Are the planets growing?

Beyond the boundaries of established science an avalanche of exotic ideas compete for our attention. Experts tell us that these ideas should not be permitted to take up the time of working scientists, and for the most part they are surely correct. But what about the gems in the rubble pile? By what ground-rules might we bring extraordinary new possibilities to light?

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allynh
Posts: 919
Joined: Fri Aug 22, 2008 5:51 pm

Re: Are the planets growing?

Unread post by allynh » Mon Aug 22, 2016 10:38 am

This is the Science Daily article from August 17, 2011 that moonkoon linked to. Be sure to download the ScienceDirect pdf in the second link as well. Thanks moonkoon.

Why does this final comment not reassure me. HA!
"Our study provides an independent confirmation that the solid Earth is not getting larger at present, within current measurement uncertainties," said Wu.
It's a small world, after all: Earth is not expanding, NASA research confirms -- ScienceDaily
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 120527.htm
Since Charles Darwin's time, scientists have speculated that the solid Earth might be expanding or contracting. That was the prevailing belief, until scientists developed the theory of plate tectonics, which explained the large-scale motions of Earth's lithosphere, or outermost shell. Even with the acceptance of plate tectonics half a century ago, some Earth and space scientists have continued to speculate on Earth's possible expansion or contraction on various scientific grounds.

Now a new NASA study, published recently in Geophysical Research Letters, has essentially laid those speculations to rest. Using a cadre of space measurement tools and a new data calculation technique, the team detected no statistically significant expansion of the solid Earth.

So why should we care if Mother Nature is growing? After all, Earth's shape is constantly changing. Tectonic forces such as earthquakes and volcanoes push mountains higher, while erosion and landslides wear them down. In addition, large-scale climate events like El Nino and La Nina redistribute vast water masses among Earth's ocean, atmosphere and land.

Scientists care because, to put movements of Earth's crust into proper context, they need a frame of reference to evaluate them against. Any significant change in Earth's radius will alter our understanding of our planet's physical processes and is fundamental to the branch of science called geodesy, which seeks to measure Earth's shape and gravity field, and how they change over time.

To make these measurements, the global science community established the International Terrestrial Reference Frame. This reference frame is used for ground navigation and for tracking spacecraft in Earth orbit. It is also used to monitor many aspects of global climate change, including sea level rise and its sources; imbalances in ice mass at Earth's poles; and the continuing rebound of Earth's surface following the retreat of the massive ice sheets that blanketed much of Earth during the last Ice Age.

But measuring changes in Earth's size hasn't exactly been easy for scientists to quite literally "get their arms around." After all, they can't just wrap a giant tape measure around Earth's belly to get a definitive reading. Fortunately, the field of high-precision space geodesy gives scientists tools they can use to estimate changes in Earth's radius. These include:

Satellite laser ranging -- a global observation station network that measures, with millimeter-level precision, the time it takes for ultrashort pulses of light to travel from the ground stations to satellites specially equipped with retroreflectors and back again.

Very-long baseline interferometry -- a radio astronomy technology that combines observations of an object made simultaneously by many telescopes to simulate a telescope as big as the maximum distance between the telescopes.

Global Positioning System -- the U.S.-built space-based global navigation system that provides users around the world with precise location and time information.
Doppler Orbitography and Radiopositioning Integrated by Satellite -- a French satellite system used to determine satellite orbits and positioning. Beacons on the ground emit radio signals that are received by satellites. The movement of the satellites causes a frequency shift of the signal that can be observed to determine ground positions and other information.

Scientists use all these techniques to calculate the International Terrestrial Reference Frame. Central to the reference frame is its point of origin: the precise location of the average center of mass of the total Earth system (the combination of the solid Earth and the fluid envelope of ocean, ice and atmosphere that surrounds it, around which all Earth satellites orbit). Scientists currently determine this origin point based on a quarter century of satellite laser ranging data, considered the most accurate space geodetic tool for this purpose.

But the accuracy of the satellite laser ranging data and all existing space geodesy technologies is contaminated, both by the effects of other major Earth processes, and limited ground measurement sites. Think of it this way: if all of Earth's GPS stations were located in Norway, their data would indicate that Earth is growing, because high-latitude countries like Norway are still rising in elevation in response to the removal of the weight of Ice Age ice sheets. So how can scientists be sure the reference frame is accurate?

Enter an international group of scientists led by Xiaoping Wu of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and including participants from the Institut Geographique National, Champs-sur-Marne in France, and Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands. The team set out to independently evaluate the accuracy of the International Terrestrial Reference Frame and shed new light on the Earth expansion/contraction theory.

The team applied a new data calculation technique to estimate the rate of change in the solid Earth's average radius over time, taking into account the effects of other geophysical processes. The previously discussed geodetic techniques (satellite laser ranging, very-long baseline interferometry and GPS) were used to obtain data on Earth surface movements from a global network of carefully selected sites. These data were then combined with measurements of Earth's gravity from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) spacecraft and models of ocean bottom pressure, which help scientists interpret gravity change data over the ocean.

The result? The scientists estimated the average change in Earth's radius to be 0.004 inches (0.1 millimeters) per year, or about the thickness of a human hair, a rate considered statistically insignificant.

"Our study provides an independent confirmation that the solid Earth is not getting larger at present, within current measurement uncertainties," said Wu.

The above post is reprinted from materials provided by NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

pavlink
Posts: 166
Joined: Thu Jan 03, 2013 7:14 am

Re: Are the planets growing?

Unread post by pavlink » Thu Sep 01, 2016 10:27 pm

Earth Is GAINING Land Despite Warming-Fueled Sea Level Rise, Study Finds
http://principia-scientific.org/earth-g ... udy-finds/

Earth is gaining land due to expanding.
We live in a double star system.
We need to study double star systems.

Solar System as 4D energy vortex
http://files.kostovi.com/8835e.pdf

MosaicDave
Posts: 108
Joined: Mon Sep 07, 2009 7:56 am
Location: Pennsylvania
Contact:

Re: Are the planets growing?

Unread post by MosaicDave » Fri Sep 02, 2016 5:35 am

Actually, thanks very much for this link. The article you indicate is interesting, but also I was very pleased to discover principia-scientific.org; it looks to be a valuable venue to watch.

--dc

allynh
Posts: 919
Joined: Fri Aug 22, 2008 5:51 pm

Re: Are the planets growing?

Unread post by allynh » Fri Sep 02, 2016 9:41 am

Silly, pavlink, the article you linked had nothing to do with GET. It's about man-made land, etc... Here is the text so people don't have to follow the click-bait. HA!

Earth Is GAINING Land Despite Warming-Fueled Sea Level Rise, Study finds
Coastal areas around the world are expanding in the face of projections that global warming-induced sea level rise will wipe out coastal cities.

But a recent study by the Dutch Deltares Research Institute found coastal areas had grown, on net, 13,000 square miles over the last 30 years. In total, the study found 67,000 square miles of water was converted into land, and 44,000 square miles of land was covered by water.

“We expected that the coast would start to retreat due to sea level rise, but the most surprising thing is that the coasts are growing all over the world,” Fedor Baart, the study’s lead author, told BBC News. “We’re were able to create more land than sea level rise was taking.”

Baart noted the expansion of coastlines around the world has thwarted sea level rise that scientists predict will get worse due to man-made global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts sea levels could rise as high as 16 millimeters a year by 2100.

Baart specifically pointed to Dubai, where the coast, “had been significantly extended, with the creation of new islands to house luxury resorts,” according to BBC, and to China where the, “whole coast from the Yellow Sea all the way down to Hong Kong” had been expanded.

The study also found irrigation completely dried up the Aral Sea, and that glacial melting created new lakes on the Tibetan Plateau. It looked at other areas of the world, like the Amazon, where natural and artificial works changed bodies of water.

“We knew in Myanmar that several dams were being built, but we were able to see how many,” Baart said. “And we also looked at North Korea, and we found dams being built there just north of the border from South Korea.”

Baart’s study comes after years of being warned that coastal cities and small islands would be overtaken by rising seas. But this research shows that’s not necessarily the case.

Pacific Islands have been more resilient to global warming than scientists predicted. Some have even grown in size.

Scientists from Australia and New Zealand found in 2015 that despite the Funafuti Atoll seeing “some of the highest rates of sea-level rise… over the past 60 [years]” the island chain has actually enlarged.

“Despite the magnitude of this rise, no islands have been lost, the majority have enlarged, and there has been a 7.3% increase in net island area over the past century (A.D. 1897–2013),” according to the study published in the journal Geology. “There is no evidence of heightened erosion over the past half-century as sea-level rise accelerated.”

allynh
Posts: 919
Joined: Fri Aug 22, 2008 5:51 pm

Re: Are the planets growing?

Unread post by allynh » Fri Oct 07, 2016 1:19 pm

I was looking at articles about the Quiet Sun and the coming Ice Age when I found this classic piece from 1958.

Read through the piece, not just for what they were saying, but to show how little time has passed since much of the technology for exploring the oceans was developed. These were the guys developing sonar to look at the ocean floor. The guys who were taking core samples of the ocean silt. Their discovery even then of the 11,000 year old change in water temperature is telling. They were beginning to see and question, then all was lost as the consensus started changing.

After you read the article look back at an old entry up thread where I pointed out that consensus was formed long before modern research had the chance to find real data.

The Coming Ice Age
http://harpers.org/archive/1958/09/the-coming-ice-age/
A true scientific detective story

By Betty Friedan

How a rising of the ocean waters may flood most of our port cities within the foreseeable future — and why it will be followed by the growth of a vast glacier which may eventually cover much of Europe and North America.

THIS is the story of two scientists, who started five years ago — with a single radiocarbon clue from the ocean bottom and a wild hunch — to track down one of the earth’s great unsolved mysteries: What caused the ancient ice ages? Their search led over many continents and seas, to drowned rivers and abandoned mountain caves, into far-removed branches of science. It took them down through recorded history, from the stone tablets of primitive man to contemporary newspaper headlines.

Maurice Ewing and the schooner Vema. Image from Neptune’s Needle

These two serious, careful scientists — geophysicist Maurice Ewing, director of Columbia University’s Lamont Geological Observatory, and geologist-meteorologist William Donn believe they have finally found the explanation for the giant glaciers, which four times during the past million years have advanced and retreated over the earth. If they are right, the world is now heading into another Ice Age. It will come not as sudden catastrophe, but as the inevitable culmination of a process that has already begun in northern oceans.

As Ewing and Donn read the evidence, an Ice Age will result from a slow warming and rising of the ocean that is now taking place. They believe that this ocean flood — which may submerge large coastal areas of the eastern United States and western Europe — is going to melt the ice sheet which has covered the Arctic Ocean through all recorded history. Calculations based on the independent observations of other scientists indicate this melting could begin, within roughly one hundred years.

It is this melting of Arctic ice which Ewing and Donn believe will set off another Ice Age on earth. They predict that it will cause great snows to fall in the north — perennial unmelting snows which the world has not seen since the last Ice Age thousands of years ago. These snows will make the Arctic glaciers grow again, until their towering height forces them forward. The advance south will be slow, but if it follows the route of previous ice ages, it will encase in ice large parts of North America and Europe. It would, of course, take many centuries for that wall of ice to reach New York and Chicago, London and Paris. But its coming is an inevitable consequence of the cycle which Ewing and Donn believe is now taking place.

The coming of another Ice Age is an event serious scientists have never been able to predict from observable Earth phenomena. For until Ewing and Donn postulated their new Theory of Ice Ages (it was first published in Science in June 1956 and a second report appeared in May 1958) the very nature of the problem seemed to defy the kind of scientific understanding which makes prediction possible.

Scientists know that the glaciers which stand quiet in the Arctic today once covered America with a wall of ice up to two miles thick — its southern boundary extending from Long Island across New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, and the Dakotas to the Missouri River, with extensions into the western mountain country . . . that it covered northern Europe, England, large parts of France and Germany . . . that it created the Great Lakes, the Hudson and St. Lawrence Rivers . . . that it moved mountains, crashed down forests, destroyed whole species of life.

They also know that it is cold enough at the Arctic for glaciers to grow today, but almost no snow has fallen there in modern times. What caused those snows that built the Ice Age glaciers until their own height forced them to march, and what caused them finally to retreat? And why has the earth been swinging back and forth between Ice Ages and climate like today’s for a million years, when before then the entire planet enjoyed a temperate climate with no extremes of hot or cold? Scientists could answer these questions only in terms of sudden catastrophe — a volcanic eruption, the earth’s movement into a cloud of cosmic dust — and unpredictable catastrophes are not the concern of contemporary science. Few scientists had even worked on the problem in recent years.

It was only by a combination of lucky circumstance and persistent curiosity that Ewing and Donn as a team began working steadily on the Ice Age Mystery. As Director of Lamont Geological Observatory, located on top of the New York Palisades over the Hudson River, Ewing teaches theoretical geophysics and directs research in earthquake seismology, marine geology and biology, and oceanography. Donn teaches geology at Brooklyn College and directs the research in meteorology at Lamont. Since the two men live twenty miles apart and were occupied all day, they would often meet at eleven at night in a deserted laboratory at Columbia University — midway between their homes — and work into the morning on the Ice Age trail.

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CLUES FROM SEA FOSSILS

THE two men share the scientist’s passion for pure search, no matter where it leads. Ewing, a tall and powerful Texan who speaks in a gentle voice, was white-haired before he was fifty, a fact his friends attribute to the pace at which he has lived his life as a scientist. For a quarter-century he has been leading expeditions over the ocean, often risking his life while pioneering new methods of investigating its secrets. In the early 1930s he founded a new science by dropping charges from a whale boat and using a seismograph to identify the different layers of earth beneath the ocean. In 1955 he was given the Navy Distinguished Service Award for devising the SOFAR (Sound Fixing and Ranging) method for rescuing men from ships and planes lost at sea.

Donn, New York City bred, is a slight, wiry meteorologist, who tames tidal waves with logarithms. His mastery of the complex relationship between sea and weather complemented Ewing’s knowledge of the depths of the oceans.

The original bits of information which set the two scientists onto the trail of the Ice Age Mystery first came to light on the decks of the three-masted schooner Vema which Lamont Observatory uses for scientific exploration. In the summer of 1953, the ship traced a puzzling pattern on the ocean bottom which led from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico and into the Caribbean Sea. The Columbia-Lamont crew were working with their newly perfected “deep sea corer,” a device which can bring up primeval sediment undisturbed through as much as 4,000 fathoms of water (24,000 feet) — just as it was deposited thousands of years ago.

This “corer” is a sharp-edged steel tube, two-and-a-half inches in diameter and up to 70 feet in length. When it has been lowered from the ship to within 15 feet of the sea bottom, a trigger trips the holding mechanism and the tube is punched by a weight into the sediment. The Lamont ocean expeditions have brought up cores as long as 60 feet — nearly 2,000 of them — representing the successive deposits of thousands of years. As Ewing describes it,

“The entire record of the earth is there in the most undisturbed form it is possible to find anywhere — traces of the animals, rocks, and plants of successive ages preserved in the order in which they filtered down from the surface of the sea.”

Only recently, radioactive isotope techniques have made if possible to deduce when the sediment was deposited, and other things about the world from which it came. Scientists can now measure the radiocarbon in a sample of ocean-bottom mud — and know how long it has lain there. Radioactive carbon ceases to be replenished when removed from the atmosphere, and decays at a known rate. Chemists therefore calculate from the ratio of radiocarbon to ordinary carbon in a fossil shell whether it has been decaying for a thousand, five, or ten thousand years.

In these cores of mud from the Caribbean, the equatorial Atlantic, and the Gulf of Mexico that summer, the Lamont expedition kept seeing a strange sharp line. “About a foot below the floor of the ocean the sediment suddenly changed from salmon pink to gray,” Ewing said. “You could see it sharp as a razor when the cores were opened on the ship’s deck. Others had reported this same line in the North Atlantic.

“When we put these cores to paleontological laboratory tests back at Lamont, we found out what that razor-sharp line meant: at a certain time the ocean suddenly changed from cold to warm. The pink sediment contained shells of minute warm-water animals; the gray sediment, cold-water animals.”

Back at Lamont, measurement of radiocarbon showed that this sudden warming took place throughout the length and breadth of the vast Atlantic Ocean — 11,000 years ago. The cores showed virtually no change in temperature for 90,000 years — except for this one sudden increase. Donn, Lamont’s meteorological expert, was as mystified as Ewing.

“What happened 11,000 years ago to heat the ocean?” they kept asking themselves at odd moments over the next year or so. “What could change the climate of the whole ocean so abruptly?”

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A JACKPOT IN ICE

NEITHER Ewing nor Donn can say precisely when the hunch came. The problem continued to tantalize them, as they traveled about the country attending meetings and doing field work. On the way back from Chicago, they may have watched the ice break up in the Delaware River. They recall reading a newspaper item about a big gambling jackpot on which day the ice would go out in the Yukon. The chain of thought seems obvious now: water freezing — ice going out — this is a sharp, abrupt change, the only sudden change that can happen to a body of water.

But oceans don’t freeze. Ocean currents dissipate the cold — except, of course, in the small Arctic Ocean which is almost entirely surrounded by land.

“What would happen if the ice went out of the Arctic Ocean as it does in the Yukon or the Delaware?” Ewing and Donn remember wondering, as they went over the problem again, one day at Lamont.

“Well, we figured, the Arctic Ocean would get warmer. Because water would flow more freely between it and the Atlantic, dissipating the cold. And of course, the Atlantic Ocean would get colder. But wait a minute . . . we saw it simultaneously. If the Arctic Ocean were open water, warmed by the Atlantic, warmer than the land around it, water would evaporate and fall as snow on the land. More snow on Greenland and northern Canada would make glaciers grow. Glaciers don’t grow now because there is no open water in the Arctic to provide the moisture for snow.

“And suddenly we had the startling hunch that the Arctic Ocean was open during the Ice Age. And that it froze over only 11,000 years ago. It was this freezing over of the Arctic Ocean which so suddenly warmed the Atlantic — and ended the Ice Age.”

“That rather exciting ten minutes,” they told me, “contradicted a whole lot of things we’d always taken for granted. Everyone has assumed that the Arctic Ocean, so covered with ice today, would be even colder and more completely frozen during an Ice Age.

“You get a lot of these wild ideas in our business. If one lasts five minutes you begin to take it seriously. The more we thought about this one, the more it added up. It explained so many things that have always puzzled us.

“For once you accept the radical idea that the Arctic was a warm open ocean at the time of the great continental glaciers, you can reconstruct a completely different weather pattern from the one we know today. As we worked it out, we could see a startling chain of cause and effect between the oceans and the glaciers themselves. We could see how the oceans would work as an actual ‘thermostat’ to keep the earth alternating between glacial ice ages and interglacial periods such as today.

“It all hinges on the fact that the North Pole is where it is — in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, which is almost completely surrounded by land except for a shallow ‘sill’ between Norway and Greenland opening into the Atlantic, and the insignificant Bering Strait. If the cold waters of the Arctic interchanged freely over this sill with the warm Atlantic water, the Arctic Ocean would not freeze over. Its moisture would build glaciers. (In the cold temperatures of the north, the moisture that evaporates from the open Arctic would all fall as snow — too much snow to melt in the short Arctic summer. When the rate at which snow accumulates exceeds the rate at which it melts, glaciers grow.) But as those glaciers grew, they would lock up so much ocean water that sea level would fall.

“We know that sea level was lowered between 300 and 400 feet at the peak of the last Ice Age. Now, most of that sill between Norway and Greenland is less than 300 feet deep. At a certain point the glaciers would lower the sea level so much that the Arctic Ocean would be virtually cut off from the warmer Atlantic. The Arctic Ocean would then freeze over. And the glaciers, no longer led by snow, would melt under the Arctic summer sun, restoring their water to the oceans. Then sea level would rise, until enough warm Atlantic water again flowed over that sill to melt the Arctic ice sheet, and start another glacial cycle.”

Donn worked out a weather map of the world, with an open Arctic Ocean, warmer than surrounding lands. It showed a completely different storm pattern than exists today; more rain and snow in the Arctic, a wind pattern carrying more ocean moisture inland generally. It showed violent blizzards over eastern North America which would spread more snow on the glaciers. Summers would become more like winters as the glacial wall advanced southward. Donn’s weather map with the open Arctic even showed that there would be rain in today’s deserts.

But they needed more proof for their theory. They had to track down the circumstantial evidence of what happened 11,000 years ago; they had to find geological witnesses to confirm their reconstruction of the crime.

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CLUES FROM A DROWNED RIVER

THEY embarked on the painstaking examination of the records of past Arctic explorers. There was little relevant data. One day, going through dusty old volumes of the National Geographic, they found a photograph of an Arctic beach — a beach that could have been made only by long years of pounding waves. There must have been open sea in the Arctic to make that beach.

Ewing took to sea in the Vema again. In the Gulf of Mexico, the Ice Age trail seemed to peter out altogether in a bottomless plain of flat gray silt. The Vema took core after core below the Mississippi Delta without finding the crucial fossil lines.

“We couldn’t even get to the bottom of it with our corers,” Ewing recalls. “We were sure the Gulf must have changed from cold to warm just as the other oceans, but how could we prove it when there seemed to be no fossils at all in that endless gray layer? We suspected that the gray silt had come from the Mississippi and had spread over the floor of the Gulf by creeping along the bottom. If we could find a hill that stood well above the Gulf floor, the sediment on top of it would have come down undisturbed from the surface of the water and might contain the record of those temperature changes.”

They nearly sailed over them — a cluster of hills rising a thousand feet off the ocean floor. There, instead of puzzling gray silt, they finally found the familiar, razor-sharp layers of glacial and interglacial fossils.

And that very gray silt which had obscured their trail turned out to be further proof that 11,000 years ago was the date the Ice Age ended.

For back at Lamont, radiocarbon measurement showed that the silt stopped sliding from the Mississippi just 11,000 years ago. This meant that a great rise in sea level must have taken place at just that time. Drowned by the rising sea, the lower channels of the Mississippi River would retain their own sediment, losing the power to take it out to the deep central part of the Gulf, it was, almost certainly, the rise in sea level caused by the melting of the glaciers.

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AND THE FISHBONE CAVES

AS THE Lamont crew were pursuing this mystery in the sea, other scientists were unearthing new Ice Age clues on land. Atomic Energy Commissioner Willard F. Libby, the scientist who originated radiocarbon dating, found fossils of a forest at Two Creeks, Wisconsin, that had been first flooded and then overridden by the advancing ice. Radiocarbon dating proved that those trees, at one of the southern fingertips of the last glacial advance, were pushed over about 11,000 years ago. (Previously, geologists thought the ice had disappeared long before that time.)

Then a series of dramatic clues were brought in by other geologists from caves in the cliffs above the dry Great Basin of Nevada and Utah. Several thousand feet above the basin are rock niches worn by the waves of glacial lakes — lakes created by the great rains that fell south of the Ice Age snows. Far below are caves, also worn by those waves, that were inhabited by man: the famous Fishbone Cave above the dry Winnemucca Lake in western Nevada and the Danger Cave above glacial Lake Bonneville in Utah.

The evidence showed that men moved into those caves shortly after the lake level suddenly dropped and exposed them. Remains were found of the nets and baskets they used to catch the fish of the now vanished glacial lakes. Radiocarbon dating showed that men were living in those caves — brought above the water when the great glacial rains and snows stopped — approximately 11,000 years ago. And the time during which the glacial lakes dropped from those niches thousands of feet above on the cliffs, to the level of the lower caves, was dramatically short — only several hundred years. It was like the sudden change Ewing and Donn had observed in the ocean. The date was now established: 11,000 years ago, plus or minus a few hundred years, the last Ice Age suddenly ended.

At the time the theory was constructed, there was no actual evidence from the Arctic Ocean itself to indicate it had ever been ice-free. Some months later Dr. A. P. Crary came back from the Arctic Ocean and sent his cores to Lamont. These cores indicated there had been minute animal life for thousands of years in the Arctic Ocean, which suddenly stopped — eleven millenniums ago. They also showed evidence of icebergs free to move in open water at the time Ewing and Donn think the Arctic was open.

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BEYOND THE NORTH WIND

COULD men have lived on the shores of this ocean during the Ice Age? Were there human witnesses to the open Arctic sea?

“It was only by accident that we stumbled on a vital clue in a completely different branch of science,’’ they told me. “We might have missed it altogether because of the compartmentalization of science.”

One day a colleague of Donn’s happened to remark over coffee that he’d overheard an anthropologist in the faculty room talking about some traces that had just been discovered of an ancient civilization around the Arctic.

Donn and Ewing started calling anthropologists. The evidence was uncertain, they learned, but some of it pointed strongly to well-established communities of man around the Arctic many thousands of years ago. In fact, the oldest flints showing man in America had been found recently in a band around the Arctic Circle, seldom straying south.

Anthropologists had been mystified. Even if a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska had existed then, why would man choose to use it to settle in the Arctic Circle, in the very heart of the intense polar cold, at temperature which was assumed to be even lower than today? Around that frozen Arctic Ocean, where would man have found the fish and game those flints suggested? Why would men have stayed there for centuries — unless, as Ewing and Donn now believe, the Arctic Ocean was open then, and its shores were a warm oasis compared with the glaciers to the South?

Ewing and Donn got another anthropologist out of bed late at night to question him further. He told them that, while anthropologists are still uncertain as to how and when man first came to America, they are pretty sure he suddenly started migrating south, in an explosive wave, about 11,000 years ago.

Here, perhaps, were their human witnesses to the end of the Ice Age! The people who lived “beyond the north wind’’ on Arctic shores, behind the towering wall of ice, using their flint-tipped weapons on big game and fish that could not survive in the cold Arctic temperatures of today. These men evidently came to America from Siberia when the glaciers had taken enough water from the sea to uncover the Siberian land bridge. They stayed for some centuries around the warm Arctic because the glaciers kept them from straying south. Then, 11,000 years ago, they suddenly fled. If the Arctic Ocean suddenly froze over, they couldn’t eat. Nor could they go back to Siberia because the great rise in sea level at the end of the Ice Age would once more submerge the land bridge.

And just at the time when they could no longer stay in the Arctic, paths opened in the great ice wall south of them. The melting glaciers permitted men to go south at last — in such a rapid wave that they reached the tip of South America in a few thousand years.

So anthropologists are now reconstructing their own mysteries in the light of Ewing and Donn’s Theory of Ice Ages — which California’s authority on early man, Carl Sauer, calls “a major contribution to our understanding. . . . The old, simple belief that man waited at the threshold of the New World until the last ice sheet was gone has been proved wrong.”

And, finally, human witnesses were tracked down in southern deserts. During this past year archaeologists have brought back new evidence that the Sahara desert was green and fertile and thriving with civilization when glaciers froze life in America and Europe. Ewing and Donn had deduced that an open Arctic Ocean would have caused rain in today’s deserts. Now, from the caves of the Sahara, came ancient man’s vivid drawings of the animals that he hunted on the once grassy desert.

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BENEATH THE EARTH’S CHUST

ONE big question remained which the new theory did not seem to answer: What started off the first Ice Age cycle?

“We know that during the past million years, the world has swung back and forth between ice ages and weather like today’s,” Ewing and Donn told me. “Before then, the whole earth was much warmer. There were no zones of extreme heat or cold; palms and magnolias grew in Greenland, and coral around Iceland; subtropical plants thrived within eleven degrees of the North Pole. Why didn’t the Arctic Ocean-glacier ‘thermostat’ work then? What suddenly turned it on one million years ago?

“The answer, we believe, is chat until a million years ago, the North Pole was not in that landlocked Arctic Ocean at all, but in the middle of the open Pacific, where there was no land on which snow and ice could accumulate, and ocean currents dissipated the cold.

“The idea of wandering poles may seem fantastic. But recently-discovered magnetic evidence leads to the geological inference that the whole earth can shift its surface crust with respect to the interior. As the earth’s crustal zone ‘slides’ over the interior, different points on the surface can be at the North or South Pole.

“Such a shift in the earth’s crust, it is now believed, did take place before the first Pleistocene fee Age which began a million years ago. Before then, the magnetic record shows the North Pole in the middle of the Pacific, and the South Pole in the open southern Atlantic.

“An abrupt shift in the earth’s crust carried the North Pole into the small and virtually landlocked Arctic, and the South Pole to the Antarctic continent, where the polar cold could not be dissipated by free ocean currents. That started the greatly contrasting zones of climate we know today — and the concentration of cold which finally froze the Arctic Ocean, to start the Ice Age cycles.”

This would explain why the Ice Age glaciers have always marched from the Arctic. No ocean thermostat exists to turn on drastic glacial-interglacial cycles in the Antarctic. There, according to the theory, the Antarctic ice cap has been building up continually since the South Pole shifted to that continent a million years ago, with only minor changes caused by the slight warming and cooling of the Atlantic in the glacial-interglacial cycles. This is confirmed by evidence from elevated beaches, which seems to indicate that maximum sea level has been dropping successively lower in each glacial era.

And as long as the poles stay where they are, the Ice Age cycles must continue.

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WHEN WILL IT COME AGAIN?

EWING and Donn realized that their theory had startling implications for the future. They have the scientist’s distaste for the sensational and carefully worked out the wording of the theory’s formal conclusion: “The recent epoch can be considered as another interglacial stage.” A number of scientists have tried to disprove their theory; so far they have been unsuccessful.

As Ewing and Donn read the glacial thermostat, the present interglacial stage is well advanced; the earth is now heading into another Ice Age. Certain signs, some of them visible to the layman as well as the scientist, indicate we may have been watching an Ice Age approach for some time without realizing what we were seeing.

Although scientists do not agree on its significance, they have observed an increasingly rapid warming and rising of the ocean in recent years. Warm water flowing north has driven the codfish off Cape Cod to Newfoundland; annual temperature has risen ten degrees in Iceland and Greenland; down here winters are warmer; the Hudson River no longer freezes over as it used to. It is part of the Ewing-Donn paradox that the next Ice Age will be preceded by such a warming of climate.

“We suspect that the ocean is already warm enough to melt the Arctic ice sheet,” Ewing and Donn told me. “For some time it has remained at the highest temperature ever reached in the four previous interglacial stages.” As climate becomes warmer, more and more glacial melt-water pours into the sea. The Atlantic has already risen 300 feet since the glaciers of the last Ice Age started to melt away. Up until twenty-five years ago the U.S. Geodetic Surveys indicated that sea level was rising six inches a century; in the past twenty-five years that rate has increased to two feet a century.

As sea level rises, more and more warm water pours over the Norway-Greenland sill, under the Arctic ice sheet. American, Russian, and Scandinavian scientists have observed a definite warming of the Arctic Ocean over the past fifty years, and a consequent thinning of the ice sheet. At an international conference on Arctic sea ice in March 1958, scientists estimated that Arctic ice covers an area 12 per cent smaller than it did fifteen years ago, and is 40 per cent thinner. A layman might surmise that if this trend continues the Arctic Ocean will be open and the Ice Age begin in another twenty years. Ewing and Dunn are much more cautious about predictions.

“The rate at which our weather has been warming in recent years could be temporarily slowed down,” they told me. “We don’t know the exact rate at which the sea is now rising. We need long-term world-wide evidence which the International Geophysical Year may give us to assess accurately the changes that seem to be taking place in the ocean and the ice.”

If the ocean continues to warm up at the present rate, Ewing and Donn think it is conceivable that there will be open water in the Arctic within about a hundred years. If they are right, tor the first time in the history of the world, the victims of an Ice Age are going to see it coming. Television cameramen will be raging all over the far north, covering the break-up of the Arctic ice sheet, looking for the first dirty summer slush. For the Ice Age will dawn, not in crashing glacial terror but in slush; as Ewing and Donn describe it, on a summer vacation up north, you will simply see a lot of dirty slush, winter’s snow that for the first time in thousands of years didn’t quite melt.

In many parts of America, at that time, the worry may not be ice, but water. Many scientists have speculated on the ocean flood that will be caused if the melting of glacial icecaps continues. Antarctic scientist Laurence Gould recently warned that “the return of only a few feet of thickness of ice as melt-water to the oceans would have serious effects in many places; and if all the ice were melted into the sea, its level would rise from 150 to 200 feet. All the world’s seaports and some of its most densely populated areas would be submerged.”

Ewing and Donn don’t know how much higher the sea is going to rise before it melts the Arctic ice sheet. They say the ocean has already risen to the point where, if certain recent storms had occurred at high tide, it would have flooded New York and Boston subways. Donn is now working at Lamont on studies of long and short period changes in world sea level.

The ocean flood that brings about the Ice Age will not resemble the flash floods that have caused havoc in the cast in recent years. It will build up slowly, and it will not flow away. The cities, industries, and military bases that are concentrated on both sides of the Atlantic may have to be evacuated. (Fortunately, Pacific coastlines are higher.)

It will probably be possible to protect New York and Washington by levees. Parts or all of New Orleans, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and other cities are now protected by levees from high water, Ewing and Donn point out. Evidently, New York is in no danger of becoming a lost Atlantis, drowned under the sea. If low-lying Brooklyn, Miami, Washington, New Orleans, or Amsterdam should become ghost cities, it will be because a decision will have been made long in advance of this slow-creeping flood to evacuate rather than build levees.

“According to our theory, with the melting of the Arctic ice sheet, the rise in sea level will stop,” Ewing and Donn explained. Instead of adding water to the sea, the glaciers will begin taking it out.

For a long time after the ocean flood subsides, the only effect the Ice Age will have on us down here will be more rain. The new Arctic moisture that falls as snow on the glaciers will increase both rain and snow here, swelling rivers and watering deserts. Then, gradually, our weather will cool. Icy winds will blow from the advancing glaciers; the great snows will fall farther and farther south. In several thousand years a two-mile ice sheet may cover the United States and Europe. If man finds no way to switch the glacial thermostat, there may well be a real estate boom in the Sahara.

JouniJokela
Posts: 98
Joined: Mon Mar 28, 2016 6:34 pm
Location: Swiss

Re: Are the planets growing?

Unread post by JouniJokela » Sun Oct 16, 2016 3:22 am

WhiteLight wrote:Hello SmileKyle & welcome

This topic has indeed been discussed on Thunderbolts here are 2 links from TPOD ....

1) http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2008/ ... earth1.htm

2) http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2008/ ... earth2.htm

It seems are reasonable supposition however there are problems with it eg where did all the new mass come from ?
Well, I haven't really studied any evidence about if Planet's are groving or not. But the conclution which I have came whilst studying other issues, is that new matter is created in the Thermosphere all the time. (at. 85-120 km height)
The endothermic fusion causes the matter to be cooled down from ~1300 Celcius to - 100 Celcius at this relatively short distance.

And This doesn't even violate the concervation Laws, It's nowadays rather a problem to find the answer, "Where does all the energy of gravitation go?" -So if it turns in to a matter, even relatively small amount of material production is able to absorb all the energy needed. I just noticed I haven't calculated this aspect, and it should be done before developing this statement any further. ... So I stop writing here. If some one can study some reasonable material flow rate, it would be helpful for any such a calculations.

allynh
Posts: 919
Joined: Fri Aug 22, 2008 5:51 pm

Re: Are the planets growing?

Unread post by allynh » Mon Nov 21, 2016 2:41 pm

I'll post this one as is. The data is important, not the interpretation. HA!

Dinosaur-killing asteroid turned planet Earth inside-out
https://www.newscientist.com/article/21 ... nside-out/
Sample of rock from the Chicxulub crater
Rock sample from the Chicxulub crater
Credit: ARae@ECORD_IODP
By Rebecca Boyle

Earth-shattering, deadly asteroid strikes might also create safe harbour for life. An expedition to the Chicxulub crater has drawn a new timeline of how the cataclysmic impact that probably killed the dinosaurs happened – and how it may have carved out new niches in which life could flourish, even in the face of utter destruction.

About 65 million years ago, a giant asteroid plummeted through Earth’s atmosphere and punched through the planet’s crust in what is now Chicxulub, in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula. That makes it one of the youngest and most accessible craters in the solar system – others are too distant or have had the story of their origins eroded by time and plate tectonics.

So Joanna Morgan, a geophysicist at Imperial College London, and her colleagues boarded an offshore platform in the Gulf of Mexico this April and May and drilled into the crater’s edge, which lies beneath the sea and about a kilometre of limestone.

Now, they have a detailed picture of exactly what happened to the rock as the crater formed – and the details are surprising.

“It’s absolutely crazy, but it tells us absolutely fundamentally how craters are formed,” Morgan says.

Joanna Morgan and Sean Gulick stand neck to some rock samples wearing hard hats
Core blimey, these rocks are really old
Max Alexander/B612 Foundation/Asteroid Day
The team retrieved samples from between 506 metres and 1335 metres beneath the seafloor, says Sean Gulick, a geophysicist at the University of Texas at Austin and an expedition leader. The samples from 506 metres down turned out to be sediments that were laid down long after the impact, between 56 and 34 million years ago.

But the deeper they dug, the more they found so-called basement rocks, representing granites from the depths of Earth’s crust. Finding old granite so close to the surface, just a kilometre below the seafloor, it was like the crust was upside down, Morgan says.

Splish splash

By analysing the depths and compositions of the rocks, the team reconstructed a timeline for the impact.

First the asteroid blasted through almost all of Earth’s crust, propelling rocks from the bottom of the crust and lifting them 25 kilometres within 10 minutes. At the rim of the newly forming crater, a mountain range higher than the Himalayas lifted and collapsed within three minutes, leaving a halo of basement rock in a geological feature called a peak ring. At the centre, a massive peak of rock splashed upward, fluid-like, before collapsing again – much like the splash of a sugar cube in a cup of hot tea.

About 10 minutes after that, the rocks stabilised and stopped flowing like a liquid. The titanic forces of impact sent shockwaves through the planet and caused earthquakes that would top the 10-point Richter scale, rattling the ground with greater force than any existing fault is capable of producing.

Temporary flow

Despite flowing as if they were fluid, the rocks did not melt entirely. We’re not sure how this works, Gulick says.

“The vast majority of the rocks that we pulled up from the peak ring were never melted,” Gulick says. “But they obviously flowed to get there. Somehow, the shock wave, and all the fracturing and faulting, allows the rock to lose all its cohesion and actually be able to temporarily flow.”

“It is a great surprise that the rocks found in this drilling program are recognizably crystalline granite basement rocks showing much of the original structure,” writes Penny Barton at the University of Cambridge in an editorial accompanying the new work.

The findings are good news for studying the interiors of other planets – all we have to do to see inside them is check out the rims of craters.

“If you look at large impact craters on the rocky planets and you see these peak rings, those bits of topography are actually windows into the mid-crust,” Gulick says.

And the calamity may have had a silver lining here on Earth, Morgan says. Rocks in the asteroid’s path were riven by new cracks and pores, which made them less dense and would have allowed water to flow through them more readily.

“In these fractured, porous rocks, it’s possible for microbes to enter,” Morgan says. “Maybe things came back into the crater that were a bit exotic.”

Journal reference: Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.aah6561

Specificity
Posts: 17
Joined: Sun Nov 20, 2016 10:23 pm

Re: Are the planets growing?

Unread post by Specificity » Fri Nov 25, 2016 8:55 am

WhiteLight wrote:Hello SmileKyle & welcome

This topic has indeed been discussed on Thunderbolts here are 2 links from TPOD ....

1) http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2008/ ... earth1.htm

2) http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2008/ ... earth2.htm

It seems are reasonable supposition however there are problems with it eg where did all the new mass come from ?
It is true that due to constant bombardment of meteors etc that a considerable mass of new material is added to the earth yearly however this would not explain this theory.

I personally am attracted to the idea though I have no idea how it would work but it seems to me that megafauna would be easier to understand if gravity had been considerably less at some point in the past.
I'm not that techno cluey so I'm sure someone else here will explain the probs with this theory better than I. :)
Not enough time to gloss through 78 pages, apologies. Has anyone mentioned an inverse density gradient? Frost and candy coated exterior with a chewy, spongey center?
Politics are a scratch on the platinum record of Life, and society is stuck in the loop.

allynh
Posts: 919
Joined: Fri Aug 22, 2008 5:51 pm

Re: Are the planets growing?

Unread post by allynh » Fri Nov 25, 2016 10:40 am

Hi, Specificity.

There's no mention of "Frost and candy coated exterior with a chewy, spongey center" but look on page 16 where I start to talk about "grapefruit/orange/tangerine continents".

viewtopic.php?p=33533&sid=415cd14d327b7 ... 3a4#p33659

BTW, the link to the Maxlow videos is broken, so here is the updated one.

Yes! The Earth is Expanding
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... CB43847CBE

The thread keeps growing, just like the planets. HA!

moonkoon
Posts: 90
Joined: Wed Jan 14, 2009 9:37 pm

Re: Are the planets growing?

Unread post by moonkoon » Mon Nov 28, 2016 6:29 am

Specificity asks,
Has anyone mentioned an inverse density gradient?

There have been a couple of letters to the editor of the NCGT lately about the subject of an inverse density gradient. The correspondent, who is an experienced geologist, uses the known behaviour of spinning matter to suggest that the earth's core is composed of lighter elements,

... The Earth is a giant centrifuge: heavy components accumulate in the periphery; light components in the interior. Like the outer planets, Earth’s core must be hydrogen and noble gases. The mantle must be metal hydrides, which are fluidic due to being bathed in high pressured hydrogen, which causes hydrogen nuclei to penetrate the outer electron ring and fluidize the metal. ...

This hydride idea would presumably also extend to include a hydride form of carbon if any is present in the core or mantle. The simplest carbon hydride is of course methane, CH4, and it is increasingly evident that vast amounts of methane are emitted from the ocean floor or trapped in the shallow crust.

The ubiquity of this carbon hydride could be taken as an argument that supports the inverse density idea. Maybe we need to take another look at the seismic data to see if it could be reinterpreted to support the concept. :-)

allynh
Posts: 919
Joined: Fri Aug 22, 2008 5:51 pm

Re: Are the planets growing?

Unread post by allynh » Sat Jan 14, 2017 3:58 pm

Here is an article from Scientific America that talks more about "atmospheric rivers" that was mentioned way up thread.

One of the links on that page is dead. Here is an alternate.

ARkStorm - Multi-Hazard West Coast Winter Storm Project
https://watchers.news/2011/05/16/arksto ... m-project/

Also, Wiki - ARkStorm

For other links. This is still something that the Team needs to look into.

The SciAm article was mentioned again because of the massive flooding in California.

California Megaflood: Lessons from a Forgotten Catastrophe
https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... tastrophe/
A 43-day storm that began in December 1861 put central and southern California underwater for up to six months, and it could happen again

Credit: USGS.gov
Geologic evidence shows that truly massive floods, caused by rainfall alone, have occurred in California every 100 to 200 years. Such floods are likely caused by atmospheric rivers: narrow bands of water vapor about a mile above the ocean that extend for thousands of kilometers.

The atmospheric river storms featured in a January 2013 article in Scientific American that I co-wrote with Michael Dettinger, The Coming Megafloods, are responsible for most of the largest historical floods in many western states. The only megaflood to strike the American West in recent history occurred during the winter of 1861-62. California bore the brunt of the damage. This disaster turned enormous regions of the state into inland seas for months, and took thousands of human lives. The costs were devastating: one quarter of California’s economy was destroyed, forcing the state into bankruptcy.

Today, the same regions that were submerged in 1861-62 are home to California’s fastest-growing cities. Although this flood is all but forgotten, important lessons from this catastrophe can be learned. Much of the insight can be gleaned from harrowing accounts in diary entries, letters and newspaper articles, as well as the book Up and Down California in 1860-1864, written by William Brewer, who surveyed the new state’s natural resources with state geologist Josiah Whitney.

In 1861, farmers and ranchers were praying for rain after two exceptionally dry decades. In December their prayers were answered with a vengeance, as a series of monstrous Pacific storms slammed—one after another—into the West coast of North America, from Mexico to Canada. The storms produced the most violent flooding residents had ever seen, before or since.

Sixty-six inches of rain fell in Los Angeles that year, more than four times the normal annual amount, causing rivers to surge over their banks, spreading muddy water for miles across the arid landscape. Large brown lakes formed on the normally dry plains between Los Angeles and the Pacific Ocean, even covering vast areas of the Mojave Desert. In and around Anaheim, , flooding of the Santa Ana River created an inland sea four feet deep, stretching up to four miles from the river and lasting four weeks.

Residents in northern California, where most of the state’s 500,000 people lived, were contending with devastation and suffering of their own. In early December, the Sierra Nevada experienced a series of cold arctic storms that dumped 10 to 15 feet of snow, and these were soon followed by warm atmospheric rivers storms. The series of warm storms swelled the rivers in the Sierra Nevada range so that they became raging torrents, sweeping away entire communities and mining settlements in the foothills—California’s famous “Gold Country.” A January 15, 1862, report from the Nelson Point Correspondence described the scene: “On Friday last, we were visited by the most destructive and devastating flood that has ever been the lot of ‘white’ men to see in this part of the country. Feather River reached the height of 9 feet more than was ever known by the ‘oldest inhabitant,’ carrying away bridges, camps, stores, saloon, restaurant, and much real-estate.” Drowning deaths occurred every day on the Feather, Yuba and American rivers. In one tragic account, an entire settlement of Chinese miners was drowned by floods on the Yuba River.

This enormous pulse of water from the rain flowed down the slopes and across the landscape, overwhelming streams and rivers, creating a huge inland sea in California’s enormous Central Valley—a region at least 300 miles long and 20 miles wide. Water covered farmlands and towns, drowning people, horses and cattle, and washing away houses, buildings, barns, fences and bridges. The water reached depths up to 30 feet, completely submerging telegraph poles that had just been installed between San Francisco and New York, causing transportation and communications to completely break down over much of the state for a month. William Brewer wrote a series of letters to his brother on the east coast describing the surreal scenes of tragedy that he witnessed during his travels in the region that winter and spring. In a description dated January 31, 1862, Brewer wrote:

Thousands of farms are entirely under water—cattle starving and drowning. All the roads in the middle of the state are impassable; so all mails are cut off. The telegraph also does not work clear through. In the Sacramento Valley for some distance the tops of the poles are under water. The entire valley was a lake extending from the mountains on one side to the coast range hills on the other. Steamers ran back over the ranches fourteen miles from the river, carrying stock, etc, to the hills. Nearly every house and farm over this immense region is gone. America has never before seen such desolation by flood as this has been, and seldom has the Old World seen the like.

Brewer describes a great sheet of brown rippling water extending from the Coast Range to the Sierra Nevada. One-quarter of the state’s estimated 800,000 cattle drowned in the flood, marking the beginning of the end of the cattle-based ranchero society in California. One-third of the state’s property was destroyed, and one home in eight was destroyed completely or carried away by the floodwaters.

[break]

Sacramento, 100 miles up the Sacramento River from San Francisco, was (and still is) precariously located at the confluence of the Sacramento and American rivers. In 1861, the city was in many ways a hub: the young state’s sparkling new capital, an important commercial and agricultural center, and the terminus for stagecoaches, wagon trains, the pony express and riverboats from San Francisco. Although floods in Sacramento were not unknown to the residents, nothing could have prepared them for the series of deluges and massive flooding that engulfed the city that winter. The levees built to protect Sacramento from catastrophic floods crumbled under the force of the rising waters of the American River. In early January the floodwaters submerged the entire city under 10 feet of brown, debris-laden water. The water was so deep and dirty that no one dared to move about the city except by boat. The floodwaters caused immense destruction of property and loss of life.

California’s new Governor, Leland Stanford, was to be inaugurated on January 10, but the floodwaters swept through Sacramento that day, submerging the city. Citizens fled by any means possible, yet the inauguration ceremony took place at the capital building anyway, despite the mounting catastrophe. Governor Stanford was forced to travel from his mansion to the capital building by rowboat. Following the expedited ceremony, with floodwaters rising at a rate of one foot per hour, Stanford rowed back to his mansion, where he was forced to steer his boat to a second story window in order to enter his home. Conditions did not improve in the following weeks. California’s legislature, unable to function in the submerged city, finally gave up and moved to San Francisco on January 22, to wait out the floods.

Sacramento remained underwater for months. Brewer visited the city on March 9, three months after the flooding began, and described the scene:

Such a desolate scene I hope to never see again. Most of the city is still under water, and has been there for three months. A part is out of the water, that is, the streets are above water, but every low place is full—cellars and yards are full, houses and walls wet, everything uncomfortable. No description that I can write will give you any adequate conception of the discomfort and wretchedness this must give rise to. I took a boat and two boys, and we rowed about for an hour or two. Houses, stores, stables, everything, were surrounded by water. Yards were ponds enclosed by dilapidated, muddy, slimy fences; household furniture, chairs, tables, sofas, the fragments of houses, were floating in the muddy waters or lodged in nooks and corners. I saw three sofas floating in different yards. The basements of the better class of houses were half full of water, and through the windows, one could see chairs, tables, bedsteads, etc., afloat. Through the windows of a schoolhouse I saw the benches and desks afloat. Over most of the city boats are still the only way of getting around.

The new Capital is far out in the water—the Governor’s house stands as in a lake—churches, public buildings, private buildings, everything, are wet or in the water. Not a road leading from the city is passable, business is at a dead standstill, everything looks forlorn and wretched. Many houses have partially toppled over; some have been carried from their foundations, several streets (now avenues of water) are blocked up with houses that have floated in them, dead animals lie about here and there—a dreadful picture. I don’t think the city will ever rise from the shock, I don’t see how it can.

The death and destruction of this flood caused such trauma that the city of Sacramento embarked on a long-term project of raising the downtown district by 10 to 15 feet in the seven years after the flood. Governor Stanford also raised his mansion from two to three stories, leaving empty the ground floor, to avoid damage from any future flooding events.

[break]

Downstream of Sacramento, towns and villages throughout the eastern San Francisco Bay Area were struggling with catastrophes of their own. Twenty miles northeast of San Francisco, four feet of water covered the entire town of Napa; to the east, the small town of Rio Vista on the Sacramento River was under six feet of water. The entire population of Alamo, at the foot of Mt. Diablo 50 miles east of San Francisco, was forced to flee rising floodwaters. People abandoned their homes in the middle of the night. Some found refuge, others drowned. The San Ramon Valley was one sheet of water from hill to hill as far as the eye could see. The destructive force of the floods was awesome: houses, otherwise intact and complete with their contents, were carried away in the rapids; horses, cattle, and barns were swept downstream for miles.

The heavy rains also triggered landslides and mud slides on California’s steep hillsides. For instance, in Knights Ferry and Mokelumne Hill, nearly every building was torn from its foundation and carried off by thundering landslides, and a major landslide also occurred at the town of Volcano in the Sierra foothills, killing seven people.

The 1861-62 floods extended far beyond the borders of California. They were the worst in recorded history over much of the American West, including northern Mexico, Oregon, Washington State and into British Columbia, as well as reaching inland into Nevada, Utah and Arizona. In Nevada, a normally arid state, twice its typical annual rainfall occurred in the two-month period of December 1861 to January 1862. All this excess water transformed the Carson Valley into a large lake, inundating Nevada City with nine feet of rain in 60 days.

In southern Utah, 1861-62 became known as the “year of the floods,” as homes, barns, a fiber and molasses mill and many forts were washed away, including the adobe home of a Mormon Bishop, John D. Lee. Lee had carefully recorded the weather throughout January 1862 in his diary, noting a solid period of alternating rain and snow with strong winds for most of that month. In Oregon, two and a half weeks of solid rain caused the worst flooding in this state’s history. Deluges covered huge portions of the lower Willamette Valley where Oregon City is located. Oregon City was the terminus of the Oregon Trail, and it was the state’s capital, where George Abernathy, an Oregon pioneer and the state’s first elected governor, lived and ran a thriving business. The flood destroyed his home, forcing him (and many others) to leave. Arizona was also impacted: floods occurred in the Gila, Verde, Bright Angel and Colorado River basins between January 19 and 23, 1862, and flooding was severe in Yuma, destroying the city.

[break]

Why so many people were caught off-guard by these floods remains a mystery, but clearly these immigrants did not recognize the climatic warning signs. They had never experienced such extreme flooding in the 12 years since the Gold Rush began, although lesser floods were not uncommon. It appears that the Native American populations, who had lived in the region for thousands of years, had deeper insights to the weather and hydrology, and recognized the patterns that result in devastating floods. A piece in the Nevada City Democrat described the Native American response on January 11, 1862:

We are informed that the Indians living in the vicinity of Marysville left their abodes a week or more ago for the foothills predicting an unprecedented overflow. They told the whites that the water would be higher than it has been for thirty years, and pointed high up on the trees and houses where it would come. The valley Indians have traditions that the water occasionally rises 15 or 20 feet higher than it has been at any time since the country was settled by whites, and as they live in the open air and watch closely all the weather indications, it is not improbable that they may have better means than the whites of anticipating a great storm.

The specific weather pattern that the Native Americans of the West recognized and knew would bring particularly severe flooding is once again understood today. The powerful storms originate in the warm and moist tropical Pacific Ocean. Recent research describes these storms more broadly as “atmospheric rivers,” and they often result in the worst floods in not only the American West, but across the globe.

The tragic 1861-62 floods may have temporarily served to wake-up the residents of California and the West to the possible perils of their region’s weather They saw nature at its most unpredictable and terrifying, turning in a day or an hour from benign to utterly destructive. But the costs to the state went beyond the loss of life, property and resources: California’s spirit and confidence was badly shaken.

The lessons of the 1861-62 floods should provide the impetus for flood disaster planning efforts in a region where housing developments and cities are spreading across many floodplains. A critical element of living in a place like California is an awareness of these natural disasters, which requires a deep understanding of the natural patterns and frequencies of these events. Today we have building codes for earthquake safety, but millions of new westerners are not aware of the region’s calamitous climate history. Most have never even heard of the 1861–62 floods, and those may not have been the worst that nature can regularly dish out to the region. In a forthcoming book I co-wrote with Frances Malamud-Roam, THE WEST WITHOUT WATER: What Past Floods, Droughts, and Other Climatic Clues Tell Us About Tomorrow (University of California Press, Spring 2013) we present evidence for similar if not larger floods that have occurred every one to two centuries over the past two millennia in California, as well as nature’s flip-side: deep and prolonged droughts.

allynh
Posts: 919
Joined: Fri Aug 22, 2008 5:51 pm

Re: Are the planets growing?

Unread post by allynh » Sat Jan 14, 2017 4:48 pm

The Guardian has an article about _What Earth will look like in 250 million years_ but it is so much SciFi. The concept is based on the nonsense that the continents slide around on a static diameter Earth. This is the video they feature.

Amasia the Next Supercontinent Movie 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG9NG6407a0

I found others based on different models when I wikied the term Amasia.

Wiki - Amasia (continent)

Wiki - Pangaea Ultima

Wiki - Novopangaea

This is a video by the lead guy, Christopher Scotese.

240 million years ago to 250 million years in the future
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLahVJNnoZ4

This is another variation

300 Million Years of the Future World (Pangaea Proxima)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQywDr-btz4

This is what happens when you only use computer models and ignore reality. HA!

What Earth will look like in 250 million years: Simulations show new MEGACONTINENT called Amasia in unprecedented detail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... masia.html
This will happen because of the movement of the earth's tectonic plates - the enormous plates of the earth's crust that have drifted together and apart over hundreds and millions of years

Researchers have predicted that a new megacontinent - Amasia - will form in the next 250 million years.

North and South America will crunch together, with the Caribbean Sea and Arctic Ocean disappearing, while Asia will join the Americas, according to new simulations from Yale University researchers and Japan's Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology.

This will happen because of the movement of the earth's tectonic plates - the enormous plates of the earth's crust that have drifted together and apart over hundreds and millions of years.

Scroll down for video
North_and_South_America_will_crunch_together_with_the_Caribbean copy.jpg
North and South America will crunch together, with the Caribbean Sea and Arctic Ocean disappearing, while Asia will join the Americas

The research, published in the journal Nature, is based on a theory called Orthoversion - after a supercontinent breaks up, the continents initially drift apart but become trapped within a north–south band of subduction – where one plate dips below another.

On our present-day Earth this band is the Pacific Ring of Fire, where the new supercontinent will form.

To test the model, researchers used paleomagnetic data – records of the Earth's magnetic field preserved in rocks – to study variations in the rotation of the Earth with respect to its spin axis.

The research is based on a theory called Orthoversion - after a supercontinent breaks up, the continents initially drift apart but become trapped within a north–south band of subduction – where one plate dips below another. On our present-day Earth this band is the Pacific Ring of Fire, where the new supercontinent will form

WHAT WILL HAPPEN
The present-day Arctic Ocean and Caribbean Sea will vanish as North and South America fuse while they move northwards together, leading to a collision with Europe and Asia.

The research is based on a theory called Orthoversion - after a supercontinent breaks up, the continents initially drift apart but become trapped within a north–south band of subduction – where one plate dips below another.

On our present-day Earth this band is the Pacific Ring of Fire, where the new supercontinent will form.

These variations, known as "true polar wander", are caused by changes in the planet's mass distribution; they are the Earth’s attempt to maintain rotational equilibrium – a re-adjustment that takes place over millions of years.

By combining these data with knowledge of how supercontinents affect the Earth's motion, the researchers were able to predict Amasia.

The present-day Arctic Ocean and Caribbean Sea will vanish as North and South America fuse while they move northwards together, leading to a collision with Europe and Asia.

'After those water bodies close, we’re on our way to the next supercontinent,' said Dr Ross Mitchell, the paper’s lead author.

'You’d have the Americas meeting Eurasia practically at the North Pole.

WHAT ARE TECTONIC PLATES?

Tectonic plates are composed of Earth's crust and the uppermost portion of the mantle.

Below is the asthenosphere: the warm, viscous conveyor belt of rock on which tectonic plates ride.

The Earth has fifteen tectonic plates (pictured) that together have molded the shape of the landscape we see around us today

Earthquakes typically occur at the boundaries of tectonic plates, where one plate dips below another, thrusts another upward, or where plate edges scrape alongside each other.

Earthquakes rarely occur in the middle of plates, but they can happen when ancient faults or rifts far below the surface reactivate.

These areas are relatively weak compared to the surrounding plate, and can easily slip and cause an earthquake.

The research has also been supported by a paper published in the journal Geology by Dr Masaki Yoshida, a geologist based at Japan's Agency for Marine–Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC).

The most recent supercontinent, Pangea (Greek for ‘All Lands’), formed about 300 million years ago with Africa at its centre.

It began breaking apart into the seven continents of today with the birth of the Atlantic Ocean about 100 million years later.

The most recent supercontinent, Pangea (Greek for ‘All Lands’), formed about 300 million years ago with Africa at its centre

Researchers believe Pangea is the third or fourth supercontinent in Earth’s history.

Its immediate predecessors were Rodinia - which formed about 1 billion years ago - and Nuna, which formed about 1.8 billion years ago.

The idea of continental drift was introduced by German scientist Alfred Wegener in 1912, to explain how the shape of Earth’s countries looked suspiciously like jigsaw pieces that would fit together.

The Earth’s surface is formed from seven major and several minor tectonic plates that wander around at speeds varying from a few millimetres to two centimetres a year, the same pace that a human nail grows.

It’s the friction caused by plates grinding against each other that causes earthquakes.

Amasia - the next supercontinent

allynh
Posts: 919
Joined: Fri Aug 22, 2008 5:51 pm

Re: Are the planets growing?

Unread post by allynh » Fri Feb 03, 2017 3:06 pm

This is another article about water being generated inside the Earth. They don't mention where all the hydrogen comes from, but I GET where it comes from. HA!

Earth's water may have originally been formed deep within its mantle, study shows
https://phys.org/news/2017-02-earth-deep-mantle.html
Earth's water may have originally been formed deep within its mantle, study shows
A new study led by a team of scientists at UCD shows that a reaction betwen silicon dioxide that is found in quartz crystals and fluid hydrogen at high temperatures and pressure, found in the earth's upper mantle, can create water. Credit: flickr-jgsgeology
Earth's water may have originally been formed by chemical reactions deep within the planet's mantle, according to research led by University College Dublin.

The new theory offers an alternative explanation as to how the life-giving liquid may have originated on Earth. Previously, scientists have suggested that comets that collided with the planet could have deposited large amounts of ice on the Earth which later melted, forming water.

The investigators carried out computer simulations which found that reactions between high-pressure and high-temperature fluid hydrogen and silicon dioxide in quartz, found in Earth's upper mantle, can form liquid water under the right conditions.

The simulations were carried out by Dr Zdenek Futera, UCD School of Chemical and Bioprocess Engineering, under the direction of Profesor Niall English, UCD School of Chemical and Bioprocess Engineering, and the Materials, Energy and Water Simulations research group. The team at UCD also worked closely with co-author of the paper, Professor John Tse, University of Saskatchewan in Canada.

The exercise tested the reaction at different temperatures and pressures typically found in the upper mantle 40 to 400km below the surface of the Earth.

The simulations revealed that the silica and fluid hydrogen could form water when exposed to temperatures of just over 1400°C and at pressure 20,000 times higher than Earth's atmospheric pressure.

Silica is found in abundance above and below the surface of the earth in the form of the mineral quartz – the Earth's crust is 59 per cent silica.

Details on discovery by scientists in 2014 that vast 'ocean-like' quantities of water are located 600 miles below surface of Earth. Credit: Beyond Science

The scientists had expected that the water would form on the surface of the silica, but instead, they were surprised to find that the water remained trapped inside the silica, leading to a massive build up of pressure.

They also believe the release of this pressure could be responsible for triggering earthquakes hundreds of kilometres below the Earth's surface.

The new findings support the experiments on the same reaction between silicon dioxide and liquid hydrogen carried out by Japanese scientists in 2014.

"We were initially surprised to see in-rock reactions, but we then realised that we had explained the puzzling mechanism at the base of earlier Japanese experimental work finding water formation," said Prof English.

"We concluded that these findings help to rationalise, in vivid detail, the in-mantle genesis of water. This is very exciting and in accord with very recent findings of an 'ocean's worth' of water in the Earth's mantle.

"We thank Science Foundation Ireland and our collaborators at the University of Saskatchewan, and the Ireland-Canada Foundation for 'seeding' this 20-paper collaboration with Professor John Tse ten years ago."

The findings were published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

Various studies in recent years have also suggested that vast quantities of water are stored in rocks as far as 1000km below the surface of the Earth.

Explore further: New study finds water deeper in Earth than scientists previously believed

More information: Zdenek Futera et al. Formation and properties of water from quartz and hydrogen at high pressure and temperature, Earth and Planetary Science Letters (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.epsl.2016.12.031
This is the video that was part of the article. I don't know why it was added. It's part of a group of fun videos. I wonder if they read this thread. Everybody wave, just in case. HA!

MASSIVE Ocean of Water Found 620 Miles Below Earth's Surface
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Dpfy3lFC9c

6 Clues That The Earth is Actually Hollow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltfuS0WQXuQ

The Moon is HOLLOW?? 5 Moon Mysteries That Science CAN'T Explain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k--9Kr2pW0Y

moonkoon
Posts: 90
Joined: Wed Jan 14, 2009 9:37 pm

Re: Are the planets growing?

Unread post by moonkoon » Fri Feb 03, 2017 8:37 pm

Here is a bit more news from the underworld :-), ...about hydrogen (and carbon).

...The redox state of Earth’s convecting mantle, masked by the lithospheric plates and basaltic magmatism of plate tectonics, is a key unknown in the evolutionary history of our planet. Here we report that large, exceptional gem diamonds like the Cullinan, Constellation, and Koh-i-Noor carry direct evidence of crystallization from a redox-sensitive metallic liquid phase in the deep mantle. These sublithospheric diamonds contain inclusions of solidified iron-nickel-carbon-sulfur melt, accompanied by a thin fluid layer of methane ± hydrogen, and sometimes majoritic garnet or former calcium silicate perovskite. The metal-dominated mineral assemblages and reduced volatiles in large gem diamonds indicate formation under metal-saturated conditions. We verify previous predictions that Earth has highly reducing deep mantle regions capable of precipitating a metallic iron phase that contains dissolved carbon and hydrogen.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6318/1403

sketch1946
Posts: 191
Joined: Wed Feb 08, 2017 7:56 pm

Re: Are the planets growing?

Unread post by sketch1946 » Thu Feb 09, 2017 1:43 am

I have a book written by Pascual Jordan called "The Expanding Earth - some consequences of P A M Dirac's Gravitational Hypothesis"... in it the main idea is that the coefficient of gravity has decayed with time, then the earth (and everything else in the universe would have formed in a similar way) ie would have formed its crust while under significantly greater pressure than exists today... so as gravity slowly decayed with time, the original pressure of each molecule in the earth is no longer held so tightly against its neighbours, creating an internal pressure against the hard solid crust, leading to all sorts of effects, earthquakes, ocean floor 'tectonic' spreading, explosive vulcanism, a gradually increasing diameter of the planet.. some 'evidence' would be the historic changes in various measures, changes to the year, gradually increasing distance of the moon, changes in planetary orbits, mountain folding as the continental crusts formed under the original smaller diameter of the earth would adapt to a 'smoother' diameter, folding and crumpling as time progressed...

A stronger gravity holding a denser atmosphere could explain giantism in the early animals, birds and insects in the fossil record... ie denser air, more like swimming than flying, larger animals can be 'supported' in a denser atmosphere held down by a stronger gravity.

Pole shifting is another consequential effect of this hypothesis, the original poles gradually 'move' as earthquakes and mid oceanic ridge expansion adds more lines of magma to the undersea ocean floor geometry and shifts the original 'continental' crust. No need for balancing subduction to compensate for the spreading ocean floors which seem uniformly young by most estimates.

All these physical effects from a single cause... decay of gravity with time. An interesting possibility?

Many scientists have questioned the so-called constants of physics... lately due to problems with measuring the earth, the meter was changed in its definition to be a function of the speed of light, which would hide a slow change in the gravitational constant.

Scientists in Napoleon's time around 1800 measured the earth to be 40,000 km in circumference, now we have measured it 'more accurately' to be 75 km bigger....

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