* Astronomy

George Howard is many things. He is the president of the Raleigh-based Restoration Systems mitigation bank and a conservationist; he is a history buff, a science geek, a cartographer. The 42-year-old family man is a talented amateur artist, a dedicated if unprolific fisherman and a politico whose office photos show him chummy with folks including Jesse Helms, Newt Gingrich, Lauch Faircloth and both George Bushes.
But what really gets Howard going - gets him talking a mile a minute, playing hooky from work and waking up at night - is his research into a geographical oddity known as the Carolina Bays.
These elliptical, wetland depressions, often rimmed with white, crystalline sand, are sprinkled along much of the North Carolina coast and parts of the eastern seaboard from Georgia to the District of Columbia. To Howard and those who share both his interest and his theory, these droplet-shaped dents (often choked with bay trees, hence the name) were most likely caused by a life-obliterating comet that landed on earth about 13,000 years ago: in geologic terms, quite recently. Howard wants to prove this, and he wants the world to take note.

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Title: Formation of the Carolina Bays: ET Impact vs. Wind-and-Water
Authors: Robert Kobres, George A. Howard, Allen West, Richard B. Firestone, James P. Kennett, David Kimbel, Wes Newell
(Sponsor: George A. Howard)

The Carolina Bays are a group of lakes, wetlands, and depressions, stretching from Florida to New Jersey along the Atlantic Ocean, and ranging up to 11 km in length and about 15 m in depth. Their distinctive elliptical shapes and common orientation towards the Great Lakes region have generated many hypotheses about their method of formation, including extraterrestrial impact (Melton and Schriever, 1933; Prouty, 1934). Another suggests that springs or groundwater dissolution of soluble minerals caused subsidence, which formed water-filled depressions that became the Bays (Johnson, D.W., 1944). One of the prevailing views is that Carolina Bays represent irregular lakes that were gradually reshaped into ellipses by circulating lake currents, generated by strong ice-age winds blowing perpendicular to the current long axes of the Bays (Kaczorowski, 1977). We report results from a suite of cores taken from within a Bay, which we have named “Howard Bay,” located about 2 km north of the town of Duart in Bladen County, North Carolina. Located on the high western bluff of the Cape Fear River, the Bay is 2.7 km long, 1.6 km wide, and filled with about 9 meters of sediment with an encircling rim that is $\sim$1-meter high. Analyses of seven cores along the long axis of Howard Bay reveal an assemblage of abundant magnetic grains, microspherules, carbon spherules, glass-like carbon, and iridium, typical of the YDB impact layer (12.9 ka) at many other sites across North America. The impact layer conforms to the basal contours of the basin, suggesting that the markers were deposited immediately or soon after the Bay formed. Further analyses of samples in complete core sequences reveal that, unlike typical, peat-rich Carolina Bays, Howard Bay essentially lacks peat, diatoms, pollen, or other organic materials, suggesting that this Bay never stored water for any sustained length of time. Furthermore, several trenches confirm that the deepest part of the Bay is filled with >6 m of cross-bedded eolian sand with no evidence of lacustrine sedimentation. This evidence calls into question prevailing hypotheses (a) that all Bays were lakes and ponds in the past and that their shapes were formed by wave action, or (b) that groundwater movement led to subsidence that formed the Bay. The presence of impact markers, including high concentrations of iridium, in a layer just above the basal sediments of this Bay that is filled with eolian sand supports the extraterrestrial impact hypothesis for Bay formation.

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Citadel professor rejects meteor theory of Carolina bays’ origin

Were they formed by the impact of a meteor striking the Earth or are they merely sink holes? The answer to how Carolina bays were formed is not something about which scientists agree.

Carolina bays are geological depressions of mysterious origin that occur throughout the Coastal Plain of the Carolinas and Georgia. They take their name from the evergreen bay trees that typically characterise them.
Carolina bays are isolated wetlands in natural shallow depressions, which are largely fed by rain and shallow groundwater. These elliptical-shaped bays generally have a northwest to southeast orientation and vary in size from less than an acre to many acres. Water levels are normally lowest in autumn and highest in early spring; some Carolina Bays are wet all year while others fill with water, then dry up, depending on the season.
Different researchers believe Carolina bays are 30,000 to 100,000 years old or older, yet scientists are not certain of their origins. One theory suggests that a meteor hit Earth thousands of years ago, breaking into pieces that made dents as they skipped across the planet’s surface.

On March 19, Dr. Richard Porcher, a professor of biology and director of the herbarium at The Citadel, gave a presentation on Carolina bays to the Friends of Santee National Wildlife Refuge.

First described around 1750 by naturalist John Bartram, a large concentration of Carolina bays is found in South Carolina’s coastal plain, some 4,000, but they also occur in southeastern North Carolina and northeastern Georgia.


The first aerial photo of Carolina Bays, taken in 1930.

"The bays are clumped and not randomly located. I have used this against a shower of meteorites because a shower of meteorites would seem to form a random pattern. These bays are discretely in certain areas, and even in a clump they seem to march in a line. To me, it is difficult to get that type of pattern from a shower of meteorites" - Dr. Richard Porcher

One of the features of the Carolina bays is normally that they have a high, elevated sand ridge along their southeastern side. In keeping with the meteorite theory, the meteorite struck and pushed out a depression, and as it struck, it pushed up a sand ridge. Some of these elevations have multiple sand ridges.


Orientation of the bays points back to a common point of origin to the northwest.
Position: 34°17'27.53"N 78°30'42.31"W

"So, if you believe a meteorite hit, you have to believe a meteorite struck here and pushed up the first ridge. Another struck right behind it and pushed up the second and so on. Some of these bays have six or seven ridges" - Dr. Richard Porcher.

Another theory on the creation of Carolina bays is that they were formed over a long period of time. Some think they were formed by artisan wells, or sink holes. However, as Porcher explained, there are “holes” is all these theories, so the bottom line is no one theory holds water.
They are puzzling, unsolved, geological phenomena.

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