Tails of a Recent Comet

TL;DR

This paper proposes that Earth's ridge systems, including eskers and drumlins, are formed from debris of a past comet encounter, with landforms resulting from cometary jet deposits and subsequent geological processes.

Contribution

It introduces a novel hypothesis that Earth's ridge formations are composed of cometary debris, linking geological features to extraterrestrial impacts.

Findings

Ridge systems are consistent with cometary debris deposition.

Eskers and drumlins originated from disintegrating comet jets.

Landforms reflect cometary impact and subsequent geological processes.

Abstract

Drain away the earth's oceans and a global pattern of great ridges appears. Adjacent to these continental and undersea mountain ranges are layers of silt and clay, so thick that they fill the gaps between ridges, creating extensive plateaus. Ranging across this planet's higher latitudes are thousands of tiny replicas of these ridge systems. These esker and drumlin swarms run up hills and across streams in roughly parallel discontinuous strands for hundreds of kilometers. Preserved by encapsulation in the ice and snow of our last ice age, eskers, drumlins and their related structures will be the focus of this paper. We contend that Greater and lesser ridge systems alike, including the water and sediments that fill them are cometary debris. Each ridge may be traced to a single stream, or 'jet' of disintegrating materials emanating from shifting areas on a comet's nucleus. A band of these jets, captured into planetary orbit, will land its debris in a unique manner. All debris will be laid down in a sheet perpendicular to the planetary surface, this process which results in the sharp ridge profile, is consistent with the manner in which comets discharge debris along the plane of their orbit. The jet particles, massive enough to resist planetary atmosphere [sands, gravel and boulders] once landed become robust structures through compacting and immediate concretization. The water and lighter materials, diverted by winds and post-depositional melting, flowed and settled into the inter-ridge basins. The establishment of the ridge complexes found on earth is therefore consistent with its initial encounter with a great comet. The ancestral body's return in reduced and fragmented form laid down the lesser esker and drumlin formations.