Michigan HIT by MASSIVE Comet Impact

Michigan hit by a massive comet impact. This is one of the coolest Michigan stories you’ll ever learn about. If you nerd out with me for 10 minutes, I’m going to take you down an awesome Michigan rabbit hole.

The mainstream view of geology is that Michigan is shaped by glacial movement ripping bedrock, moving soils and form our lakes via meltwater. Ultimately, to form the mitten that we call our home. But what if there is more to this story than we thought?

Our journey doesn’t begin here in Michigan, rather it starts 700 miles away in North and South Carolina.

Carolina Bays

700 miles away in North and South Carolina you find these elliptical depressions all next to each other and seemingly oriented in the same “direction”.

Depending on where you’re from Carolina Bays have other names, and so for the sake of simplicity we’re going to stick with this name. If these were exclusive to just North and South Carolina, that’d be one thing. These ellipticals are actually found in New York, down the entire eastern coast, and into Florida. In every single state.

As you look at the shape and “direction” of the ellipticals, it changes depending on where you’re looking. In New York, these Bays are oriented west to east. As you follow them southward and westward the orientation of the ellipticals direction starts to turn clockwise.

There are nearly 500,000 of these Carolina Bays all along the eastern coast. Yet you also have many thousands of them clustered in Nebraska and in Kansas. You even have some around the Golf of Mexico, Mississippi, Alabama and other places.

Based on the number of these depressions, the location, and the “direction” of these depressions, the theory is Carolina Bays are the debris field from a comet impact.

Based on the directional orientation and considering the rotation of the earth they point back to a single location. Triangulating them right back home to Michigan.

A big hole in this theory

This theory has a BIG problem. For starters, where is the impact crater in Michigan?

This wouldn’t be an awesome rabbit hole if there wasn’t an answer to that question.

According to mainstream geology, we know that glaciers carved out the Saginaw Bay and shaped our Michigan landscape as a whole. Is it possible that the glaciers had a helping hand?

Saginaw Impact theorist believe so.

Impact into Ice

At this time, Michigan would’ve been completely covered in almost 2-mile-high continental glacier. The theory suggests that it’s at this time a comet impact would’ve hit the glacier at the Saginaw Bay. A low angle of impact, causing a shallow crater site, muffled by the ice. Any remains of a comet impact site would’ve mostly washed away as ice melted. Just a shallow depression and bedrock compression surrounding the impact, barely noticable.

The resulting explosion would have sent ice and rock debris flying hundreds of miles away. The creation of the Carolina Bays.

Let’s go a step further in this theory. According to the theory’s proponents, the bedrock carved out of the Saginaw Bay is an odd anomaly, and an impact better explains it.

This image of Michigan above, describes the Michigan bedrock basin. The green areas in the middle are mostly very hard carbonate rock, whereas the surrounding areas in brown are softer rocks like sandstone and shale. From our mainstream theory of glacial erosion, the ice sheets were able to remove large volumes of strata (layers of rock) but the ice was unsuccessful in ripping away the carbonate layer with one exception – Saginaw Bay. Why is that?

A massive comet impact obviously!

Now having gone down the majority of this Michigan rabbit hole, it does make you wonder when you look at a topographical map. Are the higher-land regions of Michigan just areas that were compressed out of the way from an impact? Is Saginaw Bay a crater site? Next time you travel to Bay City, Michigan this will give you something to think about.

We don’t know what we don’t know.

This is only interesting because we don’t know what we don’t know. Everything gets lost in time. No matter what we do or where we look, we just won’t find the answer.

That’s not to say that science doesn’t do a good job at trying to connect the dots. Just that there will always be some limiting factors preventing true understanding of the world around us.

What do you think?

Our goal here was to breakdown the basics of this theory. So, if you want to learn more about the Saginaw Bay Impact theory click here to view an awesome breakdown.

So, was Michigan hit by a massive comet impact? Is it possible that a comet did hit Michigan causing some geological changes? Even with a skeptical eye, I think there is some room to fit this idea together with how we understand the creation of our Great Lakes. So, for the fun of it, we’re going to say yes.

Hope you learned something new today!

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