, the many waters, and we can reason from their still burning that the waters did not quench them. “Divide” is the same word for the priest dividing the sacrifice, each portion for its specific use. Not that we want to appeal unnecessarily to a miracle, but the “flames of fire” did not land where they wanted, but where the voice of the Lord directed them “over many waters.” Jehovah makes the whole Earth shake and skip, pierced with flames of fire. That is the Flood as Noah and David knew it.
- Figure 84: But, do I presently have an answer for all of the geologic question? No, but I have enough that I think my model is on the right track. The more details I find, the more answers I can supply. Our Lord’s handiwork always shows in the details. “When I consider the heavens, the work of thy finger, the moon and the stars that thou hast ordained . . . . What is man that thou are mindful of him, and the son of man that thou visited him . . . .?”
- Once again in the words of David, Psalm 29: “The voice of the Lord is over the waters; the God of Glory thunders, over many waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is full of majesty. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars; the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon to skip like a calf, and Sirion like a young wild ox. The voice of the lord divides the flaming arrows. The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness; the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh, The voice of the Lord puts the deer into the pain of birth when its not its time, and devastates the forest, so that in Hs temple all cry, “Glory”. The purpose of the Flood, in my opinion, was to destroy the work of angels with man in the Nephilim Affair, and form a world in which man could once again say, “Glory to God.” Glory to God!
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Sevier and Grand Canyon, Pt 2
- There may be no other plot of ground so often used to illustrate many of the geologic processes espoused in textbooks than the Grand Canyon. Geologist talk about it like they have the processes all figured out. Is it just possible that they have gotten it all wrong? This presentation is going to suggest unimaginable cratering was responsible for everything we see there, from the rocks, the sequence, the faults, and the actual canyon. None of it got there by geological processes we can see happening around us today. We will question if some of the processes even work the way everyone has assumed they would. Gentle reader, do not be afraid to questions the rocks, the processes, even my model, but above all, question the assumptions both you and I have made. Our God is a God of mystery, but He is also a God of Knowledge. And in knowing, He is worthy of our praise. The first part covered how we interpret Earth craters in light of what we know of moon craters, and understanding the evidence of the energy signature left in the gravity patterns. It looked at some of the largest craters found in North America, forming the crystalline basement of the continent.
- We have covered the cratering below the Great Unconformity the Crystalline Basement in Part 1. Here we want to continue on an exploration trip. Please leave your geologic preconception at the door, and we can go on a trip to discover some new ones. This session will address evidence of astral-cratering covers the entire globe 40 layers deep, We will relate cratering as the cause of the Vishnu Schist, Zoroaster Granite, Unkar Group, the Chuar Group, the 60 Mile and Tapeats Formations, the Redwall, the Surprise Canyon Valleys, and the Coconino Sandstone as well as others. Cratering was responsible for all aspects of the Grand Canyon from the strata to excavating the canyon itself.
- Figure 32: The Foxe crater, covered in Part 1, in far northern Canada, is the largest crater in North America (that I can find), what is the biggest crater in the continental United States? That distinction goes to the Tatanka crater, whose impactor nearly landed in Canada.
- Figure 33: The Tatanka crater has the Williston Basin at its center. Scanning the gravity map, the Tatanka crater is partially responsible for the red ridge near its 4-ring (between white arrows), the western branch of the Mid Continental Rift, and the 8-9-ring near the east coast (between red arrows) formed the curved ridge of the Appalachian Mountains, as a mascon of the Bermuda crater.
- Figure 34: One way to identify and confirm craters is to recognize how they interact with other craters. The white arrows are still the ends of the west limb of the Mid Continental Rift, and the red arrows are still the ends of the Appalachian ridge. I will propose the Bermuda crater arrived first because it is further to the east, with the Tatanka crater arriving later that same day as the earth rotated under the asteroid shower. The impacts together put extra energy into the area of the Mid Continental Rift where their rings overlap. This increased energy was raised as a mascon by the MCR crater a few days later. In the Appalachians, the arc of the ridge was pushed up in the heated lithosphere from the Bermuda crater. Since the red arrows both occur just outside the second ring, I will identify that as the Open-ring and make that a mascon of the Bermuda crater. The interactions of the two crater’s rims provides conformation for both of them to me, and provides conformation of the model.
- Figure 35: The Tatanka crater also has several linears to recognize it, both high and low gravity. The red-ring with the red arrow was the first I thought I saw. Do you ever feel like there is someone staring at you? Some would say this is an unfounded feeling, but other times, with careful examination we can recognize clues that we may not even have previously been aware of. People turned our way. People staring at us. All of these are clues others are listening. Scanning this image may give you a feeling that there are other circular rings concentric to the white rings.
- Figure 36: Many will say, with a crater this large, I could not possible really be seeing rings in the gravity pattern. I will say, they are not continuous rings, but they are significant repeated portions of rings. Enough to say, there is something there, and it needs more investigating.
- Figure 37: South of the Tatanka crater, centered in Nebraska is the Maka Luta crater. “Maka Luta” comes from the Lakota words for “red earth.” A Landsat image of the crater provides very little evidence other than its inside ring fits a curve in the Front Range of Colorado (Red oval).
- Figure 38: At the center of the Maka Luta crater is the Denver-Julesburg Basin, and at its outer edge is the edge of the continental shelves. Some creation authors have tried to make the Continental Shelves a product of the sediments running off of the continents as the land supposedly rose. This cannot be true if the Continental Shelves are part of the continents, and seismic sections consistently show them to be such, no matter where we look. On the east coast the high gravity ridge of the Continental Shelf is an up thrust of the Maka Luta, and while this map does not show the west coast to be similarly designed, the topographic sections do (see Pacific Northwest slideshow). In the Gulf of Mexico, the ring also limited the continent, but that limit was shortly modified by the Sigsbee Escarpment which pushed-up through the sediments from the MCR (Mid Continental Rift) crater. The Maka Luta crater determined the foundations of the continent.
- Figure 39: Looking at the Maka Luta crater’s pattern as it crosses the Rocky Mountains, it also produced a gravity pattern of ripples. When finding the cratering connection to the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, it quickly becomes evident something cut them off on their south end (yellow arrow). Part of that something was the wide dark-blue ring which includes Owens Valley and Death Valley, both very significant to geologist in California. While both had their ultimate shape determined by other, later craters. The first low gravity print was made by the Maka Luta crater, which included them in a release valley. Looking north from that area, a number of dark-blue areas are concentric to the Maka Luta’s expression all across the Basin and Range and Rocky Mountains.
- Figure 40: In Part 1 we discussed the Alvord crater that anchored the southern end of the Sevier Orogeny, and here we have identified the Tatanka and Maka Luta. In the southwest. Around the Grand Canyon, all three of these three craters overlap and produce some distinctive layers and interactions. In his Master thesis, Lathrop (2018) found the Bass Limestone’s Hotauta Conglomerate to correlate from Death Valley, California to the Franklin Mountains of West Texas, and the mud cracks correlated to the “molar-toothed” structures in the Belt-Purcell Supergroup of British Columbia and Alberta, Canada and Eastern Washington, Idaho, and Montana, U.S.A. except for the missing microsparry calcite infill or replacement. I propose that difference could be a result of higher temperature in the cratering process reflecting its shorter distance from the impact event. For these six distant disconnected deposits of Bass Limestone, Lathrop found a similar set of reverse faults hosted by each of the deposits that was concentric to the Alvord crater. By contrast to the diverse locations of the Bass/Unkar Group, the Chuar Group on top of it is only found in the Grand Canyon, to the north in the Chuar Field (6) where it is explored for petroleum, and the Uinta Mountains (7) of Utah. I propose the Bass Limestone was laid down by the Tatanka crater and then broken up over its range by the Alvord crater that followed. See Chapter 14 of my book for more thorough coverage of the Tatanka and Alvord cratering correlations.
- Figure 41: Molar-toothed structures on the left from the Belt-Purcell Supergroup and evaporation cracks from the Bass Limestone’s Hotauta Conglomerate on the right. (D) is topside and (C) is underside. The irregular division and even fine lines are the same except for the microsparry infilling of the cracks. As microsparry calcite would have been produced at a specific temperature from the solution that the quartz sand grains were depositing in. This looks like a chemical difference governed by the temperature. This also suggest, both were deposited at an extremely elevated temperature, but in the Belt-Purcell it was somewhat higher temperature or prolonged elevated temperature than in the Hotauta Conglomerate.
- Figure 42: A cratering model for the Grand Canyon’s Pre Cambrian runs right up against Stromatolites, in the Hotauta Member of the Bass Formation, and in the Kwagunt formation of the Chuar Group. Are they fossils or are they chemistry? Partly because a cratering model would require them to be chemical, I will declare them to be. Also, I think that must be the default position, until identified fossil evidence is found to confirm a biogenic source. But, as same Creationist authors have publish their belief in a biogenic origin, I will say, I am not convinced. The lower right image does not look biogenic in origin to me. When I realize the containing strata was laid down very hot and a lot of chemical reactions were taking place as the very hot sediments were being put into place. These are conditions that have not been previously considered. I would propose to interpret them as the result of a chemical reaction that produced gases that lifted layers as it moved upwards in various forms including the inverted cone formation.
- Figure 43: Other mound and cone shaped “stromatolites” have been located by Lathrop in Vishnu Canyon and Bright Angel Creek West. Although these forms are less spectacular, I believe they confirm a non-biogenic origin for the structures. No one has previously considered the chemistry that is going on between rapid high temperature depositions of these strata atop each other within mere hours.
- Figure 44: Atop the Unkar and Chuar Formations is the 60 Mile Formation. I think there is a lot of merit to Wise and Snelling (2005) suggestion that the 60 Mile formation is the start of the Tapeats. At this distance from the cratering center, the first result would be a thrust of the geography, with the resultant deposits of LARGE breccia. The sand that will eventually form the Tapeats would start early as a quartz and feldspar condensate from the vapor cloud. These lulls would be brief between episodes of thrusting, and the first sand lenses are small insertions. By the time that the Tapeats Sandstone proper is depositing, returning tsunamis from the thrusting have washed life forms back over the OCR and the platform has become stable. The thrust that the 60 Mile formation represents was not a start of the Flood, but the start of a single cratering event, not first but at least 5th in this region. In my two paper on the Tapeats, I was amazed that the strata was laid like in a river, and I compared that river for just the immediate area of the Grand Canyon would be a river 300 km (186 miles wide), Such rivers do not exist, and the Tapeats is not laid as on a beach. Hyperconcentrated flow was constantly depositing sand from a never ending source. To get that kind of deposition in a flume, you must keep adding sand to the recirculating water. Cratering supplies a continually renewing source of sediment, not from continuing erosion, but from continually condensing quartz from a very hot vapor cloud of vaporized rock that is slowly cooling. Cratering would produce the original thrust outwards carrying with it anything that can move. Water will rush back in to fill the void, filling it with hot condensing sediments and as they continues to fall, rush back outwards. Never getting very deep, 0.5 – 2 m (1.5-6 feet) in depth. This is the story of laying the thin layers of the Tapeats.
- Figure 45: If the Tatanka crater formed the Unkar Group, and the Alvord crater formed the Chuar Group, the next sedimentary layer is the Tapeats Sandstone. Clarey (2017) compiled the Sauk Group, and his map is redrawn in B. It maps the Tapeats Sandstone and equivalent sandstone all over the continent that fits the Maka Luta and Foxe craters. Additionally, it has an arch across the central states that Clarey identifies as “dinosaur peninsula.” I propose that arch was an up-thrust of the earlier Keys crater. In the far north the pattern of sandstone was altered by the Greater Beaufort crater that also produced the Franklin Large Igneous Province just south of the depositing sandstone.
- Figure 46: That these tsunamis might contain live vertebrates seems unlikely, but at Plateau Point just out from Indian Gardens just off the Bright Angel Trail we have evidence of exactly this. In my article from the Summer 2014 CRSQ, Anomalous Impressions in Tapeats Sandstone (Cambrian), Grand Canyon, the editors would not let me refer to them as footprints, but I showed that they had all of the characteristics of footprints and occurred in trackways, so I think I can defend them as footprints.
- Figure 47: See the article for much better images. At the top is a documentary set of photos of most of the site. The entire ledge is shown with a total of 32 whole or partial impressions, produced in 6 trackways of similar prints. A horse, 2 large cats, a 3-toed theropod, a web footed bird, and one small mammal. At least the Theropod, horse and large cats were running on a water saturated, thixotropic surface. If water was moving over the surface when the prints were made, it would have to be less than 12-14 cm deep. The left image shows trackway A and the right image is one of the individual prints, possibly a large cat (#2).
- Figure 48: There are no dinosaur eggs found in the Grand Canyon, but this is as good a time to talk about the conditions where dinosaur eggs are found in the Dinosaur Peninsula. In my September 2004 article in CRSQ on dinosaur eggs and nest, I emphasized how dinosaur eggs are often found in thinly layered sediments which give the impression that the sediments were depositing while the eggs were being laid. Some clutches of eggs were even laid into sand partially suspended in the saturating water. If dinosaurs were laying their eggs into water they were highly stress, desperate to survive. It is a reasonable assumption that dinosaur eggs, like bird or reptile eggs, must be incubated on dry land or embryo will drown. Both chicken and marine turtle’s eggs will drown in a few minutes of being submerged, about the same amount of time that you will last submerged. No reptiles lay their eggs in the water. So why would dinosaur do so? Obviously, they needed to get rid of the eggs for their own attempted survival. Eggs and foot prints are evidence of aerial exposure of shallow actively depositing sediments. Model shown at right is typical of those produced in museums. Baby dinosaurs are made the size of embryos found in the egg, and are only half as large as hatchling for the egg size. Many Dinosaurs were probably ovoviviparous, bearing live young, and eggs represent aborted gestation due to stress and survival instinct (Psalms 29: 9).
- Figure 49: The Grand crater centers in Eastern Utah, just happens to exactly match the depositional area of the Coconino Sandstone and related Schnebly Hills Sandstone just under it, and equivalent sandstones from Texas to Montana. The yellow oval is the location of the Fort Apache Limestone. We will come back to the limestone.
- Figure 50: First, we want to see the depositional pattern of the Coconino and Schnebly Hills sandstones. Dr. John Whitmore is the expert, not I. His map, above, traces the depositional flow patterns found in these formations. This flow pattern would support movement primarily in the Coriolis direction or possibly another large crater in the Great Lakes region. This suggest continuing deposition significant hours after the cratering event. Geologist generally recognize the Uncompahgre and the Ancestral Rocky Mountains as the source for the sand grains, but I would propose an alternative. They originated as condensates under a vapor cloud from the Grand crater.
- Figure 51: Fort Apache Limestone occurs between two layers of the Schnebly Formation in the area of Sedona, and makes only a spotty appearance at the Mogollon rim, but grows thicker as it approaches the New Mexico border. The far right image raises another question as it shows the sedimentary strata in the Sedona area. Devils Kitchen is a sinkhole that Lindberg connects to the Redwall strata below. Sources from the Hualapai Indian Reservation area cite sinkholes that originate in the Tapeats sandstone or below. I propose the sediments were laid down at high temperature and the flowing water that deposited them was not adequate to cool them. The life forms that interacted with the strata have to be consider as reacting to significantly hot strata. The breccia pipes that underlay the sinkholes are gas escape columns formed by escaping gasses from the mantle or lowest crystalline layers.
- Figure 52: The Fort Apache Limestone is a relatively thin strata arriving in the middle of the Schnebly Hills sandstone. It was blown to the south by the same wind that carried the Coconino and Schnebly sandstones in that direction.
- Figure 53: The Fort Apache Limestone commonly has Bryozoan fossils and occurs in extreme eastern Arizona, overlapping New Mexico, I associate it with the Petrified Forest crater, To see the crater, we need a larger area view, but I brought the view closer to see the county lines to show the association between the area of the limestone and the area of the crater.
- Figure 54: There are some other possibilities for the Redwall Limestone and the Supai formation. Both the Winnemucca and Nye crater centers are in Nevada, and not all that far from the Gandy crater that may have formed the Surprise Canyon valleys. The only real evidence of direction for a crater center comes from Beus and Morales (2003). They give the direction of deposition as the arrow in the right image indicates, which could apply to any of the three centers. A cratering source for the Toroweep and Kaibab Limestone, and the Moenkopi Formation could also be any of these three craters. More research is needed.
- Figure 55: Breccia Pipes are located all over the greater Grand Canyon area from Sedona on the south to Holbrook on the east and to the Paradox Basin on the north. Although popular models have them starting in the middle of the Redwall in karst structures and climbing upwards by hydraulic penetration. But, in the area of the Hualapai Reservation some sinkholes extend down into the Tapeats Sandstone. The connection of Tapeats Cave along Tapeats Fault suggest the source of displacement is below the Tapeats Sandstone in the basement rock. Some breccia pipes extend upwards as far as the Chinle Formation, and many in the immediate area of the Grand Canyon cap-out above the Tapeats with small inclusions of red Moenkopi Formation.
- Figure 56: Top of the Orphan Lode Copper and Uranium Mine on Maricopa Point, South Rim of the canyon shows the typical profile of pipe-in-pipe structure seen in all breccia pipes. Redder area may be spots of overlying Moenkopi above the Kaibab Limestone. Pipe-in-pipe structure can only form in gas escape structures. Well lithified pieces of skarn from the mines show that the strata was lithified but it broke loose in chunks that are often colored with hematite. In the Mitten Ridge breccia pipe/sink hole that terminates about 2-300 feet (60-100 m) into the Schnebly Hill Formation the last layer of sandstone is only partly melted in a concentric ring pattern like an onion skin, and small garnets are formed on the ceiling, Garnets melts just under 2,000 degrees C (3,600 degree F) suggesting the gas was at least that temperature when it arrived. For such gas to work its way up through almost a mile of sediment and still maintain that temperature requires that the sediment had to have a significantly elevated temperature already.
- Figure 57: The karst structures, caves, ascribed to down percolating water through the limestone should also be ascribed to the rise of hot gases. I will suggest the breccia pipes happened first when the mantel gases were at their hottest they moved rapidly melting their way through much of the strata. A second event later released more mantle gases which only got as far as the Redwall Limestone and stopped due to cooler conditions of the strata. Instead of moving higher they spread laterally making cave systems. From the labyrinth of remaining rock between bubbles of gas to the tubular channels in Groaning Cave, to the identical spiral chimneys seen in Cave of the Domes (Grand Canyon), Groaning Cave (Colorado), and Grand Canyon Cavern (Peach Springs, AZ), and the shrinkage cracks visible in Groaning Cave, they all were formed by hot gas. Since the caves growth seem to be restricted to the limestone, it may show that it retained its heat longer than sandstone or shale allowing the lateral movement of the gas. This would also explain lateral uranium deposits in Colorado.
- Figure 58: The Surprise Canyon valleys in the top of the Redwall are commonly explained as the Redwall was aerially exposed for some time while valleys were slowly eroded into its surface. I am suggesting the valleys are release valleys, like the Unaweep Valley in my first cratering paper, and formed in the adiabatic process in mere seconds to minutes. This means that the Redwall limestone was produced by one crate. Surprise Canyon valleys were release valleys from another crater, which after forming the valleys then started depositing the Supai Sandstone that fills and lays atop it.
- Figure 59: Did the Unkar and Chuar groups represent the first craters? I believe the Vishnu Schist represents a thrust then deposits from the Gorda Crater, and the Zoroaster Granite may originate with Pedregosa Crater. The faults or fissures that the Zoroaster Granite intrudes seem to belong to the Gorda center, so the Vishnu Schist may have originated with an even earlier crater. Or, maybe the Pedregosa crater made the faults containing the Zoroaster Granite. Generally, an adiabatic liquid is injected into faults and fissures that open up during the adiabatic conversion. The fissures were produced by a previous generation of craters.
Sevier and Grand Canyon, Pt 1
- There may be no other plot of ground so often used to illustrate many of the geologic processes espoused in textbooks than the Grand Canyon. Geologist talk about it like they have the processes all figured out. Is it just possible that they have gotten it all wrong? This presentation is going to suggest unimaginable cratering was responsible for everything we see in the Grand Canyon, from the rocks, the sequence, the faults, and the actual canyon. None of it got there by geological processes we can see happening around us today. We will question if some of the processes even work the way everyone has assumed they would. Gentle reader, do not be afraid to questions the rocks, the processes, even my model, but above all, question the assumptions both you and I have made. Our God is a God of mystery, but He is also a God of Knowledge. And in knowing, He is worthy of our praise.
- Figure 1: Any reader may question why a discussion of the Grand Canyon would start with looking at the northern edges of Canada. We share a common continent with the northern reaches of Canada, and we share the results of those early cratering processes. One of the earliest mountain building events was the Sevier Orogeny, which extends from northern Canada down to the Grand Canyon. While the canyon is not normally included in the orogeny’s events we will see that it springs from a common point of origin. While it would be convenient to start in on the deepest strata in the canyon, the Crystalline Basement, we must first look at the cratering process to define our terms and understand together the foundations of our discussion.
- Figure 2: How do impactors form their crater? Shoemaker in 1973 looked at the Meteor Crater and saw a hole very much like the Teapot ESS crater that had recently been blasted in the Nevada nuclear test site. But nuclear test are routinely buried in deep shafts so that the dirt fallback buries a significant portion of the radioactivity. Between step 6 and step 7, he envisioned the conversion between the shock wave to the release wave generating a lot of projectiles which were ballistically ejected in step 8. The fallback from this ballistic ejection builds a crater rim of fallback as well as largely filling the crater.
- Figure 3: Looking at the documentary footage from the Sedan Nuclear Test in 1962. This test was conducted with a 104 kiloton explosion under 635 feet (194 m) of alluvium. Times on the images is running time. Narrator said the third image was approximately 3 seconds after ignition, so film footage was exposed faster than shown. Fist image, a matrix bubble is seen to be forming below ground, and in less than a second the bubble is seen to be bursting with flames of energy, until the heat release consumes the bubble shell. The Shock wave was sent out with the original ignition. As it converts to the Release wave tremendous amounts of the original compression wave is converted to heat because it is released to rapidly to travel in an orderly manner from molecule to molecule. This heat is the actual flames seen shooting out of the expanding bubble. Twelve mega tons of dirt were displaced largely because it was detonated at depth. The bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki produced NO crater because they were exploded slightly in the air for maximum destruction.
- Figure 4: In the Sedan explosion some chunks of superheated rocks produced steam or dust trails as the continued on their limited trajectory, designed to stay very locally to localize and bury radioactivity. The raising of the rim was not primarily a build-up of ejecta, but the sediments forced outwards into the substrate in the shock compression expression, the bubble seem swelling and rising in first image of Figure 3.
- Figure 5: Central Arizona is the site of Meteor crater, also known as Barringer Crater; named for the family that owns it. Shoemaker developed his cratering model at Meteor Crater and NASA still uses it. Contrary to Shoemaker’s thinking, the rim was formed by lifting as compression forces some of the cratering material to retreat from the center of shear into openings between every particle of the surrounding substrate. A much thinner shell of earth than in the Sedan explosion formed at the far reaches of the expansion wave that then was pierced by a limited number of projectiles with a great release of heat. If we look outside Meteor Crater, this is a big hole, we should see some pieces of big rubble. We do not.
- Figure 6: The Google Earth view shows only a halo of small white rubble, extending to the northeast. This extension is called a “wind-streak.” Using Thermal Infrared image by NASA, the terrane is mostly Kaibab limestone (green) with many small patches of Moenkopi (blue), mainly to south and east. High silica Coconino (red) is the shattered white sandstone seen in Google Earth image. Most of the crater bottom and surrounding terrane still shows blue, the color for limestone in the infrared spectrum. That means the Kaibab limestone that originally covered the ground was compressed into the bottom of the crater, not blasted outward prior to the Coconino movement. The outer ejecta is primarily red in the TIR image and white in the Google Earth. The white ejecta is largely contained inside the blue arrow, and near the crater rim except where I have drawn linears through it. The linears represent fractures that opened up primarily along linear 1 and 2 through faults that opened up in the adiabatic conversion. I invite you to read Chapter 8 for a much more lengthy discussion of the evidence. The downward COMPRESSION forced breccia, produced by the ADIABATIC CONVERSION, down into the fractures. The resulting EXPANSION pushed up the rim and sent breccia out by the fractures beyond the rim through these linears. Primarily, the rubble is contained within the original rim, but the heat and pressure converted breccia radiates outwards by ejection through fractures. I expect this to be the pattern in all craters except the expression of heat/energy will be proportional to the size of the impactor and resultant crater. The crater bowl produced by some large craters would not be produced by ballistic excavation but compression, and the bottom (Moho) would be surfaced by recrystallized melt from that crater. While in college I witnessed the ignition of 13 sticks of melted dynamite in a grazed field of dry winter wheat. It blew the top and sides of the wooden box to splintered and compressed a 5 foot disk of earth with the box bottom about 6 inches, but left the wheat stalks under the lid only flattened on the surface.
- Figure 7: This is the farside of the moon. It is often called the “high-lands” much more like the continental areas of earth which are the earth’s “high-lands”. Much of this cratering study will use strangely colored maps of both the moon and earth. These are gravity map. Gravity maps DO NOT correspond to topography maps, but often they look similar. On a topography map a mountain may show high because its shape is tall, and in a gravity map it may show high because it has denser lithology (more gravity) than surrounding rocks. It is a subtle difference but extremely important because not all landforms with high topography have high gravity, and some low landforms have high gravity. The Compression/shock wave will produce high gravity whether it produced high topography or not. And by contrast, Expansion/release waves will produce low gravity whether they later are pushed to great heights. The bull-eye pattern seen on the moon are high compression/red gravity ringed with low expansion/blue gravity rings repeating outward.
- Figure 8: On the farside of the moon some craters are still designated basins because bureaucracy is slow changing names to show recognized craters. I may refer to them as craters, which they are. We need to first consider where to gather data. NASA provides three wonderful maps of the moon: GRAIL (gravity, seen here), Crustal Thickness, and Topography. If you are using Google Earth, you can paste these as pictures on Google Moon and the landmark names and distances will show up appropriately. A fourth map is very useful, Red Relief, that comes from the JAXA, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (their NASA), and can also be pasted on Google Moon. For Gravity on Earth, Scripps Institute of Oceanography (UCSD) offers a Global Gravity Anomaly overlay for Google Earth that you cannot do without. You will find web addresses at the end. First of all notice that nearly all of the craters, large and small, but especially the medium size ones, have a dark blue center. That is LOW gravity. But by contrast three of the largest, Moscoviense, Freundlich-Sharonov, and Raimand-Mitra Basins, have red centers. The red center is referred to as a Mascon, a mass concentration. These basins did not show up as individual craters until the GRAIL gravity map was produced, but it is now easy to recognize the red/denser/ high gravity rings from the blue/ low gravity rings between. We can deduce from this view that the normal center of a crater in not necessarily low topography, but it is low gravity until a mascon forms.
- Figure 9: The first view the public got of the GRAIL data was pasted over the east half of Mare Orientale, a NASA produced image for Science Magazine. It shows the correlation between tall topography and high gravity, except at the center. The red 1-center/mascon is such high gravity it totally mask topography and other small changes in gravity. 2-Ring is red, yellow and green, so it shows high and lower gravity, more than the topography suggest. 3-Ring is low gravity, but it has topographic highs in it. 4-ring varies similarly to 2-ring. 5-ring does not show low gravity with blue. But. It does show lower gravity in a small circular area just below the “5”. It becomes a task of judging how comparatively low and how comparatively high.
- Figure 10: Energy envelope will be an important concept for seeing craters on moon or earth. When an impactor strikes a body it does not blast a hole in it, any more than a pebble “blast” a hole in a pond when it is thrown it. It will make a splash, but not blast-out a hole. Shock/Compression waves make a crest of greater density/gravity material and release/expansion waves make a trough of less dense/gravity material. The difference is while a rock may compress until it becomes a liquid, it cools to a solid, and the sense of the wave’s motion is caught in the chemical makeup/density of the rock. Additionally, the adiabatic processes get involved “spewing” ablated (rounded) rocks/breccia out of the crater and ring structures. An energy envelope will then consist of one expression each of the compression wave and expansion wave, generally a ring of red with a ring of blue inside of it.
- Figure 11: When you see ripples in a pond, you are seeing the energy signature, alternating shock/compression waves and release/expansion waves. This is an expression of the pebble’s impact energy. Look at the image on the left, how many ripples can you pick out? Can you see the one that is colored red on the right? We can all probably see the one in black inside of it, and if we look carefully we can probably pick out some expressions of the red-ring within and between other ripples. Can you see the yellow-ring? It is pretty obvious in the center and towards the right edge, but will probably take a little looking to see it along the far distant edge. Can you see the pink line? Again it is obvious in the center and becomes less so within the other ripple patterns. But, ripples show us one very important characteristic, other sets of ripples do not obliterate previous ones, they just add to their expression. Look at the obvious pattern in the lower right hand corner. When ripples overlap, they form a system of nodes, with the additive and subtractive combinations for the energy put into each water molecule. So, as it is a wave, the energy is not expended but it keeps on moving outward until it is dissipated and lost in noise.
- Figure 12: Looking at Mare Orientale in greater detail, (A) shows some linear ridges and valleys that cut across the first few rings. Most of these can be traced even further out with greater detail afforded by the zoom feature on Google Earth. The crater center is amongst the lowest topographic points seen, but Gravity in (B) shows it to be a mascon with the bright red/highest gravity center. Crustal thickness shows the center to be the thinnest crust in the immediate area with a red ring, thickest crust just inside 4-ring. So the densest crust is just outside the thickest crust. A possible structural cross section in shown at upper right, with the orange showing crustal thickness, and the Lunar Discontinuity (LD), equivalent to the Moho on earth, showing variation in depth between crust and mantle. With the gravity map in lower right, the mascon is indicated as probably a pull-up of the mantle in the rebound of the crater floor. (Chapter 10 and 16 in the book.) The five arrows represent where Hartmann in his 1963 book placed them.
- Figure 13: Moving on outwards, using Red Relief, which emphasizes changes in topography (JAXA), 11-rings are located and verified with Ambient light. These more distant annulus to the cratering event are referred to as Concentric Global Ring Structures (CGRS). Rings 1, 2, 3 and 5 of Hoffmann were verified, and several concentric linears in between them, and then extending even further out are added. I believe Mare Orientale’s 2-ring (at 930 km diameter), was the (Original Cratering Rim) OCR-ring, and the crater was possibly the last large crater in its area. Maybe this is why it left such a clear record in the topography seen with ambient light. The cross section of Mare Orientale is the most detailed I could draw with this information. Chapters 8, 9, 10A, and 12 give much more information how I developed these cross sections. Scale on the right represents the depths. Regrettably, I have better information on lunar craters, so I cannot provide nearly this clear a picture of earth craters, until we look at some smaller structures (Uncompahgre crater, ~460 km diameter OCR-ring [Original crater rim]).
- Figure 14: Looking closely back at Mare Orientale’s blue/low gravity center, outside the Mascon we see 3 distinct blue linears. “1” is the most distinct, but “2” has some green to orange in its center. I will classify both of these slightly arced linears as Release-Valleys similar to the Unaweep Release-wave Valley of Colorado (Chapter 1). Linear 3 is also a release valley, and its wiggly line reminds me of the Grand Canyon when viewed in Gravity map. This has been a rapid review of the cratering process and how to read gravity maps, but before we get to the Grand Canyon we need to cover some more preliminary information about my model.
- Figure 15: This is the bare-bones, “Cliff Note,” version. I will call it the “Rain-of-Heaven” Cratering Model. It contains only 5 points at present. 1. Impactors came from only one direction striking continuously from when the “Windows of Heaven” were open until they were closed. As I assume these impactors were headed for the sun, this means that all cratering took place at night. If the Taurid Meteor Shower is the remnants of this rain, the Flood likely started in our Fall Months. 2. As it rotated, one part of earth was struck for about 12 hour intervals then cooled for 12 hours. Making 40 rotations, dividing the Flood into 40 distinct intervals of cratering on earth. As the first impactors were some of the largest, possibly much water was blasted into space where it was flash frozen and probably fell as ice during the day partially cooling the substrate. 3. Moon made only 1.43 rotations in 40 days, being struck continuously except briefly when it was in the earth’s shadow, so cooled less and more slowly between strikes (here the light half of the moon represents it nearside, and the gray half represents its farside. Small numbers represent the approximate juxtaposition of the moon’s sides to the earth and to the arriving impactors on that day’s number.) 4. Moon’s farside highlands are most similar to earth’s continents and the nearside is similar to earth’s oceans. Therefore, continents are determined by the amount of cratering in that location. More craters = continents, less craters = oceans. 5. Cratering with secondary impactors continued after 40 days, finally ending about Abraham’s time frame with Sodom and Gomorrah. Possibly allowing for some significant post-Flood catastrophism.
- Figure 16: If the moon’s bombardment started in the vicinity of Mare Orientale, made a full 1.43 rotations; it would rotate through the highlands, across the front side lowlands and then back through the highlands. If this concentration of impactors for a second time in the same area resulted in a greater percent of alkaline magmas, this would correlate with returning over the same crust results in bringing more alkaline material towards the surface where it can be accessed by the cratering process. Such a concentration of alkaline material will account for earth’s continents as well, not basalt vs granite which is usually cited.
- Figure 17: This is a gravity map of the earth. In this presentation I will usually pair it with a Google Earth Landsat image so that you can relate the gravity map to familiar mapped locations. If you are going to work in cratering, you will have to learn to recognize the important landmarks while in gravity maps. The Yukon Gold crater anchors the northern end of the Sevier Orogeny. It extends from Alaska to British Columbian, and includes most of the Yukon Territory inside its inner ring. You can see the thin white circle outside of the obvious blue half ring. If this was ripples in a pond, you would have no problems recognizing the ripple pattern from this much information. The Yukon Gold crater is recognized for it “energy envelope” (alternating high and low gravity) seen in the gravity map. The slightly arced linears are distant CGRS/annulus from (1) the Tasman Sea crater and (2) the Azores crater, The Azores crater caused the Tintina Fault, and the Tasman crater caused this portion of the Denali Fault.
- Figure 18: Now that you have seen the Yukon Gold, can you see the much larger Caribou crater? It is most obvious with its projection off of the continent into the Pacific Ocean. The Taltapin and Fraser craters are much harder to see, but as you train your eye, they also become visible. Can you see diagonal lines going through the mountains of British Columbia? That is Concentric Global Ring Structures (CGRS) from the Tasman Sea crater. They are also the source of one of the Mid Continental arches touted in some geologist analyses, extending down through Colorado. For this mid-continental arch, the source of shear lies 12,000 km (7,500 miles) away. Is it any wonder I will not allow any continental/plate or any other significant movement in the earth’s past. It just doesn’t work. Admittedly, I located the crater before I recognized the linear of the arch. But could this be a coincident that the plate moved into precisely the exact location to fit? By the way, I have located 20-30 of these distant correlations. In my book I document at least 8 covering the entire State of California. Is it a coincidence that the Yukon Gold and Caribou crater rings are reflected in surface geology in the right-hand map? I think not. Cratering not only determined the topography but also the lithologic makeup of the topography.
- Figure 19: These lines and arcs in Plate Tectonics are referred to the Sevier Orogeny (fancy word for “mountain building”). The red arrow shows direction of thrust (the direction from the Tasman Sea to here), but the blue arrow shows another direction of thrust that runs near the Tasman line, It is only slightly different but it was real fun solving the small conundrum it caused. That source of shear/thrust from the east is the Azores crater. Yes, originating off of the coast of Spain, only 7,200 km (4500 miles) from where it shows up. I wish I could spend all of my time explaining the direction and special relationships in the Mackenzie Mountains, but that is an only partly written chapter in my book. But note, at the lower end of the Sevier Orogeny lies the Grand Canyon, and we want to get there.
- Figure 20: This is a Geology map of the same area of Canada. We can only see partial remnants of the cratering pattern. That is because the craters and lines work together to form much of the lithology. Events that occur together have results that reflect ALL of the involved sources of shear. Also, the heat and pressure that were already put into that patch of ground by large, previous crater. They all work together to bring the chemical composition up from the mantle together and crystallize the specific pattern of minerals found there dependent on heat and pressure. The pressure does not come from deep burial, but cratering on the surface. Carbon is pulled up in one place and turned to carbonate rock and in another place formed into kerogen, bitumen, and petroleum based compounds. The chemistry all depend on the available heat and pressure, the final energy envelope expression in the specific area.
- Figure 21: Ok, we got that much figured out, but don’t get too smug. Here is a slightly larger picture including Alaska to California. The Alaskan crater makes a HUGE impression on the northern end, and the Alvord makes a pretty big one on the south end. But the Greater Beaufort and Foxe made additional contribution. The Greater Beaufort was a bit later than the Foxe and opened up some of its concentric fractures to spew the Franklin Large Igneous Province out over much of Northern Canada. Yes, volcanics are a direct result of cratering. Can I expect you to understand all of these cratering circles? If you take only one thing from this, I hope that you will take a mental image of the globe covered with all of these circles. Circles that have their source in points of shear pressure caused by astral-impactors that created the craters that formed the lithology and shaped the topography. These circles are associated with all of the geology we know, and the more we study them the more we can explain the geology.
- Figure 22: A craton is defined as a large stable piece of deep crystalline rock lithosphere with sedimentary layers on top. The large blue area is certainly the thickest portion of the crust? Could that be a result of the large Foxe crater that compression melted the rocks to great depth? As a result, energy signatures of later craters were simply lost in the massive energy signature of the Foxe crater leaving what I term “ghost crater.” It looks like South Pole-Aiken on the moon. How similar the craton and the deep LAB boundary is to a maps of the Laramide Ice Sheet. When I first saw this spatial relationship and realized cratering produced rock surface scour, large erratic boulders, and piles of small breccia to sand to loess sized particles. The same evidence that is used to support the ideas of glaciers and an Ice Age. Did an Ice Age happen, or are we mistaken in the genesis of the evidence ascribed to them?
- Figure 23: Compare the Foxe crater image with several moon craters. These are all gravity images, so all of them have large blue centers of low gravity, but several of the moon craters have a red mascon in the center of the blue. Since the mascon is a dense up thrust (CGRS) from the mantle originating at a distant shear/cratering center, the craters would have had to form after some other large craters which would produce the CGRS that formed the mascon. South Pole-Aitken, lower right, and the Foxe craters do not have obvious mascons, and I will propose part of the reason is that they were both formed early before other large craters could form CGRS to produce mascons in there centers. There could be other differences as well. We know the South Pole-Aitken is a mantle cored crater, so a mantle up warp is not enough to form a mascon. It has to have an additional up-thrust compressed by the shock wave’s CGRS from another crater.
- Figure 24: These are six tomographic sections through the North American continent, three west to east and three north to south. The resultant arcs are the proposed pressure energy signature of the bowl depth of craters. I have indicated in yellow some other contained pressure bowls of later and smaller crater. There are alternative interpretations when more detail is seen. Robert Watchorn is one of the few individuals I can locate worldwide that is significantly studying craters.
- Figure 25: The Alvord crater anchors the south end of the Sevier Orogeny thrust zone like Yukon Gold crater anchors the northern end, connected by the Tasman Sea linears. See the white wiggly line between the 3 and 4-ring? That is the location of the Grand Canyon.
- Figure 26: Seeing the Alvord crater in gravity map, the Great Basin is at its center and the Grand Canyon between rings 3 and 4 in a wide primarily dark blue ring. Just inside this blue ring, the 2-3-ring is the location of the Sevier Precambrian Thrust Belt of western Wyoming. The early Alvord crater is not alone in this position. Is it just a coincidence that the Grand Canyon occurs in the broad dark blue area of low gravity?
- Figure 27: Remember near the start, I said seeing impact shockwaves in gravity is like seeing ripples from a pebble in a pond. Everyone is asking the question, how do I see the Alvord crater? I see the ripples and you can too. Some compression rings are shown with dashed red linears. The one between the two white rings near the west edge of Wyoming is the one that formed the Sevier Thrust Belt. If you look inside that red dotted linear, you will see a blue dashed linear. I admit the blue ones are easier to see in gravity, and the red ones are recognized for their relationship to the dark blue linears. The wide dark blue containing the Grand Canyon (marked with yellow arrow) is most obvious. But, can you pick out the 5 high gravity wave ridges?? Yet, the Sevier Thrust Belt was not formed by the Alvord crater alone. Across Wyoming its thrust edge has been overridden by another crater slightly to the west. This belongs to the Blowout Mountain impactor.
- Figure 28: An enlarged view from Figure 27, including the pink rings of the Blowout Mountain crater. The Blowout Mountain center is in nearly the same location as the Alvord, but slightly to the west. That causes the Sevier Thrust Belt to draw back towards the west, nearer the western edge of Wyoming. The thrust edge is marked in a red dashed linear. Just inside the high gravity ridge is the following release-valley marked with a blue dashed linear (yellow arrow). It was this section of the blue ring that first led me to separate the thrust ridges of the Alvord from that of Blowout Mountain. The high gravity ridge marked with the red arrow is almost lost in that wide blue linear from the Alvord, but it does correspond with a couple high points near the Grand Canyon. The combination of the Alvord and Blowout Mountain faults has led to the assumption in geology that faults can be formed in the Precambrian and later reactivated in the Cretaceous. Alvord crater’s sediments and faults are dated as Precambrian, and Blowout Mountain’s sediments are dated as Cretaceous or later. They both have a significant presence across the entire Rocky Mountain region as their own distinct fault, not reactivated.
- Figure 29: On the Pre Cambrian surface map of Wyoming the two thrust faults of the Sevier Orogeny (A and B) show near the southwest corner. The Open-rings of the Alvord and Blowout Mountain craters are shown in the red oval. The thrust zones have been displaced to the southwest by the later Bighorn crater and pushed south by the Teewinot crater. Many of the basement morphologic features are shown correlated with medium size craters generally associated with Cretaceous and later deposits.
- Figure 30: An active fault map of Utah confirms the location of the Sevier Thrust Zone in this area. It is noted that not many of the faults lie in the direction of the up-thrust or crater rims, but because later craters were adding to the energy signature of the up-thrust, the later craters were able to leave faults for their up-thrust. The small generalized section is taken at the black line. It shows a much generalized section through a few of the large craters showing how they contributed their sediments around the two uplift. The Alvord crater (Chuar Group of Grand Canyon) was very early, shortly after the Tatanka (Unkar Group of Grand Canyon which is prior to the Sevier Orogeny). The Maka Luta crater (Tonto Group: Tapeats Sandstone, Bright Angel Shale, and Mauve Limestone/Dolomite Rock of Grand Canyon) arrived after the Alvord but covered more of the continent, similar to the Tatanka’s dispersion. The Grand crater (Schnebly Hills Sandstone, Fort Apache Limestone, and Coconino Sandstone) is separated by the craters depositing the Redwall and Supai Formations from the Maka Luta crater, and is followed by the Blowout Mountain crater forming the more westerly edge of the Sevier Orogeny. The Uinta Mountains extends right across the Sevier thrust zone, because it was formed by a later crater which struck almost atop the thrust zones and pulled up the Uinta Mountains is an earth mascon. (Moon Mascons are mass concentrations of gravity in the center of many larger craters on the moon. They are all formed by CGRS from distant craters, see Chapters 10A and 16.)
- Figure 31: Where is the start of the Flood boundary in the Grand Canyon? That is not easy to find, but it is easy to define. The start of the Flood boundary is below the lowest cratering. If layer 3 is the Alvord crater, and it is mixed up with the evidence for the Blowout Mountain crater, 5; it is easy to see there is much to sort out. Actually, crater 6 is my diagraming of the Laramide Orogeny, like the Uinta or Bighorn Mountains. Mascons are short mountain ranges that are pulled up when the crater bottom rebounds. The difference in the Sevier and Laramide Orogeny is covered in Chapter 10B of my book. I will define the start of the Flood as below the crystalline basement.
- Have you now recognized the need for a good gravity overlay? There are two addresses for Global Gravity Anomaly. I used the download from UCSD. The reference in the Scripps site gives the background on how it was derived and a little about it. Scripps Institute of Oceanography is part of University of California at San Diego (UCSD) so you can down load the same KML file for Google Earth from either webpage. But, if you want to see the craters, you need to get it.
Sevier and Grand Canyon, Pt 1
- There may be no other plot of ground so often used to illustrate many of the geologic processes espoused in textbooks than the Grand Canyon. Geologist talk about it like they have the processes all figured out. Is it just possible that they have gotten it all wrong? This presentation is going to suggest unimaginable cratering was responsible for everything we see in the Grand Canyon, from the rocks, the sequence, the faults, and the actual canyon. None of it got there by geological processes we can see happening around us today. We will question if some of the processes even work the way everyone has assumed they would. Gentle reader, do not be afraid to questions the rocks, the processes, even my model, but above all, question the assumptions both you and I have made. Our God is a God of mystery, but He is also a God of Knowledge. And in knowing, He is worthy of our praise.
- Figure 1: Any reader may question why a discussion of the Grand Canyon would start with looking at the northern edges of Canada. We share a common continent with the northern reaches of Canada, and we share the results of those early cratering processes. One of the earliest mountain building events was the Sevier Orogeny, which extends from northern Canada down to the Grand Canyon. While the canyon is not normally included in the orogeny’s events we will see that it springs from a common point of origin. While it would be convenient to start in on the deepest strata in the canyon, the Crystalline Basement, we must first look at the cratering process to define our terms and understand together the foundations of our discussion.
- Figure 2: How do impactors form their crater? Shoemaker in 1973 looked at the Meteor Crater and saw a hole very much like the Teapot ESS crater that had recently been blasted in the Nevada nuclear test site. But nuclear test are routinely buried in deep shafts so that the dirt fallback buries a significant portion of the radioactivity. Between step 6 and step 7, he envisioned the conversion between the shock wave to the release wave generating a lot of projectiles which were ballistically ejected in step 8. The fallback from this ballistic ejection builds a crater rim of fallback as well as largely filling the crater.
- Figure 3: Looking at the documentary footage from the Sedan Nuclear Test in 1962. This test was conducted with a 104 kiloton explosion under 635 feet (194 m) of alluvium. Times on the images is running time. Narrator said the third image was approximately 3 seconds after ignition, so film footage was exposed faster than shown. Fist image, a matrix bubble is seen to be forming below ground, and in less than a second the bubble is seen to be bursting with flames of energy, until the heat release consumes the bubble shell. The Shock wave was sent out with the original ignition. As it converts to the Release wave tremendous amounts of the original compression wave is converted to heat because it is released to rapidly to travel in an orderly manner from molecule to molecule. This heat is the actual flames seen shooting out of the expanding bubble. Twelve mega tons of dirt were displaced largely because it was detonated at depth. The bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki produced NO crater because they were exploded slightly in the air for maximum destruction.
- Figure 4: In the Sedan explosion some chunks of superheated rocks produced steam or dust trails as the continued on their limited trajectory, designed to stay very locally to localize and bury radioactivity. The raising of the rim was not primarily a build-up of ejecta, but the sediments forced outwards into the substrate in the shock compression expression, the bubble seem swelling and rising in first image of Figure 3.
- Figure 5: Central Arizona is the site of Meteor crater, also known as Barringer Crater; named for the family that owns it. Shoemaker developed his cratering model at Meteor Crater and NASA still uses it. Contrary to Shoemaker’s thinking, the rim was formed by lifting as compression forces some of the cratering material to retreat from the center of shear into openings between every particle of the surrounding substrate. A much thinner shell of earth than in the Sedan explosion formed at the far reaches of the expansion wave that then was pierced by a limited number of projectiles with a great release of heat. If we look outside Meteor Crater, this is a big hole, we should see some pieces of big rubble. We do not.
- Figure 6: The Google Earth view shows only a halo of small white rubble, extending to the northeast. This extension is called a “wind-streak.” Using Thermal Infrared image by NASA, the terrane is mostly Kaibab limestone (green) with many small patches of Moenkopi (blue), mainly to south and east. High silica Coconino (red) is the shattered white sandstone seen in Google Earth image. Most of the crater bottom and surrounding terrane still shows blue, the color for limestone in the infrared spectrum. That means the Kaibab limestone that originally covered the ground was compressed into the bottom of the crater, not blasted outward prior to the Coconino movement. The outer ejecta is primarily red in the TIR image and white in the Google Earth. The white ejecta is largely contained inside the blue arrow, and near the crater rim except where I have drawn linears through it. The linears represent fractures that opened up primarily along linear 1 and 2 through faults that opened up in the adiabatic conversion. I invite you to read Chapter 8 for a much more lengthy discussion of the evidence. The downward COMPRESSION forced breccia, produced by the ADIABATIC CONVERSION, down into the fractures. The resulting EXPANSION pushed up the rim and sent breccia out by the fractures beyond the rim through these linears. Primarily, the rubble is contained within the original rim, but the heat and pressure converted breccia radiates outwards by ejection through fractures. I expect this to be the pattern in all craters except the expression of heat/energy will be proportional to the size of the impactor and resultant crater. The crater bowl produced by some large craters would not be produced by ballistic excavation but compression, and the bottom (Moho) would be surfaced by recrystallized melt from that crater. While in college I witnessed the ignition of 13 sticks of melted dynamite in a grazed field of dry winter wheat. It blew the top and sides of the wooden box to splintered and compressed a 5 foot disk of earth with the box bottom about 6 inches, but left the wheat stalks under the lid only flattened on the surface.
- Figure 7: This is the farside of the moon. It is often called the “high-lands” much more like the continental areas of earth which are the earth’s “high-lands”. Much of this cratering study will use strangely colored maps of both the moon and earth. These are gravity map. Gravity maps DO NOT correspond to topography maps, but often they look similar. On a topography map a mountain may show high because its shape is tall, and in a gravity map it may show high because it has denser lithology (more gravity) than surrounding rocks. It is a subtle difference but extremely important because not all landforms with high topography have high gravity, and some low landforms have high gravity. The Compression/shock wave will produce high gravity whether it produced high topography or not. And by contrast, Expansion/release waves will produce low gravity whether they later are pushed to great heights. The bull-eye pattern seen on the moon are high compression/red gravity ringed with low expansion/blue gravity rings repeating outward.
- Figure 8: On the farside of the moon some craters are still designated basins because bureaucracy is slow changing names to show recognized craters. I may refer to them as craters, which they are. We need to first consider where to gather data. NASA provides three wonderful maps of the moon: GRAIL (gravity, seen here), Crustal Thickness, and Topography. If you are using Google Earth, you can paste these as pictures on Google Moon and the landmark names and distances will show up appropriately. A fourth map is very useful, Red Relief, that comes from the JAXA, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (their NASA), and can also be pasted on Google Moon. For Gravity on Earth, Scripps Institute of Oceanography (UCSD) offers a Global Gravity Anomaly overlay for Google Earth that you cannot do without. You will find web addresses at the end. First of all notice that nearly all of the craters, large and small, but especially the medium size ones, have a dark blue center. That is LOW gravity. But by contrast three of the largest, Moscoviense, Freundlich-Sharonov, and Raimand-Mitra Basins, have red centers. The red center is referred to as a Mascon, a mass concentration. These basins did not show up as individual craters until the GRAIL gravity map was produced, but it is now easy to recognize the red/denser/ high gravity rings from the blue/ low gravity rings between. We can deduce from this view that the normal center of a crater in not necessarily low topography, but it is low gravity until a mascon forms.
- Figure 9: The first view the public got of the GRAIL data was pasted over the east half of Mare Orientale, a NASA produced image for Science Magazine. It shows the correlation between tall topography and high gravity, except at the center. The red 1-center/mascon is such high gravity it totally mask topography and other small changes in gravity. 2-Ring is red, yellow and green, so it shows high and lower gravity, more than the topography suggest. 3-Ring is low gravity, but it has topographic highs in it. 4-ring varies similarly to 2-ring. 5-ring does not show low gravity with blue. But. It does show lower gravity in a small circular area just below the “5”. It becomes a task of judging how comparatively low and how comparatively high.
- Figure 10: Energy envelope will be an important concept for seeing craters on moon or earth. When an impactor strikes a body it does not blast a hole in it, any more than a pebble “blast” a hole in a pond when it is thrown it. It will make a splash, but not blast-out a hole. Shock/Compression waves make a crest of greater density/gravity material and release/expansion waves make a trough of less dense/gravity material. The difference is while a rock may compress until it becomes a liquid, it cools to a solid, and the sense of the wave’s motion is caught in the chemical makeup/density of the rock. Additionally, the adiabatic processes get involved “spewing” ablated (rounded) rocks/breccia out of the crater and ring structures. An energy envelope will then consist of one expression each of the compression wave and expansion wave, generally a ring of red with a ring of blue inside of it.
- Figure 11: When you see ripples in a pond, you are seeing the energy signature, alternating shock/compression waves and release/expansion waves. This is an expression of the pebble’s impact energy. Look at the image on the left, how many ripples can you pick out? Can you see the one that is colored red on the right? We can all probably see the one in black inside of it, and if we look carefully we can probably pick out some expressions of the red-ring within and between other ripples. Can you see the yellow-ring? It is pretty obvious in the center and towards the right edge, but will probably take a little looking to see it along the far distant edge. Can you see the pink line? Again it is obvious in the center and becomes less so within the other ripple patterns. But, ripples show us one very important characteristic, other sets of ripples do not obliterate previous ones, they just add to their expression. Look at the obvious pattern in the lower right hand corner. When ripples overlap, they form a system of nodes, with the additive and subtractive combinations for the energy put into each water molecule. So, as it is a wave, the energy is not expended but it keeps on moving outward until it is dissipated and lost in noise.
- Figure 12: Looking at Mare Orientale in greater detail, (A) shows some linear ridges and valleys that cut across the first few rings. Most of these can be traced even further out with greater detail afforded by the zoom feature on Google Earth. The crater center is amongst the lowest topographic points seen, but Gravity in (B) shows it to be a mascon with the bright red/highest gravity center. Crustal thickness shows the center to be the thinnest crust in the immediate area with a red ring, thickest crust just inside 4-ring. So the densest crust is just outside the thickest crust. A possible structural cross section in shown at upper right, with the orange showing crustal thickness, and the Lunar Discontinuity (LD), equivalent to the Moho on earth, showing variation in depth between crust and mantle. With the gravity map in lower right, the mascon is indicated as probably a pull-up of the mantle in the rebound of the crater floor. (Chapter 10 and 16 in the book.) The five arrows represent where Hartmann in his 1963 book placed them.
- Figure 13: Moving on outwards, using Red Relief, which emphasizes changes in topography (JAXA), 11-rings are located and verified with Ambient light. These more distant annulus to the cratering event are referred to as Concentric Global Ring Structures (CGRS). Rings 1, 2, 3 and 5 of Hoffmann were verified, and several concentric linears in between them, and then extending even further out are added. I believe Mare Orientale’s 2-ring (at 930 km diameter), was the (Original Cratering Rim) OCR-ring, and the crater was possibly the last large crater in its area. Maybe this is why it left such a clear record in the topography seen with ambient light. The cross section of Mare Orientale is the most detailed I could draw with this information. Chapters 8, 9, 10A, and 12 give much more information how I developed these cross sections. Scale on the right represents the depths. Regrettably, I have better information on lunar craters, so I cannot provide nearly this clear a picture of earth craters, until we look at some smaller structures (Uncompahgre crater, ~460 km diameter OCR-ring [Original crater rim]).
- Figure 14: Looking closely back at Mare Orientale’s blue/low gravity center, outside the Mascon we see 3 distinct blue linears. “1” is the most distinct, but “2” has some green to orange in its center. I will classify both of these slightly arced linears as Release-Valleys similar to the Unaweep Release-wave Valley of Colorado (Chapter 1). Linear 3 is also a release valley, and its wiggly line reminds me of the Grand Canyon when viewed in Gravity map. This has been a rapid review of the cratering process and how to read gravity maps, but before we get to the Grand Canyon we need to cover some more preliminary information about my model.
- Figure 15: This is the bare-bones, “Cliff Note,” version. I will call it the “Rain-of-Heaven” Cratering Model. It contains only 5 points at present. 1. Impactors came from only one direction striking continuously from when the “Windows of Heaven” were open until they were closed. As I assume these impactors were headed for the sun, this means that all cratering took place at night. If the Taurid Meteor Shower is the remnants of this rain, the Flood likely started in our Fall Months. 2. As it rotated, one part of earth was struck for about 12 hour intervals then cooled for 12 hours. Making 40 rotations, dividing the Flood into 40 distinct intervals of cratering on earth. As the first impactors were some of the largest, possibly much water was blasted into space where it was flash frozen and probably fell as ice during the day partially cooling the substrate. 3. Moon made only 1.43 rotations in 40 days, being struck continuously except briefly when it was in the earth’s shadow, so cooled less and more slowly between strikes (here the light half of the moon represents it nearside, and the gray half represents its farside. Small numbers represent the approximate juxtaposition of the moon’s sides to the earth and to the arriving impactors on that day’s number.) 4. Moon’s farside highlands are most similar to earth’s continents and the nearside is similar to earth’s oceans. Therefore, continents are determined by the amount of cratering in that location. More craters = continents, less craters = oceans. 5. Cratering with secondary impactors continued after 40 days, finally ending about Abraham’s time frame with Sodom and Gomorrah. Possibly allowing for some significant post-Flood catastrophism.
- Figure 16: If the moon’s bombardment started in the vicinity of Mare Orientale, made a full 1.43 rotations; it would rotate through the highlands, across the front side lowlands and then back through the highlands. If this concentration of impactors for a second time in the same area resulted in a greater percent of alkaline magmas, this would correlate with returning over the same crust results in bringing more alkaline material towards the surface where it can be accessed by the cratering process. Such a concentration of alkaline material will account for earth’s continents as well, not basalt vs granite which is usually cited.
- Figure 17: This is a gravity map of the earth. In this presentation I will usually pair it with a Google Earth Landsat image so that you can relate the gravity map to familiar mapped locations. If you are going to work in cratering, you will have to learn to recognize the important landmarks while in gravity maps. The Yukon Gold crater anchors the northern end of the Sevier Orogeny. It extends from Alaska to British Columbian, and includes most of the Yukon Territory inside its inner ring. You can see the thin white circle outside of the obvious blue half ring. If this was ripples in a pond, you would have no problems recognizing the ripple pattern from this much information. The Yukon Gold crater is recognized for it “energy envelope” (alternating high and low gravity) seen in the gravity map. The slightly arced linears are distant CGRS/annulus from (1) the Tasman Sea crater and (2) the Azores crater, The Azores crater caused the Tintina Fault, and the Tasman crater caused this portion of the Denali Fault.
- Figure 18: Now that you have seen the Yukon Gold, can you see the much larger Caribou crater? It is most obvious with its projection off of the continent into the Pacific Ocean. The Taltapin and Fraser craters are much harder to see, but as you train your eye, they also become visible. Can you see diagonal lines going through the mountains of British Columbia? That is Concentric Global Ring Structures (CGRS) from the Tasman Sea crater. They are also the source of one of the Mid Continental arches touted in some geologist analyses, extending down through Colorado. For this mid-continental arch, the source of shear lies 12,000 km (7,500 miles) away. Is it any wonder I will not allow any continental/plate or any other significant movement in the earth’s past. It just doesn’t work. Admittedly, I located the crater before I recognized the linear of the arch. But could this be a coincident that the plate moved into precisely the exact location to fit? By the way, I have located 20-30 of these distant correlations. In my book I document at least 8 covering the entire State of California. Is it a coincidence that the Yukon Gold and Caribou crater rings are reflected in surface geology in the right-hand map? I think not. Cratering not only determined the topography but also the lithologic makeup of the topography.
- Figure 19: These lines and arcs in Plate Tectonics are referred to the Sevier Orogeny (fancy word for “mountain building”). The red arrow shows direction of thrust (the direction from the Tasman Sea to here), but the blue arrow shows another direction of thrust that runs near the Tasman line, It is only slightly different but it was real fun solving the small conundrum it caused. That source of shear/thrust from the east is the Azores crater. Yes, originating off of the coast of Spain, only 7,200 km (4500 miles) from where it shows up. I wish I could spend all of my time explaining the direction and special relationships in the Mackenzie Mountains, but that is an only partly written chapter in my book. But note, at the lower end of the Sevier Orogeny lies the Grand Canyon, and we want to get there.
- Figure 20: This is a Geology map of the same area of Canada. We can only see partial remnants of the cratering pattern. That is because the craters and lines work together to form much of the lithology. Events that occur together have results that reflect ALL of the involved sources of shear. Also, the heat and pressure that were already put into that patch of ground by large, previous crater. They all work together to bring the chemical composition up from the mantle together and crystallize the specific pattern of minerals found there dependent on heat and pressure. The pressure does not come from deep burial, but cratering on the surface. Carbon is pulled up in one place and turned to carbonate rock and in another place formed into kerogen, bitumen, and petroleum based compounds. The chemistry all depend on the available heat and pressure, the final energy envelope expression in the specific area.
- Figure 21: Ok, we got that much figured out, but don’t get too smug. Here is a slightly larger picture including Alaska to California. The Alaskan crater makes a HUGE impression on the northern end, and the Alvord makes a pretty big one on the south end. But the Greater Beaufort and Foxe made additional contribution. The Greater Beaufort was a bit later than the Foxe and opened up some of its concentric fractures to spew the Franklin Large Igneous Province out over much of Northern Canada. Yes, volcanics are a direct result of cratering. Can I expect you to understand all of these cratering circles? If you take only one thing from this, I hope that you will take a mental image of the globe covered with all of these circles. Circles that have their source in points of shear pressure caused by astral-impactors that created the craters that formed the lithology and shaped the topography. These circles are associated with all of the geology we know, and the more we study them the more we can explain the geology.
- Figure 22: A craton is defined as a large stable piece of deep crystalline rock lithosphere with sedimentary layers on top. The large blue area is certainly the thickest portion of the crust? Could that be a result of the large Foxe crater that compression melted the rocks to great depth? As a result, energy signatures of later craters were simply lost in the massive energy signature of the Foxe crater leaving what I term “ghost crater.” It looks like South Pole-Aiken on the moon. How similar the craton and the deep LAB boundary is to a maps of the Laramide Ice Sheet. When I first saw this spatial relationship and realized cratering produced rock surface scour, large erratic boulders, and piles of small breccia to sand to loess sized particles. The same evidence that is used to support the ideas of glaciers and an Ice Age. Did an Ice Age happen, or are we mistaken in the genesis of the evidence ascribed to them?
- Figure 23: Compare the Foxe crater image with several moon craters. These are all gravity images, so all of them have large blue centers of low gravity, but several of the moon craters have a red mascon in the center of the blue. Since the mascon is a dense up thrust (CGRS) from the mantle originating at a distant shear/cratering center, the craters would have had to form after some other large craters which would produce the CGRS that formed the mascon. South Pole-Aitken, lower right, and the Foxe craters do not have obvious mascons, and I will propose part of the reason is that they were both formed early before other large craters could form CGRS to produce mascons in there centers. There could be other differences as well. We know the South Pole-Aitken is a mantle cored crater, so a mantle up warp is not enough to form a mascon. It has to have an additional up-thrust compressed by the shock wave’s CGRS from another crater.
- Figure 24: These are six tomographic sections through the North American continent, three west to east and three north to south. The resultant arcs are the proposed pressure energy signature of the bowl depth of craters. I have indicated in yellow some other contained pressure bowls of later and smaller crater. There are alternative interpretations when more detail is seen. Robert Watchorn is one of the few individuals I can locate worldwide that is significantly studying craters.
- Figure 25: The Alvord crater anchors the south end of the Sevier Orogeny thrust zone like Yukon Gold crater anchors the northern end, connected by the Tasman Sea linears. See the white wiggly line between the 3 and 4-ring? That is the location of the Grand Canyon.
- Figure 26: Seeing the Alvord crater in gravity map, the Great Basin is at its center and the Grand Canyon between rings 3 and 4 in a wide primarily dark blue ring. Just inside this blue ring, the 2-3-ring is the location of the Sevier Precambrian Thrust Belt of western Wyoming. The early Alvord crater is not alone in this position. Is it just a coincidence that the Grand Canyon occurs in the broad dark blue area of low gravity?
- Figure 27: Remember near the start, I said seeing impact shockwaves in gravity is like seeing ripples from a pebble in a pond. Everyone is asking the question, how do I see the Alvord crater? I see the ripples and you can too. Some compression rings are shown with dashed red linears. The one between the two white rings near the west edge of Wyoming is the one that formed the Sevier Thrust Belt. If you look inside that red dotted linear, you will see a blue dashed linear. I admit the blue ones are easier to see in gravity, and the red ones are recognized for their relationship to the dark blue linears. The wide dark blue containing the Grand Canyon (marked with yellow arrow) is most obvious. But, can you pick out the 5 high gravity wave ridges?? Yet, the Sevier Thrust Belt was not formed by the Alvord crater alone. Across Wyoming its thrust edge has been overridden by another crater slightly to the west. This belongs to the Blowout Mountain impactor.
- Figure 28: An enlarged view from Figure 27, including the pink rings of the Blowout Mountain crater. The Blowout Mountain center is in nearly the same location as the Alvord, but slightly to the west. That causes the Sevier Thrust Belt to draw back towards the west, nearer the western edge of Wyoming. The thrust edge is marked in a red dashed linear. Just inside the high gravity ridge is the following release-valley marked with a blue dashed linear (yellow arrow). It was this section of the blue ring that first led me to separate the thrust ridges of the Alvord from that of Blowout Mountain. The high gravity ridge marked with the red arrow is almost lost in that wide blue linear from the Alvord, but it does correspond with a couple high points near the Grand Canyon. The combination of the Alvord and Blowout Mountain faults has led to the assumption in geology that faults can be formed in the Precambrian and later reactivated in the Cretaceous. Alvord crater’s sediments and faults are dated as Precambrian, and Blowout Mountain’s sediments are dated as Cretaceous or later. They both have a significant presence across the entire Rocky Mountain region as their own distinct fault, not reactivated.
- Figure 29: On the Pre Cambrian surface map of Wyoming the two thrust faults of the Sevier Orogeny (A and B) show near the southwest corner. The Open-rings of the Alvord and Blowout Mountain craters are shown in the red oval. The thrust zones have been displaced to the southwest by the later Bighorn crater and pushed south by the Teewinot crater. Many of the basement morphologic features are shown correlated with medium size craters generally associated with Cretaceous and later deposits.
- Figure 30: An active fault map of Utah confirms the location of the Sevier Thrust Zone in this area. It is noted that not many of the faults lie in the direction of the up-thrust or crater rims, but because later craters were adding to the energy signature of the up-thrust, the later craters were able to leave faults for their up-thrust. The small generalized section is taken at the black line. It shows a much generalized section through a few of the large craters showing how they contributed their sediments around the two uplift. The Alvord crater (Chuar Group of Grand Canyon) was very early, shortly after the Tatanka (Unkar Group of Grand Canyon which is prior to the Sevier Orogeny). The Maka Luta crater (Tonto Group: Tapeats Sandstone, Bright Angel Shale, and Mauve Limestone/Dolomite Rock of Grand Canyon) arrived after the Alvord but covered more of the continent, similar to the Tatanka’s dispersion. The Grand crater (Schnebly Hills Sandstone, Fort Apache Limestone, and Coconino Sandstone) is separated by the craters depositing the Redwall and Supai Formations from the Maka Luta crater, and is followed by the Blowout Mountain crater forming the more westerly edge of the Sevier Orogeny. The Uinta Mountains extends right across the Sevier thrust zone, because it was formed by a later crater which struck almost atop the thrust zones and pulled up the Uinta Mountains is an earth mascon. (Moon Mascons are mass concentrations of gravity in the center of many larger craters on the moon. They are all formed by CGRS from distant craters, see Chapters 10A and 16.)
- Figure 31: Where is the start of the Flood boundary in the Grand Canyon? That is not easy to find, but it is easy to define. The start of the Flood boundary is below the lowest cratering. If layer 3 is the Alvord crater, and it is mixed up with the evidence for the Blowout Mountain crater, 5; it is easy to see there is much to sort out. Actually, crater 6 is my diagraming of the Laramide Orogeny, like the Uinta or Bighorn Mountains. Mascons are short mountain ranges that are pulled up when the crater bottom rebounds. The difference in the Sevier and Laramide Orogeny is covered in Chapter 10B of my book. I will define the start of the Flood as below the crystalline basement.
- Have you now recognized the need for a good gravity overlay? There are two addresses for Global Gravity Anomaly. I used the download from UCSD. The reference in the Scripps site gives the background on how it was derived and a little about it. Scripps Institute of Oceanography is part of University of California at San Diego (UCSD) so you can down load the same KML file for Google Earth from either webpage. But, if you want to see the craters, you need to get it.
Sevier and Grand Canyon, Pt 3
- There may be no other plot of ground so often used to illustrate many of the geologic processes espoused in textbooks than the Grand Canyon. Geologist talk about it like they have the processes all figured out. Is it just possible that they have gotten it all wrong? This presentation is going to suggest unimaginable cratering was responsible for everything we see there, from the rocks, the sequence, the faults, and the actual canyon. None of it got there by geological processes we can see happening around us today. We will question if some of the processes even work the way everyone has assumed they worked. Gentle reader, do not be afraid to questions the rocks, the processes, even my model, but above all, question the assumptions both you and I have made. Our God is a God of mystery, but He is also a God of Knowing. And in knowing, He is worthy of our praise.
- In the previous two parts I have covered a little of how I arrived at my model of crater formation, and the cratering events that shaped some of the strata exposed in the canyon. Now we want to understand the cratering events that led to the formation of the canyon.
- Figure 60: Redwall Cavern, a prominent landmark on the river trips is a great place to deal with the ubiquitous red color that coats much of the inner gorge. Many just say that it is Iron Oxide, but do not specify the type. Iron (Fe) has three oxidations states and forms three oxides: rust that requires water in its molecule, magnetite that is black, and hematite that is red. To form hematite requires removing three electrons from the Fe ion, which requires almost twice the energy of removing only 2 electrons (Chapter 12.). If it were rust it would keep forming and flaking off, like rust does on a piece of iron. It did not come from the Supai above that washed down as the rangers try to tell you, because it covered the ceiling of Redwall Cavern, and it could not have washed onto the ceiling all the way to the back of the cavern. Also, the hematite in the Supai Sandstone is trapped as crystals between the grains of silica sand. The black you can see on some of the far wall is not “dirt,” but chemist have identified it as oxides of magnesium, and tungsten, and it requires high temperatures to form also. All of these oxides require very high temperatures, ~1,000 degrees C (1,832 degrees F), to form. Note, the Cavern formed at the same time as the rest of the canyon and all of the other alcoves into the Redwall, which are also covered with hematite.
- Figure 61: It was Aristotle who recognized that streams move material, and Seneca recognized the power of streams to wear away valleys. Leonardo da Vinci believed that valleys were a result of their streams, but Unaweep and Grand Valleys of Colorado and the Grand Canyon are extreme examples of under-fit streams. The water flowing through them could never start to produce the vast amount of erosion that has taken place there. In the Grand Canyon it is made even worse. It is not one channel, but, a maze of side channels covering about 2,000 sq. miles (5,200 sq. km.). I have classified the Unaweep and Grand Valleys as Release Valleys (Chapter 1) from the Unaweep crater. Could the Grand Canyon have the same origin??
- Figure 62: Let’s start with one small but pronounced feature of the erosion, the Butte Fault. It is up to the east, telling us the shear center is to the west. The west side it thrusting up-and-over the east side. Comparing this in a diagram of the expected cratering faults, the only expected movement of earth in a cratering event would be thrust movement, reverse faults, outwards in all directions as a result of shock compression at the impact site. The formation of Normal Compensation faults would be expected as the compression drops down into the Release Valley at the adiabatic conversion site on the inside of the compression wave. Faults are not a matter of plate growth/extension or contraction/foreshortening. Horst and Graben systems and Transverse Faults do not exist (Chapter 19A). There are several things in geology that will have to be relearned, and faults are one of them.
- Figure 63: The Bright Angel-Phantom Creek-Eminence Break Fault is a second continuous linear that Huntoon and Sears first recognized in 1975. It is first seen at the Bright Angel trailhead, and forms the canyon to the river. From there the linear continues following the Phantom Creek canyon out over the North Rim where it corresponds with the Eminence Break on the north eastern edge of the rim. Do linears appear at random (Chapters 3-7)? Or, can their source of shear be traced back to the supposed direction of plate convergence?? Over vast reaches of the Pacific Northwest multiple authors have traced the Euler Pole for several sets of faults. They assume the Euler Pole is a pole of plate rotation, but I find their location of the pole corresponds with my location of cratering centers (Chapter 19). We are finding the same thing, and identifying it according to our different models.
- Figure 64: (A) One map of Butte Fault that may have been taken from an old map or estimated from the terrane. I highlighted their designation of Butte Fault as two linears using corresponding labels to Figure 66. (B) Linears I located in the area using topographic clues, CGRS in white and short concentric linears shown in red. Labels as in Figure 65.
- Figure 65: Craters found to correlate with linears around (A) Butte Fault and (B) Bright Angel-Phantom Creek-Eminence Break Fault. Butte Fault is up to east and Davidson, Molokai, and Salsipuedes craters all center in the Pacific Ocean. Red oval encircles a topographic high parallel to Ipojuca linear (Chapter 15A). The Ipojuca linear extends through Nankoweep Butte, Figure 62B. Ipojuca center is in the southern Atlantic Ocean. Huntoon and Sears identified the Bright Angel Fault as a normal fault (compensation fault) with west side up, meaning its center is to the southeast. I correlate it with the Gulf of Mexico crater. Additionally, they identify it as faulting between the deposition of the Unkar and Chuar Groups. This means that the Gulf of Mexico crater arrived between the Tatanka and Gorda craters. But in fact, the Gulf of Mexico is east of the Tatanka and would arrive first, but its CGRS may not have arrived here until after the Tatanka’s CGRS. This type of associations allow sequence and timing to be established for craters outside of the Grand Canyon.
- Figure 66: Top of the Crystalline Basement under the Grand Canyon and some of the earliest mapped faults (Precambrian). Butte Fault designated in blue as separate linears: (A) CGRS from Molokai crater, (B) CGRS from Salsipuedes crater, (C) CGRS again from Molokai crater, (D) CGRS again from Salsipuedes crater, and (E) CGRS from Ipojuca crater. Bright Angel-Phantom Creek-Eminence Break Fault designated in red. Two portions of the more southerly Mesa Butte Fault also appear to correspond with CGRS from the Gulf of Mexico crater. Faults are often made up of segments from different shear centers that have become associated in the mind of the geologist because they seem to form a continuous line on the ground. This reflects the observation in the Paradox Basin, made by Gay (2012) that faults and other structures exhibit “straight line segments with corners” where they meet other segments. They are largely not one continuous linear.
- Figure 67: What do the Sevier Orogeny and the Alvord crater have to do with what we can now see in the Grand Canyon? Remember the Gravity Map of the farside of the moon? The distinct bull’s-eye appearance of high and low, red and blue, gravity? If cratering did this to the moon, it also did this to the earth. In spite of all the later cratering, we can see that the Grand Canyon (red oval) lays in a broad blue band that extends well beyond the canyon. If it is dark blue, it was filled with a less dense version of the rock. As I have suggested the Alvord crater deposited the Chuar Formation, so that formation in this area is less dense than the alternative. If that formation is less dense, it will be preferentially eroded by the adiabatic conversion forming release valleys in subsequent cratering. What are some of these larger subsequent craters, and what did they each contribute???
- Figure 68: When evaluating what each crater contributed, we have to recognize how the dark blue rings conform to the white rings of that crater. I have already emphasized how the Alvord and Blowout Mountain have a similar foot print and how they both contributed to the Sevier Orogeny. In the Grand Canyon area, the Blowout Mountain produced a couple of additional small up-thrust. I suggest that these up-thrust were smaller because they were working against the low gravity left in the area by the Alvord. The blue ring of the Winnemucca crater extends well beyond both ends of the Grand Canyon’s area. Again the dark blue seems to hug the white rings, strongly indicating that it is a low gravity ring of the Winnemucca crater. The white ring just beyond the canyon did thrust up some mountain ridges, so it would be a compression wave, and the canyon just behind it would be part of the associated release valley. The general line of the canyon appears to mimic the curve of the Winnemucca’s rings.
- Figure 69: The Chilili and Gandy craters have one very important aspect in common, both of them include the Grand Canyon within their original crater rim. We saw on the moon’s highlands, the continent of the moon, all of the craters, except the mascons in the largest, have blue centers. The fallback into the crater leaves a less dense lithology. On the Chilili crater the third ring displaced the mountain ridge down Baja California. A larger view would show that slight arc certainly originally aligned with California’s Sierra Nevada, further to the east. The original crater ring on the Gandy crater is outside the edges of the image.
- Figure 70: While the Grand crater included the Grand Canyon within its original crater rings, both the Grand and Navajo craters also contributed to the release valley the Colorado River flows through in the Canyon. With the Grand crater the white arrows point to sections of the river channel that follows the rings. The Yellow arrows indicate other locations that it contributed to the gravity pattern, but the river does not follow it. The river channel southwest of both Kaibab Plateau (K) and Shivwits Plateau (S) are release valleys from Grand crater, while the raised plateaus themselves were produced by the Navajo crater. The inner ring of the Navajo crater is especially easy to see (red arrow) as it is a ridge of high gravity making almost a half-circle. Walhalla Plateau on the southeast pointed end of Kaibab Plateau. It is a nearly isolated plateau surrounded by steep slopes to the Colorado River. I propose it remained a plateau because it was harder, denser because of the added energy put into it by the Navajo crater. Its added density may not reflect different mineral content, but only denser, more tightly packed particle matrix.
- Figure 71: The Alaskan crater produced a CGRS just southeast of the white arc that highlights the release-wave response on its backside, The CGRS is accentuated by a second arced linear to the northwest. The red line indicates the shock/compression ridge and the dark blue linear behind it was produced by the following release/expansion wave. The Aguj de Anahuac crater being a smaller crater than the Alaskan, I assume arrived a couple days later. It left a CGRS in a very similar location, but I think the exact location of its release valley better corresponds to the low gravity area connecting the Kaibab and Shivwits Plateaus. A careful examination will show the low gravity linear that makes this central portion of the canyon also had an expression on both the Kaibab and Shivwits Plateaus forming small valleys in its paths across them. This expression on the plateaus is not a feature of the Alaskan craters linear. The Alaskan CGRS probably arrived earlier about the time of the Chuar or Tapeats, while Aguj de Anahuac arrived about the time of the Redwall or Kaibab and left a release valley much higher in the strata.
- Figure 72: Now that we have accounted for some of the sedimentary layers from cratering, how did the canyon form? Could it also be cratering? Some readers will object, but I place the entire canyon as a Release-Valley Canyon formed with the help of the Flagstaff crater. The Flagstaff crater shows up as the blue ring inside the first white ring on gravity. In the Grand Canyon vicinity, the blue ring is diverted to the Canyon which is a dark blue, very low gravity path. That there is little indication of the Flagstaff crater at this resolution on Landsat is not surprising.
- Figure 73: Do you see the similarities between the dark blue path of the Grand Canyon and this wiggly canyon I showed you previously in Mare Orientale? The low gravity paths were already formed by the individual adiabatic responses of all of these craters and probably even more. The Flagstaff crater, because of its size I would place late in the 40 days of cratering, maybe between days 35-38. The adiabatic conversion from the Flagstaff crater would have blown much of the sediments out in one puff, and the fast moving water flowing all the way through it would have quickly washed any remaining loose sediments towards the California coast. Some of them may have dropped out of suspension, but I would not look for a “California River” as some papers have proposed. This flow coastward, would have taken place continuously for several days at this time, and would have been rapid but not highly erosive. Note: many of these lines account for the direction of faults within the canyon, and would make an interesting study.
- Figure 74: Let us look again at the Flagstaff crater’s rim in topography. The edges of the “crop circle” (“Gulf of Mexico to Turner Gulch” slide show) are marked with the inside end of the yellow lines. I do not believe the “crop circle” would have been recognized if the Flagstaff crater had not been identified first, but it is real. How many other obvious indications of craters occur but are ignored because we are using a different model? One you have seen some of it, it becomes obvious.
- James was writing about the need to practice what we know in our spiritual lives, but it is not an absurd stretch to apply it to everything we know. Is knowing enough? The picture is a poor pun and a tired joke, but you now have new information. Think, what are you going to do with it? Discard it because it can’t possibly be true? Investigate it more? Ignore it because you don’t want it to be true?
- Figure 75: Can you apply what you have learned to this figure and locate comparable topographic clues in this region for these CGRS. I see clues for each, and clues for many, many more.
- Figure 76: One other form of erosion which played a major role in the canyon we see today was small erosion craters that continued throughout the Flood year and into the Post-Flood period. This probably involved secondary impactors which were chunks of lithology that was shot into orbit by the first LARGE impactors. Secondary impactors may have continued till Sodom and Gomorrah. Horseshoe Mesa is a famous landmark with its horseshoe shape and two arms. Can you see the many fracture linears with dark plant growth. How many of them are indicated in the earlier image for cratering fracturing and the Flagstaff crater? At the end of its west arm . . . . . . .
- Figure 77: Is a series of circular lineaments in the plateau’s surface. Only the middle of the circles are on the Plateau surface, but I see them very clearly on Google Earth, and they are equally visible on the ground surface. It would be an interesting study to compare limestone in the circles and that more distant. In the second yellow ring, where the purple arrow points on the “thumb” peninsula some very curious minerals are exposed.
- Figure 78: This is the trail out onto the thumb. Around the small tree, along the path and in the distant wall barite is visible. If you ever get down there, the barite is easy to identify. It is white, like cloudy quartz, but four times the density. It feels very heavy. The geologist tell us, barite replaced the quartz chert in these locations. How does chert/quartz melt out of the limestone and make a void barite can fill? It is only about a 6 foot wide band of barite with the quartz chert still present on either side. I suspect either the compression wave or release wave vaporized the quartz in this ring and mobilized the Barite. It would be a great project for some chemistry major’s thesis.
- Figure 79: This obvious crater is not so obvious from the ground. It is referred to as Phantom Creek Valley, and I believe I have camped in an overhang on the south wall of the crater. I wish I had known about its total shape when I was there. I spent a day climbed all over it. This would be a great location to see specific characteristic of secondary craters. Note the red near the center of the crater. I will assume it is cutting down to the liver red Hakatai Shale. The Hakatai shale is a far reaching red formation, like the Supai and Moenkopi formations. They are red from distinct red crystals of hematite scattered among the white sand and gray shale particles. Distinct hematite crystals require ~1,000 degrees C (1,832 degrees F) to form in the air. They cannot grow between the sand grains. That is why I propose a vapor condensate to form the sediments in the air, not erosional degradation.
- Figure 80: Looking at the area surrounding that circle in Phantom Creek, I see it as only one of many circles. Should I be misunderstood, I am saying much/most of the topography is shaped into circles produced by secondary impacts that makeup the majority of erosional craters. They continued landing after the 40 days, until the days of Sodom and Gomorrah. This would produce the soil for the earth, but could also produce major post Flood catastrophes.
- Figure 81: One more look at Hematite. This is the south edge of the Tonto Platform with Cheops Pyramid and Utah Flats in the background. Something turned the normally white Tapeats Sandstone alternating layers of red and white, in a circular shape. Is it the small center of a secondary erosional crater? I believe so.
- Figure 82: Many of the side canyons to the Colorado River are still banked with large deposits of “river rounded” cobbles. I would suggest from the image that many are rounded not from tumbling but ablation and show good indication of a heat rind from going through and being spit-out from the adiabatic conversion. I would suggest this happened in the formation of a release valley. The release valley we now call the Grand Canyon.
- Figure 83: In a rare glimpse inside a heavenly court room where “gods” set in condemnation before God as He recites their failing, Psalm 82 says, because of their actions “all the foundations of the earth are shaken.” Not covered with water, or filled with fire and smoke, although we have seen that is true in other places, but the very foundations of the earth/ continental shelves are shaken. If we are not going to believe this is pure hyperbole or metaphor, it would take quite a large force. That force would be consistent with impacts of the size I am suggesting. Psalms 29 qualifies as a scene out of such a courtroom: The Psalm is not addressed to the Lord, but about the Lord. It is addressed to the “heavenly beings”/ mighty-son. Assuming, Jehovah includes the portion of the Godhead called the “Son/ Jesus,” we must assume an angel (“sons of God”) is being addressed. Because he is mentioned as a “mighty” son, I will suggest a specific angel, Lucifer, because he is commander of other angels. He is being instructed to give Jehovah glory and strength, which Lucifer refused to do when he said, “I will be like the most High (Isaiah 14:14).” Preferring KJV in verse 7, the voice of Jehovah “divideth the flames of fire.” “Flame” not only denotes the burning, but also refers to the “head’ of a spear, the piercing part. Blazing spears are acting upon, piercing, the many waters, and we can reason from their still burning that the waters did not quench them. “Divide” is the same word for the priest dividing the sacrifice, each portion for its specific use. Not that we want to appeal unnecessarily to a miracle, but the “flames of fire” did not land where they wanted, but where the voice of the Lord directed them “over many waters.” Jehovah makes the whole Earth shake and skip, pierced with flames of fire. That is the Flood as Noah and David knew it.
- Figure 84: But, do I presently have an answer for all of the geologic question? No, but I have enough that I think my model is on the right track. The more details I find, the more answers I can supply. Our Lord’s handiwork always shows in the details. “When I consider the heavens, the work of thy finger, the moon and the stars that thou hast ordained . . . . What is man that thou are mindful of him, and the son of man that thou visited him . . . .?”
- Once again in the words of David, Psalm 29: “The voice of the Lord is over the waters; the God of Glory thunders, over many waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is full of majesty. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars; the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon to skip like a calf, and Sirion like a young wild ox. The voice of the lord divides the flaming arrows. The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness; the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh, The voice of the Lord puts the deer into the pain of birth when its not its time, and devastates the forest, so that in Hs temple all cry, “Glory”. The purpose of the Flood, in my opinion, was to destroy the work of angels with man in the Nephilim Affair, and form a world in which man could once again say, “Glory to God.” Glory to God!
Gulf of Mexico to Turner Gulch
- The Gulf of Mexico Crater is one of the larger, and most thoroughly studied portion of geology in the North American Continent. As a major source of hydrocarbons, there has been much discussion of how it was formed, and how all of the petroleum products got there. At the other end of the size scale, the Turner Gulch crater forms a part of the surface of the Uncompahgre Plateau of Colorado and Utah. While the Gulf of Mexico crater tells about conditions when cratering started, the Turner Gulch tells about conditions when cratering ended.
- Figure 1: Trying to find the dimensions of the Gulf of Mexico crater was a bit of a challenge, because the gulf itself seems such a logical choice. It is reasonably round, and at over 1,500 km/930 miles in diameter it would be a fairly large crater by earth’s standards. But, when I located the image of the Sabine Block, Figure 2, in the position A-A’, reaching past the Open Ring (Cc) I figured that Cc-ring must be the crater rim. However, when looking at the Global Gravity Anomaly Map from Scripps (2014) the portion of the Original Crater Rim (OCR)-ring between the two pairs of black arrows became obvious. In the Atlantic Ocean a very distinct darker blue ring, low density ring, fills between A-ring and B-ring. Immediately under A and B-rings themselves are a higher density ridge shown by the lighter blue. In the Pacific Ocean between A-and B-rings is a broken blue gravity pattern, but it is lower gravity than the much more yellow B-ring. And it can be seen that the A and B-rings define much of the yellow arced area that extends south from Mexico. The Gulf of Mexico crater provides a reason for the distinctly denser gravity pattern over this area of the ocean’s floor. White arc overlaying the red line (A-A’, line of Sabine Block section) identifies a Concentric Global Ring Structure (CGRS) centered in the Verde crater in the eastern Atlantic Ocean, near northern Africa, that I believe defines the physical shape and location of the Sabine Block, Figure 13.
- Figure 2: Cross section of the Sabine Block roughly down the border between Texas and Louisiana (A-A’ Figure 1) that encouraged me to see the Gulf of Mexico rings further to the north. Then plotting it on gravity map allowed me to see the larger context of the entire North American Continent. The Sabine Block is a chunk of continental crust that has been broken off. If the gray peak of granite (gneissic) core under the Ouachita Mountains and block-4 had arrived later, visually the Sabine Block might have directly fractured off the continental crust and floated south on the more viscous mantle surface. But, what could have broken a 40 km thick by 800 km long block of rock loose? It had to happen before any significant amount of the sediments were deposited. Did the Gulf of Mexico crater produce a ring-fault that split it off? The division does not continue around towards Texas. In fact, a sharp split occurs below the Texas Salt Basin, which is assumed to be part of the Grenville Orogeny for the Plate Tectonics Model forming Earth’s geomorphology (See pdf: GoM-1-Grenville Orogeny never happened). Although there are some ridges and gullies descending along the gulf coast of Texas, there is not another loose block near this size.
- Figure 3: Additionally, the geology of Florida is not like the rest of the bordering gulf structure. The cratering process did not shear it off in a slope, but instead seems to have left it as a block. The overlapping of the Bermuda crater (see slideshow: The large craters that formed North America) could account for some of the differences, but after searching, an additional earlier crater was located, This earlier crater, the Keys crater, left heat in the substrate that changed the way the later Gulf of Mexico shaped the crater edges in this area. Recognizing the Keys crater requires careful separation of the clues. In the Atlantic Ocean the red arrows point to slightly greater density rings of the Gulf of Mexico crater, while the white arrows show slight deviations of higher gravity that comes from the Keys crater. Compare the same area in Figure 1 to see the deviation when not obscured with circles.
- Figure 4: Looking at the surface of the basement as determined by welling drillings, Buffler produced a topography map of the bottom of the excavated bowl of the Gulf of Mexico. The lowest depth (~16 km/10 mi) is part of the release-wave ring of the Keys crater. The Green linear is where the cross section of the Sabine Block was measured, but I propose the raised linear under the red arc (A-A’) suggest the actual structure might be an arc formed by a CGRS from the Verde crater (Figure 1). The outer red ring/annulus from the Keys may be responsible for splitting the Sabine Block off on its west side from the main Continental crust (Figure 13). Combining the 4,550 km/2,830 mi diameter with the 16 km/10 mi depth and basin shape of the bowl is shown at 1:1 ratio in a generalized original section, and with a vertical exaggeration of 10 times to accentuate the bowl shape. This is not the crater shape most people would expect from cratering models often offered. The model by Shoemaker (1974) (Chapter 8) and still used by NASA, based on an subsurface nuclear explosion, suggest they need to examine more actual craters. Which is the point of this slideshow.
- Figure 5: A section from Mid Texas into the Gulf across the Sabine Block. (Linear B-B’, Figure 4). Red linears 1-3 show possible locations of faulting from the Keys crater that might have split the blocks loose at multiple locations. Or they may represent multiple fracturing events from multiple other craters. One section does not give us enough information to differentiate between choices.
- Figure 6: When both Figures 2 and 5 are combined obliquely, we get more of an idea of the actual shape of the Sabine Block in the edge of the Gulf of Mexico cratering bowl.
- Figure 7: But, the Sabine Block is not a total peninsula sticking out into the gulf. It is attached to the Wiggins Arch structure extending across Mississippi and possibly Alabama.
- Figure 8: Here are two sections through the Wiggins Arch. They have roughly the same profile as the Sabine Block. As they carry that structure towards the Keyes crater, I propose they all brock off in the same event prompted by the lithologic change produced by the earlier Keys crater and all were split off by the following Serranilla crater.
- Figure 9: Between the Sabine Block and the Wiggins Arch occurs a trough known as the Mississippi Embayment. It extends up the path of the Mississippi River’s thalweg past the joining of the Ohio River. This thalweg is a CGRS Release Valley from the Ipojuca center in the southern Atlantic Ocean (Chapter 15A) and can be traced into Saginaw Bay and through Lake Huron into Ontario and Quebec, Canada.
- Figure 10: If the Keys crater caused the Sabine Block and Wiggins Arch to fracture across the bowl of the Gulf of Mexico, what caused them to fracture on their northern end off the Continental crust of North America? I will propose it was the formation of the Serranilla crater that spans from the Yucatan Peninsula to South America, and is responsible for forming much of the Caribbean Ocean. The Serranilla crater forms the arc of mountains that rim the northern coast of Cuba, from the Sierra de Los Organos to the Arch de Camaguey, although later smaller craters have made major contributions to the up-thrust final form. The Mayan Mountains of Yucatan and Belize carry the arc to the south. While the small red circle, the Chicxulub crater, is credited with the Iridium layer and much of the Late Cretaceous to Paleogene lithology of the Gulf Of Mexico region, I propose the lithology and accompanying changes were due to the formation of the much larger Serranilla crater, not the tiny Chicxulub.
- Figure 11: An uplift in the center of the crater is a commonly recognized structure in lunar craters. (A) shows the South Pole-Aitken Basin in GRAIL Gravity Map. James et al (2016) provides the cross section of the ~2,000 km/1,240mi diameter crater. I propose the uplifted mantle exist under the Gulf of Mexico crater to the Open (Cc)-ring, Figure 1. This topography isochrones suggest the rebound is most evident in the red circular area, possibly accentuated by the uplift from the Serranilla crater.
- Figure 12: Two drawings of the distribution of salt in the gulf. Present model builder have no explanation for the strip of separation between the two main salt bodies. Many refer to it as the “spreading center” suggesting this strip is where the gulf has historically grown wider pushing South America and Africa (Gondwana) apart to form the Atlantic Ocean. We will see an explanation why the Sigsbee Salt is thrust southward, but the salt’s “arc of absence” separating the two main bodies, and the circular absence between the Yucatan Peninsula and the Yucatan Salt and Campeche Salt, where I have proposed the Gulf of Mexico crater is centered, is a real physical absence. As I propose salt is a condensate from the cloud of vaporized rock. The heat in the surface may have a direct affect on the ability for vaporized minerals to remain on the ground after condensing (see pdf: GM 2- GoM Louann Salt). This heat would most likely be present near the center of the Gulf of Mexico crater, and where additional heat was put into the substrate by the Serranilla crater. This would also suggest the Serranilla crater happened before much of the heat for the Gulf of Mexico crater had time to significantly dissipate.
- Figure 13:Steinhoff et al provides a Topographic map of the top of the crystalline basement using the Pettet to Gilmore Lime as a surrogate from well drillings. Some of the detail we can see in the basement topography includes the top ridge of the Sabine Block, linear B, laying at an angle to the mapped section used by Mickus and Keller, Figure 2, that is located at linear-A. Linears C and D are a ridge and valley pair that cuts off the west side of the Sabine Block. I believe this shear pair probably centers in the Keys crater. Linear E shows in both the Talco Fault Zone and the Southern Arkansas Fault Zone, and I propose it is a CGRS from the Serranilla crater.
- Figure 14: The first sedimentary layer above the Great Unconformity in the Grand Canyon is the Tapeats Sandstone. It is correlated over much of North America and is often referred to as the Sauk Mega Sequence. While the author does not agree with the concept behind mega sequences, these correlated sandstone layers do conform to the edges of the Foxe crater and much of the Maka Luta crater with some significant absences. One of these absences is underneath the center of the Maka Luta crater and a void extending along the CGRS from the Keyes crater. This curved linear is often referred to as the “dinosaur Peninsula,” as many evidences of dinosaurs are to be found in it. As some additional spots appear on the Keyes circle further south, I propose heat controlled the non-depositing of the sandstone in these areas. If the substrate was too hot, the quartz and feldspar sand was not able to condense, This would also explain why the sandstone did not condense towards the center of the Foxe crater. This is the Canadian “craton” which must have remained at a higher temperature than its edges. But, why is the void in the sandstone over Texas and Louisiana adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico?
- Figure 15: Overlaying the basement topographic map over the Sauk map suggest a reason. Much of that area was excavated by the Gulf of Mexico crater and would also be at an elevated temperature compared to further inland. The spot of sandstone just north of Florida, in southern Georgia is also interesting in this regards. Note how the isochrones over Florida avoids that area. It is likely that the basement under that spot was also at a lower temperature to allow condensation of the sandstone from a cloud of vaporized rock. The placement of the TONCK crater, Chapter 1, extends the void in the Maka Luta to the west, but it does not follow its border like the basement topo does. I propose this is because the TONCK crater was after the Maka Luta, and therefore did not change the substrate’s temperature, but it did push back or rearrange the excavation of the Gulf of Mexico crater in that area, so that it is no longer recognized.
- Figure 16: Section R, see Figure 18 for location, extends from the Black Warrior Basin, across the Wiggins arch, through Sigsbee Scarp, into the deep gulf. I have included the original ION seismic section for the reader themselves to see the disruption that the MCR crater produced in the sedimentary strata thrusting up the Sigsbee Scarp. Had not that disruption occurred, it is presumed that the slopping layers seen under 7 would continue at that same slope to join up with the layers under 5. That slope would have been the slope of the crater sides in the excavated bowl. I am struck by the similarity in appearance of the cone shape in the area of the thrust-up to the cone-in-cone appearance of shatter cones that are also often found under the edge of a crater’s ring. Remember shatter cones are found in association with rings of relatively small craters. What would a shatter cone look like if it was 12-14 km/8-10mi tall and 4-600 km/250-375 mi wide? Maybe it would look like this.
- Figure 17: Sections rimming the Gulf (location shown in Figure 18) from the Mexico-Texas border on the upper right (P) to the Atlantic Coast just north of Florida on the mid right (Q’). The strata are not only correlated, but they are continuous, except for the earliest strata which did not deposit on the Peninsular Arch under Florida. The earliest strata only deposited on the gulf side of Florida and may represent sediments from the Bermuda crater. Both the Bermuda and Gulf of Mexico craters came after the Keyes crater and worked together to form the sub Florida Peninsular Arch. The top of the blue strata is generally identified as Late Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary. I propose both the brown and blue strata were all fallback sediments from the Gulf of Mexico crater. And, while later craters thrust up and rearranged the gneiss in the crystalline basement and lower strata, no later craters pierced down to the crystalline basement in this area. Section S-S’ shows what I interpret as part of the central peak structure, just on the edge of the Campeche shelf. This is where I find the center of the Gulf of Mexico crater in Figure 1.
- Figure 18: Key to most of the lithology sections and locations referenced in this slideshow. The Gulf of Mexico is the location of the Grenville Orogeny and the convergence and rifting of Gondwana. For this all to have happened gradually is impossible if all the base layers show continuous deposition from Mexico to Florida (See the Grenville Orogeny never happened). As possibly the most drilled and studied area of ground on the planet, the Gulf of Mexico hold few lithologic secrets. The history of cratering is all in the details, and the more details we know, the better we are going to be able to understand exactly how cratering there took place. If the model is correct, the more we know, the more we will understand, and the clearer the details will become.
- Figure 19: Six sections through the gulf (for locations, see Figure 18). The black line between the Late Cretaceous and the Paleogene is the K-Pg Boundary (KPGB). The black line represents the KPGB iridium layer believed to be spewed out by Chicxulub crater causing the dinosaur extinction. The KPGB iridium layer is real, but unlikely to represent a unique feature. Probably, iridium layers around the world represent local cratering to that area, like in the gulf. But, it was not produced by the Chicxulub crater, which was much later, but maybe the Serranilla crater in this location. The Paleogene Wilcox formation just above the KPGB is one of the thickest single strata in the gulf, and it may represent the final fallback and condensation from the Gulf of Mexico crater with the arrival of the Serranilla crater. Section C show it predates the rise of the Florida platform and predates the Serranilla as it is partially absent in the south end of the Campeche rise which I attribute to uplift in the center of the Gulf of Mexico crater, and disruption form the rise of Yucatan in the Serranilla cratering up-thrust.
- Figure 20: Comparing sections between areas can be misleading. This is three section. A-A’ is across the Eastern Rocky Mountains to the Mississippi River, a distance of ~1,500 km/~930 miles with an altitude gain of ~3500 m/~2.0 miles. In barely half the linear distance on the Louisiana Shelf, B-B’, strata in the Gulf gains almost 10 miles/16 km of altitude. Similarly in C-C’, on the Texas shelf in about 2/3 the linear distance the altitude gain is between 9 -10 miles/5 - 6 km. All three sections are shown with the same vertical exaggeration, so they are in the same scale. Topographic changes in the Gulf of Mexico is nothing like topographic changes on the surface of the earth, so it would be ridiculous to postulate similar processes formed them. I am suggesting, the cratering bowls left by the early craters were very different than the remnants of smaller craters left on the earth’s surface.
- Figure 21: One more section from Oklahoma, west of the Sabine Block, to the Yucatan Peninsula. The section emphasizes the differences west of the Texas Salt basin and the Sabine Block. It is a very simplified section, but contains some very important information. On the north end there is some “Upper Triassic-Lower Jurassic” strata indicated. I propose this would be from an earlier crater that struck further west but left some strata incorporated below the first fallback from the Gulf of Mexico crater. This suggest, the cratering bowl was not excavated into the lithology, but the rim was pushed up from below like Meteor crater in Arizona (see Chapter 8). In the center of the section, the upturning and overturning of the strata with the emplacement of the Serranilla crater has been interpreted as a complete over-thrust of some of the Jurassic sediments. Against the Yucatan Shelf it shows some additional “Upper Triassic-Lower Jurassic” strata remains. Whether further research will substantiate this designation remains to be seen. The sections in this area show broken and rotated blocks of rubble, some of which have completely become engulfed in the up-thrust crystalline rock. The interpretation of origin of these xenoliths is totally dependent on the model being used.
- Figure 22: The rebound of the crater bottom happened relatively close timewise to the time of up-thrust putting the Serranilla crater in place.
- Figure 23: Understanding a large crater like the Gulf of Mexico involved sorting out the events of many craters that interacted with and in the gulf. Considering the interaction that proceeded and produced the cratering results for the Turner Gulch crater are nearly as involved. Once again, the more we know, and the greater detail to which we know it, the more ability we have to explain the lithology. Gravity and Oblique view of the Uncompahgre Plateau and Uncompahgre crater in red. The larger white ring belong to the Cortez and Unaweep craters.
- Figure 24: Secular geologist suggest the monoclonal gneissic dome Uncompahgre Plateau is all that is left of the Ancestral Rocky Mountain that eroded away to fill the Paradox Basin. By contrast I propose two CGRS are expressed in its structure. (1) is concentric to the Irminger shear center in the northern Atlantic Ocean, and (2) is concentric to the Tasman Sea, just east of Australia. The Irminger seems to be the first or primary CGRS to arrive as the Plateau thrusting up the southwestern edge, giving it a distinct slope to the northeast and placing the drainage divide at the top of the southwest edge. This is the wrong direction for sediment laden water to drain into the Paradox Basin on its southwest, and contradicts the popular explanations.
- Figure 25: While the Uncompahgre Plateau may have gotten its profile from the Irminger CGRS, it got its linear shape from the Tasman Sea CGRS. The red linear down its center is a compression/shock-wave expression while the blue low gravity linear to either side is a Release-wave Valley. The Uncompahgre Plateau ends abruptly on both ends (2). I will propose that the plateau is a mascon for the Uncompahgre crater, like mascons on the moon (Chapter 10A and 16). The (3) separation between the blue-ring that defines the plateau’s ends and the red ring which is the Open-ring defining the edge of the uplift/rebound (Chapter 9). Wrapping the Open-ring around the Plateau provides the center’s location. Cross section emphasize the plateau shape in longitudinal Section F-F’, and the monoclonal shape in sections A-E with the direction of the Irminger up-thrust indicated in red curved lines.
- Figure 26: And, moving outward from there, the fourth ring shows a good conformation of a strong compression-wave seen in gravity. It was this ring I first picked out in the gravity map, and worked my way inwards to first identify the plateau as a mascon.
- Figure 27: While we saw the Gulf of Mexico crater in Gravity maps and conformation in seismic sections and the lithology of well cores,, we want to see the smaller craters in gravity and topography. Everybody assumes earlier craters were hidden and obliterated by later cratering. This is only partly true. If we are looking carefully, many clues to the cratering history of an area can be plainly seen in topography as well as gravity, for the larger ones. The Noble-Paradox crater is a good example. Only about 120 km/75 mi diameter, the rings can be seen in image-A by points of change in the gravity measurements indicated by the inner end of the while lines. Pale blue sections on the green-ring indicates sections of lower gravity produced by the release-wave. In the topographic view, the rings are not nearly as visible, until be get down to the detail. A-A’ is the Irminger CGRS that defines the plateau, shown in Figure 25, but sections B-F are sections through low points on that release-wave where it had a good chance to leave an imprint.
- Figure 28: Looking at the four detail areas from Figure 27 a distinct line is seen in the topography between the two white rings and they all correlate to distinct troughs in the elevation profiles of the individual sections. Sections B and F that do not show the distinct lines, they still show the presence of a trough, though less distinct. No geologist would relate these different portions of a single ring trough if they had not first identified the ring of the crater, but now that it has been identified, it can not be unseen.
- Figure 29: The Cortez is another crater that shows up in the same general area. Pairs of white arrows point to visible high gravity ridges of the rings. Open-ring = ~300 km/186 mi, OCR-ring = 580 km/360 mi, 2-ring = 800 km/500 mi diameter.
- Figure 30: An oblique view of the northern end of the Uncompahgre Plateau with a dark band corresponding roughly with the north side of the Unaweep Valley showing across the upper half of the image. Just below the middle, what looks like a flat topped hill with sloping sides can be seen. Image-B show circular lineaments of the Cortez crater correspond with many of the dark linears, as well as the location of the turner Gulch crater.
- Figure 31: If we look carefully other craters can be seen in the center of the same area. But, you say they are not obvious to you. Maybe that is because you have not looked for and located the details that make them visible.
- Figure 32: Crop-marks are a well-respected method for first identifying stone walls and fortification ditches under an agricultural field. These historic alterations in the landscape have caused conditions for greater or lesser plant growth or longevity that the archeologist can exploit to locate the historic traces. Similarly, subtle differences in density of the rock produced by the difference of expression between the compression of the shock-wave, and the resultant adiabatic dispersion within the release-wave, provide patterns that can be exploited in plant growth. Whether the circular ring under the white circle of the Pinon Mesa HP crater, indicated by the end of the red and yellow lines, is a ring of denser rock, or less dense rock? Whether it supports greater plant growth or is dark because it is barren? Or whether is has a mineral that restricts or encourages plant growth? These are all questions that need to be answered, but that the ring exist and has a probable connection to a shear point at its center seems obvious. I have given it a name for reference, and suggested it is most likely a small crater (not from the model used by NASA, but my understanding).
- Figure 33: Yet these “crop-marks” are not unique to this single circular structure. The Pinon Pine circle to the west, and a line, which is a CGRS to the Ascension shear center in the South Atlantic Ocean, all left very visible crop-marks in the same area. Something was happening specifically in that area to encourage production of the tell-tell marks. I would propose the extra energy put into the plot of substrate by the Cortez and Payne crater, Figure 31, is certainly partially responsible.
- Figure 34: Many individual authors have speculated which river eroded the Unaweep valley across the northern end of the Uncompahgre Plateau. Chapter 1 in my book suggest the Unaweep crater’s release-valley was majorly responsible. That no river or flowing channel of water had anything to do with the erosion of the Unaweep Valley. This short slideshow has shown that once the Uncompahgre Crater had raised and isolated the Uncompahgre Plateau, several other craters, including the Cortez and Noble-Paradox craters, contributed to the total energy pattern expressed in the area of the Unaweep Valley. All of these craters are much larger than the Turner Gulch crater. The blue wiggly line is the path of the two shall creeks that presently flow from the center of the canyon to its ends. While the eastern half of the blue wiggly line conforms to the Unaweep crater’s release valley, with its white linear extension to the west indicated by the two parallel/concentric lines passing across the southern half of the Turner Gulch circles. But, the western end the Unaweep canyon does not conform to the rings of the Unaweep crater, but rather the much smaller outer ring of the Turner Gulch crater.
- Figure 35: No matter whether the crater involved is as large as the Gulf of Mexico (4,550 km/2830 mi diameter) or as small as the Turner Gulch crater (8.02 km/5.0 mi diameter) when we understand the cratering behind the shear that produces the ridges and valley, the twist and turns of the mountains and river, we will start better understanding the lithology and all that it can help us understand about our Earth.
Cratering Index
Name | Lat (N) | Long (E) | Center |
---|---|---|---|
A2A | -78.671667° | 126.998486° | Antartica |
A3A | -80.302656° | 14.518486° | Antartica |
AA IV-1 Wilkes | -72.785289° | 88.097753° | Antartica |
Adams | 32.687562° | -80.360965° | South central South Carolina coast |
Adobe Mesa | 38.613098° | -109.287198° | Central eastern Utah |
Afeman | 31.056422° | -92.855013° | Eastern Louisiana |
Aguj de Anahuac | 21.033191° | -106.450002° | Central Pacific coast Mexico |
Alaskan | 62.250685° | -161.743814° | Western Alaska |
Aldan | 59.260902° | 130.600155° | Southeastern Russia |
Allenworth | 35.834381° | -119.327366° | Central California |
Altair | 44.712302° | -34.096225° | Central Atlantic Ocean |
Alvord | 42.553612° | -118.485099° | South eastern Oregon |
Amazon | -3.392981° | -63.904822° | Central Brazil |
Art 2 | -22.552678° | 150.223726° | Eastern shore Queensland |
Artesia | -16.699993° | 146.606484° | Coral Sea |
Arusha | -2.917076° | 36.477207° | Northeastern Tanzania |
Ascension | -10.967566° | -12.239272° | Central Atlantic Ocean |
Australia | -24.518182° | 134.672748° | About center of Australia |
Australia Central | -23.055404° | 131.695492° | Central Australia |
Australia Desert | -30.776038° | 135.163795° | South Australia |
Australia South | -36.476234° | 129.609864° | Great Australian Bight |
Azores | 46.229754° | -24.858218° | North central Atlantic O. |
Bahia Grande | -49.679077° | -65.641914° | Offshore east Argentina |
Bakken | 49.368965° | -107.412339° | Southern Saskatchewan |
Baldy | 33.907061° | -109.558919° | Central Arizona |
Barbirwa | -22.167754° | 29.299080° | Extreme eastern Botswana |
Belaway | -20.164931° | 29.986113° | Zimbabwe |
Bering Sea | 62.883332° | -177.933333° | Bering Sea |
Bering Sea | 62.883332° | -177.933333° | Bering Sea |
Bermuda | 32.165132° | -65.644819° | Northwestern Atlantic O. |
Bighorn | 44.486655° | -106.806286° | North central Wyoming |
Blach Mesa | 36.227286° | -110.010164° | Northeast Arizona |
Black Warrior | 33.398031° | -88.231613° | Northwest Alabama |
Blanco | 44.871604° | -127.174523° | North eastern Pacific Ocean |
Blowout Mountain | 41.662275° | -119.185648° | Northwest corner Nevada |
Bonanza | 44.301606° | -114.767954° | Central Idaho |
Bountiful | -25.648201° | -137.757961° | South Pacific Ocean |
Bowie | 33.479869° | -97.865544° | Northeast Texas |
Breat Bight | -51.733348° | 125.416638° | Central Gr. Australian Bight |
Bridger | 41.306545° | -107.245399° | South cerntral Wyoming |
Brouse | 33.840009° | -113.989081° | Southwestern Arizona |
Burnet | 30.902404° | -98.105310° | Central Texas |
Canarc | 77.920060° | -136.835353° | Beaufort Sea, Artic Ocean |
Cardno | -12.489536° | -5.908450° | South Atlantic Ocean |
Cardwell | 45.860013° | -111.930247° | Southwest Montana |
Caribou | 58.343084° | -115.964586° | Northern Alberta |
Carmen | 29.468611° | -101.763411° | Northern Mexico |
Cent Pac W | 4.943633° | -172.593970° | South Pacific Ocean |
Central Africa | 2.117584° | 14.689315° | Border Cameroon and DR Congo |
Challenger | -38.189306° | -108.000514° | Central Pacific Ocean |
Chesapeake | 37.251465° | -76.002857° | Chesapeake Bay |
Chichuachua East | 27.860443° | -102.630819° | Northcentral Mexico |
Chichuachua West | 30.851845° | -108.434550° | Northwestern Mexico |
Chicxulub | 21.210233° | -89.596658° | Northern edge Yucatan |
Chilili | 34.838163° | -106.266979° | Southwestern New Mexico |
Choba | -17.634202° | 24.463793° | Extreme western Namibia |
Christmas | -16.982483° | 115.055876° | Indian Ocean |
Christo Llano | 31.167806° | -100.460003° | Central Texas |
Chukchi | 75.526168° | -160.586782° | Beaufort Sea, Artic Ocean |
Cocos | 8.100810° | -90.489926° | Central E Pacific Ocean |
Columbia | 45.248179° | -119.472906° | Northeast Oregon |
Concordia | -75.243909° | 121.924625° | Antartica |
Cortez | 37.385211° | -108.612040° | Southwest Colorado |
CPES | 3.943361° | -121.192259° | Central Pacific east south |
Cubango | -16.953216° | 17.958725° | Southeastern Angola |
Damazin | 11.849682° | 34.080730° | Sudan, Africa |
Davis Straits | 68.447844° | -64.593197° | North of Baffin Island |
Deryugin | 53.793609° | 146.367743° | Sea of Okhotsk |
Dolores | 23.518034° | -100.196633° | Central Mexico |
Dowd | 13.875639° | -121.010778° | Central Pacific Ocean |
Duval | 30.524182° | -81.630981° | Northeastern Florida |
Ellensburg | 47.032784° | -120.500057° | Central Washington |
Enchanted Rock | 30.544083° | -98.849817° | Central Texas |
Eyre | -28.495909° | 140.265297° | Central South Australia |
Fairweather | 20.529829° | -115.668364° | Eastern central Pacific |
Fanga | 14.990361° | -10.345408° | Western Mali, Africa |
Faulk | 45.102089° | -99.433295° | North central North Dakota |
Feather | 39.642098° | -121.055344° | North central Califonia |
Flagstaff | 35.144301° | -111.599848° | Near Flagstaff, Arizona |
Fort Wayne | 41.346688° | -85.293362° | Northeast Indiana |
Four Corners | 37.637053° | -109.738483° | Southeastern Utah |
Foxe | 64.586369° | -80.161244° | Foxe Straits north of Canada |
Fraser | 51.129530° | -121.971736° | Southern BC, Canada |
Frost | 32.074696° | -96.774794° | Central Texas |
Fuste | 28.809579° | -102.964128° | North Mexico, Rio Grand |
Galapagos | -0.238829° | -90.166163° | Eastern Pacific Ocean |
Gandy | 39.332339° | -113.978730° | Central western Utah |
Gao-Tellaberti | 15.372008° | 2.591936° | Southern Border Mali |
Getz | -74.299044° | -123.177906° | Antartica |
Ghanzi | -21.717448° | 21.674793° | West central Botswana |
Giyani | -23.652817° | 30.814434° | Northeastern South Africa |
Gorda | 41.363371° | -128.242383° | Eastern Pacific Ocean |
Grand | 39.314055° | -109.814068° | Eastern central Utah |
Great Lakes | 42.367817° | -85.754516° | Southwestern Michigan |
Greater Beaufort | 77.920060° | -136.835353° | Beaufort Sea, Artic Ocean |
Green River | 41.111593° | -109.324634° | Southwestern Wyoming |
Guinea | -7.940744° | 0.957739° | South eastern Atlantic O. |
Gulf of Mexico | 23.123490° | -89.603740° | Outer edge Canpeche Banks |
Haqingcun | 50.677267° | 126.909907° | Aihui District, China |
Hawiian | 20.426899° | -167.069601° | Southwest Hawaiian Chain |
Hebron | 41.705737° | -122.109639° | Northern California |
Hertzog | -28.194190° | 25.232128° | Central South Africa |
High | 46.634878° | -110.106536° | Central Montana |
Horefedi | 9.526286° | 43.082186° | Northern Ethiopia |
Hornsby | 35.152636° | -88.702574° | Southwestern Tennessee |
Horseshoe Mesa | 36.032661° | -111.980617° | Grand Canyon |
Hudson | 59.463898° | -85.558056° | Hudson Bay |
Iceland | 67.145971° | -19.885974° | North Atlantic Ocean |
Independence | 28.647636° | -70.118853° | Western Atlantic Ocean |
Indian Ocean | -9.199539° | 78.532680° | Central Indian Ocean |
Indlovu | -29.066101° | 30.243664° | Central KwaZulu-Natal |
Indonesia | 12.198597° | 116.704097° | South China Sea |
Ipojuca | -8.747542° | -34.421007° | Central west Atlantic O. |
Ipope | -2.951086° | 20.364879° | Democratic Republic of the Congo |
Irminger | 60.274911° | -36.436412° | Irminger Sea, southeast of Greenland |
Ironside | 40.749950° | -122.154405° | Northern Caliornia |
Jarvis 1 | 0.754989° | -160.077451° | Line Islands South Pacific |
Jarvis SW | -3.224438° | -162.981684° | South Pacific Ocean |
Joplin | 37.024968° | -94.362795° | Southwest Missouri |
Kanisksu | 47.932840° | -115.207460° | Northwest Montana |
Kara | 79.229312° | 86.578863° | Kara Sea |
Kariba | -16.980658° | 28.435961° | Northcentral Zimbabwe |
Karuk | 41.728425° | -123.194386° | Northern California |
Kenora | 50.172082° | -94.384689° | Southwest Ontario |
Keys | 23.755746° | -82.922128° | Florida Keys |
Klamath | 41.398906° | -122.058925° | Northern California |
Koster | -25.880049° | 26.677070° | Central South Africa |
La Crete | 58.272741° | -117.490717° | Alberta, Canada |
Laceys | 34.574635° | -86.578828° | Northern Alabama |
Lassen | 40.477052° | -121.541635° | Northern California |
Lemhi | 44.736179° | -114.514848° | Central Idaho |
Lesser Beaufort | 74.855515° | -151.789511° | Beaufort Sea, Artic Ocean |
Llano | 30.528811° | -98.935235° | Central Texas |
Llano Uplift | 30.717355° | -99.797230° | Central Texas |
Loyal | 30.552785° | -99.103355° | Central Texas |
Luambe | -12.779564° | 31.789097° | Northeast Zambia |
Lukarilla | 45.842645° | -123.500609° | Northwest Oregon |
Mabule | -26.032117° | 23.345464° | Northern South Africa |
Maka Luta | 40.541866° | -100.931942° | Southwest corner of Nebraska |
Marbleton | 42.782801° | -110.389766° | Central western Wyoming |
Mariana | 17.607284° | 141.204725° | Philippine Sea |
Mars | 35.316290° | -116.963735° | Southern California |
Martian Vaz | -18.750946° | -21.685390° | Western Atlantic Ocean |
Mauritus | -20.902999° | 58.078990° | Weatern Indian Ocean |
MCR | 43.835771° | -94.560707° | South central Minnesota |
Mendocino | 39.363819° | -125.157162° | Eastern Pacific Ocean |
Metema | 13.023447° | 35.969411° | Southeastern Sudan |
Meteor | 35.027312° | -111.022769° | Central Arizona |
Mexican Waters | 36.915906° | -109.680412° | Northeastern Arizona |
Michigan | 43.618564° | -87.726917° | Western edge Lake Michigan |
Mine | 44.637528° | -39.046150° | Western Atlantic Ocean |
Moape | 36.615590° | -114.393475° | Southeastern Nevada |
Molokai | 22.101439° | -152.400347° | Northeast of Hawaii |
Molucca | -1.415934° | 125.624981° | Molucca Sea |
Mooiwater | -27.251250° | 28.613950° | Central South Africa |
Mormon Basin | 44.022889° | -118.093822° | Central eastern Oregon |
Mutuaura | -23.682617° | -153.390552° | Southeastern Pacific Ocean |
Navajo | 35.898030° | -109.294417° | Northeastern Arizona |
New Zealand | -40.615431° | 173.635876° | Cook Strait |
Nivano | -7.116450° | -163.962933° | South Pacific Ocean |
Noble-Paradox | 37.947379° | -108.485775° | Southwestern Colorado |
North Atlantic | 29.644686° | -39.591279° | Central north Alantic O. |
North Pole | 87.047822° | -89.139046° | North Pole |
North Tasman | -27.463797° | 161.665134° | Northern Tasman Sea |
Nunavut | 71.387396° | -85.747303° | Nunavut Island |
Nye | 38.729256° | -116.356928° | Central Nevada |
Ontario | 44.054958° | -77.855631° | North of Lake Ontario |
Orange | -28.440302° | 16.828040° | Mouth Orange River, Africa |
Othello | 47.087685° | -118.561518° | Central eastern Washington |
Owens | 37.129634° | -118.424366° | East central California, Owens Valley |
Pacific | 72.708453° | 78.032992° | Kara Sea |
Pacific Blue | -10.680104° | -90.195021° | Central E. Pacific Ocean |
Palm Bay | 27.917443° | -80.594775° | East central Florida |
Paskenta | 39.950186° | -122.368640° | Northern California |
Pedregosa | 31.602207° | -109.731728° | Southwestern Arizona |
PeeDee | 34.141414° | -79.486261° | Eastern South Carolina |
Penrhyn | -9.382367° | -154.252956° | South Pacific Ocean |
Perris | 33.804342° | -117.208418° | Southern California |
Petrified Forest | 34.800116° | -109.600296° | East central Arizona |
Pinon Mesa HP | 38.791307° | -108.775220° | Central western Colorado |
Pinon Pine | 38.818590° | -108.864895° | Centtral western Colorado |
Pioneer | 38.948499° | -136.910005° | Central N. Pacific Ocean |
Plymouth NC | 35.786465° | -76.749472° | North coastal North Carolina |
Polar Mesa | 38.693530° | -109.183124° | Central eastern Utah |
Polynesia | -10.426543° | -147.647782° | South Pacific Ocean |
Poplar Bluff | 36.447258° | -90.246679° | Southeast Missouri |
Prairie | 46.898966° | -105.321309° | Central eastern Montana |
Qaasuitsup | 74.429519° | -49.590038° | Central Greenland |
Red Butt | 37.972343° | -114.291678° | Southeastern Nevada |
Red Sea | 19.072798° | 40.263535° | Central Red Sea |
Rio Grande Atl | -23.323967° | -26.450097° | East central Atlantic O. |
Rocky Mountain | 40.670937° | -113.682743° | Northwestern Utah |
Rumsey | 38.859965° | -122.268066° | Central California |
S. Challenger | -48.895053° | -94.015150° | Southeast Pacific Ocean |
S. Hubei | 29.798921° | 115.156735° | S. Hubei District, China |
S. Indian | -12.328490° | 87.299611° | Indian Ocean |
Sabine | 32.588540° | -93.607962° | Northwest Louisiana |
Sahara E | 21.651089° | 3.670828° | Southern Algeria |
Sahara W | 17.723481° | -3.708058° | Western Mali, Africa |
Salsipuedes | 31.802292° | -117.859023° | Eastern Pacific Ocean |
San Juan | 36.600335° | -108.233122° | Northwest New Mexico |
Santo Antao | 18.129858° | -28.240708° | East central Atlantic O. |
Sarepta | 32.911796° | -93.382125° | Northwestern Louisiana |
Sargent | 37.035818° | -91.985408° | South central Missouri |
Sequoia | 36.144543° | -118.463472° | Sequia Valley southern Sierra Nevada |
Serranilla | 16.254834° | -81.967671° | Northeast of Honduras |
Sheephorn | 44.893003° | -114.045797° | Central Idaho |
Solomon | -10.047985° | 152.576981° | Solomon Sea |
Sonora | 31.258866° | -111.916265° | Northwestern Mexico |
Sourdough | 45.936995° | -109.712261° | South central Montana |
South Pacific 1 | -49.963975° | -111.418047° | Central S Pacific Ocean |
SPEC | -4.290343° | -129.221486° | South Pacific east center |
Squaw Creek | 41.091803° | -122.264594° | Northern California |
Superior | 33.277022° | -111.112740° | Central Arizona |
Superior AZ | 33.277030° | -111.112789° | South central Arizona |
Taltapin | 54.422092° | -125.396546° | Central BC, Canada |
Taney | 35.368106° | -124.651391° | Eastern Pacific Ocean |
Tasman Sea | -39.038360° | 164.451966° | Tasmanian Sea |
Tatanka | 48.278175° | -108.311195° | North central Montana |
Tavaputs | 39.482342° | -108.799680° | Western Colorado |
Teewinot | 43.754570° | -110.847861° | Northwest Wyoming |
Tehama | 40.448399° | -121.527032° | North central California |
Timur | 1.939105° | 143.751594° | Southern Philippine Sea |
Tocantins | -12.111220° | -46.832162° | Southeastern Brazil |
TONCK | 33.420389° | -100.651483° | North central Texas |
Tull | 34.456044° | -92.604080° | Central Arkansas |
Turner Gulch | 38.742305° | -108.860216° | Central western Colorado |
Tver | 56.797161° | 35.896931° | Western Russia |
Tweeling | -27.503717° | -27.503717° | Eastern South Africa |
Uinta | 39.542228° | -110.106271° | Eastern Utah |
Umatilla | 45.903886° | -119.221383° | Northcentral Oregon |
Unaweep | 39.063028° | -108.855744° | Northwestern Colorado |
Uncompahgre | 38.339260° | -108.826176° | Colorado/Utah border |
Uummannaq | 71.224540° | -56.531564° | Slightly southwest of central Greenland |
Verde | 16.354025° | -24.121064° | East central Atlantic O. |
Victory | -32.146521° | 144.736171° | Central New South Wales |
Vredefort | -27.063617° | 27.506017° | Central South Africa |
W. Huurayn | 45.559478° | 91.119733° | Bulgan, Western Mongolia |
Watertown | 44.884685° | -97.072142° | East central South Dakota |
Watford | 47.738234° | -103.198892° | Northwest North Dakota |
West Australia | -23.728562° | 111.291520° | Eastern Indian Ocean |
Wilgeriver | -27.282747° | 28.601172° | Central South Africa |
Winnemucca | 41.024552° | -117.547697° | Northern Nevada |
Winslow | 33.554873° | -107.607509° | Western central New Mexico |
Wolf | 30.829692° | -98.804613° | Central Texas |
Yellowstone | 44.233118° | -110.664262° | Northwestern Wyoming |
Yilgarn | -24.110286° | 111.101059° | Indian Sea, W Australia |
Yukon Gold | 61.539220° | -132.402700° | Yukon Territory, Canada |
Yun Zhou Xiang | 41.032750° | 115.922817° | Zhangjiakou, Hebei, China |
Yurok | 42.017620° | -123.687732° | Southweat Oregon |
Zancarron | 23.493633° | -102.487903° | Central Mexcio |
Zapiola | -42.899447° | -46.871363° | Southwestern Atlantic O. |
Zimbabwe | -18.258645° | 30.608897° | Central Zimbabwe |
Large Craters of North America
- What are the largest and earliest craters in North America? These are the fifteen that appear to be most important and obvious. The purpose here is not to defend their existence, a gravity map is provided for each one so the reader can recognize their individual energy signature. They are the “new kids” on the block, I want to introduce them and share a little bit about why I want to know them, and let you start to know your neighbors. Before we can make friends of them, we need to start to trust them.
- Figure 1: For the author, the search for the big and early craters started with the Gulf of Mexico crater. The more I studied it, the more basin like it looked. If a huge bowl shaped pit had been excavated by a crater, the Gulf is the classical cratering pit. Its sedimentary layering even gives an understanding of fallback and washback ejecta. But, it is deep with information and much more research is needed.
- Figure 2: When I started to study the Gulf of Mexico, I only considered the bowl to be the Gulf of Mexico crater, but the sediments extend as far north as the 7-8th ring, southern Missouri, and the original crater rim (OCR) may be as far north as Arkansas, about ring 9. The small Chicxulub crater on the Yucatan shelf is nothing compared to the much larger Serranilla crater that formed Yucatan Peninsula, Cuba, the Cayman Trough, and much of the Caribbean Sea.
- Figure 3: The next crater I recognized was the Bermuda. I was curious how Florida came to be protruding into the Gulf of Mexico crater. The Bahama Islands are laying in a 30 km wide portion of very deep water, “Tongue of the Ocean” that I identify as a Release Valley just inside the Original Crater Rim-ring that contributes to Cuba, Florida, and the Appalachians.
- Figure 4: The outer rings of the Bermuda crater also contribute to the Mid Continental Rift, red section under the 4-ring, the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, and extending its up-thrust to the High Plateau of Mexico between the Sierra Madre Oriental and the Sierra Madre Occidental.
- Figure 5: The Keys crater lie under both the Gulf of Mexico and Bermuda craters. Fractures from it defined the Sabine Block of the western gulf and the eastern Texas area. The elevated heat the Keyes crater put into the substrate combined with the Gulf of Mexico crater’s heat to allow the Bermuda crater to push Florida up in a gneissic dome instead of a rocky mountain.
- Figure 6: Being a relatively early crater, much of the energy signature of the Keyes crater is swamped by later cratering. Yet, we can see how the western edge of the Gulf and the southern arc of the Sierra Madre Oriental conform to it. Later craters do not obliterate, just add their energy envelopes to the ripple pattern. Can you see the blue ring inside the sixth-ring and under the fifth-ring?
- Figure 9: The Alvord crater made the second contribution to the Sevier Orogeny, but its second and third ring extend too far into Wyoming to be the major contributor. The Great Basin at the center is all that remains of the cratering basin. Looking between the fourth and fifth rings, the white squiggly line is the path of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, and those rings extend up into Wyoming as the Intermontane and Bighorn Basin. These are areas of the Rocky Mountains with raised topography and extremely shallow Moho in the crust. The adiabatic response of the blue ring is why.
- Figure 8: The Gorda’s ring structure was first recognized off of the coast in the slight bend and wide trough that later formed in the center few rings. The Gorda’s heat contribution allowed the far annulus from the later crater to have a greater expression with in those rings.
- Figure 10: The wide area of dark blue between the third and fourth ring is obvious in this gravity map. This is what I refer to as a Release Valley, the adiabatic response zone following the shock wave. It forms as the wave moves from the high energy compression wave to the low energy of the expansion release-wave portion of the energy signature.
- Figure 11: The third crater adding to the Sevier Orogeny is the Blowout Mountain crater. It is the crater which left the surface traces of the Sevier Thrust Belt at the western edge of Wyoming and down across Utah. It is also the major thrust behind the Kaibab Uplift of the Grand Canyon.
- Figure 12: This stacking of the three thrust from three different cratering events within roughly the same area is the source behind the idea that the Sevier orogeny is a “thick skin” mountain building process going deep into the Precambrian rocks, reactivating original Precambrian faults. The narrow dark blue band just inside the sixth-ring, which cuts off the south end of the Sierra Nevada, sets the Blowout Mountain crater apart from the Alvord crater. They were not the same thrust.
- Figure 13: Tatanka is the Lakota word for the buffalo that roamed the area. The major sedimentary and hydrocarbon Williston basin is indicated. The peculiar high spot in the western edge of the basin, the Bearpaw and Little Rocky Mountains, represents the central-peak or peak-ring of a complex crater on the moon.
- Figure 14: The rings of the Tatanka crater are recognized by the blue ring just inside the third-ring and sixth-ring. The fourth-ring seems to be the next energy events in the red area of the Mid Continental Ridge after the Bermuda crater.
- Figure 15: The Maka Luta, Sioux words for “red earth,” crater is possibly the most important crater for the US. It defines the “foundation” of this portion of the continent. It’s the up-thrust defining the continental shelf on the Pacific, Atlantic, and Gulf coasts. The first-ring again defines the Front Range and the western limits of the Denver-Julesburg Basin, which is the eroded remnant of the impact basin.
- Figure 16: With added information, outside the first ring’s Denver- Julesburg basin, the Maka Luta crater defines several important hydrocarbon basins including the Powder River, Bighorn, Mowry, Niobrara, Greater Green River, Uinta, Mancos, Hermosa, Paradox, and San Juan Basins. This suggest hydrocarbons have their primary source from the deep mantle rather that fossil organics. Looking at a map of the Sauk Megasequence finds it is defined by the Maka Luta’s eighth-ring. This includes the Tapeats Sandstone of the Grand Canyon region.
- Figure 17: The Foxe crater is one of the largest mappable craters in North America. The tenth-ring largely defines the Canadian Craton and also the northern reaches of the Sauk Megasequence.
- Figure 18: The center of the Foxe crater appears primarily blue, and becomes deep blue inside the sixth-ring. If the reader would care to compare it with the gravity/GRAIL view of the lunar South Pole-Aitken crater’s center, there are several remarkable visual similarities. Tomographic sections through this area shows the low gravity blue extends downwards between 300-500 km, which is well through the lithosphere and asthenosphere. These large early crater show that it is not the mountains that have very deep roots, but the craters.
- Figure 19: Very early craters are challenging to identify, but the Pedregosa crater suggest it is a very early one. This is based on its identification as the center for concentric expression in the Pelusiam Megashear of North Africa. That a point could be recognized as having a small circle relationship to a linear half a globe away suggest a great coincidence or a point application of a huge shear force, such as a very large impactor.
- Figure 20: The best recognition clues for the Pedregosa crater is the blue areas just inside several of the white ring linears. The one just inside the third-ring is most pronounced, including a significant portion of the northern reaches of the Gulf of California.
- Figure 21: The MCR crater is named for the Mid Continental Rift that it contains. The Tatanka and Bermuda craters have been mentioned as contributing their energy signature to the Mid Continental Rift. While I drew rings for both of those craters that align with the Mid Continental Rift, the dark blue area along both sides of it suggest it was the release valleys/expansion waves that aligned. One other “chance occurrence” is the alignment from the Ipojuca crater, which is certainly a release valley expression. The Mid Continental Rift is believed to represent a failed rift across the central partion of the continent. I propose it is a buried trench like those on the sea floor that represent release valley expressions, not rifting.
- Figure 22: The visible high gravity expression of the Mid Continental Rift is exactly as long as the diameter of the second-ring of the MCR crater. I would refer to this as the Open-ring that would correlate with the rebounded crust under a lunar crater. Then the Mid Continental Rift would correspond to the Mascon (Mass concentration) found in many of the larger moon craters. It has been broken up, twisted, and shaped by several later smaller craters. Towards the eastern sea coast, the MCR crater had a remarkable effect on the final shape of the Appalachian Mountains.
- Figure 23: The “Aguj de Anahuac” crater was chosen to mean “Pit of the ancient Mexican people”. It arrived after the Gulf of Mexico crater, and shaped much of Mexico, pushing it back towards the gulf.
- Figure 24: Aguj de Anahuac crater emphasizes the major blue/low gravity valley that underlays most of western Mexico. This crater has little to do with that trough of low gravity but crosses it. It shows up as a thrust fault regularly in the midcontinent region, but has some of its most conspicuous energy signature showing on the Eastern Pacific Ocean floor just south of the center, not visible here.
- Figure 25: Having its center in the Irminger Sea, between Greenland and Iceland, the Irminger crater is the most distant crater from the North American continent. Its timing may have coincided with the Tatanka or the Maka Luta. It comes up repeatedly in trying to map thrusting linears in the central continent, and is a major contributor to the southeast-northwest portion of the New Madrid, Missouri earthquake zone.
- Figure 26: The third-ring of the Irminger craters has some gravity ridges that look strikingly similar to the Mid Continent Rift. It would be an interesting study to see if they also had some structural similarity. The eighth-ring is concentric to the Canadian Rocky Mountains. The Tasman Sea crater seems to be the source of much of the up thrust in the Canadian Rockies from the southwest, but it may be that the Irminger crater adds to that up thrust from the opposite direction as it does several times across Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and Montana when viewed is much greater detail. Two to three linears around the Grand Canyon appear to conform to segments of the Colorado’s path. This suggest it may be a significant contributor forming Grand Canyon faults.
- Figure 27: The Great Beaufort is another crater that seems rather far from North America. It arrived very near the time of the Maka Luta and Foxe craters because it is a third crater that made a significant contribution to sandstone deposits in the north of Canada and Alaska in the Sauk Megasequence. The Great Beaufort crater also seems to be the energy source behind the Franklin Large Igneous Province that opened up some of the Foxe crater’s faults as extrusive conduits for the lava. This suggest the Great Beaufort impact may have occurred only hours to a day after the Foxe cratering event.
- Figure 28: The Great Beaufort crater was after the Gordo crater. The fifth-ring coincides with the wide trough just off the California coast that I proposed was highly visible because it had occurred within rock that the Gordo crater had already heated. That fifth-ring forms a speckled pattern all the way across the continent, and the sixth-ring defines a section of the Atlantic Ocean’s Continental shelf.
- Figure 29: The Caribou crater is the smallest crater considered here, but it forms the island studded Pacific Ocean edge of British Columbia, both Vancouver Island and Haida Gwaii. But, although Caribou crater contributed to the edge of the continent, it did not contribute to the perimeter of the Sauk Megasequence. This may mean that it followed the Fox and Maka Luta craters by a day or more.
- Figure 30: The most obvious indication of the positioning of the Caribou crater is the third, fourth, and fifth-rings interaction with the Cordilleran. The compressive high gravity ridges under the white rings are all paired with blue rings on their inside edge. The sixth-ring is bordered with blue on much of its distance across the midcontinent, and even when the color is all blue, as in Canada, there is a lighter blue just under the white ring signally a slightly higher gravity in that area.
- Figure 31: Although I have introduced each of these craters one at the time, we must never forget they are a gang, and when we look at any single geomorphic characteristic of our Earth, we may be looking at the result of 6 or 8 individual energy thrust but acting as a gang. Sometimes the assigning of responsibility is relatively straight forward, but sometimes it is a Gordian knot defying separation into its parts.
- Figure 32: Looking at them as a gang, does not a gravity map resemble a quiet pond’s surface which has had a couple of handfuls of pebbles tossed into its depth? Trying to figure all of the pattern out mathematically may stump even the largest supercomputer. Yet, taken one-at-a-time, and with a minimum understanding of how the ripples interact constructively and destructively, we may be able to follow a ring enough that our confidence is established and a center allows us to expand and integrate much of the energy signatures into a pattern of work accomplished. A confusion of circles can be decomposed to understand the implications of the pattern.
Seeing cratering in Lineaments
- To understand the geological history of our planet, we need to see and understand all of the evidence available to us. Part of that evidence is the recognition of lineaments in the landscape visible in satellite pictures available as Landsat images used by Google Earth. Gravity maps, such as Global Gravity Anomaly, downloaded from Scripp’s Institute of Oceanography as “Marine Gravity Anomaly,” an overlay for Google Earth, provide valuable additional information.
- Figure 1: The Vredefort Impact Crater of South Africa is considered to be one of the largest and oldest recognized impact craters on the Earth’s surface. It makes a pattern of concentric circles that are hard to miss on a satellite image. These implied lines in the landscape are referred to as linears, and the partial circles they form in this image are called “circular” or “arcuate lineaments.”
- Figure 2: Some of the other craters that show up in this Landsat view had a major effect on the visibility of the Vredefort crater. Blue circles are three rings of the Vredefort Dome crater. “D” is the dome and “C” is the collar structures. The first blue ring is drawn just outside the collar. Blue 3-ring shows the strongest with mountain arcs showing to both the west and the east. Yellow circles 1-4 are the primary reasons the collar terminates to the southeast. Yellow 5-ring is most likely an earlier, larger crater which maybe more responsible for defining the Witwatersrand than the Vredefort Dome since it came earlier and was apparently larger.
- Figure 3: Many of the linears show differences of topographic features. When the topography is viewed from an airplane, even when the elevation has been exaggerated as in this image, the circular pattern is not near as evident, because much more than just large topography produces visual linears. Any true pattern in these small features may only be observed when we are directly overhead. Other patterns can only be perceived when our field of view is much larger.
- Figure 4: But, with the Vredefort Structure, careful geologic study on the ground has verified a lithologic pattern that is very consistent with a circular impact origin. While the Karoo Supergroup covers the southern half to the crater it was not responsible for the lower elevation of the ring. Instead, the yellow 1-ring of Figure 2 swallowed the heat signature’s energy imprint never allowing the ridge to thrust-up.
- Figure 5: This is a very different map of the Vredefort area. Known as Global Gravity Anomaly Map overlay for Google Earth it is based on slightly different strengths of gravity as measured by satellite altimetry. Generally referred to as Free-Air Gravity Anomaly, the red areas measure a little higher gravity and the blue areas measure a little lower gravity. The differences in the pull of gravity is thought to reflect differences in topography and thickness of crust, but as the visible pattern differs markedly from a simple topography map, there must be something else involved.
- Figure 6: The three pairs of circles I have drawn here relate to three different guesses as to the original crater size for the Vredefort Crater. The inside red circle is the diameter (160km) recognized by the Earth Impact Database. The blue circle is the diameter (>300km) given by Wikipedia, while the white (500 km) given by this author as the most visible in the Gravity Anomaly readings. Yet, all three circles point out two good principles.
- Figure 7: 1) The colored circles were located in Landsat images, where dark shadows of ravines are more pronounced than ridges at this resolution. These more pronounced circular lineaments correspond to low gravity readings. 2) The inner, thin white circular lineaments, correspond more with higher gravity readings on this map. Yellow arrows indicate points of pronounced gravity change consistent with a circular impact lineament.
- Figure 8: If we apply these same principles to all of southern Africa we will note some interesting results. The southern half of Africa has a shape we all recognize in a standard satellite image. But, look at it in Global Gravity Anomaly…..
- Figure 9: Can you pick out the continent shape in this Gravity map??? If this is a new tool for you, take a few minutes; flip back and forth between the pictures until you can see the outline of southern Africa. Can you pick out a near circle of red to yellow in the southern Africa region? Let’s focus on that circular area.
- Figure 10: I call it the Mabule Circle, named for a small town near its center. It is seen here in Free Air Gravity Anomaly map published by BGI, France. You may also notice the name Vredefort just below the word Mabule. The Vredefort Crater is located within the Mabule Circle. Based on the Vredefort Crater being an accepted crater, but its gravity pattern showing less distinct changes in the gravity readings, the red circle here shows a very strong circular lineament that could be a much larger circular crater.
- Figure 11: While the red expression of the circle has been interrupted at the top and bottom, it has not been totally obscured at either place. This is partial occlusion at these points. It shows something has interfered or covered the expression in that area and not that this isn’t a complete circular expression. We will discuss partial occlusion more shortly.
- Figure 12: Here is the Mabule circle with a much heavier line that might help you see it. When I am locating circles, I prefer a lighter line, as my eye is drawn to the heavier line, and I do not feel as able to objectively evaluate its presence. The Mabule circular lineament is one of the strongest on this planet. So, if we are going to start seeing these lineaments so we can understand them, this is a good place to start.
- Figure 13: What can we really see? Looking at the same circle on a Terrane Map, the circle does correspond to many mountain ridges, gullies, rivers, and other topographic features. Take your time. Examine the circle carefully. You will only start to see these circles as you take the time to train your eyes.
- Figure 14: Bouguer Gravity Anomaly is the Free Air Gravity Anomaly adjusted for the surface rock above sea level. It is as close to a gravity reading for only the crust that we can get. The Mabule and Vredefort crater and their centers are indicated with a light white circle for the crater rim and a place marker for the center. Neither show-up quite as well as in Free-Air Gravity Anomaly.
- Figure 15: Yet, several incomplete circles show up in the Bouguer Gravity Anomaly. There are three marked with several black dots each. One overlapping the Vredefort circle to the northeast, a second overlapping to the southeast, and a third completely separate to the west.
- Figure 16: Could you find all three of these yellow rings? Take time to flip back and forth between these images to see if you can recognize the indicators I used to identify these circles. All 4 of these smaller craters would have much greater differences in deep crustal lithology which the Bouguer map reflects rather then mountain peaks that the Terrane map reflects for the Mabule crater. There are also several other circles that can be seen here. Are all of these circular lineaments?? The next image will show some additional circles. As each of these different maps show different things, this is a strong reminder that we need to look for circular lineaments in any map we can see them in, as they find expression in different forms under differing conditions.
- Figure 17: Check out the orange circles. Flip back and forth, again. Does knowing where to look help you see them?? This still is not all of the circles that can be recognized. In someways, eliminating some of the peaks leave the remaining curves more evident.
- Figure 18: Other rocky bodies in our Solar System seem to be covered in craters, why don’t we see them on the Earth?? One of the excuses given is the large part of our planet is covered by water. But, with Google Earth’s inclusion od NOAA data, this is no longer a problem. This is the Eastern Pacific; if you look closely, maybe you can just make out some linear patterns running east and west through the dark blue ocean. While these aren’t circular craters, maybe they are still related to impacts.
- Figure 19: Here are some of the more visible lines/ linears. Linear patterns are something we can see all over our globe. Some are circular, but many appear to be straight or nearly straight lineaments.
- Figure 20: Here is the same area after converted to black and white and having the contrast raised. We can see those same linears so much clearer. We must also learn to ignore the myriad of diagonal linears going every which way. These “tank tracks” are a factor of extra data gathered in standard shipping lanes. The most obvious lines are thousands of kilometers long. Of course the question arises, “Where did they come from?? What is their meaning?” Plate Tectonics has explanations for a few of these lines, suggesting they are where the plate’s movement slowed down and stalled. But, they are too regular for such a random explanation. S.P. Gay, in an address to the American Association of Petroleum Geologist in 2012 said, “To not attempt to understand lineaments is to ignore one of the most common and basic features in geology.” My goal here is to help you start to see circular and straight lineaments, and hopefully as we see more of them; the patterns will emerge and we can start to understand where they come from. Where are their points of shear?
- Figure 21: This is the Global Gravity Anomaly Map of the exact same portion of our globe. In gravity maps, blue represents lower gravity readings and red higher readings. Notice while the myriad of diagonal lines all vanish, yet, the east west lines become very defined as dark blue lines. We will notice one more thing, details do not generally show up very well on Gravity maps. Gravity maps used here are lower resolution then Google Earth Landsat images. Actually, the detail possible in Landsat images is pretty remarkable. We will look at this again later. Be aware, I don’t believe any source for these linears can be found that explains them as well as impacts. But, the basic problem for many people is seeing them in the first place.
- Figure 23: In seeing lines, we are dealing with a science called “Spatial Perception.” Is there a pattern in the words in this image?? Is it random or planned?? Does there seem to be a purpose to it?? Can you identify that possible purpose?? Just because you do not know a purpose, it does not mean we should ignore that a pattern is there. Because you can not yet answer the final question does not mean that we can ignore the previous questions. Any non random pattern reflects some cause or purpose. Energy was expended to make any pattern. Complex patterns do not happen randomly.
- Figure 23: Look at this small white area. There are two short lines or linears like we might see on a map in the form of a stream or a rock outcrop. Look closely, can you see a pattern in them?? Are you maybe not sure??
- Figure 24: If we add this additional linear, does it help?
- Figure 25: How about a little more information. Maybe now we are starting to see a pattern. Maybe the top three are a line. But, then what about the two towards the left bottom. Sometimes we cannot see a pattern because our field of view is not large enough.
- Figure 26: Sometimes just a little more information will give a much clearer idea of the pattern, if there is one. We are starting to see three lines. Maybe this is a triangle. But, then we must ask the question, is this the entire pattern?
- Figure 27: But, sometimes it takes a whole lot of additional information before we can apply Spatial Perception with confidence. But, just because we can see a pattern, the importance is not in what we can see. The importance is in the purpose of the pattern.
- Figure 28: Spatial Perception allows us to mentally fill in and complete patterns. There may be multiple solutions, and we may have to follow each one through to its logical end to test whether it is likely or not. Using Spatial Perception we interpret the lineaments into the pattern we think most likely, and share that interpretation with others.
- Figure 29: This is my interpretation of this pattern, colored to make it more visible. Seeing a nonrandom pattern gives us assurance that a purpose does exist. We may not understand the purpose. We may have all kinds of questions about this figure. Is there a white triangle in the pattern?? Is there a black triangle?? Are there three black circles or are they “Packman” figures?? If we do not admit to the white triangle, then the black triangle and black circles can not exist, and we are looking at 6 repetitive, but strange geometric shapes. They would still not be random. There is repetition of elements in a consistent arrangement. There is a type of radial symmetry at three places which gives us repeated elements. And, there are parallel elements that show a common purpose exclusive to this arrangement. All of these are interpretations about the pattern, but first we needed to determine that it existed in the sketchy linears we started with.
South Africa Kaapvaal
- Much of this website will cite cratering evidence from North America, because that is where the author physically is located. This look at southern Africa was started because the ring of the Mabule crater is the most obvious circle globally in gravity maps. But, I also wanted to see if cratering as I am coming to understand it from North America holds true over the entire globe. With this look at many of the larger craters found around South Africa, I believe it confirms that my understanding of cratering applies globally.
- Figure 1: The Witwatersrand Basin of the Kaapvaal craton under South Africa’s Vredefort Dome Structure holds the largest goldfields in the world. How did the gold get there? Did the Vredefort Structure/crater have anything to do with it? Was it the collision between two tectonic plates? Was it eroded out of long forgotten mountains into a near shore reef? How does the cratering history of South Africa relate to its gold??
- Figure 2: Gold in the Witwatersrand Basin is found in “reef” deposits, where the native gold occurs as particles that are believed to be detrital in origin. The particles of gold are found among rounded quartz and pyrite pebbles along with an abundance of kerogen and bitumen in the “carbon” reefs. Many yellow-green diamond are found in some “reefs,” and were a valuable commodity in the early nonmechanized mining era. Now, all of these superfluous items are smashed fine to get at the gold.
- Figure 3: (A) Google earth image of Vredefort Dome Structure with enhanced color, showing the arced ridges of the Collar giving it the unmistakable visual image of a crater. The collar is a circular thrust, and is in keeping with a crater, but the thrust layers continue outwards for an additional 80-100 km. The collar thrust was a circular expression of the shear energy, but it was not the only one. (B) Isopachs contour lines based on the amount of annealing in the Planar Deformation Features (PDF) are indicated. The contour lines suggest the location of four straight lineaments (CGRS) that cross the energy pattern of the crater that were also produced by points of shear.
- Figure 4: PDF samples not from South Africa, but showing two sets of PDFs in each sample. The second set annealed spots in the earlier set. PDF are a type of very fine parallel fractures in the quartz crystals. They are produced by shock-waves passing through the crystal. Multiple craters from different direction produce different sets of PDFs. When later sets occur, the shock-wave’s passing is accompanied by significant heat and the second set of heat waves anneals (melts together) spots in the first set of PDFs. So, the pattern of differing amount of annealing in Figure 2B is an indication of the total amount of heat from the passing of multiple shock-waves at that location.
- Figure 5: Looking at a larger area around the Vredefort structure. Moving outwards, the three views show the persistence of linear patterns that cross the crater. These linears have a small circle relationship and are referred to as Concentric Global Ring Structures (CGRS) because in many instances concentric patterns can be traced globally. Some linears will persist in being seen at greater distance, while others appear and disappear. Circular lineaments also appear, marked with dotted lines and pairs of white arrows. The collar is marked “a” in image A and continues inside the double ring in the other two views. Pairs of white arrows show annulus rings for the impact continue outward to the limit of the viewing field.
- Figure 6: The annulus rings continue outward with the collar between the first two, smallest, rings. The 5-ring is labeled in both images for comparative purposes. A few of the other circles that can be seen in these topographic images are marked. Panning up and down in Google Earth will show some circles to be more visible at one elevation and other circles at another. Should this variability of viewing decrease our confidence in identifying the cratering rings? I would say, no. It is to be expected as distance makes some linears less prominent while others blend together to form other patterns. Resolution is an important characteristic, but the release wave-valley (dark ring/“crop marks”) inside the yellow rings in Image B provide confirmation that the higher density ridge exist under the yellow circular lineaments although they are much less noticeable.
- Figure 7: Witwatersrand Basin’s goldfields contain the Vredefort Dome Structure (crater) at its center, and the recognized circular lineaments of that crater (Figure 5A) extends over most of the basin. But, rather than the circular pattern of the crater, the goldfield and lifted lithology reflect more of the linear patterns that we saw in Figure 4. WHY???
- Figure 8: To effectively see craters and their effect on the lithology, we have to learn to operate in gravity maps. This is the gravity map of Africa, with the Google Earth Landsat image of the exact same area so you can compare and orientate yourself. For this discussion we want to limit our area to southern Africa where the Vredefort Structure and the Kaapvaal Craton are located.
- Figure 9: When we get up closer in gravity maps they make more sense, but it is sometimes difficult to retain our orientation. For ease of recognition, I have outlines southern Africa and Madagascar in black rather than include the Landsat image for comparison. In a gravity map, high gravity is shown in red and low gravity is shown in dark blue. Sometimes the high gravity correlates with high topography, and sometimes it does not. Consider the high gravity just off the edge of southern Africa. It is red, but there are no mountains sticking out of the water along that section of the coast. The most visible nearly complete circular form in high gravity is this circle near Africa’s tip. I have named it the Mabule crater.
- Figure 10: (A) The Mabule crater with two pairs of circles showing the high ridge for the two rings between these pairs of circles. Some of the linear patterns that are seen in the topography close ups of the Vredefort crater can be seen crossing the entire continent. (B) Some of the other circles visible in topography shown in black. The Ghanzi circle/crater corresponds directly to the Congo Craton and the Giyani circle/crater corresponds to the Zimbabwe Craton. Several circles can be seen around the area of the Kaapvaal Craton, but none of them correspond to its structure.
- Figure 11: Using the gravity map, the Chobe, Bulaway, and Zimbabwe craters show up. They all have a distinct effect obliterating the strong circular pattern of the northern edges of the Mabule crater’s rings. This is an indication that these northern craters arrived after the Mabule crater.
- Figure 12: There are at least two other larger craters that will need to be accounted for in a final sequence of impact to account for the total lithology. The Indlovu crater, centered near the east coast, produced an up-thrust with its outer ring within the center of the Bulaway and Zimbabwe craters. I will propose the Giyani crater arrived after the Indlovu crater interacted with the Bulaway and Zimbabwe craters and after the Mabule crater had set the continental edges to the south.
- Figure 13: The inner Indlovu cratering rings seen in the gravity image. The reader is encourage to note the pattern in shades of blue in the ocean floor east of the continent, as indication of higher gravity left from up-thrust of shock-wave/compression shear from the cratering center.
- Figure 14: Limpopo Metamorphic Belt complex terrain formed where the Indlovu crater overlapped the earlier Bulaway craters. The Bulaway crater would have heated the rock into a plastic state, so that the up-thrust of the Indlovu’s ring would buckle it up on edge to form the Northern Marginal Zone. The Indlovu crater-rings also overlapped the Mabule crater where the Witwatersrand strata would later occur and both of them contributed to the energy event’s heat and pressure that would draw the carbon, gold and diamonds from deep in the mantle.
- Figure 15: The Witwatersrand Basin is centered under the Vredefort crater, as shown by the last ring in Figure 5A. It is cut off on the west by the Open-ring of the Mabule crater, on the east by the Open-ring of the Indlovu crater and on the north by the Bulaway crater. The up-thrusting shear from these three craters were still in the substrate and active when the Vredefort impactor arrived so all could interact together.
- Figure 16: The Bushveld complex is actually a triangular area where the Indlovu, the Bulaway, and the Mabule craters overlap. I will propose the Mabule arrived last contributing its energy and sediments to the already occurring Indlovu and Bulaway craters. The later arriving Giyani crater may have pulled the differentially heated, more plastic, rock up in its crater rebound.
- Figure 17: The Bushveld Complex primarily consist of two formationsthe lower complex, a layered “reef” of igneous intrusions, and an upper layer of red granite. While the standard explanation for both layers requires feeder sources from within the crystalline basement or even from the mantle below the Moho; in a cratering context, I proposing they were the first vapor condensate sediments from the three overlapping crater’s vapor clouds (igneous condensates).
- Figure 18: The Kaapvaal craton underlies the Witwatersrand Basin and the Vredefort crater, and the craton generally conforms to the crater-ring of the Koster crater. As this craton’s borders do not respect the Indlovu, Bulaway, Giyani, or Mabule craters’ thrust-rings, this crater was laid over them.
- Figure 19: Additional conformation that the Kaapvaal Craton was produced in a cratering sequence comes from the Koster craters limiting by additional smaller craters. Craters 1-4 are sketched craters that conform to those limiting edges with energy patterns in the gravity image. Study the four rings to see if you can recognize the gravity indication of a high and low pattern consistent with the input of a shock/release-wave.
- Figure 20: Attempting to find conformation of the Koster crater, the tomography of southern Africa was viewed. The Bushveld Province (BP) in image A corresponds to the Koster impactor’s landing spot. Tracing it through the tomographic slices, the bowl shaped arc (1) of its compressed layer (red) are recognized.
- Figure 21: The blue center of the green at the center of the Koster crater shows its center was pushed deep offsetting or producing a disconformity that has become known as the Moho.
- Figure 22: But, there is an even larger, deeper center to the northeast under the Limpopo Metamorphic Belt that I have labelled the Barbirwa crater. The additional heat center is a major cause behind the Limpopo Metamorphic Belt’s occurrence at this point. Reexamining the tomographic slices at this point suggest they do not go deep enough to capture the bottom of the arc at this point.
- Figure 23: Looking at the reaches of the Barbirwa crater in Landsat, it is evident that we are dealing with a crater of much larger dimensions even including an up-thrust in 3-ring that is a major contributor to Madagascar’s topography.
- Figure 24: Looking at Barbirwa crater in gravity, we can see up-thrust all around the third ring. Not only in Madagascar and the gravity plateau south of it, but also in the parallel ridge of high gravity to the west of the continental edge. This suggest the Mabule did not operate alone forming the edges of the continent, but its energy and thrust were combined with the earlier Barbirwa’s in that area to determine the ultimate gravity pattern.
- Figure 25: Looking once again at the tomographic sections, I have attributed bowl 1 to the Koster crater, however the distinct red compression may not be the bottom of the bowl because a faint blue layer occurs below it, and another red faint layer below that. The 3 red/compression bowl may be the bottom of the Bulaway crater. The 4 would represent the location of the Barbirwa crater occurring below this section. The significant arc 2 would be the correct location for the Indlovu crater’s bowl.
- Figure 26: The Indlovu crater is large, but much of it extends over the ocean. By contrast, the Mabule crater is primarily contained by the edges of the continents. I will propose the Mabule crater formed the foundation of South Africa, and was the transition between craters laying down the crystalline crust and the smaller craters that produced the sedimentary cover for the land. The primary difference between the land and the ocean’s floor is not some distinction between basalt and granite, but timing in the cratering sequence when materials in the mantle had been turned over sufficiently to produce as condensates the sandstone, limestone and shales rather than the granitics and basalts of the earlier sediments.
- Figure 27: The Indlovu crater stands out in gravity. Elsewhere I recognize a mascon is pulled up inside the Open-ring of a crater. The high gravity between the two white arrows is a mason, whose compression ring is shear from the Mabule crater and the blue/red Open-rings of the Indlovu crater represents its uplifted cratering bottom that limits the mascon’s expression by the Open-ring. I propose the Mabule crater arrived the day after the Indlovu. But, as large as the Indlovu crater is, it was not the first in this area.
- Figure 28: The Orange crater, at ~6,900 km diameter to the outside ring shown here, and ~8,000 km diameter to the outermost ring in Figure 29, may be the largest crater in our Solar System or a CGRS beyond that crater’s rim. More study is needed.
- Figure 29: The Orange crater starts near the mouth of the Orange River, but extends well into both the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Its most distinctive topographic features are on the island of Madagascar where three sections of shoreline follow concentric to the rings
- Figure 30: While the topography above the water might not show evidence for the impact, the energy pattern in the seafloor’s gravity map does testify to the cratering origin. The ridge between the two red rings and the release-valley between the two blue rings is exactly the structure expected from the compression wave followed by the trough of the release wave from a shock/release-wave pair. I refer to this pattern as the Energy Envelope of an impact. This large energy envelope came from an equally large impact. As the ridge winding through from west to east is part of the “southern Mid-Atlantic Ridge transitioning into the Indian Ridge south of Africa.” It still is a gravity ridge having nothing to do with the concept of Plate tectonics. Cratering does not ignore the evidence for ridges and valleys on the ocean’s floor, but it recognizes different reasons for their structure and origin.
- Figure 31: This is the west end of Figure 29. It shows that the energy envelope evidence make much more sense when we are able to find the added circles (energy envelopes) of overlapping craters. Crater 1 here defines a section of the Orange crater rim that conforms to the red-rings, and outside crater 1 there is a distinct blue ring cutting this up-thrust red-ring. The blue-ring trough of the Orange crater is also much more distinct within this white-ring. Whether this is an earlier or later crater is indeterminate at this time. If it is an earlier larger crater, it is a distinct possibility that the up-thrust ring of the Orange crater is a mascon within the Open-ring (white-ring) of crater 1. The regular blue lines that cross the Orange crater ridge-ring are reminiscent of the release-wave valleys traced crossing the Sierra Nevada in Chapters 6 and 7.
- Figure 32: This is the east end of the Orange crater’s rings shown in Figure 29. Here an even larger crater 1, recognized by its blue-ring inside the white-ring, suggest the Indian Ridge is a mascon, but it is not from the Orange crater. Within this crater 1 a second crater can also be seen crossing the rings of the Orange crater and the Indian Ridge. Ring-2 is largely recognized by the blue-ring inside the white-ring produced by a release-wave valley in the energy signature.
- Figure 33: The strongest evidence to recognize the Orange crater continues to be the blue-ring (release-valley) inside the higher gravity ridge/red-ring (compression-rings). While significant parts of the high gravity ridge can be seen, a nearly continues blue release-valley can be traced once the reader has learned to pick them out.
- Figure 34: This photo essay has recognition a series of much larger craters than the Vredefort Dome Structure/crater suggest a cratering history that goes back beyond the depths of topographic sections. The origin of the gold is relatively simple. It involves a multi-stage process of larger and large craters pulling up gold and other minerals in a sequence of cratering events which heated the substrate and repeatedly subjected it to surface crystallization under extreme pressure, then lifted the mineral in up-thrusting mascons in the Open-rings of those craters. It was not a continuous cycle of deposition, burial, pushed deep into the earth, and then re-eroded in a continuous maniacal cycle of millions of years, but large craters with huge heat and pressure acting on or near the surface during a limited time of bombardment that produced today’s surface lithology.
- Figure 35: These craters not only left a record on the surface of the earth seen in gravity maps, but left a record in their compression layers down into the lithosphere and asthenosphere. We are not looking at a lithosphere and asthenosphere that is mobile, carrying the tectonic plates in continuous wonderings over the planet, but a wholly static lithosphere and asthenosphere topped by the mantle and crust with innumerable discontinuities produced by the deep reaches of the compression layers of many of these craters. Generally and primarily unchanged since the cratering stopped.