Köfels impact event

	Style over substance; Pseudoscience
	Popular pseudosciences
	Alternative medicine; Creationism; Racialism; Pseudopsychology;
	Random examples
	Expanding Earth; Behe: The Edge of Evolution, Interview; Rice puller; Aetherometry; Journal of Cosmology; Alan O'Reilly; Ancient giant silicon-based tree hypothesis; Hollow Earth; Pierre-Marie Robitaille; v - t - e

Site of the Köfels landslide, the rubble blocked the Ötztaler Ache, which later formed a small canyon

The Köfels landslide was a huge mountain rockslide (a Sturzstrom) that occurred in the Austrian Alps about 9800 years ago near the present day village of Köfels. Some of its features mystified geologists for quite some time. One hypothesis was that it had been caused by an asteroid impact — a Köfels impact event — but more recent research has rejected the idea. This didn't stop a pair of British engineers from publishing a book that claims that a) it was an asteroid impact, b) it inspired a lot of myths, and c) it was recorded on an ancient Sumerian clay tablet.

Science[edit]

The reason for the original impact hypothesis was the presence of fused rock. At the time, the only processes known to be able to do this were either volcanism or meteor impacts. Later research found that it can be also produced by friction and similar fused rock has been found in other large rockslides.

Pseudoscience[edit]

British Museum tablet K.8538, a.k.a. The Planisphere.

In 2008, two British engineers, Alan Bond^[1] and Mark Hempsell, published a book, A Sumerian Observation of the Köfels' Impact Event. They claim that an ancient Sumerian clay tablet documents an asteroid impact on 29 June 3123 BCE that was the root of many myths, including the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the Greek myth of Phaeton (the son of the sun god Helios who took his father's fiery sun chariot for a joyride and crashed it).

There are many problems with their claims, but perhaps the most major one is the wrong chronology. The Köfels site has been dated with radiocarbon dating of wood buried by the landslide to about 9800±100 BP (Before Present), which is about 4000 years earlier than Bond and Hempsell's date. Another problem is the absence of an impact crater in the region. According to the two engineers, the peculiar trajectory of the asteroid explains why there are no signs of impact on the site. The angle of arrival on Earth would have been very narrow (about six degrees), which means that the asteroid, rather than impacting the ground, would have cut the top of a mountain called Gamskogel, about 11 kilometers from Köfels, causing the catastrophic avalanche.

Bibliography[edit]

A Sumerian Observation of the Köfels' Impact Event, Alan Bond and Mark Hempsell, 2008, ISBN 978-1904623649

External links[edit]

See the Wikipedia article on Umhausen § Landslide.
Cuneiform clay tablet translated for the first time, 31 March 2008, Physorg.com (being bitches again and re-publishing the press release from the University of Bristol)
Researchers: Asteroid Destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, Fox News.com, 1 April 2008
https://www.neperos.com/article/s9kr7cad8131ef00
Fire in the Sky, a review of the book by Jeff Medkeff (of the Blue Collar Scientist blog) and Martin Rundkvist (of Aardvarchaeology) in the eSkeptic newsletter, 4 February 2009
- A Sumerian Observation of the Köfels Impact? Almost Certainly Not…, Jeff Medkeff, 1 April 2008 (a Wayback Machine copy, because the blog's domain was usurped soon after Medkeff's untimely death)
- A Response to Mark Hempsell, Jeff Medkeff, 16 April 2008 (Hempsell had left comments on the previous post)
Tablet K8538 details on the British Museum website
Astronomical Artifacts and Portraits: 9: Late Babylonian (Neo-Assyrian) planisphere, a page on the tablet that has more pictures and criticism of Bond and Hempsell's claims
News to Note, April 5, 2008, Answers in Genesis
Köfels Impact Event^img, article in Conservapedia (revision from 21 November 2008, last revision as of writing this page)
A post on a meteorite mailing list
http://info.tuwien.ac.at/geophysik/research/landslides/1997_pr01/structure/koefels.htm

References[edit]

↑ Alan Bond is the managing director of Reaction Engines Ltd., a British company developing the Skylon, an air-breathing, horizontal-take-off/horizontal-landing, single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane (= cheaper and more versatile Space Shuttle). See the Wikipedia article on Alan Bond (engineer).

[1] Alan Bond is the managing director of Reaction Engines Ltd., a British company developing the Skylon, an air-breathing, horizontal-take-off/horizontal-landing, single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane (= cheaper and more versatile Space Shuttle). See the Wikipedia article on Alan Bond (engineer).

[1]