In 1865 Jules Verne’s novel From the Earth to the Moon introduced the concept of a ballistic projectile escaping the Earth’s gravity, from which Phipps Morgan and others derived the name “Verneshot” in their paper theorizing a connection between extinction events and cratonic gas ejection.
I have been howled down for suggesting a series of volcanic explosion events could eject matter into space and have occured at the time of the biblical Noahs flood event…well now it seems that my claims are not so far fetched.
Verneshot
a massive explosion which would be quite analogous to a meteorite impacting the Earth. Gases, debris and perhaps even a projectile (called Verneshot projectile) would be thrown into the atmosphere. The release of gases and debris would have the necessary climatic effects on the environment to cause a mass extinction.
the real value of Verneshot theory is highlighted in that its entirely possible this could be the real reason why dinosaurs became extinct. For me the really interesting thing is, this theory has relevance to the Biblical flood event as illustrated in Genesis.
Recently, a team of scientists at Kiel University in Germany have presented a new theory regarding the K/T extinction. They have put the blame of the extinction on, what they call, a Verneshot. This theory has been recently conceived and still dwells in its infancy, but it does have a great advantage over the others: it explains why an impact and continental flood basalts always coincide when the chances of both occurring simultaneously are infinitesimally small. Geologic past contains the signs of 4 major eruptions. Each of these extinctions events shows signs of both a meteorite impact and continental flood basalts.
Here is the Wikipedia article on the theory…
Phillips Morgans area of expertise…
Phipps Morgan earned a Ph.D. in geophysics from Brown University. He joined the Cornell faculty in 2004 after serving as director of the geodynamics division at GEOMAR Research Center in Kiel, Germany, and prior stints working at MIT and Scripps. He teaches a class in geodynamics and an introduction to geology for engineers.
