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
Thank you for the most plausible explanation for these formations. Especially since there are actual examples we can draw from on other locations planetwide.
@@mikeharrington5593most continents have similar elliptical deflation hollows with raised rims. Playas, thermokarst lakes, and fairy circles to name a few.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 .
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.
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.
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.
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?
@@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.
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.
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 RU-vid 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.
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.
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
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.
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. :)
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 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.
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.
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.
@@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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
@@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.
Finally. I had a heated discussion with someone else on RU-vid 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"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Antonio Zamora has thoroughly and correctly explained these Carolina Bays, and related Nebraska Rainwater Basins. His thorough scientific explanations are here on RU-vid, 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.
There is a O.O% chance that all these features would be both eliptical (exactly, not kinda. you didn't explain this.) and FAN OUT RADIALLY pointed to The Great Lakes (wind CAN'T do this, as you suggested). You should say you don't know, right?
Very few of the bays are exact ellipses, most are misshaped. The bays are oriented towards the ocean (where prevailing winds off land mass tend to travel) There is 0.0% chance that the largest impact in billions of years left no trace of impact except the bays.
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.
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.
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 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 RU-vid. 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.
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"
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!
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
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
Next time you take hot shower and if you have a clear glass door do this experiment. Once the glass fogs up, flick your fingers and splatter the glass. The formation you get are the exact same type of formations that you see with the Carolina Bays. It truly is in my opinion a cosmic crime scene caused by secondary impacts from a comet strike on the Laurentide Ice sheet as proposed by Antonia Zamora.
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.
And yet in your 'pinned' comment you provide the answer why their impact origin makes sense and a thermokarst explanation fails. 1. Similar preservation over more than a hundred thousand years. Though there are overlaps (another problem in the thermokarst explanation) the preserved 'state' of nearly all the 'bays' is highly regular and repetitive. 2. Nearly all of the thousands of basins has a similar major axis orientation, within a few degrees, again over more than 100,000 years the wind and water forces within a varied substrate combined to align nearly all of the bays in the same major axis orientation. (Apparently statistics is not a required course in Geology degrees). 3. When proposing a set of natural forces that appear in other locations, the results of these natural forces must repeat the amazing similarity and nearly uniform alignment and apparent common age over hundreds of miles of near coast lowlands (which are repeated, as stated in Alaska, but without the amazing alignment regular outlines of nearly all the 'crater' shaped Carolina bays. Rather the 'true' thermokarst lakes have no overall shared alignment or state of preservation). 4. Absence of a 'normal' initial impact crater is not evidence that no impact occurred. 'Normal' Impact Craters are the result of stony geological layers absorbing a high energy impact that converts kinetic energy into thermal energy (explosion). But the ET impact hypothesis for the Carolina Bays formation only requires the ice/glacier thickness be capable of absorbing the kinetic >> thermal explosion energy so completely that there is little left to 'dig out' a crater in the crust's rock layers. But the the 'normal' crater formation did occur, with huge Ice chunks ejected by the impact explosion which would have dwarfed man's biggest hydrogen bombs but left a crater in the glacier ice, to disappear when the glacier melted and moved.. In fact the sheer size of an ice chunk that would have formed just one nearly kilometer long (on the major axis) secondary impact crater would approximate a fairly large nuclear blast, but occurring over a large area and nearly simultaneously. (and thus the overlapping craters -- as well as an explanation why all of North America's Megafauna disappeared at nearly the same time in the Younger Dryas). The same 'energy absorption' phenomena occurred in the sandy, high water content soils along the coasts. These were wet and cool from the generally lower temperatures and much wetter climate near the glaciers further north at the end of the younger Dryas period. Earthquakes are a great example of how rapid onset, high energy events transit differently through a nearly viscous soil (and increasingly so as they are shaken by an Earthquake event). Moving the 'jello' soil mass reduces the energetic 'sharpness' of the Earthquake shock, compared to the far steeper energy wavefront of solid rock given the same released Earthquake movement energy. Shake a bowl of jello to see how it absorbs energy to distribute it over time in a dissipative, jiggly manner. As an experiment, throw a large rock as hard as you can into a thick layer of mud, at a slight angle as if it were a natural projectile, coming down at a relatively low angle from far away. What sort of shape does it make, a circle or an oval/ellipse? You tell me. Or you can observe thermokarst lakes for several thousand years to see if they produce a set of aligned, nearly identical aged, elliptical basins. I haven't got the patience, but you might.
A 3km ice sheet can only explain large ejecta to a distance of 15km before strata impact is required. A minimum 1000km impact crater is required to explain large ejecta to 2500km. In the case of locating the largest impact crater in billions of years …absence of evidence is obviously evidence of absence.
@@gravitonthongs1363 you sound like a broken record... until you undersrand what happens when a comet, usually quite big, usually broken up closely so like a shot gun, hits an ice sheet, then we talk. Until then I suggest you turn off/fix the record player. The lack of statistical analysis is a very good point. What are the odds that geometry orientation and particular features are so similar in so many thousands of bays? We went through the math of ejecta, and it is possible so why repeat that point as evidence of impossibility? Also, if the impact hypothesis is true, wouldn't the initial ice extent be incorrect since the observed morrains and erratics would actually be similar inner ejecta soil and boulders? We must be open to the possibility. Another thing is the strange closed minded hard stance from a supposed science researcher, the various videos "debunking" Zamora's work and saying its pseudoscience, etc. when it actually is statistically the most plausible explanation. Like if this theory were to be accepted it would mean we would have to work double to make sense of it all, the complexity is not something geologists tend to prefer or favour. Rewriting text books, science papers and dogma is not easy. So it's just easier to squash the "difficult" theory with a concerted debunking campaign. Maybe there is money or paid time involved. Graviton seems to be very dedicated repeating feeble talking points, how does graviton make a living spending so much time here? So many questions...
@@worldbridger9 I just gave you the math that clearly identified the implausibly of your fantasy, which is why it is statistically the least plausible explanation and no geologists believe the pseudoscientific hypothesis. You can continue clinging on by ignorance of ejecta ratios and comet impact evidence on ice worlds, but scientists have an ethical duty not to choose ignorance over evidence, which is the difference between science and the ideological fantasy that you clearly subscribe to.
Great retort,@@worldbridger9 . One of the positive reviewers for my GSA paper submission stated "Some of the kinetic physics are at the edges of knowledge crossing the transition between high- and hyper-velocity, as well as between impact cratering and ballistics for mass transport of mixed phase flows. The possibility of detachment at multilayered ice-water-rock interfaces during a low angle bolide impact highlight many of the problems encountered between laboratory experiment capability and modelling of impacts in planetary research, and this contribution provides a genuine new stimulus."
@@MichaelDaviasfantastical speculation and irrational conspiracy theory is a great retort? Supporting pseudoscience shows how hard you are trying to sell your fringe theory.
where are all the Clovis bodies/fossils if Antonio Zamora's hypothesis isn't true? given the number of sites, there were likely millions of them at the time of this disaster. *What happened to the Clovis?*
@@AustinKoleCarlisle no, they didn’t. They changed their technology from spear heads to arrow tips. The disappearance of spear heads from the archaeological records is not a disappearance in population. Gather information from reputable sources to correct the pseudoscientific misinformation you have sought from sources of low reputation.
@@gravitonthongs1363 bingo, "low reputation" but not unproven or even more logical, lol... so you concur you are just repeating popular discourse because "trust me bro", even though it is not proven, gotcha...
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 🤦
