Did A Meterorite Trigger an Ancient Tsunami in New York?
2,300 years ago, a meteorite hit just outside of Long Island, possibly triggering a tsunami that covered most of New York City. Katherine Cagen of Harvard University believes that she has found evidence in the Hudson River between the borders of New York and New Jersey.
The evidence included deformed rocks; rare microscopic “nanodiamonds”; and microscopic, perfectly round rocks called spherules, which form when molten and vaporized rock are flung into the air by a space impact and then solidify in the temporary vacuum created by the blast.
The Hudson River samples date back to around 300 B.C.—the same age as some out-of-place gravel deposits discovered by another team of scientists on Long Island in 2003.
The rocky layer is several inches thick and appears to have been transported from a gravel-rich coast a few hundred meters away. The individual rocks are quite large—some as big as fists—so normal waves or wind could not have carried the stones,
More research needs to be done, but, so far, it’s proved quite interesting.
