verneshot

[Jonathan Lighter]

"A verneshot," says Biology Daily [http://www.biologydaily.com/biology/Verneshot] "is a hypothetical volcanic eruption event which launches an extremely large rock into a sub-orbital trajectory. According to the Department of Marine Geodynamics at GeoMar, Kiel, such an event could be triggered by an explosion caused by a mantle plume under a craton in an area of continental rift . Verneshots are one possible cause for extinction-level events."

You can read all about the theory of verneshots (though bedtime might be a bad time) here : http://www.meta-religion.com/Archaeology/Other/verneshot_cause_of_dinosuars.htm   and here :http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2668094 . The word was evidently coined at Kiel University in 2003 or 2004, with reference to the tremendous cannon shot that would be required to fire a projectile to the moon, as in Jules Verne's early sci-fi novel, _From the Earth to the Moon_.

JL


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