whohoho,
People, please hold the horses. If anyone would bash Creationism in this thread It should be me as an author of this thread, but I won't. It is not that I would agree or disagree with it, I simply see it very useful as it attacks the comfort zone of modern geology very nicely, and I like that. If I would go with bashing Creationism I would do that including the study of the Holy Bible and history of the church(es), not with sole reason and scientific proof experiments and other devilish activities. But again, I won't do that here as this is EU forum. So lets classify these points and material outside from religious view as "Young Earth theory". Ok? In this thread however I will try to use only reason and logic and ask for anyone participating to do the same. Please be polite to each other.
One more point (I hope I am not opening Pandora's box with that). I am personally completely lax about the peer review. The peer review was flawed already an age ago - it was proven to be flawed with some joke by biologist (Ironically to this thread some my good friend paleontologist introduced me to that book while I started my geology studies, from that time I am completely lax about peer review). I think it is worth to see that, it is so bizarre and surreal:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/s ... t-hoax-rat
Another example from 7 years ago - it was still clear that peer review is flawed like a hell
https://www.the-scientist.com/the-nutsh ... view-38589.
In example from my own specialization: magma mixing concept was actively bashed for 100 years and stopped being actively neglected only 50 years ago, and accepted as real process in magma systems by igneous petrologist only 20-30 years ago. Plate tectonics was not accepted, no geologists (except one professor from Wrocław (currently Poland, but at that times it was in 2nd Reich – Breslau)) wanted to hear out the A. Wegener, the meteorologist who got the idea about continental spreading/migration, and had not lived to the adoption of his theory. Interestingly, Wroclaw Geologists currently are known as one of the bigger community of proponents of Expanding Earth theory. I also have seen a lot of papers in my own specialization which are a complete junk. I start to read papers straight from methodology section, and If it passes my scrutiny only then I read introduction and further, otherwise I just stop - life is too short to waste it reading junk (I apply this rule for
stricto scientific publications).
I was fearing that this thread will derail straight into paleontology and sedimentology - the two least loved subjects of mine, and I see it just happened. While I don't work in those fields, I have some indirect touch rarely with them through analytical work. I will try to answer those questions anyway as far I can in next post as I will gather my answer.
One more general note: I am not industry insider, rather academic insider. I hope this will change some day. I simply have some technical challenges (operating Schottky-field emission equipped SEM and making it to work stable is really fun activity) which keeps me agitated to stay at the current position. Lets say I am also probing the community. And when time will come I will try to present EU view there. That will either produce a spark, or will make me leave that place for better good. Up to this point I see that it is not that people working in academics are stupid or lazy. The academia is institutionalized and only number of papers counts. Lots of people have put all they cards into career in academics, and they fear of loosing they position. Many have families, bank loans, mortages and I quite understand them. Fear as a tool of controlling masses is old as our known civilization, and probably predates it. Fear also causes most of people stop of thinking. Geological academics community is particularly in hard position as all world had lost its mind with new green religion of Eco'holiness. Lately I had hear from colleague very disturbing story how his student actively resisted of learning where known coal deposits resides in the country. According to student, she resists as that is dirty fossil fuel, and that harms the planet, so she would not want to know anything about these. The public high school education (or rather lets call it with straightforward name – ecodumbisation) just started giving its ugly fruits. And youngsters don't want to study something what would give them ability to work in mineral and energy industry as those are dirty and unholy devils for Eco-yeah. I know that in this process many geological departments in Germany universities ceased to exist in the last 20 years (technically were reorganized into something something environmental or eco-something). And I knew this will come to East Europe with delay which I sadly observe to fulfill as I saw it will be.
But in the end it is own fault for this as with being silent about climate hoax and taking no public position against such widespread nonsense it sealed the destiny of geological community. Was this all inaction from fear or ignorance of coming doom? Hard to tell.
At this point I would like to derail into "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Thomas Khun. What we probably would like to see with EU is successful scientific revolution so that human kind would benefit from our hard work. It can be seen that to make successful scientific revolution the practitioners of old and new paradigm need to find common language as initially they can't understand each other. EU and modern Astrophysics can't find its common language. What Khun had missed from the big picture is the State (countries, international organisations) which usurped the Science as replacement of religion to control the masses. It is probably impossible to find common language with Astrophysicists because with institutionalization they are fortified against anything what would question its infallibility (because else that would mean that State makes mistakes). I had heard/seen that "Paradigm shift" terminology in many EU materials. However, in my opinion the EU community should rather think and plan the scientific revolution as in sense of real revolution. I know, some naive people think that revolutions happen spontaneously without any helping hand. I rather am convinced that only revolutions which succeeds are well planed and supported by someone behind. In history classes much more attention is given for successful revolutions (French revolution comes in mind), and rather rarely unsuccessful revolutions are studied or even mentioned. I am from country which had two unsuccessful revolutions lead by people spontaneously, and country only was successful to free itself from occupation at third time when some other state lend a hand in revolutionary war. Yes revolution is kind of war and needs good strategy, and allies can be handy or even crucial. In war it is even good to know what allies an enemy can have and neutralize those first. And that is why I think I started this thread, to try to find common language between EU and "modern" geology and show weak points usable for revolutionary war. Due to its internal divisions geology is one of the weakest "fortresses". And that brings me to mineral and energy industry...
Mineral and energy industry is not in agreement on everything with majority of academic geology. They buy only ideas which brings more profit (what a surprise
). Now if EU can improve practically the earth evolution model, and increase successful prospection rate they will win industries hearts and open back-doors to academic Geology. Which would lead getting rid of current contamination by contemporary Astrophysical nonsense in the Geology thus severely weakening Astrophysics position. Its probably not very perspective plan on the earth, as most of best perspective deposits at surface and near surface had been already prospected. But in case of other planets, this can be a game changer.
They would really would not throw out currently profitable models based on plate tectonics and geological time reconstruction, just for some other theory which have no idea how element concentrations depletes at one place and accumulates at other when some process is applied.
In the end I want some clarifications:
Cargo, what do you mean by fossilization? There are three type of fossils which come in my mind:
remnants of land and air dwellers, remnants of sea dwellers and palaeo-poop (so called caproliths).
The third type can look funny, but it is quite useful particularly when doubting about how fast extermination of something was.
"That shit is radioactive" can have quite unexpected meaning. However at least I don't know any fossils of water dwellers to have such property.
So what does you mean by fossilization? time from death of creature to its carcass finding by excavation. Or time animal living or dead body is buried under some forming rock? It also depends which group we are talking about.
If it goes about turning living things into stone preserving its whole unaltered shape... it is known for me and Geologically accepted only with fast catastrophic volcanic processes. Of course land, air and poop is affected by such process, but not the sea dwellers. Are You suggesting that electric strike could turn living things into fossils which would drop down dead? (And poop into stone?) Is there any lab experiment which would demonstrate that that is possible? Every year there are deaths from thunderstrike, but I had not hear that anyone would turn into stone. Lets say, that during great trouble the currents/ and voltages of those thunder strikes were much higher. But I have bad news. We have sometimes organic material or some tissues for observation under SEM. Guess what, organic stability under electron beam is one of most outstanding problem for SEM analyses. You don't need to go million of kV, it is enough few kV and organic material simply evaporates at place where electron beam hits - it just reacts instantly. The only thing what megavolt interplanetary lightning could achieve is evaporate soft tissue leaving carcase without it. I can think only possibility which should need to be tested in laboratory by applying lighting on organic tissue with some exotic atmosphere (i.e. atmosphere full of SiO2 in aerosol). Interesting if we could find volunteer for the test, oh and machinery for experiment. I will continue this soon.