Did comet smashup unleash Earths mini Ice Age?
by Richard Ingham Richard Ingham Fri Apr 2, 7:32 am ET PARIS (AFP) – It has been called the Big Freeze, the Last Blast of the Ice Age or — to use the scientific name — the Younger Dryas, and for climate experts it is one of the big mysteries of their field. Around 12,900 years ago, Earth was on a steadily warming trend. For nearly 100,000 years, the planet had been gripped in glaciation. Ice sheets placed a swathe of the northern hemisphere under a dead hand, extending their thrall as far as south as New England and Wales. But just as the glaciers were beginning to retreat, and an easier life at last beckoned for Earth’s small population of humans, everything went into reverse. Temperatures fell dramatically by up to eight degrees Celsius (14.4 degrees Fahrenheit), heralding a cruel winter that would last 1,300 years. But what caused it? Crunching powerful equations and weighing fresh evidence, an astrobiologist in Britain is pointing the finger at an unusual culprit. Earth collided
