I would like to remind my audience that the Carolina Bays cannot be impact event related as each feature formed at a different time, some as much as 128,500 years apart. This would be impossible if they were created by an impact event (which they weren’t, hence why that hypothesis has long ago been thoroughly debunked). If they had been impact related, or related to multiple large impact events, you would expect 1 or less likely 2-3 dates that all point to the same time.
You're mistaken in the dating of the bays. Dating of the soils in which the bays occur only tell geologists what the age of the soils were that were impacted by the secondary ice bombardment from a meteor or comet strike on the laurentide ice sheet. When an ice boulder was ejected from the impact site, it flew hundreds of miles and impacted on soft soil in the coastal plain areas ("piedmonts") of the east coast. The impactor cannot be dated because it was just ice ejected from a glacier. The soils into which these ice boulders impacted may be dated in some instances, but that does not give the date of the bay-forming impact iself, but only the date of the soil upon which the ice boulders fell. The impact hypothesis has NOT been "long ago thoroughly debunked". In fact that hypothesis was only advanced during the last 20 years, so the "long ago" is simply wrong. You may be referring to a theory that each of the Carolina bays themselves were formed by direct impact of extraterrestrial objects. That theory has been rejected, but not the theory of secondary ice boulder impacts ejected from the Laurentide ice sheet which was struck (or is theorized to have been struck) by a meteor. And in fact many evidences of just such an impact have been found in the ice sheet of Greenland, i.e., iridium and platinum "spikes" just before the onset of the Younger Dryas Cooling event. Additionally, microspherules have been found dating to the same period. Read (or re-read) Antonio Zamora's book, or watch his videos and then LOOK UP THE ARTICLES THAT HE CITES. I've done that. I have a stack of peer-reviewed, multiple-author papers which support the scenario that Zamora popularized.
@@flyingdog2304 Just look at northern Manitoba, Saskatchewan if you want to see the depressions and lakes and now w permafrost melting for good up in the Yukon & Alaska, you can see the ice retreating.
@@monarchz6320 One idea is you don't even need permafrost. All you need is shallow groundwater interacting with wind in a consistent direction. I highly recommend googling like "New Jersey Lidar" and spending some time going through the maps, the southern half of the state has the best examples in my opinion.
tyvm for covering this topic I asked for multi times. You never fail to amaze this number 1 fan from 10k subs to now 272k subs!... Even tho it's not in your wheelhouse, you're amazing! ty for your time, energy and effort, much love from your lil ole disabled lady in central NC
I own land with Bays on it. The bays themselves have a sedimentary alluvial clay as their base . They are within a sand overlying sand deposit which makes up the local coastal plane. The area at the time of the last ice age was a "cold" desert. ie a hot desert has more windblown sand as the sand is heated by the sun and forms massive dunes. A cold desert whilst having winds , does not create as much movement of sand. Therefore the available sand from glacial runoff is limited and therefore can only form dunes in the shape of ovals a few tens of feet high moving sand over an immovable clay in the prevailing wind direction.
I'm super-curious why this matters SO much to these clowns. It isn't academic rage. Obscuring the bays' actual origin is terribly important to someone. Same with the age of the Sphinx. Flaky high-powered people pop up with complex well-funded clearly-wrong explanations. I didn't care. Now, I feel like I want make this BS my life work. There's a dead rat in this soufflé.
These occur on Marylands eastern shore and are known as whale wallows. Locals believe hundreds of whales swimming in a magnetically north direction were caught on what had been shallow continental shelf when sea levels dropped dramatically at the start of the ice ages. Most of these depressions have yielded million year old whale fossils found buried in the sediments .
My grandparents grew up in Elizabethtown NC and their families had lake houses on White Lake ( 1910’s-1940’s) so many stories of dances and hunting Alligators. I remember as a kid being able to see all the way to the bottom in the center of the lake.
According to that hypothesis, we should also see fewer of these former lakes the farther south since there would be less permafrost. Also I wonder if the direction if these lakes match up with current wind directions or how much that would have changed over the last dozen millennia.
The world is not what they say it is. Oval craters are almost impossible to create with high velocity impacts. Look at the moon. Nothing else explains the orientation. Wind doesn’t carve lakes into perfect ovals aligned with distant points. Right? Can we move beyond lame guessing?
The formation of the lakes, given the proposal in this video, will depend upon the subsurface composition. The amount of near surface water will impact the formation of permafrost.
Thank you for the most plausible explanation for these formations. Especially since there are actual examples we can draw from on other locations planetwide.
North Carolinian here! Thank you for covering these structures. Your theory on how they formed is the best one I've heard so far. We also have an interesting phenomenon that occurs around the Carolina Beach, Wilmington and Cape Fear River mouth area commonly called Seneca Guns. It also occurs inland sometimes like around Raleigh and surrounding areas. I have experienced the loud explosive-like sound a couple of times and have yet to come across a reasonable explanation. I would love to hear your thoughts on it.
That happens everywhere. Just look it up. Google "loud explosions heard" and see how many stories pop up from many different states, many in the middle of the country.
@@BohumirZamecnikin South Carolina? This area is currently not nearly cold enough to support permafrost for methane to form from. You have to be somewhere with permafrost for that to happen.
I believe these mystery sounds are known as "Bama Boom" in the Piedmont region of Alabama. I heard one of these as an early child, but not in later years. At the time I attributed the boom to a sonic boom from a military jet aircraft.
That makes a lot of sense if you think about the sinkholes forming in the Artic. Interesting. The meteor shower is more fun but there should be some evidence.
They don't think it was a meteor, they think it was an icy comet that hit the ice sheet somewhere around the great lakes and then that impact ejected huge ice boulders towards the south, the ice boulders created the oval depressions and then melted away leaving no evidence behind besides the craters themselves.
The dating of the structures is crucial. If they were formed by a ballistic debris curtain from an asteroid or comet impact, you'd expect the dates of the formations to be contemporaneous. Which doesn't appear to be the case.
This is the big question. However it may depend on the post-formation processes. Whether and the record may have become contaminated by some weather action in the time between 140k and 11k y is something that needs to be discussed. Can a local torrential rainstorm stir up the lake deposit? Or possibly human activity after that.
The dating has been inconsistent due to what in the formation they are sampling and the decade inwhich they were dated. Most recent dating techniques are indeed consistently showing some part of the Y-D timeline. More and more the evidence is pouring in pointing to an extraterrestrial strike(s) on the Laurentide ice sheet. NOT TO MENTION the corresponding features also found in In Nebraska called the Nebraska rainwater basins. The only difference is the orientation is pointing NE instead of NW triangulating to a point or points in and around the Great Lake region. No ….. these are certainly NOT thermokarst due to the lack of permafrost in those locations. NO, there was not permafrost that far south. The furthest south were in Ohio, Pennsylvania and such latitudes.
Also meteor could be ruled out pretty much all together by the shape alone. Scott Manley has a great video on why basically all crators are circular in shape. So essentially at the super shallow angle they would have to be to have that shape, they would be in the atmosphere long enough to explode as a bollide.
I teach geomorphology at a 300 level at UMD- there are some great images of current thermokarst lakes. We use the Carolina Bays for a lab every spring! There are some excellent aerial photos of current periglacial thermokarst lakes at the Coleville River Delta in AK- we use those for comparison :)
I'm looking at Lindgren et al (2000) "GIS-based Maps and Area Estimates of Northern Hemisphere Permafrost Extent during the Last Glacial Maximum" and Jackson et al (2000) "Vegetation and environment in Eastern North America during the Last Glacial Maximum", and find the argument that these were thermokarst lakes weak. The Colville river delta (or Mackenzie) is colder than it ever got at these coastal plain sites. Some of the dating that he alludes to also suggests these were actively forming rims prior to the LGM, when climate was warmer.
@@andybreckenridge4461 Just spoke with Karen Prestegaard, an expert geomorphologist (who has an office directly across the hall, and whose curriculum I teach) - and it absolutely was cold enough in this part of the country during the LGM. She also brought up the fact that these features may have initially had some sand piling up along the edges of the features in dunes, which could be related to those rims forming earlier than the LGM (to form these features in the first place, the climate needs to be arid, ergo, dunes). If you actually measure the length/width/depths, these lakes are identical to those on the Coleville/MacKenzie River deltas. Add that knowledge to the layers of peat - although thin and more sparse than we'd like them to be - and thermokarst lakes are by far the most logical explanation - add some random other minor details like some blowing/piling up sand if the evidence requires it. Regardless of the true formation mechanism, the Carolina Bays are great examples of "how we use modern geologic phenomena to take a guess at how something weird elsewhere might have formed" in a geology major class. For the lesson to stand, there only needs to be that thermokarst lake hypothesis.
@@andybreckenridge4461your arguments are: 1. that there are colder places elsewhere? 2. That the extremes of the error bars go outside the glacial conditions? These are not legitimate counter claims.
@@Antonio_Zamora While yes, one can fit ellipses to these Bays, an ellipse does not an impact morphology make. The energy from an impact that could cause an event like the extinctions/climatic effects of the Younger Dryas would almost certainly just melt a large part of the ice sheet - I don't think there would be boulders of ice to send flying. Such a massive impact would also very likely have a large crater somewhere covered by the ice sheet in the first place - the energy of such an impact would absolutely have penetrated km's of ice and shatter morphologies would have to be present. The North American shield is far too ancient for any evidence of the initial impact to have been eroded away. I challenge you - where is that impact crater?
The hypothesis by Antonio Zamora explains the mathematically precise elliptical nature or the bays. It also explains the orientation of the bays to a relatively small area. The variable nature of dating of emplacement makes more sense if the lips of the bays are considered to be overturned, as if by an impact. Does your theory offer these explanations? Does your theory cater for the bays found in other parts of North America, not close to historical permafrost emplacement? I appreciate your content and look forward to more on this fascinating topic. Kind regards.
Zamora’s hypothesis is classified as pseudoscience. It completely avoids explanation by physical mechanism. That much ejecta at that distance requires the largest impact in billions of years to justify.
All the proven thermokarst features I can find lack the directional oval shapes, the heightened boundaries, and the mechanism does not support inverted sand/mud layers at the boundaries.
Finally. I had a heated discussion with someone else on UA-cam who claimed the impact hypothesis was the correct one. I completely agree with your explanation. It is the most plausible one to date.
@@justmenotyou3151 You're not doing it right. When you disagree with someone on the interwebs you're supposed to call them a brainlet and insult their mother. That's proper discourse.
@@justmenotyou3151 Highly recommend ignoring what other people cherry pick to put in their videos and just go look at the LIDAR by yourself. Give it a few minutes and I almost guarantee you'll find bays that make you question the impact idea.
@@pauldickman4379 how so? All the LiDAR data Ive seen is pretty consistent and matches up with the impact hypothesis. Can you point me to some LiDAR data that suggests against it?
@@n8dawg640 Wikipedia even has a section devoted to the bays that have random orientations: "At the northern end of the distribution of Carolina bays within the Delmarva Peninsula and New Jersey, the average orientation of the long axes abruptly shifts by about 112 degrees to N48°E. Further north, the orientation of the long axes becomes, at best, distinctly bimodal, and exhibits two greatly divergent directions and, at worst, completely random and lacking any preferred direction." That's what I saw as well. "Completely random, lacking any preferred direction." It also says to look in Maryland: "disorganized nature of the orientations of the long axes of Carolina bays in Somerset, Wicomico, and Worcester counties, Maryland"
That's what I was thinking. There was an ice sheet or multiple glaciers that did form over the Appalachian Mountains during the ice ages and ice would have flowed generally southeast to the Atlantic. Tidewater is sinking due to isostatic rebound; post-glacial isostatic adjustment also caused the 2011 Virginia earthquake. Multiple glacial advances and retreats could account for the range in dates.
@@littlefish9305 evidence points towards glacial formations in the Appalachian ranges. It is almost unreasonable to think there were no glacial formations in the elevated areas bordering the Laurentide ice sheet. Thermokarst lakes only require seasonal permafrost anyway.
Thanks for this. Just get ready for incoming comments asking you to visit weirdo pseudo-science YT channels trying to tell us the Bays are extra-terrestrial in origin. I keep having to tell people that geologists have been studying these things for 100 years and have never once found evidence for meteor strikes.
Except for their mean orientations pointing toward Michigan. Same with the Nebraska rain water basins. There’s some geologists that have published about these being the result of ice falling back after a meteor or comet strike in the ice covering Michigan. Not pseudo-science at all. Their conclusions are compelling.
Yeah, he said it. The fact that all these bays are oriented towards Saginaw, is not explained by prevailing winds. The Arctic is far more windy than the east coast so there should be similarly elongated ovals with overlapping development. Ihaven’t seen any like that in the Arctic. Features growing on a surface look disseminated like trees in a forest or rust on sheet metal, permafrost, not random distribution like spattered paint on a surface, craters on the moon, or Carolina bays. Fact is, there is no earthly physics available to explain what we see. Time to consider extraterrestrial physics. Neutronium, hydrogen ice comets, GOD, who knows.
From the impact hypothesis videos I’ve seen, I think the consensus within that community is that a large object impacted the ice sheet, which sent ejects out. Since the ejecta would have been mostly ice, and not at orbital velocity, there’d be less evidence of an impact within the bays itself. The evidence for that is that the axis of orientation mostly points to the same spot, even as far as Oklahoma (they might be different entirely, they claim that as evidence). So, they appear to “rotate” to point to the same spot basically. Furthermore, the physics would match (if you preferentially select impact conditions to fit the model of course…) a consistent “ring” of secondary ejecta impacts found at those locations. However, no evidence of that original impact has been found (some claim it’s in Saginaw Bay), and the varying ages are of concern too. These seem to lie over an unconformity, which a permafrost layer could explain. I don’t like that theory either, but it’s not trying to imply thousands of micro impacts. I’m personally not a fan of this permafrost hypothesis, only because I find it hard to believe that Georgia and Alabama would have had that climate. I’ve seen published papers suggest that the southern limit for permafrost during the LGM was somewhere around southern Delaware. People dispute this, but so far I’ve just seen people cite this hypothesis as their evidence for that. Also, I’d expect to find some more inland in river valleys with lots of overlaying sediment, but we don’t find those. Instead these are limited to the coastal plain. Furthermore, the sea levels would have varied drastically during the ice ages, so these areas would have been further from the coast if lower, or perhaps even underwater if higher (although, in the most recent glacial episode, we’d have to go back some 370,000 years to get to sea levels higher than today). Point being, these areas may have had a completely different ecosystem at the time. These areas were likely cold desert, like the gobi. I wouldn’t be surprised if the overall change in climate and reintroduction of life had a part to play in this.
Geologist here; I’ll tell you why I push back on your assertion that the bays “cannot” be the result of an extraterrestrial impact simply because of soils dating. I don’t put much stock into dating evidence alone; I’ll need other evidence against a hypothesis to consider it unlikely. The bigger issue is that you’ve missed some key properties of the bays that I think cannot be easily explained by any hypothesis that I’ve heard other than the (indirectly) extraterrestrial origin. First, the orientation of the bays. I have yet to find or hear about a permafrost or pseudokarst mechanism that produces depressions in the same orientation. I’ve heard hypotheses of predominant wind being the factor, but that remains unconvincing until i can see it in action in some other place. You claim that the permafrost explains these, but again, I have yet to see a permafrost environment where every single ice wedge is 1: an ellipse and 2: oriented in the same way. Second, the existence of carolina bays in Nebraska, oriented NE-SW instead of NW-SE. The existence of identical bays in a different, but locally similar, orientation, and 1,500 miles from the other bays, is hard to explain via permafrost. Sure, it may have happened that way, but where’s the modern day permafrost environment which produces elliptical depressions along almost the same orientation? Third, the shapes and overlap. Virtually all carolina bays, from florida to new york to nebraska, are elliptical in shape. Permafrost can create circular or elliptical looking depressions, but from the mapped permafrost environments Ive seen, they’re not anywhere near as close as the carolina bays. There has to be some mechanism by which the permafrost environment can create conical sections. Additionally, ice wedges, from my understanding, don’t really overlap. So why do we see so many overlapping carolina bays? And bays within bays? There needs to be a mechanism for developing overlapping depressions via permafrost that i have yet to hear postulated. All these properties, locations, existence of consistent orientation and match with conical sections can be explained via an extraterrestrial impact. The most convincing hypothesis to me thus far is that a comet hit the Laurentide ice sheet around Saginaw Bay, Michigan (where the orientations of bays on the east coast and Nebraska generally join). When it hit, it threw blocks of ice in a ballistic trajectory in 360 degrees. As the ice struck, they would remove cones of sediment from the ground, angled toward the impact site. As these impact locations were filled in over minutes, days, years, as the plane cutting a cone at an angle is an ellipse, so would the impact zones be. Ice projectiles from the Laurentide ice sheet would explain the lack of extraterrestrial material found in or around the bays. The singular impact, as well as the ballistic trajectory of projectiles, helps to explain the shape and orientations. Obviously, we don’t know if this is true or not, but the fact that so many properties of these features can’t easily be explained by other known phenomena, but can be explained via secondary ice impacts caused by an extraterrestrial impact on an ice sheet, makes me consider the impact hypothesis the most plausible, even with the soil dating not agreeing (at this time).
It is not greatly unusual for a geologist to be under informed on a geological process and thus arrive prematurely at unlikely conclusion so don’t feel too bad when you discover the reasons why impact ejecta theory is not considered likely. Start with ejecta blanket law to see that a 2500km radius ejecta blanket requires a 1000km wide crater (largest in billions of years). Have a look at the recent videos by the UA-cam channel TheGoeModels to see examples of thermokarst formations. Cheers
@@AustinKoleCarlisle It incorporates all terrain types and no crater including those found on glaciers have been found to have contradicted the law. It is a minimum requirement and ice being less dense and a weaker structure has a lower ratio than rock, so you would likely need a 1500km crater to explain the large bays formed by ice. It is not even remotely feasible and that is why reputable geologists do not support the idea.
@@gravitonthongs1363 yes, i see a spray pattern caused by ejecta from an impact into the Canadian ice sheet, which hurled city block sized chunks of ice at the east coast. They then buried themselves in the soft sandy soil and slowly melted over time.
@@shadetree2992 see ejecta blanket law to find that a minimum 1000km wide crater is required to explain the bay’s formation by ejecta. No geologists believe that fantasy.
@@gravitonthongs1363 these bays have a radius of 1500 km max. the impact hit so hard that the a lot of the ejecta went into suborbital flight which explains why they were able to fly so far. they didn't go through the atmosphere the entire time.
@@AustinKoleCarlisle the proximal ejecta from the Chicxulub impact travelled far far less distance then what you suppose from your magical vanishing impactor. Physics is far more fascinating then fantasy, give it a go.
In the Netherlands there is a similar phenomenon like that of the Carolina Bays. It is called a Pingo and this was a depression in the ground that seems to have been a feature that formed during the Iceage of Northern Netherlands. Besides other features like ridges, the Pingo formed round depressions that were filled with ice that pushed the ground to the sides, causing a rim. When the ice melted, these pingo's became shallow lakes. Birds deposited the eggs of egg laying fish and amphibians that stuck to their feathers. The Pingo became a magnet to early hunter gatherers who left their stone tools on its shores. Most Pingo's were later filled in, but a few are still existing. Prehistorians and Geologists have reconstructed the workings of the Pingo. Another explanation is that pingo's were areas where early humans collected peat and left a depression in the ground that filled with water that froze in winter. Another explanation is that lighning struck in the peat, reeds and the vegetation which burned up the reeds and caused a depression. As a child I have seen this happening in reedfields close to my home. After the fire died down, there was a big black depression in the earth where previously dry reeds were standing. The depression was half a meter deep. Also in Siberia we see similar features in the permafrost. Now that the Permafrost is melting in Russia, many villages and towns that have build on permafrost, sink into the melting permafrost. So, all over the world we see this phenomenon of icy lakes melting. Another explanation may be the work of beavers who make lakes. Actually, in Finland there are thousands of lakes that also were formed in the last ice age by the movement of ice.
Wow, got some debate here in the comments -- means it's a hotly debated geological topic! Love to see it. Thank you for the explanation and your insight. :)
@@AustinKoleCarlislethat is the exact type of backwards pseudoscience ideology I expected from you. You can justify every flat earth conspiracy theory with that irrational process now. You can up your pseudoscience speculation to alien space lasers now and I can’t object because absence of evidence is not evidence of absence apparently in fantasy land.
This is very interesting. They seem to be perfect ellipses. There are also the Nebraska rainwater basins which mirror them. They both seem to have a convergence point. The problem is dating. That is vexing. I'd like to know more about that. There would be forensic evidence of an extra terrestrial impactor were it so. There isn't as far as I know.
Case did say the atlanteans deliberately finished off the dinosaurs to get rid of them using power crystals and energy beams so.... these might be what remains! Lol 😂 If anyone would know it'd be the pistorly flannel.
How do you accurately date these? You could get the age that some of the sediment under the surface last saw sunlight via luminescence dating, or get the age that some buried organic material was last alive, but that wouldn't tell you when the material was shaped into the ellipse. I may be misunderstanding the logic of how they're dated, could someone please explain how this is done?
@@gravitonthongs1363 sure it is. if it's required that sampling take place BELOW the stratigraphy layer where we expect the impact to have taken place, then it's always going to result in an older date.
@@AustinKoleCarlisleshow me an example of a recent crater that is a kilometre wide but only 10 metres deep. You are ignoring basic physics and rationality.
It is hard to imaging that area in permafrost. It is so hot and boggy down there. The pictures from Alaska are convincing. First good explanation I have heard.
It is hot and boggy NOW. But 140,000 to 10,000 years ago the this Atlantic coastal area looked like northern Canada does today which sits right on the edge of the Arctic.
If you look at lidar imagery of the carolina bays, for example the image at the top of the wikipedia article about them, you'll see they are very close to being regular ellipses in shape. Thermokarst lakes for example in alaska are not even close to elliptical in shape. So to me, comparing the two doesn't explain the shape of the carolina bays.
@@gravitonthongs1363yes, those are not anywhere near as close to being elliptical as the Carolina bays are. Some of them may look like ovals, be rounded and longer than they are wide, but that's not the definition of a regular ellipse. The mathematically regular ellipse shape is one of the really unique and remarkable features of the Carolina bays that I would love to be explained.
@@PhilipMcGarvey the Carolina bays are not significantly more regular than those seen in the image. There are many other examples you can see in recent videos by the channel TheGeoModels if you want a more thorough analysis.
@@gravitonthongs1363 all i hear is "ad hominem". do you EVER talk about facts, or are you just paid to stir shit for people who actually ask questions?
Thank you for covering this topic! I learned about Carolina Bays a number of years ago, and have since had a fascination with them, so I enjoy anyone's take on it.
I prefer the meteor strike on the ice sheet hypothesis. Ejected ice from the impact made these oblong impact craters. The ice would have melted after impact, so no remnants of meteor or ground from the initial impact site. The long axis of the ovals points back to a spot in SE Michigan if one takes coriolis effects into account. The permafrost method has the issue that these interact with each other more like meteor craters than lakes from melting permafrost. Edit: Don't know why I typed SW instead of SE. Also these are relatively slow speed impacts, unlike meteors that are high speed. So you don't get the shock explosion that circularizes the crater.
That is the most likely scenario, imo. It explains their changing orientations and also the Nebraska rain water basins, which also point toward Saginaw Bay. There’s been quite a bit of research into that. If it was permafrost, why do the orientations change? Why aren’t they spread across the rest of the US?
change in orientation is explained by prevailing wind direction witch varies by location. At the time, that would be away from the ice sheet @@Foxtrap731
Thanks for another great video! You might be interested in these two videos from TheGeoModels Channel (www.youtube.com/@TheGeoModels/videos). "What does a geologist say about the Carolina Bays?" and "Lidar reveals the ancient landforms that most Carolina Bays researchers won't show you"
I first heard of these just a few years back, I happened to be listening to this dude named Randall Carlson...I'm sure his theory has been mentioned somewhere here....about the bays being craters caused by ejecta from a very large meteor impact further North-East? That would explain the lack of extraterrestrial material... but not the varying dates of formation.... I take Randall with a grain of salt, but he's a good story teller. Your theory does make sense, though less spectacular...lol.
How do you explain their orientation changing as they progress north? The orientations all point to an area near Saginaw Bay. A meteor or comet colliding with the ice sheet, and the ice falling back to earth is more plausible, imo. It would allow for the changing mean orientations and also explain the rainwater basins in Nebraska, which also orient toward Michigan. The ice melted, leaving a shallow depression and some water.
If you get on lidar data by yourself, look up New Jersey because it's easiest imo. You will find areas of a couple square miles that contain bays that overlap each other, in seemingly different ages of erosion, and in MANY different orientations, not just one or two, but dozens and dozens of different angles of orientation. How can you explain that with an impact?
Nothing explains it. The orientation proves it was extraterrestrial, but that’s about it. You cannot make consistent oval craters using any natural process know to man. Moon has no oval craters. High velocity impacts produce circular craters. Time to get beyond traditional science and history.
Thermokarsts is an interesting hypothesis, but I don't think you have adequately shown the Pleistocene conditions to be sufficient to explain the "bays." There are similar features in Nebraska, with a different average orientation.
GeoHub guy, I think you have the most likely explanation (you are correct because that is what I think, said a bit tongue-in-cheek). Sure, it would be a great story if the features were from ice splatter due to cosmic impact of glaciers, but dating and overlapping features do not seem consistent with that idea.
@@worldbridger9 a 2500km radius of large ejecta requires a minimum 1000km crater for explanation. Zamora’s pseudoscience was bunk from the start which is why it is not supported by any geologists.
Bought a book called “The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes” which goes into great detail about the Carolina Bays. There are some in Southeastern Ontario’s border with the USA. It’s a fascinating concept. 🇨🇦🖖🏻🇨🇦
More likely than not, the South Atlantic Coastal Plain did not average below freezing during even the coldest parts of the ice age. There is evidence of Tundra in Maryland and Virginia, but no further South. Temperatures likely averaged around 5C along the South Atlantic Coastal Plain.
If you have ever seen an impact area for artillery or bombs or have looked at the bomb crater patterns of WWII, you would see a striking resemblance to the patterns of the Carolina Bays and the Nebraska Rain Water Basins. Also, the orientation of all of these ovoid depressions are towards the Saginaw Bay area and to the west of there. An asteroid bombardment of the Lorentide ice sheet to me seems the more likely event or events, possibly during different time periods.
If you fly across Siberia you see all over the landscape the most circular traces of kryoturbation. Tha oval shape of the Carolina bays may have a tectonic cause when they were formed by ice, freezing and thawing over a long time.
This is very interesting as it's similar to the formations in Western Australia that are near an area called the Kau rocks nature reserve, they look more like ponds but as yet I have not seen any reference as to how they were formed.
It is ridiculous to suggest that each Carolina Bay were formed over a range of time >100,000 years as erosion would erase any geographical features in that amount of time. Also the dates were erroneously calculated using optically stimulated luminescence, which can only be used on deposits over 1 metre underground. The black mat defining the Younger Dryas Boundary is usually shallower than that. The elliptical shape and common orientations towards the Great lakes is more proof of the glacial impact hypothesis, which is alive and well.
Impact hypothesis never lived outside of pseudoscience channels on UA-cam. It is easily debunked because there is no 1000km crater to explain the distance of large ejecta. See ejecta blanket law to rule it out easily. Vague correlation of orientation is very weak evidence in comparison to thermokarst or other aeolian explanations.
@@gravitonthongs1363 please show me overlapping thermokarst lakes with raised circumferential rims with inverted stratigraphy. i won't hold my breath. lol
@@AustinKoleCarlisle I keep showing you and you choose to ignore it, but never show any evidence to support your wild claims. Please do your own diligent homework, I am not you babysitter.
@@gravitonthongs1363 again... take a 2-5 mile (1.5-8 km)C type asteroid or dense comet, density of about 4-1.7g/cm3, break it up into say 3-10 chunks like Shoemaker-Levy, slam these chunks (closeish) into a glacier 2-3 km thick in NA 12.9k years ago at say 17-22km/s... now plug all this into an online impact calculator... you find the crater depth is about 50-300 meters under the ice, only a slight depression... crater width is about 20-60 km since ice plasticity shatters... all impacts vapourize about 3-10 km3 of ice creating a penetrator explosion of gas under the glacier and hurling ice chunks at different parabolic trajectories... the ice absobs ~90% of the energy, atmosphere may only absorb a smaller % at that size... and at 1200 km distance large ejecta is indeed possible. Crater gets inundated and erased by melt water slush chaos. All that is left is elliptical bays... along the ejecta.
@@worldbridger9not too bad of an attempt. Well done. Corrections follow: A crater that rebounds from 300m below a 3km ice sheet has a maximum diameter of rebound depth x2 = 6.6km therefore, a maximum proximal ejecta distance of crater radius x5 = 16.5km. Evidence of impacting body is preserved in situ, buried, or eroded into rivers systems, it does not vanish into thin air.
There's a layer dated at the end of clovis that has microspherules that are impact proxies and the radial pattern along with the youngest date on the bays being the same its likely secondary impacts from ice projectiles blasted from the mile+ of ice it landed on.
Microsperules have a few origins, so are only impact proxies when accompanied by ejecta tephra or shocked quartz which we don’t find in abundance like at other impact sites. The bays were formed many thousands of years apart from each other.
Sort-of like inverted Drumlins... Feasible. Nature has its Ways -- which are not always apparent to Human sensibilities. Pat, simplistic explanations rarely serve Cause, down here at the living, Human end of the Effect. The only question one might have could well be: Why so many in such close proximity? Human Sciences suffer from a bias, which often fits the explanation to what we think we know. Science is, by its nature, pedantic: one step at a time -- confined to a Generational time frame (step?) approximating 75 years. That's Life. Someday, there may (or may not) be a definitive answer. For this Time Being, the effort alone "works"; in a limited sense. In the mean of a more definitive explanation, I am contented with what such explanations say about Time and the (very) Human inclination to know. So many mysteries. So little time. In the final analysis, focused speculation is all we have.
It wouldn't be a mystery if people actually looked at the evidence we have, instead of trying to take existing theories and bend them to fit the evidence.
You forgot to mention the Nebraska rain water basins. They are northeast to southwest and not lined up with the prevailing wind. The bays and basins all line up pointing towards the great lakes region. they are also eliptical shaped while karst lakes tend to be football shaped or oddball shaped. You are wrong on this one buddy.
The Laurentide ice sheet generated prevailing winds Zamora’s hypothesis is classified as pseudoscience. It completely avoids explanation by physical mechanism. That much ejecta at that distance requires the largest impact in billions of years to justify.
Thermokarst lakes WILL ALMOST NEVER FORM ELLIPSES! And yet thousands of Carolina Bays are near-perfect ellipses! Antonio Zamora’s hypothesis is that a comet, meteorite or airburst over the Laurentide Ice sheet at the beginning of the Younger Dryas 12,850 years ago blasted chunks of ice into ballistic trajectories. Associated earthquake waves liquefied soils along the East Coast, and upon landing in these soils the ice chunks excavated conical ejecta curtains that later relaxed into elliptical depressions. Here are five reasons why Antonio Zamora’s hypothesis of Carolina Bay formation is probably correct. 1) The intersection of a cone (in this case the ejecta curtain) with a plane (the surface of the Earth) is an ellipse. 2) The major axis of almost all Carolina Bays points towards the Great Lakes region where the Laurentide Ice sheet used to be. 3) Most Carolina Bays have a raised area at the distal (southeast) end, where an oblique hit would be expected to deposit more material. 4) Some Carolina Bays are superimposed on another bay (from different ice chunks landing close by at slightly different times); wind effects, lake effects and karst lakes cannot explain this. 5) Several studies have found inverted stratigraphy at the Bay rims - this is absolutely diagnostic of an impact.
1) the distance of large ejecta requires an impact far greater than the KPG impact, but no evidence has been found supporting this. 2) the orientation of the bays are fairy random and shape is often circular, which is explained by thermokarst lakes and other terrestrial geological formations defined as elliptical to circular in shape. 3)the raised rims resemble morphology of wind deposits, not craters. 4)the bays are thoroughly dated to a 100k year period of formation which explains the well preserved new bays forming over highly eroded older bays, not a single event. 5) Impact Is not the only cause of inverted stratigraphy. Zamora’s hypothesis is not supported by geologists or reputable scientific sources for the above reasons.
So kind of the same reason you mentioned about why Canada landscape has so many depressions in it now when looking via satellite? What is off though is why would it form in such a curve pattern around the coast...could it be that long ago the shoreline was that further inland and simple old sand dunes the ocean formed?
During an ice age the coast would have been further away. Sea levels were much lower as so much water was locked in the glaciation. Those depressions could well have formed in areas that are now under the sea but the action of the water will have eroded them.
Zamora’s hypothesis is classified as pseudoscience. It completely avoids explanation by physical mechanism. That much ejecta at that distance requires the largest impact in billions of years to justify.
At one point the Laurentide Ice sheets were as far south as Ohio, so it's not a stretch to think Georgia would have been a rather colder place at that time...
Antonio Zamora has thoroughly and correctly explained these Carolina Bays, and related Nebraska Rainwater Basins. His thorough scientific explanations are here on UA-cam, and he's also written a peer reviewed paper on the subject.
*pal reviewed Zamora’s hypothesis is classified as pseudoscience. It completely avoids explanation by physical mechanism. That much ejecta at that distance requires the largest impact in billions of years to justify.
They are all oblong and point in the same directions. There are also the same features in Nebraska and other western states that are oblong and point backwards and point in the same direction as if there is an epicenter of an impact over Michigan. Also Iridium has been found all over as well as a black mat layer thats consistent with charred vegetation. This coincides with the estimation of 10% of all biomass was on fire
They are not all oblong. They do not all point to the same direction. A spike in iridium has not been detected. Human occupants specialised in fire starting.
AFAIK, the 'best explanation' is actually an impact that caused a large amount of ice to be thrown up (glacier) and then to fall back to earth. There are videos on youtube that show how the angles of the Carolina bays all line up & point to an apparent impact (Canada?, Michigan? [don't recall]). The clencher is there are a other 'bays' that cover a similar arc on the west down towards the south, as an impact (coming from over the North Pole) would also have thrown up ice in that direction, too. Since the some of the dating aligns w/ the glacier covering most of North America that means ice, blasted up & falling back, would have made the Carolina bays as they are also in an arc from the south towards the east.
Zamora’s hypothesis is classified as pseudoscience. It completely avoids explanation by physical mechanism. That much ejecta at that distance requires the largest impact in billions of years to justify.
Whoa, that’s crazy. Which do you think makes more sense? An impact on ice spreading glacier secondary impacts leaving millions of secondary impact craters that form a ring around a centralized area and are oriented in its direction or magic wind that oriented itself to give the appearance of pointing in a direction but doesn’t happen today?
Briefly skimmed the comments - didn't see any mention of it so here goes. I hadn't heard of this site, being from New Zealand, but as someone who focuses primarily on tectonic-volcanic interactions a few things stood out to me immediately. First, the site you looked at in North Carolina immediately stuck out to me as a depression. I went on google earth and built some quick elevation profiles, and the features all lie within a pretty clear graben structure with a significant bounding fault running NW to SE on the southern side of the rift structure. All of the "depressions" within align well with the axis of this rift structure. Having no other information or back ground in the region, it screams rift related, volcanic field of basaltic crators. The only bit of evidence you presented which is hard to explain under this model is the shallow depths of the crators. Additionally - and I could be wrong because I do not have a background in this region, but I didn't think there was volcanism in this part of the United States during the time frame that the dating provided. Very interesting video though, I enjoy your theory!
The permafrost hypothesis does not account for the inverted stratigraphy that has been observed in some of the rims. The trails on the rim of Meteor Crater show inverted stratigraphy.
The impact to the Laurentide Ice Sheet makes, by far the most sense. Unfortunately, many cling to earlier assumptions about the formation and will not consider new information that gets in the way of their narrow view. Sad.
Zamora’s hypothesis is classified as pseudoscience. It completely avoids explanation by physical mechanism. That much ejecta at that distance requires the largest impact in billions of years to justify.
Zamora’s hypothesis is classified as pseudoscience. It completely avoids explanation by physical mechanism. That much ejecta at that distance requires the largest impact in billions of years to justify.
This hypothesis does not account for why they are perfect ellipses all the same ratio of length/width, and overlap each other. No other collections of thermokarst lakes on the planet that I've seen are elliptical in shape, nor consistent in length/width, nor overlapping. (If you've got lat/long of elliptical lakes/bays anywhere else, please share!)
@@_MikeJon_ I did, haven't found any elliptical thermomarst lakes, and none of the collections of such lakes I've seen have consistent length/width ratios. I'm not claiming they don't exist, just asking for someone to show me one cause I can't find it.
@@PhilipMcGarvey You didn't look hard enough for one. Two; They absolutely do over lap. Three; the Carolina Bays are not all the same perfect shapes. Many are but many are not. It's a broad spectrum. To say they're prefect ellipses is not true. Plus you gotta realize that current lakes are still an evolving geological feature. The Carolina Bays are ancient. Of course they're not going to be identical...
@@_MikeJon_ could you give lat/long of an example of a group of lakes anywhere else that are even somewhat elliptical? Again, not arguing they can't exist, but I want to see. I've spent many hours scrolling satellite imagery on google maps in areas with thermokarst lakes and haven't found any. If you've seen such a thing I'd appreciate if you'd share the location.
There are bays in storm alley also. Hence “Nebraska rainwater basins” have been known for decades. There were no glaciers this far south. Thermokarst lakes are NEVER elliptical.
@@_MikeJon_ I have a difficult time believing that permafrost conditions existed that significantly in South Georgia, south Alabama, etc. there’s no precedent, or even any evidence to support this. If there was I missed it. And it fails to answer several significant questions, like orientation of the long axis. Seems like he threw a theory of his at us to gauge reactions. Maybe he’s working on a paper.
@@Foxtrap731 Permafrost is still in Canada and Alaska bud. Literally nowhere near a glacier. How far down do you think it reached when there was a mile thick ice cap?
@@Foxtrap731 The amount of cold strong wind coming off the ice would've been immense as well. I can only imagine how the ice impacted the Jetstream and weather patterns. We don't see anything like it today because there is nothing like it today.
Wouldn't these also form the same way if ejecta from an ice sheet are dispersed and land in area of retreating ice sheet? Imagine thousands of chunks of large ice cubes distributed and landing from an impact site. What would the evidence look like? Would it be any different from what has been found to date? Thx for interesting educational video
The Randall Carlson theory is the rocks hit the ice sheets with such force it launched ice blocks so high they proceeded to rain down across the country. Don't they also all line up with the deepest part of the great lakes which couldn't have been created from the ice sheets based on its depth?
It's not Randall Carlson, whom is an architect btw it's Antonio Zamora whom is a computer science guy. Why do you get your information from non-professionals in the field? And btw... Most attempts at following the inferred orientation of the bays back up the trajectories' bearing have failed to produce a focus. We propose this to be caused by three variables not considered. First, that the impact may have been a "train-of-craters" event or an oblique impact, either of which would infer a chaotic focus. Secondly, the earth is a spherical playing field. Third, the earth rotates significantly during any realistic ejecta loft time. We attempt to evaluate the spherical effects in the Systematic by Loft discussion. The earth's rotation generates west-to-east ground-velocity vectors differences between the impact site and the ejecta landing site will be resolved when the ejecta strikes the earth, which we discuss in the Systematic by Latitude. If you notice they have to pull other ideas to explain THE LACK OF ALIGNMENT.
@@swirvinbirds1971sorry my response made you so angry. But I'm here to remind you that people are allowed to different opinions. I get it, you guys with your Twitter and Wiki like to silence any opposition, but until you get a dictator in office we are allowed to form opinions that do not align with your narrative. Have a nice day sir!
@@swirvinbirds1971 the obvious answer is that multiple cometary fragments hit the Laurentide Ice sheet, explaining the lack of alignment entirely to Saginaw.
@@gravitonthongs1363 but comets travel 3-4X as fast as a typical asteroid, though. given that 99.9999% of impacts we've used to calculate cosmic impact projectile physics has been based on meteor strikes and not comet strikes, it's safe to say that a comet travelling 3-4x fast as a meteor would create a larger ejecta curtain. we simply don't know what a comet striking the ice sheet would result in, which is why we have to keep it on the table as a possibility.
Didn't take into account that a strike on a 2 mile thick ice sheet would show no impact. There are these same kinds of formations in Nebraska with a orientation of sw to ne
@@gravitonthongs1363 under the Michigan peninsula there a fracture zone. Did you take into account angle, speed and all the other consequences of such a impact including the vaporized water and such?
@@billstream1974 I was generous to the ice ejecta distance, but let’s double it …and we are still only 2% of the required distance. Zamora’s hypothesis fails because there is no 1000km wide crater to explain the 2500km distance of large ejecta
This is an interesting hypothesis you've given for the formation of these features. It would be great to see field research, digging deeper so to speak, providing confirmation and an explanatuon for the orientation. 💜🌎🏞️✌️😎 Edit: autocorrect 🤦
Antonio Zamora has spent his life on this subject. He is THE EXPERT on these. I agree with his work. These bays are also in Georgia, Texas, Nebraska, Iowa, etc. They are not oval, yet mathematically calculable ellipses most pointing towards the Great Lakes. It’s time to pull our head out of our asses. A 10 year old can look at a map with azimuth lines included and see that something hit near the Great Lakes, striking the almost 2 mile thick ice sheet and sending boulders of ice in a perfect circumstance. Watch his videos and you will understand. Edit: Ark, not circumstance
Zamora’s hypothesis is classified as pseudoscience. It completely avoids explanation by physical mechanism. That much ejecta at that distance requires the largest impact in billions of years to justify.
It is inconsistent to dismiss the sediment age range data and then casually assert a confident creation during the last ice age. No explanation by thermoclast lake creation shows why the ellipses have the orientation they do. Ramora's impact hypothesis does.
Aeolian only processes are a contending theory, but there is currently more support for thermokarst formation, so it can’t be labeled a mistake correctly.
@@gravitonthongs1363 no other thermokarst lakes on Earth are overlapping, are perfectly elliptical like this, have circumferential overturned rims, orient toward a common point. these weren't from thermokarst.
@@AustinKoleCarlisle 3:24 for a quick example you can clearly see at the bottom on this image one bay overlapping another one as the prevailing winds form it into an elliptical shape orientated to a common direction. You do have eyes don’t you?
@@AustinKoleCarlislethe bays are orientated to the ocean from the mountains where the prevailing winds form. They overlap often in the image also, and the Carolina bays far more closely resemble the image than they resemble impact cratering. Thousands of miles not just hundreds, which require a 1000km crater to explain. Where is your crater or other significant impact evidence?
I would like to remind my audience that the Carolina Bays cannot be impact event related as each feature formed at a different time, some as much as 128,500 years apart. This would be impossible if they were created by an impact event (which they weren’t, hence why that hypothesis has long ago been thoroughly debunked). If they had been impact related, or related to multiple large impact events, you would expect 1 or less likely 2-3 dates that all point to the same time.
Excellent! Well done
You're mistaken in the dating of the bays. Dating of the soils in which the bays occur only tell geologists what the age of the soils were that were impacted by the secondary ice bombardment from a meteor or comet strike on the laurentide ice sheet. When an ice boulder was ejected from the impact site, it flew hundreds of miles and impacted on soft soil in the coastal plain areas ("piedmonts") of the east coast. The impactor cannot be dated because it was just ice ejected from a glacier. The soils into which these ice boulders impacted may be dated in some instances, but that does not give the date of the bay-forming impact iself, but only the date of the soil upon which the ice boulders fell. The impact hypothesis has NOT been "long ago thoroughly debunked". In fact that hypothesis was only advanced during the last 20 years, so the "long ago" is simply wrong. You may be referring to a theory that each of the Carolina bays themselves were formed by direct impact of extraterrestrial objects. That theory has been rejected, but not the theory of secondary ice boulder impacts ejected from the Laurentide ice sheet which was struck (or is theorized to have been struck) by a meteor. And in fact many evidences of just such an impact have been found in the ice sheet of Greenland, i.e., iridium and platinum "spikes" just before the onset of the Younger Dryas Cooling event. Additionally, microspherules have been found dating to the same period. Read (or re-read) Antonio Zamora's book, or watch his videos and then LOOK UP THE ARTICLES THAT HE CITES. I've done that. I have a stack of peer-reviewed, multiple-author papers which support the scenario that Zamora popularized.
@@user-qr2gd7me6cexactly. A plausible lie is produced and then gets innocently passed along, building up a bulletproof coating of repetition.
@@flyingdog2304 Just look at northern Manitoba, Saskatchewan if you want to see the depressions and lakes and now w permafrost melting for good up in the Yukon & Alaska, you can see the ice retreating.
@@monarchz6320 One idea is you don't even need permafrost.
All you need is shallow groundwater interacting with wind in a consistent direction.
I highly recommend googling like "New Jersey Lidar" and spending some time going through the maps, the southern half of the state has the best examples in my opinion.
tyvm for covering this topic I asked for multi times. You never fail to amaze this number 1 fan from 10k subs to now 272k subs!... Even tho it's not in your wheelhouse, you're amazing! ty for your time, energy and effort, much love from your lil ole disabled lady in central NC
I own land with Bays on it. The bays themselves have a sedimentary alluvial clay as their base . They are within a sand overlying sand deposit which makes up the local coastal plane. The area at the time of the last ice age was a "cold" desert. ie a hot desert has more windblown sand as the sand is heated by the sun and forms massive dunes. A cold desert whilst having winds , does not create as much movement of sand. Therefore the available sand from glacial runoff is limited and therefore can only form dunes in the shape of ovals a few tens of feet high moving sand over an immovable clay in the prevailing wind direction.
I'm super-curious why this matters SO much to these clowns. It isn't academic rage. Obscuring the bays' actual origin is terribly important to someone. Same with the age of the Sphinx. Flaky high-powered people pop up with complex well-funded clearly-wrong explanations.
I didn't care. Now, I feel like I want make this BS my life work. There's a dead rat in this soufflé.
@@vapormissilewhat???
@@Lylaris_or_Garuktry reading it backwards
@@vapormissile
What clowns?
love the rational explanation
These occur on Marylands eastern shore and are known as whale wallows. Locals believe hundreds of whales swimming in a magnetically north direction were caught on what had been shallow continental shelf when sea levels dropped dramatically at the start of the ice ages. Most of these depressions have yielded million year old whale fossils found buried in the sediments .
My grandparents grew up in Elizabethtown NC and their families had lake houses on White Lake ( 1910’s-1940’s) so many stories of dances and hunting Alligators. I remember as a kid being able to see all the way to the bottom in the center of the lake.
According to that hypothesis, we should also see fewer of these former lakes the farther south since there would be less permafrost. Also I wonder if the direction if these lakes match up with current wind directions or how much that would have changed over the last dozen millennia.
Many in south central Nebraska, some in Kansas, and Texas.
The world is not what they say it is. Oval craters are almost impossible to create with high velocity impacts. Look at the moon. Nothing else explains the orientation. Wind doesn’t carve lakes into perfect ovals aligned with distant points. Right? Can we move beyond lame guessing?
The formation of the lakes, given the proposal in this video, will depend upon the subsurface composition. The amount of near surface water will impact the formation of permafrost.
not really. the earth has been a complete ice ball quite a few times in its past.
@@TheDanEdwards These oval lakes appear in many soil types, latitudes, elevations, ecologies, ground water, etc. But they all point to Saginaw.
Thank you for the most plausible explanation for these formations. Especially since there are actual examples we can draw from on other locations planetwide.
I am always glad to help educate people!
Where else are there similar elliptical depressions all aligned in the same direction? Don't the Carolina Bays have evidence of "raised rims" ?
North Carolinian here! Thank you for covering these structures. Your theory on how they formed is the best one I've heard so far. We also have an interesting phenomenon that occurs around the Carolina Beach, Wilmington and Cape Fear River mouth area commonly called Seneca Guns. It also occurs inland sometimes like around Raleigh and surrounding areas. I have experienced the loud explosive-like sound a couple of times and have yet to come across a reasonable explanation. I would love to hear your thoughts on it.
Aliens
Maybe some methane explosions as in Siberia?
That happens everywhere. Just look it up. Google "loud explosions heard" and see how many stories pop up from many different states, many in the middle of the country.
@@BohumirZamecnikin South Carolina? This area is currently not nearly cold enough to support permafrost for methane to form from. You have to be somewhere with permafrost for that to happen.
I believe these mystery sounds are known as "Bama Boom" in the Piedmont region of Alabama. I heard one of these as an early child, but not in later years. At the time I attributed the boom to a sonic boom from a military jet aircraft.
That makes a lot of sense if you think about the sinkholes forming in the Artic. Interesting. The meteor shower is more fun but there should be some evidence.
They don't think it was a meteor, they think it was an icy comet that hit the ice sheet somewhere around the great lakes and then that impact ejected huge ice boulders towards the south, the ice boulders created the oval depressions and then melted away leaving no evidence behind besides the craters themselves.
The dating of the structures is crucial. If they were formed by a ballistic debris curtain from an asteroid or comet impact, you'd expect the dates of the formations to be contemporaneous. Which doesn't appear to be the case.
This is the big question. However it may depend on the post-formation processes. Whether and the record may have become contaminated by some weather action in the time between 140k and 11k y is something that needs to be discussed. Can a local torrential rainstorm stir up the lake deposit? Or possibly human activity after that.
@@chemallex valid point I'd say.
The dating has been inconsistent due to what in the formation they are sampling and the decade inwhich they were dated.
Most recent dating techniques are indeed consistently showing some part of the Y-D timeline. More and more the evidence is pouring in pointing to an extraterrestrial strike(s) on the Laurentide ice sheet. NOT TO MENTION the corresponding features also found in In Nebraska called the Nebraska rainwater basins. The only difference is the orientation is pointing NE instead of NW triangulating to a point or points in and around the Great Lake region.
No ….. these are certainly NOT thermokarst due to the lack of permafrost in those locations. NO, there was not permafrost that far south. The furthest south were in Ohio, Pennsylvania and such latitudes.
The dating has been accomplished. They occurred simultaneously. I’d show you the data, but he’s deleting my responses.
Also meteor could be ruled out pretty much all together by the shape alone. Scott Manley has a great video on why basically all crators are circular in shape. So essentially at the super shallow angle they would have to be to have that shape, they would be in the atmosphere long enough to explode as a bollide.
I teach geomorphology at a 300 level at UMD- there are some great images of current thermokarst lakes. We use the Carolina Bays for a lab every spring! There are some excellent aerial photos of current periglacial thermokarst lakes at the Coleville River Delta in AK- we use those for comparison :)
I'm looking at Lindgren et al (2000) "GIS-based Maps and Area Estimates of Northern Hemisphere Permafrost Extent during the Last Glacial Maximum" and Jackson et al (2000) "Vegetation and environment in Eastern North America during the Last Glacial Maximum", and find the argument that these were thermokarst lakes weak. The Colville river delta (or Mackenzie) is colder than it ever got at these coastal plain sites. Some of the dating that he alludes to also suggests these were actively forming rims prior to the LGM, when climate was warmer.
@@andybreckenridge4461 Just spoke with Karen Prestegaard, an expert geomorphologist (who has an office directly across the hall, and whose curriculum I teach) - and it absolutely was cold enough in this part of the country during the LGM. She also brought up the fact that these features may have initially had some sand piling up along the edges of the features in dunes, which could be related to those rims forming earlier than the LGM (to form these features in the first place, the climate needs to be arid, ergo, dunes). If you actually measure the length/width/depths, these lakes are identical to those on the Coleville/MacKenzie River deltas. Add that knowledge to the layers of peat - although thin and more sparse than we'd like them to be - and thermokarst lakes are by far the most logical explanation - add some random other minor details like some blowing/piling up sand if the evidence requires it. Regardless of the true formation mechanism, the Carolina Bays are great examples of "how we use modern geologic phenomena to take a guess at how something weird elsewhere might have formed" in a geology major class. For the lesson to stand, there only needs to be that thermokarst lake hypothesis.
@@andybreckenridge4461your arguments are:
1. that there are colder places elsewhere?
2. That the extremes of the error bars go outside the glacial conditions?
These are not legitimate counter claims.
You can fit ellipses to the Carolina Bays by the least squares method: ua-cam.com/video/jt0vR18zK5U/v-deo.html
@@Antonio_Zamora While yes, one can fit ellipses to these Bays, an ellipse does not an impact morphology make. The energy from an impact that could cause an event like the extinctions/climatic effects of the Younger Dryas would almost certainly just melt a large part of the ice sheet - I don't think there would be boulders of ice to send flying. Such a massive impact would also very likely have a large crater somewhere covered by the ice sheet in the first place - the energy of such an impact would absolutely have penetrated km's of ice and shatter morphologies would have to be present. The North American shield is far too ancient for any evidence of the initial impact to have been eroded away. I challenge you - where is that impact crater?
The hypothesis by Antonio Zamora explains the mathematically precise elliptical nature or the bays. It also explains the orientation of the bays to a relatively small area. The variable nature of dating of emplacement makes more sense if the lips of the bays are considered to be overturned, as if by an impact. Does your theory offer these explanations? Does your theory cater for the bays found in other parts of North America, not close to historical permafrost emplacement? I appreciate your content and look forward to more on this fascinating topic. Kind regards.
Zamora’s hypothesis is classified as pseudoscience. It completely avoids explanation by physical mechanism. That much ejecta at that distance requires the largest impact in billions of years to justify.
All the proven thermokarst features I can find lack the directional oval shapes, the heightened boundaries, and the mechanism does not support inverted sand/mud layers at the boundaries.
This is really interesting 🤔
With experience of Michigan geography my first thought was kettles (holes left by glaciers), but kettles aren't uniformly shaped like this.
My homeland! I'm from Charleston, SC which is surprisingly at high risk of earthquake - love to see an episode on the 1886 Charleston Earthquake
Hiya neighbor! Used to live there, am midlands now. The intraplate earthquakes are really interesting!
Check out “Quakeland” by Katherine Miles. You’ll enjoy it!
Finally. I had a heated discussion with someone else on UA-cam who claimed the impact hypothesis was the correct one. I completely agree with your explanation. It is the most plausible one to date.
My reply was delated. I disagree. Zamora's work lays out nicely the impact causation theory.
@@justmenotyou3151 You're not doing it right. When you disagree with someone on the interwebs you're supposed to call them a brainlet and insult their mother.
That's proper discourse.
@@justmenotyou3151 Highly recommend ignoring what other people cherry pick to put in their videos and just go look at the LIDAR by yourself.
Give it a few minutes and I almost guarantee you'll find bays that make you question the impact idea.
@@pauldickman4379 how so? All the LiDAR data Ive seen is pretty consistent and matches up with the impact hypothesis. Can you point me to some LiDAR data that suggests against it?
@@n8dawg640 Wikipedia even has a section devoted to the bays that have random orientations:
"At the northern end of the distribution of Carolina bays within the Delmarva Peninsula and New Jersey, the average orientation of the long axes abruptly shifts by about 112 degrees to N48°E.
Further north, the orientation of the long axes becomes, at best, distinctly bimodal, and exhibits two greatly divergent directions and, at worst, completely random and lacking any preferred direction."
That's what I saw as well.
"Completely random, lacking any preferred direction."
It also says to look in Maryland: "disorganized nature of the orientations of the long axes of Carolina bays in Somerset, Wicomico, and Worcester counties, Maryland"
We have small tear drop shaped hills in Scotland which were formed during the last Ice-age which all point in the same direction of Glacial flow!
That's what I was thinking. There was an ice sheet or multiple glaciers that did form over the Appalachian Mountains during the ice ages and ice would have flowed generally southeast to the Atlantic. Tidewater is sinking due to isostatic rebound; post-glacial isostatic adjustment also caused the 2011 Virginia earthquake. Multiple glacial advances and retreats could account for the range in dates.
@@stevekluth9060 glacial moraines only exist well north of the carolina bays - the glaciers did not reach this far.
@@littlefish9305 evidence points towards glacial formations in the Appalachian ranges. It is almost unreasonable to think there were no glacial formations in the elevated areas bordering the Laurentide ice sheet.
Thermokarst lakes only require seasonal permafrost anyway.
@@gravitonthongs1363 how do thermokarsts explain the perfect and consistent geometry of the bays?
@@littlefish9305 thermokarst lakes are circular to elliptical in geomorphology. The thawing and refreezing action tends to create consistent shapes.
Occems Razor. This is an educated hypothesis. The best kind.
Thanks for this. Just get ready for incoming comments asking you to visit weirdo pseudo-science YT channels trying to tell us the Bays are extra-terrestrial in origin. I keep having to tell people that geologists have been studying these things for 100 years and have never once found evidence for meteor strikes.
Except for their mean orientations pointing toward Michigan. Same with the Nebraska rain water basins. There’s some geologists that have published about these being the result of ice falling back after a meteor or comet strike in the ice covering Michigan. Not pseudo-science at all. Their conclusions are compelling.
Yeah, he said it. The fact that all these bays are oriented towards Saginaw, is not explained by prevailing winds. The Arctic is far more windy than the east coast so there should be similarly elongated ovals with overlapping development. Ihaven’t seen any like that in the Arctic. Features growing on a surface look disseminated like trees in a forest or rust on sheet metal, permafrost, not random distribution like spattered paint on a surface, craters on the moon, or Carolina bays. Fact is, there is no earthly physics available to explain what we see. Time to consider extraterrestrial physics. Neutronium, hydrogen ice comets, GOD, who knows.
Why do americans have such weird ideas. Its always aliens, big foot, UFOs etc. Bad education in school?
@@memyselfandi8544 "I haven't seen any like that in the Arctic" he literally says in the video you can find similar structures in Alaska and Canada.
From the impact hypothesis videos I’ve seen, I think the consensus within that community is that a large object impacted the ice sheet, which sent ejects out. Since the ejecta would have been mostly ice, and not at orbital velocity, there’d be less evidence of an impact within the bays itself. The evidence for that is that the axis of orientation mostly points to the same spot, even as far as Oklahoma (they might be different entirely, they claim that as evidence). So, they appear to “rotate” to point to the same spot basically. Furthermore, the physics would match (if you preferentially select impact conditions to fit the model of course…) a consistent “ring” of secondary ejecta impacts found at those locations.
However, no evidence of that original impact has been found (some claim it’s in Saginaw Bay), and the varying ages are of concern too. These seem to lie over an unconformity, which a permafrost layer could explain. I don’t like that theory either, but it’s not trying to imply thousands of micro impacts.
I’m personally not a fan of this permafrost hypothesis, only because I find it hard to believe that Georgia and Alabama would have had that climate. I’ve seen published papers suggest that the southern limit for permafrost during the LGM was somewhere around southern Delaware. People dispute this, but so far I’ve just seen people cite this hypothesis as their evidence for that. Also, I’d expect to find some more inland in river valleys with lots of overlaying sediment, but we don’t find those. Instead these are limited to the coastal plain. Furthermore, the sea levels would have varied drastically during the ice ages, so these areas would have been further from the coast if lower, or perhaps even underwater if higher (although, in the most recent glacial episode, we’d have to go back some 370,000 years to get to sea levels higher than today). Point being, these areas may have had a completely different ecosystem at the time. These areas were likely cold desert, like the gobi. I wouldn’t be surprised if the overall change in climate and reintroduction of life had a part to play in this.
Nice! I was waiting for this video!
Geologist here; I’ll tell you why I push back on your assertion that the bays “cannot” be the result of an extraterrestrial impact simply because of soils dating. I don’t put much stock into dating evidence alone; I’ll need other evidence against a hypothesis to consider it unlikely. The bigger issue is that you’ve missed some key properties of the bays that I think cannot be easily explained by any hypothesis that I’ve heard other than the (indirectly) extraterrestrial origin.
First, the orientation of the bays. I have yet to find or hear about a permafrost or pseudokarst mechanism that produces depressions in the same orientation. I’ve heard hypotheses of predominant wind being the factor, but that remains unconvincing until i can see it in action in some other place. You claim that the permafrost explains these, but again, I have yet to see a permafrost environment where every single ice wedge is 1: an ellipse and 2: oriented in the same way.
Second, the existence of carolina bays in Nebraska, oriented NE-SW instead of NW-SE. The existence of identical bays in a different, but locally similar, orientation, and 1,500 miles from the other bays, is hard to explain via permafrost. Sure, it may have happened that way, but where’s the modern day permafrost environment which produces elliptical depressions along almost the same orientation?
Third, the shapes and overlap. Virtually all carolina bays, from florida to new york to nebraska, are elliptical in shape. Permafrost can create circular or elliptical looking depressions, but from the mapped permafrost environments Ive seen, they’re not anywhere near as close as the carolina bays. There has to be some mechanism by which the permafrost environment can create conical sections. Additionally, ice wedges, from my understanding, don’t really overlap. So why do we see so many overlapping carolina bays? And bays within bays? There needs to be a mechanism for developing overlapping depressions via permafrost that i have yet to hear postulated.
All these properties, locations, existence of consistent orientation and match with conical sections can be explained via an extraterrestrial impact. The most convincing hypothesis to me thus far is that a comet hit the Laurentide ice sheet around Saginaw Bay, Michigan (where the orientations of bays on the east coast and Nebraska generally join). When it hit, it threw blocks of ice in a ballistic trajectory in 360 degrees. As the ice struck, they would remove cones of sediment from the ground, angled toward the impact site. As these impact locations were filled in over minutes, days, years, as the plane cutting a cone at an angle is an ellipse, so would the impact zones be. Ice projectiles from the Laurentide ice sheet would explain the lack of extraterrestrial material found in or around the bays. The singular impact, as well as the ballistic trajectory of projectiles, helps to explain the shape and orientations.
Obviously, we don’t know if this is true or not, but the fact that so many properties of these features can’t easily be explained by other known phenomena, but can be explained via secondary ice impacts caused by an extraterrestrial impact on an ice sheet, makes me consider the impact hypothesis the most plausible, even with the soil dating not agreeing (at this time).
It is not greatly unusual for a geologist to be under informed on a geological process and thus arrive prematurely at unlikely conclusion so don’t feel too bad when you discover the reasons why impact ejecta theory is not considered likely.
Start with ejecta blanket law to see that a 2500km radius ejecta blanket requires a 1000km wide crater (largest in billions of years).
Have a look at the recent videos by the UA-cam channel TheGoeModels to see examples of thermokarst formations. Cheers
@@gravitonthongs1363 you're referring to meteor-on-ground-level-soil calculations. this is ice-on-ice, an entirely different set of variables.
@@AustinKoleCarlisle It incorporates all terrain types and no crater including those found on glaciers have been found to have contradicted the law. It is a minimum requirement and ice being less dense and a weaker structure has a lower ratio than rock, so you would likely need a 1500km crater to explain the large bays formed by ice.
It is not even remotely feasible and that is why reputable geologists do not support the idea.
@@gravitonthongs1363 absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
@@AustinKoleCarlisle you can justify any pseudoscience with that same ignorance of existing evidence.
I disagree with the prevailing wind hypothesis to explain orientation.
Hence the thermokarst explanation.
@@gravitonthongs1363 yes, i see a spray pattern caused by ejecta from an impact into the Canadian ice sheet, which hurled city block sized chunks of ice at the east coast. They then buried themselves in the soft sandy soil and slowly melted over time.
@@shadetree2992 see ejecta blanket law to find that a minimum 1000km wide crater is required to explain the bay’s formation by ejecta. No geologists believe that fantasy.
@@gravitonthongs1363 these bays have a radius of 1500 km max. the impact hit so hard that the a lot of the ejecta went into suborbital flight which explains why they were able to fly so far. they didn't go through the atmosphere the entire time.
@@AustinKoleCarlisle the proximal ejecta from the Chicxulub impact travelled far far less distance then what you suppose from your magical vanishing impactor.
Physics is far more fascinating then fantasy, give it a go.
In the Netherlands there is a similar phenomenon like that of the Carolina Bays. It is called a Pingo and this was a depression in the ground that seems to have been a feature that formed during the Iceage of Northern Netherlands. Besides other features like ridges, the Pingo formed round depressions that were filled with ice that pushed the ground to the sides, causing a rim. When the ice melted, these pingo's became shallow lakes. Birds deposited the eggs of egg laying fish and amphibians that stuck to their feathers. The Pingo became a magnet to early hunter gatherers who left their stone tools on its shores. Most Pingo's were later filled in, but a few are still existing. Prehistorians and Geologists have reconstructed the workings of the Pingo. Another explanation is that pingo's were areas where early humans collected peat and left a depression in the ground that filled with water that froze in winter. Another explanation is that lighning struck in the peat, reeds and the vegetation which burned up the reeds and caused a depression. As a child I have seen this happening in reedfields close to my home. After the fire died down, there was a big black depression in the earth where previously dry reeds were standing. The depression was half a meter deep. Also in Siberia we see similar features in the permafrost. Now that the Permafrost is melting in Russia, many villages and towns that have build on permafrost, sink into the melting permafrost. So, all over the world we see this phenomenon of icy lakes melting. Another explanation may be the work of beavers who make lakes. Actually, in Finland there are thousands of lakes that also were formed in the last ice age by the movement of ice.
Wow, got some debate here in the comments -- means it's a hotly debated geological topic! Love to see it. Thank you for the explanation and your insight. :)
There are also "rainwater basins" in Nebraska, but are oriented to the northeast--pointing to the Saginaw Bay theoretical impact site.
…that has no evidence of impact
@@gravitonthongs1363 absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
@@AustinKoleCarlislethat is the exact type of backwards pseudoscience ideology I expected from you. You can justify every flat earth conspiracy theory with that irrational process now. You can up your pseudoscience speculation to alien space lasers now and I can’t object because absence of evidence is not evidence of absence apparently in fantasy land.
@@gravitonthongs1363 the fact that you take so much offense to a true statement is telling.
@@AustinKoleCarlisle I don’t take offence. I am literally rolling in laughter at your backwards ideology. Try science for a change.
This is very interesting. They seem to be perfect ellipses. There are also the Nebraska rainwater basins which mirror them. They both seem to have a convergence point.
The problem is dating. That is vexing. I'd like to know more about that.
There would be forensic evidence of an extra terrestrial impactor were it so. There isn't as far as I know.
I asked the History Channel, and they said they're actually the impact points of Atlantean plasma weaponry.
There are similar craters in the Nevada desert. Clearly this area was used for atomic dinosaur tests by the Flintstones!
Case did say the atlanteans deliberately finished off the dinosaurs to get rid of them using power crystals and energy beams so.... these might be what remains! Lol 😂
If anyone would know it'd be the pistorly flannel.
@@dananorth895 They are suspiciously flying saucer shaped, landing / storage areas maybe.
How do you accurately date these? You could get the age that some of the sediment under the surface last saw sunlight via luminescence dating, or get the age that some buried organic material was last alive, but that wouldn't tell you when the material was shaped into the ellipse.
I may be misunderstanding the logic of how they're dated, could someone please explain how this is done?
Both methods were employed but luminescence is the most regarded, for acquiring a minimum age at least.
@@gravitonthongs1363 yes and the minimum sampling depth for that method involves strata WAY OLDER than 12,900 years ago.
@@AustinKoleCarlisleirrelevant when determining a minimum age.
@@gravitonthongs1363 sure it is. if it's required that sampling take place BELOW the stratigraphy layer where we expect the impact to have taken place, then it's always going to result in an older date.
@@AustinKoleCarlisleshow me an example of a recent crater that is a kilometre wide but only 10 metres deep. You are ignoring basic physics and rationality.
It is hard to imaging that area in permafrost. It is so hot and boggy down there. The pictures from Alaska are convincing. First good explanation I have heard.
It is hot and boggy NOW. But 140,000 to 10,000 years ago the this Atlantic coastal area looked like northern Canada does today which sits right on the edge of the Arctic.
If you look at lidar imagery of the carolina bays, for example the image at the top of the wikipedia article about them, you'll see they are very close to being regular ellipses in shape. Thermokarst lakes for example in alaska are not even close to elliptical in shape. So to me, comparing the two doesn't explain the shape of the carolina bays.
@@PhilipMcGarvey3:24
@@gravitonthongs1363yes, those are not anywhere near as close to being elliptical as the Carolina bays are. Some of them may look like ovals, be rounded and longer than they are wide, but that's not the definition of a regular ellipse. The mathematically regular ellipse shape is one of the really unique and remarkable features of the Carolina bays that I would love to be explained.
@@PhilipMcGarvey the Carolina bays are not significantly more regular than those seen in the image. There are many other examples you can see in recent videos by the channel TheGeoModels if you want a more thorough analysis.
I'm not sure if it's already been mentioned, but I doubt this explanation would produce formations with such regularity of shape and orientation.
It is definitely a remarkable geological oddity. Aeolian processes are by far the best scientific explanation though.
@@gravitonthongs1363 localized entirely to the areas where the Clovis suddenly went missing 12.9k years ago! what are the odds!
@@AustinKoleCarlislethe Clovis didn’t go missing. That is more pseudoscience that you have soaked up from the pseudoscience fantasy you seek.
@@gravitonthongs1363 all i hear is "ad hominem". do you EVER talk about facts, or are you just paid to stir shit for people who actually ask questions?
@@AustinKoleCarlisleyou only hear ad hominem because you are ignoring the evidence.
3:23 I was going to say that it kind of reminds of the water features in northern Canada
Yeah, I don't know.
Please explain the inverted stratigraphy of the raised rims of the Carolina Bays. Thanks.
Why do you feel the need to like all you own comments? I have added a like to this one to help alleviate your insecurities.
@@gravitonthongs1363 the Aeolian wind Gods told me so.
they can't explain it, so they distract you with childish trivia.
Thank you for covering this topic! I learned about Carolina Bays a number of years ago, and have since had a fascination with them, so I enjoy anyone's take on it.
Oh cool! I had no idea!
I had. There is no explanation that fits. Nothing explained by known physics.
Yay im so happy you covered this phenomena, very interesting take
I prefer the meteor strike on the ice sheet hypothesis. Ejected ice from the impact made these oblong impact craters. The ice would have melted after impact, so no remnants of meteor or ground from the initial impact site. The long axis of the ovals points back to a spot in SE Michigan if one takes coriolis effects into account. The permafrost method has the issue that these interact with each other more like meteor craters than lakes from melting permafrost. Edit: Don't know why I typed SW instead of SE. Also these are relatively slow speed impacts, unlike meteors that are high speed. So you don't get the shock explosion that circularizes the crater.
That is the most likely scenario, imo. It explains their changing orientations and also the Nebraska rain water basins, which also point toward Saginaw Bay. There’s been quite a bit of research into that. If it was permafrost, why do the orientations change? Why aren’t they spread across the rest of the US?
No
@@sassa82excellent counter argument
change in orientation is explained by prevailing wind direction witch varies by location. At the time, that would be away from the ice sheet
@@Foxtrap731
@@sassa82 compelling,
Ming the merciless did it with a meteor attack.
Thanks for another great video! You might be interested in these two videos from TheGeoModels Channel (www.youtube.com/@TheGeoModels/videos).
"What does a geologist say about the Carolina Bays?" and "Lidar reveals the ancient landforms that most Carolina Bays researchers won't show you"
Thanks for the links. Quality science for sure
I first heard of these just a few years back, I happened to be listening to this dude named Randall Carlson...I'm sure his theory has been mentioned somewhere here....about the bays being craters caused by ejecta from a very large meteor impact further North-East? That would explain the lack of extraterrestrial material... but not the varying dates of formation.... I take Randall with a grain of salt, but he's a good story teller. Your theory does make sense, though less spectacular...lol.
How do you explain their orientation changing as they progress north? The orientations all point to an area near Saginaw Bay. A meteor or comet colliding with the ice sheet, and the ice falling back to earth is more plausible, imo. It would allow for the changing mean orientations and also explain the rainwater basins in Nebraska, which also orient toward Michigan. The ice melted, leaving a shallow depression and some water.
No, sorry that americans have so bad education.
If you get on lidar data by yourself, look up New Jersey because it's easiest imo.
You will find areas of a couple square miles that contain bays that overlap each other, in seemingly different ages of erosion, and in MANY different orientations, not just one or two, but dozens and dozens of different angles of orientation.
How can you explain that with an impact?
Judging by Mars and the Moon, we probably don't give impacts enough credit.
Nothing explains it. The orientation proves it was extraterrestrial, but that’s about it. You cannot make consistent oval craters using any natural process know to man. Moon has no oval craters. High velocity impacts produce circular craters. Time to get beyond traditional science and history.
how do you explain the widely differing ages of the lakes? one meteor impact wouldn't be able to cause falling ice for 100,000 years
Has anyone else heard they were named BAYS because only bay trees grew around their edges?
That could be due to the soil composition? If that’s true, that’s quite interesting
Bay trees live in them. If you’re looking for bay leaves, head to your local bay.
@@Foxtrap731 What?
Thanks! It is also cool to know the origin of the numerous lakes of Manitoba and other areas with permafrost!
Thermokarsts is an interesting hypothesis, but I don't think you have adequately shown the Pleistocene conditions to be sufficient to explain the "bays." There are similar features in Nebraska, with a different average orientation.
All of them are orientated away from the Laurentide ice sheet which generated prevailing winds
GeoHub guy, I think you have the most likely explanation (you are correct because that is what I think, said a bit tongue-in-cheek). Sure, it would be a great story if the features were from ice splatter due to cosmic impact of glaciers, but dating and overlapping features do not seem consistent with that idea.
Which data do you speak of? Please show me...
Hey, question, how hard would it be to render your videos in 4k?
Lot of 4k monitors and TVs out there these days.
Thanks for covering this one. There is obviously a lot of misconception on the topic out there currently.
Please debunk Zamora then...
@@worldbridger9 a 2500km radius of large ejecta requires a minimum 1000km crater for explanation. Zamora’s pseudoscience was bunk from the start which is why it is not supported by any geologists.
@@gravitonthongs1363 1500 km radius
@@gravitonthongs1363 that's not an argument
@@AustinKoleCarlisleaccording to science it is.
I was wondering about sink holes? What is the bedrock below?
Bought a book called “The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes” which goes into great detail about the Carolina Bays. There are some in Southeastern Ontario’s border with the USA. It’s a fascinating concept. 🇨🇦🖖🏻🇨🇦
More likely than not, the South Atlantic Coastal Plain did not average below freezing during even the coldest parts of the ice age. There is evidence of Tundra in Maryland and Virginia, but no further South. Temperatures likely averaged around 5C along the South Atlantic Coastal Plain.
If you have ever seen an impact area for artillery or bombs or have looked at the bomb crater patterns of WWII, you would see a striking resemblance to the patterns of the Carolina Bays and the Nebraska Rain Water Basins. Also, the orientation of all of these ovoid depressions are towards the Saginaw Bay area and to the west of there. An asteroid bombardment of the Lorentide ice sheet to me seems the more likely event or events, possibly during different time periods.
Low grade correlation is not significant evidence for causation.
The bay’s formation by ejecta requires a minimum 1000km initial impact crater.
I like the idea that asteroids at different times hit the glaciers and the chunked ice from the impact created the impressions.
That is why people believe it, because they want it.
@@gravitonthongs1363 Its cool
If you fly across Siberia you see all over the landscape the most circular traces of kryoturbation. Tha oval shape of the Carolina bays may have a tectonic cause when they were formed by ice, freezing and thawing over a long time.
This is very interesting as it's similar to the formations in Western Australia that are near an area called the Kau rocks nature reserve, they look more like ponds but as yet I have not seen any reference as to how they were formed.
They are playas. Movement of groundwater
@@gravitonthongs1363 Thanks for the reply , It's always wondered me at how wide spread and the amount of them in that area of W.A
@@AvGas502 SA border with VIC has some big ones too. Cheers
It is ridiculous to suggest that each Carolina Bay were formed over a range of time >100,000 years as erosion would erase any geographical features in that amount of time. Also the dates were erroneously calculated using optically stimulated luminescence, which can only be used on deposits over 1 metre underground. The black mat defining the Younger Dryas Boundary is usually shallower than that. The elliptical shape and common orientations towards the Great lakes is more proof of the glacial impact hypothesis, which is alive and well.
Impact hypothesis never lived outside of pseudoscience channels on UA-cam. It is easily debunked because there is no 1000km crater to explain the distance of large ejecta. See ejecta blanket law to rule it out easily.
Vague correlation of orientation is very weak evidence in comparison to thermokarst or other aeolian explanations.
@@gravitonthongs1363 please show me overlapping thermokarst lakes with raised circumferential rims with inverted stratigraphy. i won't hold my breath. lol
@@AustinKoleCarlisle I keep showing you and you choose to ignore it, but never show any evidence to support your wild claims. Please do your own diligent homework, I am not you babysitter.
@@gravitonthongs1363 again... take a 2-5 mile (1.5-8 km)C type asteroid or dense comet, density of about 4-1.7g/cm3, break it up into say 3-10 chunks like Shoemaker-Levy, slam these chunks (closeish) into a glacier 2-3 km thick in NA 12.9k years ago at say 17-22km/s... now plug all this into an online impact calculator... you find the crater depth is about 50-300 meters under the ice, only a slight depression... crater width is about 20-60 km since ice plasticity shatters... all impacts vapourize about 3-10 km3 of ice creating a penetrator explosion of gas under the glacier and hurling ice chunks at different parabolic trajectories... the ice absobs ~90% of the energy, atmosphere may only absorb a smaller % at that size... and at 1200 km distance large ejecta is indeed possible. Crater gets inundated and erased by melt water slush chaos. All that is left is elliptical bays... along the ejecta.
@@worldbridger9not too bad of an attempt. Well done. Corrections follow:
A crater that rebounds from 300m below a 3km ice sheet has a maximum diameter of rebound depth x2 = 6.6km therefore, a maximum proximal ejecta distance of crater radius x5 = 16.5km. Evidence of impacting body is preserved in situ, buried, or eroded into rivers systems, it does not vanish into thin air.
There's a layer dated at the end of clovis that has microspherules that are impact proxies and the radial pattern along with the youngest date on the bays being the same its likely secondary impacts from ice projectiles blasted from the mile+ of ice it landed on.
Microsperules have a few origins, so are only impact proxies when accompanied by ejecta tephra or shocked quartz which we don’t find in abundance like at other impact sites.
The bays were formed many thousands of years apart from each other.
Sort-of like inverted Drumlins... Feasible. Nature has its Ways -- which are not always apparent to Human sensibilities. Pat, simplistic explanations rarely serve Cause, down here at the living, Human end of the Effect.
The only question one might have could well be: Why so many in such close proximity?
Human Sciences suffer from a bias, which often fits the explanation to what we think we know. Science is, by its nature, pedantic: one step at a time -- confined to a Generational time frame (step?) approximating 75 years. That's Life.
Someday, there may (or may not) be a definitive answer. For this Time Being, the effort alone "works"; in a limited sense. In the mean of a more definitive explanation, I am contented with what such explanations say about Time and the (very) Human inclination to know.
So many mysteries. So little time. In the final analysis, focused speculation is all we have.
It wouldn't be a mystery if people actually looked at the evidence we have, instead of trying to take existing theories and bend them to fit the evidence.
You forgot to mention the Nebraska rain water basins. They are northeast to southwest and not lined up with the prevailing wind. The bays and basins all line up pointing towards the great lakes region. they are also eliptical shaped while karst lakes tend to be football shaped or oddball shaped. You are wrong on this one buddy.
My thought too. Wrong, dead wrong.
The Laurentide ice sheet generated prevailing winds
Zamora’s hypothesis is classified as pseudoscience. It completely avoids explanation by physical mechanism. That much ejecta at that distance requires the largest impact in billions of years to justify.
Thermokarst lakes WILL ALMOST NEVER FORM ELLIPSES! And yet thousands of Carolina Bays are near-perfect ellipses! Antonio Zamora’s hypothesis is that a comet, meteorite or airburst over the Laurentide Ice sheet at the beginning of the Younger Dryas 12,850 years ago blasted chunks of ice into ballistic trajectories. Associated earthquake waves liquefied soils along the East Coast, and upon landing in these soils the ice chunks excavated conical ejecta curtains that later relaxed into elliptical depressions. Here are five reasons why Antonio Zamora’s hypothesis of Carolina Bay formation is probably correct. 1) The intersection of a cone (in this case the ejecta curtain) with a plane (the surface of the Earth) is an ellipse. 2) The major axis of almost all Carolina Bays points towards the Great Lakes region where the Laurentide Ice sheet used to be. 3) Most Carolina Bays have a raised area at the distal (southeast) end, where an oblique hit would be expected to deposit more material. 4) Some Carolina Bays are superimposed on another bay (from different ice chunks landing close by at slightly different times); wind effects, lake effects and karst lakes cannot explain this. 5) Several studies have found inverted stratigraphy at the Bay rims - this is absolutely diagnostic of an impact.
1) the distance of large ejecta requires an impact far greater than the KPG impact, but no evidence has been found supporting this.
2) the orientation of the bays are fairy random and shape is often circular, which is explained by thermokarst lakes and other terrestrial geological formations defined as elliptical to circular in shape.
3)the raised rims resemble morphology of wind deposits, not craters.
4)the bays are thoroughly dated to a 100k year period of formation which explains the well preserved new bays forming over highly eroded older bays, not a single event.
5) Impact Is not the only cause of inverted stratigraphy.
Zamora’s hypothesis is not supported by geologists or reputable scientific sources for the above reasons.
While it being a meteor strike is literally impossible, how cold does earth have to get before you get permafrost in Florida?
not cold enough to get the Democrats to stop blaming everything on global warming....what is the mail late today...GW
not meteoric, it was a comet.
@@sn0fxjust as impossible
@@gravitonthongs1363 you deny the existence of comets?
@@AustinKoleCarlisle I don’t believe in hypothetical ones which don’t adhere to the fundamental physics of the universe.
In Siberia, huge holes apear where gas come up out of the thawing ground.
Thank your for using “hypotheses” rather than the misued “theories.”
So kind of the same reason you mentioned about why Canada landscape has so many depressions in it now when looking via satellite? What is off though is why would it form in such a curve pattern around the coast...could it be that long ago the shoreline was that further inland and simple old sand dunes the ocean formed?
During an ice age the coast would have been further away. Sea levels were much lower as so much water was locked in the glaciation. Those depressions could well have formed in areas that are now under the sea but the action of the water will have eroded them.
@@stephaniewilson3955 Unless he's suggesting they formed 100,000 kya, when the sea level was higher than today.
Also, it gets dark for long periods there, which is famous for causing depression.
They point towards the ocean
The wate table dropped during the glacial period. Many aquifers lost pressure during that time.
I think this is happening in Alaska, melting thermafrost, land then homes sinking. Thanks for the info.
lone pine earthquake in the late 1800’s! some eastern sierra videos would be awesome ;)
Secondary ejecta from comet hitting the glaciers in the great lakes area formed these.
Zamora’s hypothesis is classified as pseudoscience. It completely avoids explanation by physical mechanism. That much ejecta at that distance requires the largest impact in billions of years to justify.
Think about what this would mean. South Georgia at one point in human history had permafrost. Most years it doesn't even snow there
At one point the Laurentide Ice sheets were as far south as Ohio, so it's not a stretch to think Georgia would have been a rather colder place at that time...
Antonio Zamora has thoroughly and correctly explained these Carolina Bays, and related Nebraska Rainwater Basins. His thorough scientific explanations are here on UA-cam, and he's also written a peer reviewed paper on the subject.
*pal reviewed
Zamora’s hypothesis is classified as pseudoscience. It completely avoids explanation by physical mechanism. That much ejecta at that distance requires the largest impact in billions of years to justify.
They are all oblong and point in the same directions. There are also the same features in Nebraska and other western states that are oblong and point backwards and point in the same direction as if there is an epicenter of an impact over Michigan. Also Iridium has been found all over as well as a black mat layer thats consistent with charred vegetation. This coincides with the estimation of 10% of all biomass was on fire
They are not all oblong.
They do not all point to the same direction.
A spike in iridium has not been detected.
Human occupants specialised in fire starting.
AFAIK, the 'best explanation' is actually an impact that caused a large amount of ice to be thrown up (glacier) and then to fall back to earth.
There are videos on youtube that show how the angles of the Carolina bays all line up & point to an apparent impact (Canada?, Michigan? [don't recall]).
The clencher is there are a other 'bays' that cover a similar arc on the west down towards the south, as an impact (coming from over the North Pole) would also have thrown up ice in that direction, too.
Since the some of the dating aligns w/ the glacier covering most of North America that means ice, blasted up & falling back, would have made the Carolina bays as they are also in an arc from the south towards the east.
Zamora’s hypothesis is classified as pseudoscience. It completely avoids explanation by physical mechanism. That much ejecta at that distance requires the largest impact in billions of years to justify.
Whoa, that’s crazy. Which do you think makes more sense? An impact on ice spreading glacier secondary impacts leaving millions of secondary impact craters that form a ring around a centralized area and are oriented in its direction or magic wind that oriented itself to give the appearance of pointing in a direction but doesn’t happen today?
@@risunokairu evidence points towards wind orientation
But what about the inverted stratigraphy found as well as widespread shocked quartz in core samples in the Carolina Bays?
Inverted stratigraphy is due to aeolian processes demonstrated in video.
No shocked quartz has been located in the abundance required
Briefly skimmed the comments - didn't see any mention of it so here goes. I hadn't heard of this site, being from New Zealand, but as someone who focuses primarily on tectonic-volcanic interactions a few things stood out to me immediately. First, the site you looked at in North Carolina immediately stuck out to me as a depression. I went on google earth and built some quick elevation profiles, and the features all lie within a pretty clear graben structure with a significant bounding fault running NW to SE on the southern side of the rift structure. All of the "depressions" within align well with the axis of this rift structure. Having no other information or back ground in the region, it screams rift related, volcanic field of basaltic crators. The only bit of evidence you presented which is hard to explain under this model is the shallow depths of the crators. Additionally - and I could be wrong because I do not have a background in this region, but I didn't think there was volcanism in this part of the United States during the time frame that the dating provided. Very interesting video though, I enjoy your theory!
wouldnt that region also have been underwater at the time?
This region of North Carolina has mostly limestone and shell hash as bedrock. There are no volcanic rock formations anywhere near the area.
@@josephwirtz8352 Very interesting. Thanks for that.
Indeed, this does not explain the elongation effect
Aeolian
The permafrost hypothesis does not account for the inverted stratigraphy that has been observed in some of the rims. The trails on the rim of Meteor Crater show inverted stratigraphy.
Lets all just be honest here and accept the fact it was aliens.
The impact to the Laurentide Ice Sheet makes, by far the most sense. Unfortunately, many cling to earlier assumptions about the formation and will not consider new information that gets in the way of their narrow view. Sad.
Zamora’s hypothesis is classified as pseudoscience. It completely avoids explanation by physical mechanism. That much ejecta at that distance requires the largest impact in billions of years to justify.
Are these not kettle formations?
Similar, yet very different
no, there were no glaciers over the carolina bays region.
Antonio Zamora has written 3 books on this subject and has a wonderful UA-cam channel that explores the mystery in detail.
Zamora’s hypothesis is classified as pseudoscience. It completely avoids explanation by physical mechanism. That much ejecta at that distance requires the largest impact in billions of years to justify.
Thick salt deposits deep below?
EDIT: Your theory makes a lot more sense :)
This hypothesis does not account for why they are perfect ellipses all the same ratio of length/width, and overlap each other. No other collections of thermokarst lakes on the planet that I've seen are elliptical in shape, nor consistent in length/width, nor overlapping. (If you've got lat/long of elliptical lakes/bays anywhere else, please share!)
Google image search it. You're wrong.
@@_MikeJon_ I did, haven't found any elliptical thermomarst lakes, and none of the collections of such lakes I've seen have consistent length/width ratios. I'm not claiming they don't exist, just asking for someone to show me one cause I can't find it.
@@PhilipMcGarvey You didn't look hard enough for one.
Two; They absolutely do over lap.
Three; the Carolina Bays are not all the same perfect shapes. Many are but many are not. It's a broad spectrum. To say they're prefect ellipses is not true. Plus you gotta realize that current lakes are still an evolving geological feature. The Carolina Bays are ancient. Of course they're not going to be identical...
@@_MikeJon_ could you give lat/long of an example of a group of lakes anywhere else that are even somewhat elliptical? Again, not arguing they can't exist, but I want to see. I've spent many hours scrolling satellite imagery on google maps in areas with thermokarst lakes and haven't found any. If you've seen such a thing I'd appreciate if you'd share the location.
@@PhilipMcGarvey That's a ridiculous request lol. They're all over Google search. Many are elliptical, round, oddly shapped, etc.
Lots of good information
Asteroid strike, the Saginaw Bay in Michigan.
Could you create a new video about how the giant Stone Mountain, Georgia granite peak formed?
There are bays in storm alley also. Hence “Nebraska rainwater basins” have been known for decades. There were no glaciers this far south. Thermokarst lakes are NEVER elliptical.
Be careful. He’s deleting comments that don’t agree with his video.
Simple google image search will show plenty of elliptical ones. The point wasn't that glaciers were that far south. It was that the permafrost was.
@@_MikeJon_ I have a difficult time believing that permafrost conditions existed that significantly in South Georgia, south Alabama, etc. there’s no precedent, or even any evidence to support this. If there was I missed it. And it fails to answer several significant questions, like orientation of the long axis. Seems like he threw a theory of his at us to gauge reactions. Maybe he’s working on a paper.
@@Foxtrap731 Permafrost is still in Canada and Alaska bud. Literally nowhere near a glacier. How far down do you think it reached when there was a mile thick ice cap?
@@Foxtrap731 The amount of cold strong wind coming off the ice would've been immense as well. I can only imagine how the ice impacted the Jetstream and weather patterns. We don't see anything like it today because there is nothing like it today.
Can you do a video on the finger lakes in upper NY? That's what this reminded me of.
The Finger Lakes were formed by glaciers.
@@jrkorman seems simple enough. They really do look like a giant carved its fingers into the land though!
@GeologyHub
We're all waiting for you to post examples of perfectly elliptical geological features backing up your claims.
Thanks.
3:24
You love trolling science channels with your pseudoscience conspiracy theories. Get a life.
they won't, that's not their game. their game is to defend a certain fraudulent researcher's career.
Wouldn't these also form the same way if ejecta from an ice sheet are dispersed and land in area of retreating ice sheet? Imagine thousands of chunks of large ice cubes distributed and landing from an impact site. What would the evidence look like? Would it be any different from what has been found to date? Thx for interesting educational video
The distance and volume of ejecta requires a minimum 500km deep crater, the largest impact in billions of years.
The Randall Carlson theory is the rocks hit the ice sheets with such force it launched ice blocks so high they proceeded to rain down across the country. Don't they also all line up with the deepest part of the great lakes which couldn't have been created from the ice sheets based on its depth?
It's not Randall Carlson, whom is an architect btw it's Antonio Zamora whom is a computer science guy.
Why do you get your information from non-professionals in the field?
And btw... Most attempts at following the inferred orientation of the bays back up the trajectories' bearing have failed to produce a focus. We propose this to be caused by three variables not considered. First, that the impact may have been a "train-of-craters" event or an oblique impact, either of which would infer a chaotic focus. Secondly, the earth is a spherical playing field. Third, the earth rotates significantly during any realistic ejecta loft time. We attempt to evaluate the spherical effects in the Systematic by Loft discussion. The earth's rotation generates west-to-east ground-velocity vectors differences between the impact site and the ejecta landing site will be resolved when the ejecta strikes the earth, which we discuss in the Systematic by Latitude.
If you notice they have to pull other ideas to explain THE LACK OF ALIGNMENT.
@@swirvinbirds1971sorry my response made you so angry. But I'm here to remind you that people are allowed to different opinions. I get it, you guys with your Twitter and Wiki like to silence any opposition, but until you get a dictator in office we are allowed to form opinions that do not align with your narrative. Have a nice day sir!
@@swirvinbirds1971 the obvious answer is that multiple cometary fragments hit the Laurentide Ice sheet, explaining the lack of alignment entirely to Saginaw.
@@AustinKoleCarlislethey can’t explain ejecta travelling 2500km with one large impact, so multiple small ones are even more far fetched.
@@gravitonthongs1363 but comets travel 3-4X as fast as a typical asteroid, though. given that 99.9999% of impacts we've used to calculate cosmic impact projectile physics has been based on meteor strikes and not comet strikes, it's safe to say that a comet travelling 3-4x fast as a meteor would create a larger ejecta curtain. we simply don't know what a comet striking the ice sheet would result in, which is why we have to keep it on the table as a possibility.
Didn't take into account that a strike on a 2 mile thick ice sheet would show no impact. There are these same kinds of formations in Nebraska with a orientation of sw to ne
A 2 mile deep crater is 4miles wide and ejects large material up to 10miles
@@gravitonthongs1363 under the Michigan peninsula there a fracture zone. Did you take into account angle, speed and all the other consequences of such a impact including the vaporized water and such?
@@billstream1974 I was generous to the ice ejecta distance, but let’s double it …and we are still only 2% of the required distance. Zamora’s hypothesis fails because there is no 1000km wide crater to explain the 2500km distance of large ejecta
This is an interesting hypothesis you've given for the formation of these features. It would be great to see field research, digging deeper so to speak, providing confirmation and an explanatuon for the orientation.
💜🌎🏞️✌️😎
Edit: autocorrect 🤦
They are in Nebraska. They all point to one source. This was ejecta from an impact.
No
@@sassa82Yes
Not when their formation covers a time range of over 100000 years.
@@nortyfinerthey were all formed simultaneously. Same time. Same day.
@@nortyfiner what paper are you citing?
I was going to say when he did go on Google earth and zoom in on northern Alaska.
Antonio Zamora has spent his life on this subject. He is THE EXPERT on these. I agree with his work. These bays are also in Georgia, Texas, Nebraska, Iowa, etc. They are not oval, yet mathematically calculable ellipses most pointing towards the Great Lakes.
It’s time to pull our head out of our asses. A 10 year old can look at a map with azimuth lines included and see that something hit near the Great Lakes, striking the almost 2 mile thick ice sheet and sending boulders of ice in a perfect circumstance. Watch his videos and you will understand.
Edit: Ark, not circumstance
Zamora’s hypothesis is classified as pseudoscience. It completely avoids explanation by physical mechanism. That much ejecta at that distance requires the largest impact in billions of years to justify.
Oh Wow , i am a born North Carolina native
This is very close to where i live..... thanks for the Spotlight @GeologyHub
Can we have Mima Mounds next? Or if you've already done them, a link?
There is a very upstanding woman from Georgia who probably thinks that these were formed by Jewish space lasers.
It is inconsistent to dismiss the sediment age range data and then casually assert a confident creation during the last ice age. No explanation by thermoclast lake creation shows why the ellipses have the orientation they do. Ramora's impact hypothesis does.
Prevailing winds shaped the thermokarst or playa formations
Loess Hills, I thought they were named after someone, Loess is a geologic action, and is vast.
Ohh , a mistake.
This will not go down well with those who want real answers
Aeolian only processes are a contending theory, but there is currently more support for thermokarst formation, so it can’t be labeled a mistake correctly.
@@gravitonthongs1363 no other thermokarst lakes on Earth are overlapping, are perfectly elliptical like this, have circumferential overturned rims, orient toward a common point.
these weren't from thermokarst.
@@AustinKoleCarlisle 3:24 for a quick example you can clearly see at the bottom on this image one bay overlapping another one as the prevailing winds form it into an elliptical shape orientated to a common direction.
You do have eyes don’t you?
@@gravitonthongs1363 the CBs orient to a common direction over 100s of miles, often overlapping. the comparison is ludicrous.
@@AustinKoleCarlislethe bays are orientated to the ocean from the mountains where the prevailing winds form.
They overlap often in the image also, and the Carolina bays far more closely resemble the image than they resemble impact cratering.
Thousands of miles not just hundreds, which require a 1000km crater to explain. Where is your crater or other significant impact evidence?