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Re: (meteorobs) Iridium from Impacts vs Volcanism
"Still others question how the impact could have ignited global wildfires"
I don't have time to check references to this, but as impacts scale up,
new phenomena appear. One is the ejection of substantial material back
into space which falls as secondary debris some distance from the impact.
Such debris of tens of meters diameter can cause wildfires from their
radiant heat on re-entry. Thus, within an hour of a huge impact,
wildfires can spring up all over the Earth.
Now, this makes a nice little story, but I don't know the details of the
physics, so can't say at what size of impactor this becomes important. It
is my belief that the Chicxulub impact was large enough, but I really
don't know the literature.
Cheers, Rob
Robert H. McNaught
rmn@aaocbn.aaodot gov.au
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