Talk:Chicxulub crater

Redirect from Chicxulub

I redirected Chicxulub to the town of Chicxulub Pueblo which is what that word refers to. But User:Hemiauchenia reverted my edit arguing that nobody is looking for the town. Isn't it a policy that redirects should prioritize geographic locations over things named after them? Perhaps a disambiguation page is pertinent? What is the policy on these matters? --Homo logos (talk) 23:58, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

72 teratonnes or 100 teratonnes of TNT?

I remember the article declared that the explosion was around 72 teratonnes of power, instead of 100. What changed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nawlison (talk • contribs) 21:29, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

Change name of article to "Chicxulub impact"

This article seems to be more about the impact event in general than just the crater. It would require that the page that host the redirect from "Chicxulub impact" be deleted so this page could be moved there, and would require updating the lead. However, the title would be more accurate to the content of the article. aaronneallucas (talk) 01:33, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree, given that there's extensive discussion of the geology and morphology of the site. The impact and its effects are mostly the first half. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 01:40, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Dash v. Hyphen

Peter M. Brown in this edit you are citing the Wikipedia article, dash, but Wikipedia has its own house Manual of style, with coverage of this matter at MOS:PREFIXDASH. Thank you for the correction, and for educating me, but I thought you might want to cite Wikipedia's MOS for future such corrections. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:48, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia: Point taken. When you want to create a new talk-page section, though, it's best to click the "New Section" link at the top of the page. Your contribution showed up in the Watchlist as

Change name of article to "Chicxulub impact": dash v hyphen

though it had nothing to do with the article's name. Peter Brown (talk) 18:34, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

Science isn't settled

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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The article's lead claims that "it is now widely accepted that...the impact was the cause of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event..." First this OBVIOUSLY needs an authoritative reference. Second, "accepted" seems to be too strong - "believed" would be more accurate (amongst experts). Third, there are very strong arguments made that while it was a contributor to that mass extinction, it was NOT "THE" cause. (and some argue it wasn't even the most important cause.)174.131.48.89 (talk) 23:21, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

Third, there are very strong arguments made that while it was a contributor to that mass extinction, it was NOT "THE" cause. (and some argue it wasn't even the most important cause.) and where precisely is your evidence for this? You complain about the lack of citations (there is no need for citations in the lead per WP:LEADCITE, provided it is supported by the article body), but you are just pontificating your personal opinion. I can't think of a single paper I've read from the last decade that doesn't consider Chicxulub to be the primary cause of the extinction. Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:29, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

this one is interesting.

Chicxulub impact predates the K-T boundary mass extinction

Crossref DOI link: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0400396101 122.62.227.55 (talk) 01:08, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

The article body mentions meta-analysis of the past few decades' worth of research that it's the likely cause of the extinction event, and mentions the alternate hypotheses, which are not as well-supported. I don't see the issue—"accepted" is a common-enough term for held scientific consensus, because it's not based on belief alone but evidence. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 23:52, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

"The crater was named for the nearby town of Chicxulub"

When I read the the lead claim, my clarity alert immediately went off:

Its center is offshore near the communities of Chicxulub Puerto and Chicxulub Pueblo, after which the crater is named. Does this mean it is named after Chicxulub Pueblo only, or both? And what is the actual claim?

Sure enough, all we have down in the article body is "The crater was named for the nearby town of Chicxulub". So does this mean the Puerto or the Pueblo, because I find it unlikely that Western scientists cared enough about Mexican geography details to reference both settlements in the naming process. Could this be the overeager correction actions of a Wikipedian unfamiliar with the need to source our claims?

I strongly suspect we should in the lead only say:

Its center is offshore near the community of Chicxulub, after which the crater is named.

...and leave it at that. More specificity than that likely requires a source asking Hildebrand, Penfield, or someone else that was there at the time. CapnZapp (talk) 06:23, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

This morning, I corresponded by email and on the phone talked with Glen Penfield. He pointed me to:

Penfield, G. 2019. UNLIKELY IMPACT, The Unexpected Discovery of the Paleogene-Cretaceous Impact Crater. AAPG Explorer. December 2019. pp. 20-23.

It states:

"My Mayan wife, Erendira, and I, along with Alan, decided to name the crater after the town of Chicxulub located near its center, partly to give the academics and NASA naysayers a challenging time pronouncing it after a decade of their dismissals, since “Yucatan crater” was too easily pronounced."

On the phone, Penfield assured me, that in that article, "town" means "pueblo" and definitely not "port" (puerto). He also noted that Pueblo Chicxulub is the nearest town to the PEMEX well from which came the crucial samples containing evidence of impact metamorphism. Paul H. (talk) 17:16, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

That source is in the article, and that's what the article originally said; I've adjusted. It was changed in January to point to Puerto by Hunab 21 who seems confused that it's not named for the community directly at the center of the impact feature. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 18:24, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for going to all this effort to clarify this. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:25, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Note that the 2019 AAPG article disproves the premise that it is "unlikely that Western scientists cared enough about Mexican geography details to reference both settlements in the naming process." The article shows that not only did Penfield care about about Mexican geography, but also an indigenous Mayan, Penfield's wife, was directly involved in the naming of the Chicxulub Crater. Paul H. (talk) 18:21, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

12-Mile Depth

I’m a bit confused as to how the impact crater could be 12 miles deep when the distance from Challenger Deep to the peak of Mount Everest, the highest and lowest points on Earth, is barely 12 miles. Is there some special method of measuring that I’m not aware of? Is “depth” not vertical displacement from bottom to top? Do they measure from some point within the Earth’s crust? Obviously I’m not a geologist, so perhaps I am fundamentally misunderstanding some basic geological concepts here, but I feel the article could clarify this to the readers, most of whom I would assume are not geologists either. On the other hand, perhaps it’s a typographical error or mistranscription? 66.91.36.8 (talk) 21:14, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

The crater is filled with debris and sediment. It is not a 12-miles-depth of open water. Also, this is not a social media chat page. ♆ CUSH ♆ 22:19, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Well, I'm also a bit confused, the 20 km depth is mentioned once in the lead section and again in the infobox, in both cases without a supporting citation. We have one source (cited in the article, reference #47) that reports 12 km initial depth of the excavation on the basis of "scaling laws", citing Melosh's book on impact cratering. Note that this is just the initial depth, which is almost completely erased by the rebound of the crust in the centre of the structure - see the cross-section in the "Morphology" section. By the time that the crater formation was complete, the depth was far less than 12 km. Still, I think that we should have a citation for the initial depth - I'll see what I can find. Mikenorton (talk) 23:10, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

The top of the melt sheet, which is the, "crater floor" and base of the post-impact sedimentary fill, ranges from 1.2 to 1.6 km below sea level as confirmed by drilling (Gulick et al. 2013:44). Interpretation of geophysical data indicates that the sedimentary fill on top of the melt sheet is as deep as 1.9 km (Gulick et al. 2013:44). However, the original transient crater (transient cavity) was as much as 30 km deep before it collasped (Gulick et al. 2013:fig 4).

Note: (Gulick et al. 2013:49-50) defines "crater floor" and "transient cavity". This needs to be considered in discussing how deep the crater "was" and "is".

Gulick, S.P.S., Christeson, G.L., Barton, P.J., Grieve, R.A.F., Morgan, J.V. and Urrutia‐Fucugauchi, J., 2013. Geophysical characterization of the Chicxulub impact crater. Reviews of Geophysics, 51(1), pp.31-52. open access Paul H. (talk) 00:55, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Additional note: Stöffler et al. (2004:1036) states:

"The present complex structure results from the collapse of a transient cavity, the diameter of which has been estimated to be about 90 to 120 km (Fig. 2), with a depth of about 30 km and an excavation depth of approximately 15 km (e.g., Ivanov et al. 1996; Pierazzo et al. 1998; Pierazzo and Melosh 1999; Morgan et al. 1997, 2000)."

Stöffler, D., Artemieva, N.A., Ivanov, B.A., Hecht, L., Kenkmann, T., Schmitt, R.T., Tagle, R.A. and Wittmann, A., 2004. Origin and emplacement of the impact formations at Chicxulub, Mexico, as revealed by the ICDP deep drilling at Yaxcopoil‐1 and by numerical modeling. Meteoritics & Planetary Science, 39(7), pp.1035-1067. open access Paul H. (talk) 01:48, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

@Paul H.:, thanks for going through those. The 30 km depth for the transient cavity matches what we have already in the "Effects" section. If we put that in the lead section and infobox, we'll need to make it clear exactly what we're talking about. Regarding the current crater shape, the central basin is filled with up to 3 km of impact melts, followed by a layer of suevite (variable, but locally at least 250 m thick) and about 1 km of later sediments. However, taking Gullick et al. (2013)'s definition of the crater floor, then it's only about 1 km deep currently, so anything else is just misleading. The infobox depth clearly refers to the currently observed depth, not the transient cavity depth, so actually that should be just the 1 km. Mikenorton (talk) 19:59, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

I agree. Sounds fine. Paul H. (talk) 20:04, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Depth discrepancy

English version of this page says the impact crater is 1km in depth, but Simple English says it's 20km. Some other languages also say different depths. What is the correct depth? 78.61.107.100 (talk) 18:42, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

From the article body, in the first paragraph of "Effects", ... produced a transient cavity 100 kilometers (62 mi) wide and 30 kilometers (19 mi) deep that later collapsed. This formed a crater mainly under the sea and currently covered by ~1,000 meters (3,300 ft) of sediment. In other words, the crater was instantaneously 30km deep, but has been filled in by rebound and is currently covered by 1km of sediment. You can read more details in Gulick, S.P.S.; Christeson, G.L.; Barton, P.J.; et al. (January 2013). "Geophysical characterization of the Chicxulub impact crater". Reviews of Geophysics. 51 (1): 31–52. Bibcode:2013RvGeo..51...31G. doi:10.1002/rog.20007. ISSN 8755-1209. S2CID 55502139.. Tarl N. (discuss) 23:49, 28 October 2024 (UTC)