Was the Younger Dryas mini ice-age initiated by volcanism? New evidence from Halls cave, Texas. Prehistory Decoded 2020-08-02 | A new paper suggests the Younger Dryas climate event was initiated by volcanism - specifically the Laacher See volcano in Germany. But is it right? Check out this review of their data and methods.
Greek constellations at Gobekli Tepe? Response to David Miano Prehistory Decoded 2021-11-13 | About one year ago, David Miano made a highly critical and defamatory video about me and my research into Gobekli Tepe. Here is my response.For a tutorial on this pattern matching methodology, see martinsweatman.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-statistics-of-pattern-matching.html
Harbetsuvan Tepesi Prehistory Decoded 2021-11-01 | Recent visit to southern Turkey, this time at Harbetsuvan Tepesi, part of the new Tas Tepeler complex
Gobekli Tepe WAS a settlement, not just a temple Prehistory Decoded 2021-05-16 | It's all change at Gobekli Tepe - according to a new report it WAS a settlement, and not just a temple. Here, I show you why the site's archaeologists think this, and discuss some of the repercussions of this new idea.
Review paper on the Younger Dryas impact theory Prehistory Decoded 2021-05-13 | This review paper has just been accepted by Earth-Science Reviews, one of the top journals in Earth science. See my blog www.martinsweatman.blogspot.com for a full copy.
Did a long-period comet kill the dinosaurs? Prehistory Decoded 2021-03-01 | Examines a new paper by Siraj and Loeb about the possibility that a long-period comet from the Oort cloud ended the dinosaurs. In fact, a short period comet from the Centaur population is a much more likely source.
Gobekli Tepes enclosures are huge! Prehistory Decoded 2020-12-12 | Title says it all - video shots from GT itself and Sanliurfa museum. Sorry for the wind noise.
How do we know this is the sun? Prehistory Decoded 2020-11-15 | Explains how we know this circle represents the sun, and how to decode Gobekli Tepe with that simple piece of information.
Setting up a Fortran programming environment with debugger in Windows using Visual Studio Code Prehistory Decoded 2020-10-02 | A short tutorial on how to set up a Windows programming environment, including debugger, in Windows. I'm using Windows 10 and Microsoft Visual Studio Code.
The Younger Dryas impact research debate: part 20 - southern hemisphere 2019 Prehistory Decoded 2020-09-07 | Continues my review of the Younger Dryas impact research, this time focussing on papers from 2019.
The Younger Dryas impact research debate: part 19b - complete darkness 2018 Prehistory Decoded 2020-08-17 | Continue my review of the Younger Dryas impact research debate, this time focussing on the second Wolbach paper from 2018, which tries to establish an impact winter effect
The Younger Dryas impact research debate: Part 19a - wildfires 2018 Prehistory Decoded 2020-07-28 | Younger Dryas, climate change, comet impact, wildfires, Gobekli Tepe, megafaunal extinctions
The Younger Dryas impact research debate: part 18 - Hiawatha crater and Laacher See 2018 Prehistory Decoded 2020-07-05 | Continues my review of the Younger Dryas impact research into 2018, foussing on the Greenland Crater and the Laacher See volcanic eruption.
The Younger Dryas impact research debate: part 17 - Yukon boneyards 2017 Prehistory Decoded 2020-06-19 | Continues my review of the Younger Dryas impact research debate, finishing off 2017.
The Younger Dryas Impact debate research: part 16 - nitrate and megafauna 2009/10 Prehistory Decoded 2020-06-12 | Continues my review of the academic research concerning the Younger Dryas impact. This time I mop up some papers from the new bibliography, from 2009 and 2010. We'll return to 2017 in the next video.
The Younger Dryas Impact research debate: part 15 - nanodiamonds and platinum 2017 Prehistory Decoded 2020-05-27 | Continue my review of the academic research concerning the Younger Dryas impact research. This time looking at papers in 2017 concerning the nanodiamond evidence and a widespread platinum anomaly.
The Younger Dryas impact research debate: part 14 - summary Prehistory Decoded 2020-05-09 | Quickly summarizes the debate so far up to the end of 2016. This is needed to clearly set the context for papers to follow in 2017
The Younger Dryas impact debate research: part 13 - blind test 2016 Prehistory Decoded 2020-04-28 | Continues my review of the Younger Dryas impact research, this time covering the whole of 2016
The Younger Dryas impact research debate: part 12 - house fires? 2015 Prehistory Decoded 2020-04-12 | Continues my review of the impact research literature, this time finishing off the papers from 2015
The Younger Dryas impact research debate: part 11 - Bayesian 2015 Prehistory Decoded 2020-03-28 | Continues my review of the Younger Dryas impact research into 2015.
Abu Hureyra, Gobekli Tepe and the Origin of Civilisation Prehistory Decoded 2020-03-14 | New research shows definitively that Abu Hureyra, an ancient Natufian settlement in northern Syria, was destroyed by a cometary airburst. I show here the connection between this event, the construction of the world's first ancient wonder, Gobekli Tepe, and the origin of civilisation.
The Younger Dryas impact debate research: part 10 - nanodiamonds and mammoth bones 2014 Prehistory Decoded 2020-03-02 | Continues my review of the research literature concerning the Younger Dryas impact, this time finishing off papers from 2014
The Younger Dryas impact debate research: part 9 - cosmic catastrophe 2014 Prehistory Decoded 2020-02-19 | Continues my review of the research literature surrounding the Younger Dryas impact debate, focussing on the 'cosmic catastrophe' paper by Holliday et al. from 2014.
The Younger Dryas impact debate: part 8 - timing debacle 2014 Prehistory Decoded 2020-01-30 | Continues my review of the research literature, this time focussing on some more papers 2014
The Younger Dryas impact debate: part 7 - critical review 2014 Prehistory Decoded 2020-01-21 | Continues my review of the research literature about the Younger Dryas impact debate into 2014, this time focussing on a review paper by van Hoesel et al.
The Younger Dryas impact debate: part 6 - spherules 2013 Prehistory Decoded 2020-01-08 | Continues my review of the Younger Dryas impact debate research, finishing off papers from 2013
The Younger Dryas impact debate: part 5 - platinum 2013 Prehistory Decoded 2019-12-10 | Continues my review of the Younger Dryas impact research literature - this one reviews a single paper from 2013 - the 'platinum' paper - a crucial paper that almost wins the debate.
The Younger Dryas impact debate: part 4 - confirmation 2012 Prehistory Decoded 2019-12-05 | Continues my review of the research literature into 2012
The Younger Dryas impact debate: part 3 - requiem 2011 Prehistory Decoded 2019-11-19 | Sound boosted by Marc Young - thanks Marc!
The Younger Dryas impact debate: part 3 Prehistory Decoded 2019-11-16 | Continues our review of the Younger Dryas impact research into 2011
The Younger Dryas impact debate: part 2 - Greenland nanodiamonds 2010 Prehistory Decoded 2019-10-31 | Part 2 of the series covers developments in the research in 2010, including the nanodiamond layer found in the Greenland ice sheet
The Younger Dryas impact debate: part 1 - Firestone 2007 Prehistory Decoded 2019-10-19 | Surveys the research literature surrounding the Younger Dryas debate. Part 1 discusses papers from 2007 to 2009.
Locating the Solstices and Equinoxes at Gobekli Tepe using Stellarium Prehistory Decoded 2019-03-18 | How to use Stellarium to locate solstices and Equinoxes. The focus here is on Gobekli Tepe (Sanliurfa) around 10950 BC, at the time of the Younger Dryas impact.
The fundamental physics of reproduction - potential origin of life Prehistory Decoded 2017-12-09 | This work recently published in Molecular Physics. Click 'Show more' for more info.Also see my website: http://www.homepages.ed.ac.uk/msweatma/papers_new.htmland the journal website:http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00268976.2017.1406164and my review article co-authored with Dr Lue (University of Strathclyde)onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/adts.201900025All life on Earth is thought to be related to a type of single-celled organism called the 'Last Universal Common Ancestor', or LUCA. But LUCA was not necessarily the first cell to exist. Imagine the very first cell. It would still have been too complex to simply have formed spontaneously. Much more likely, before the very first cell we would recognise, there was another 'cluster' of complex chemicals that would be unreconisable to us as a cell. And yet it must too have evolved from earlier clusters of chemicals. Therefore, it must also have been 'alive', just not as we know it.Now, go back further in time and imagine what the very first cluster of chemicals that could be considered 'alive' looked like? Difficult isn't it. However, in order for chemcial evolution to occur, even this most primitive cluster of chemcials, that can still be considered to be alive, must have been able to reproduce. Nobody knows what this cluster of chemicals looked like, but it must have existed. It must have exhibited reproduction, but conventionally it is thought that reproduction requires complex chemical reaction networks. The paradox at the heart of studies of the origin of life and synthetic life is this question; 'How can a cluster of chemicals be sufficiently complex to reproduce and evolve, and yet sufficiently simple that its parent could form spontaneously?' Its parent must have been able to form spontaneously, since if it could not then it too can be considered to be alive, and therefore our cluster is not the first living organism.My new work just published provides a potential answer to this paradox. It shows that even the simplest cluster imaginable, without any chemistry at all, can reproduce. Instead of complex chemistry, all that is needed is simple physics, i.e. particles should have a long-range repulsion. As most biochemicals exhibit a long-range repulsion through becoming charged in water (e.g. through protonation or deprotonation), reproduction of simple clusters is likely to be ubiquitous. Quite possibly, it is happening right now in every cell of your body, and it might also have happened within the earliest ponds of 'primordial soup' as soon as Earth was cold enough for these clusters to form. Therfore, perhaps life began with the simplest of clusters that can form spontaneously, with chemical evolution leading, eventually, to us today. The video shows that clusters of a single type of particle (or chemical) with a long-range repulsion (and a short-range attraction) can reproduce. The simulation used in the paper is a type of Monte Carlo simulation that mimicks Brownian dynamics. There are no chemical reactions involved (note, water is not represented directly in this simulation - its effect is included through the definition of the effective forces between the particles).Why hasn't this behaviour been seen before? In fact it probably has, but that work was a long time ago and has largely been forgotten or ignored.Proteins and other biological molecules are already known to form large stable clusters in solution. And there is good experimental evidence that even smaller 'primordial' chemcials, like amino acids and nucleobases, the building blocks of proteins, DNA and RNA, might show the same behaviour.But, around 50 years ago, Sidney Fox, and American chemist, observed under an optical microscope what he called 'proteinoid microspheres' reproducing, just like these SALR clusters do. At the time he argued in many papers that these microspheres were precursors to life, but few people agreed him, and with the advent of genetics the research focus shifted towards DNA and then RNA.So, my latest work might be the first theoretical explanation for Fox's microspheres. It also suggests that, although Fox might have been on the right track, his proteinoid microspheres were not yet alive. They lacked chemical evolution, and because they formed spontaneously in solution they do not exhibit the property of death, and are therefore not alive.This work is now publsihed in the international peer-reviewed journal 'Molecular Physics'. It potentially opens a new avenue in the search for the origin of life and in studies of synthetic life.As Dirac might have said '... the rest is chemistry'.
