Featured

Trigonal hapkeite Fe2Si in the Chiemgau impact crater strewn field

and a critical comment on the Mineralogical Magazine Peer Review

50th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference 2019 (LPI Contrib. No. 2132) 1520.pdf

Trigonal and cubic Fe2Si polymorphs (hapkeite) in the eight kilograms find of natural iron silicide from Grabenstätt (Chiemgau, Southeast Germany) – authors
Frank Bauer1, Michael Hiltl, Michael A. Rappenglück, Kord Ernstson

We are referring here to the article recently published in the Mineralogical Magazine
by Luca Bindi et al. on the discovery of trigonal hapkeite:

Trigonal Fe2Si from the Blackville site, South Carolina, USA: occurrence, composition and determination of the crystal structure. – Mineralogical Magazine 90(1):1-20.

We point to our post above we published seven years ago at the LPSC 2019 on hapkeite, which occurs within the vast distribution area – spanning several tens of kilometers – of the entire iron silicide family in connection with the Holocene airburst impact event.

In addition, a very comprehensive paper on the impressive iron silicide deposit at the Chiemgau impact site was published in 2023, covering all previous findings and observations regarding the excavated metallic chunks and spherules (not in glass, as the article incorrectly claims), along with extensive SEM, TEM, and EBSD analyses:

A Prominent Iron Silicides Strewn Field and Its Relation to the Bronze Age/Iron Age Chiemgau Meteorite Impact Event (Germany) by Kord Ernstson, Frank Bauer, Michael Hiltl

All of this is omitted by Luca Bindi et al. and addressed only in passing in a single sentence with a citation. The Mineralogical Magazine and the responsible peer reviewers are accused of manipulating science. A quick web search using the term “trigonal hapkeite” would have listed our publications among the top results on Google.

Featured

New article: impact and the high-resolution Digital Terrain Model

Click the article (translated from the German original)

We present our findings on the Schlitzer Kauten in Hesse, Germany, revealing their complex structure as part of a larger impact feature field formed by a low-altitude touchdown airburst event. Our high-resolution digital terrain model DGM 1 has allowed us to rule out previous interpretations and connect these formations to similar Holocene events in Mid-Europe from the French border to the Czech Republic.

Please note that this article is a computer translation of the original German text and may contain incorrect wording.

Featured

LPSC 2025 and MetSoc 2025 Contributions

Lake Bärnsee impact – Chiemgau impact strewn field – Impact research in the Czech Republic – Lake Tüttensee multiple impact – The Saarland impact and DTM – Viničky 100 km diameter impact structure in Slovakia

Lake Bärnsee in the Chiemgau Holocene impact strewn field (Germany): ice-age tongue basin lake vs. Holocene low-altitude touchdown airburst impact formation

Kord Ernstson and Jens Poßekel

Poster Meteoritical Society Meeting 2025

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Many of a kind: the Digital Terrain Model and a new cluster of larger and smaller craters accumulate the Chiemgau meteorite impact strewn field

Kord Ernstson and Jens Poßekel

Poster Meteoritical Society Meeting 2025

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The current state of impact research in the Czech Republic

Martin Molnár, Karel Ventura, Jens Poßekel and Kord Ernstson

Poster Meteoritical Society Meeting 2025

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The Digital Terrain Model: New Insights into the Holocene Lake Tüttensee (Germany) Multiple Impact Structure as Part of the Chiemgau Low Altitude Touchdown Airburst Event

Jens Poßekel and Kord Ernstson

Poster 56th LPSC Meeting 2025, 2770.pdf

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The new world of impact cratering: the high-resolution digital terrain model and hydrocode modeling -the Saarland (Germany) low altitude touchdown airburst impact event

Kord Ernstson, Werner Müller, Andreas Gawlik-Wagner, Kord Ernstson and Allen West

Poster 56th LPSC Meeting 2025, 1264.pdf

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Viničky: evidence of a 100 km impact structure in Slovakia

Kord Ernstson, Martin Molnár and Pavel Švanda

Poster 56th LPSC Meeting 2025, 1639.pdf

MetSoc Meeting 2023 Los Angeles – two poster contributions

The Enigmatic Luzice (Czech Republic) Megablock and Melt Rock Megabreccia: Evidence of a Meteorite Impact Origin click PDF

Kord Ernstson, Jens Poßekel, Karel Ventura, and Martin Molnár

Abstract: We report an unusual polymict melt rock megabreccia in the form of an allochthonous non-volcanic megablock within the Tertiary volcanic province of the Bohemian Massif. It is considered a relict of a suspected low-altitude airburst impact.

The Canadian Earth Impact Database, Wikipedia and the Azuara and Rubielos de la Cérida (Spain) Impact Case click PDF

F.M. Claudin and K. Ernstson

Abstract: We report on the mid-Tertiary multiple Azuara impact event (Spain) with the Azuara impact structure and the Rubielos de la Cérida impact basin and the chequered history of their discovery and their place in impact research.

New impact research journal: Open Access, Peer-reviewed

A peer-reviewed journal collection covering all aspects of airbursts and impacts on Earth by Comets and Asteroids – Click the image to enter this new world of impact research.

Under the auspices of the ScienceOpen platform, this new journal provides a publication forum that is arguably unparalleled within the global impact research community. Designed as an open access journal with free access to any size readership, this journal for high quality contributions is a response to what a new report (1/4/2023) in the journal NATURE described as a sharp increase in the number of purely scientific and technical articles in recent decades, with a drastic decline in submitted articles pointing in new, exciting, “disruptive” directions. This development is unfortunately accompanied by increasingly incompetent and partially manipulated peer review processes, for which there is some thought-provoking evidence directly addressed here. What expresses this alarming development better than that at MDPI journals the Editorial Board at Minerals, for example, has 405 members and the Reviewer Board 274 members, and at Geosciences 300 members occupy the Editorial Board and 198 members the Topical Advisory Panel.

This new journal will have a different character, and a detailed introduction and overview (aims and scope, article submission, published articles statistics, peer review processes, and more) is provided by clicking on the image above. A special feature is already added here that the journal also consideres quality posters and iPosters accepted from meetings (e.g. LPSC, AGU Fall Meeting, MetSoc Meeting) for publication in this journal.

Lapsed Invitation to Authors – No More Contributions to the Special Issue of the MDPI Journal GEOSCIENCES on “Terrestrial Meteorite Impacts and Impact Cratering”

The ugly side of Peer Review.

The guest editors of the Special Issue on terrestrial meteoritic impacts and impact structures, Prof. Dr. Kord Ernstson (Editor-in-Chief), Dr. Allen West, Dr. Gerhard Schmidt (Co-Editors) have terminated their collaboration with the MDPI Journal GEOSCIENCES with immediate effect (with confirmation from MDPI). The reason is intolerable and ugly manipulation of the peer review process for research articles submitted for the special issue. Thereafter, unchallenged by Geosciences, external intervention (almost certainly from the so-called narrower “impact community”) occurred in the virtually positively terminated review process of several articles with a final REJECT by the Geosciences Academic Editorial, without a single word of notice to us as responsible editors of the Special Issue.

This practice, massively violated against all scientific ethics (which MDPI apparently holds so high), has become intolerable for us. The four research articles already announced for the Special Issue are in preparation for a more honest publication organ.