This is a hypothesis and probably fits more into the ‘Non-Mainstream Science and Controversial Science’ forum but given some of the outrageous threads there this is far more mainstream like by comparison.
First of all some preliminaries, when a seismic event occurs such as an earthquake seismic waves are produced.
Seismic waves which travel through the earth’s interior are called body waves and can either be P- waves (Primary waves) or S-waves (Secondary waves) which travel in different trajectories in the interior.
Seismic events can also be triggered by impact events, the most well known is the Chicxulub crater caused by an asteroid impact which led to the Cretaceous mass extinction 66 million years ago.
The Permian mass extinction which occurred nearly 200 million years earlier was far worse, the scientific consensus is the extinction was caused by extensive volcanism that formed the Siberian Traps which released large volumes of sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere resulting in oxygen starvation, elevating global temperatures, and acidification of the oceans.
Volcanism is easily explained when it occurs at tectonic plate boundaries but the Siberian Traps are nowhere near a plate boundary, volcanism must have been triggered by some interior hotspot but what caused this hotspot in the first place?
There is evidence of an enormous impact crater in Wilkes Land Antarctica, direct evidence is difficult to obtain as the crater lies beneath the ice sheet.
If it is a crater the impactor is 4-5 times wider than the asteroid which created the Chicxulub crater.
The location of this suspect crater puts the Siberian Traps antipodal to the crater.
This supports the hypothesis seismic energy from a major meteorite impact would disrupt the surface on the opposite side of the Earth. The different types of wave phases are shown below. In a perfectly spherically symmetrical structure, waves arrive simultaneously from all directions and focus exactly at the antipode.
The disruption would cause the formation of a mantle plume hotspot and resulting volcanism.
A further consequence of the impact event was the separation of Australia from Antarctica.
The paper for antipodal hotspots is found here.
A criticism of this hypothesis is whether it is even possible to focus enough energy at the antipode to form hotspots.
First of all some preliminaries, when a seismic event occurs such as an earthquake seismic waves are produced.
Seismic waves which travel through the earth’s interior are called body waves and can either be P- waves (Primary waves) or S-waves (Secondary waves) which travel in different trajectories in the interior.
Seismic events can also be triggered by impact events, the most well known is the Chicxulub crater caused by an asteroid impact which led to the Cretaceous mass extinction 66 million years ago.
The Permian mass extinction which occurred nearly 200 million years earlier was far worse, the scientific consensus is the extinction was caused by extensive volcanism that formed the Siberian Traps which released large volumes of sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere resulting in oxygen starvation, elevating global temperatures, and acidification of the oceans.
Volcanism is easily explained when it occurs at tectonic plate boundaries but the Siberian Traps are nowhere near a plate boundary, volcanism must have been triggered by some interior hotspot but what caused this hotspot in the first place?
There is evidence of an enormous impact crater in Wilkes Land Antarctica, direct evidence is difficult to obtain as the crater lies beneath the ice sheet.
If it is a crater the impactor is 4-5 times wider than the asteroid which created the Chicxulub crater.
The location of this suspect crater puts the Siberian Traps antipodal to the crater.
This supports the hypothesis seismic energy from a major meteorite impact would disrupt the surface on the opposite side of the Earth. The different types of wave phases are shown below. In a perfectly spherically symmetrical structure, waves arrive simultaneously from all directions and focus exactly at the antipode.
The disruption would cause the formation of a mantle plume hotspot and resulting volcanism.
A further consequence of the impact event was the separation of Australia from Antarctica.
The paper for antipodal hotspots is found here.
A criticism of this hypothesis is whether it is even possible to focus enough energy at the antipode to form hotspots.
