Author(s)

Hermann G. W. Burchard

Department of Mathematics, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, USA.

Several significant events of a geological nature occurred approximately 800 ka before the present: (1) Australasian tektite fall (AA), (2) Brunhes-Matuyama geomagnetic reversal (BMR), (3) mid-Pleistocene changes in ice age cycles. Add to these the undated fault system (4) in the South-West (SW) of the South China Sea (SCS). Here we offer a unified cause for all four of these in (5), an impact in the SCS of a large, massive cosmic object, likely a comet, obliquely coming from the SW at an extremely shallow angle, striking the Sunda shelf yet unexploded with the shock of its compressed air bow wave, and causing the continual shelf and slope to collapse, resulting in the fault system (4), then traveling almost tangentially to the surface, exploding at impact with the sea surface, ejecting the tektites (1), creating the formation underlying the later atolls of Spratlies Archipelago (6), Nansha Islands in Chinese, & causing the BMR (2). An explanation of event (3) was Richard Muller’s hypothesis of planet Earth passing through an interplanetary dust cloud periodically due to ecliptic precession. Here we hypothesize this cloud actually is a belt of Australasian tektites ejected into space at super-orbital velocities that Earth encounters about every 100 ka.

Spratlies Archipelago, Cosmic Object Impact Crater, Australasian Tektites, Brunhes-Matuyama Geomagnetic Reversal, Richard Muller Dust Cloud Hypothesis, Mid-Pleistocene Ice Age Cycle Transition, Google Earth High Resolution Update

Burchard, H. (2018) Spratlies Archipelago as the Australasian Tektite Impact Crater, Details of Formation & Richard Muller’s Dust Cloud Explanation for the Mid-Pleistocene Ice Age Cycle Transition. Open Journal of Geology, 8, 1-8. doi: 10.4236/ojg.2018.81001.