Mar 24, 2008
Dendritic
Channels
These large-scale structures are amazingly similar, yet
one is located in the driest desert and the other is an
ocean inlet. What could create these features in such
disparate environments?
In several
past Picture of the Day articles we have discussed features on Mars that
should be interpreted as something other than ravines from liquid runoff or as
wind-carved canyons. The slopes of
Olympus Mons, the gigantic “volcano” that dominates the Northern Hemisphere
of Mars, are covered with mountain-high ridges that exhibit a branch-like
structure. They appear to flow down the sides of
Olympus Mons, sometimes submerged in a thick layer of iron oxide dust. The
tendril-shaped, embossed formations are called “dendritic ridges” because of
their tree-like structure.
In the image at the top of the page, there is a remarkable duplication of the
Olympus Mons dendritic ridges, except in reverse. Rather than being raised above
the surrounding terrain like those on Mars, these figures are deeply incised
into the strata, hundreds of meters deep in both cases. The
Yemeni formation is located in one of the driest regions on Earth, where
there is less than a centimeter of precipitation in ten years. Chesapeake Bay is
located in one of the wettest regions, where there is almost a meter of
precipitation in a year besides being inundated by the Atlantic Ocean.
Chesapeake Bay is thought to be the result of an
impact event that took place 35 million years ago, because there is
geological evidence for a 90-kilometer crater buried beneath the breccias and
sediments near the lower Bay. Its proximity to another strange feature of the
Eastern Seaboard, the Carolina Bays, lends credence to the impact theory since
the bays are also thought to be the remnants of a “meteor storm” that crashed
into the coast long ago.
The multitude of small inlets and side channels that snake their way off the
main artery, as well as the lack of a large delta or heavy sedimentation in the
bottom of the canyon that makes up the bay bring the impact theory into
question, however. The surrounding topography suggests that some other force
that can instantly vaporize rocks and organic material, as well as leave
melted-looking valleys and dual-ridge faults, may have contributed to Chesapeake
Bay’s origin. That force is
electricity.
The dry gullies (wadis) and steep cliffs in Yemen appear to be fossils
carved by tremendous floods after the last Ice Age. According to conventional
theories, as the glaciers melted the runoff from the coastal mountains carved a
drainage system. When the ice was gone, the melt waters disappeared and the
filigree-shapes remained as a vestige from a wetter era with a more temperate
climate. Since the last Ice Age is supposed to have ended 15,000 years ago, the
sharpness of the cuts into the stone and the fine detail that can be seen in the
thousands of “finger canyons” that branch out in all directions belie a watery
birth.
Lichtenberg figures have been highlighted in these pages many times. They are
the forking shapes that lightning bolts make when they strike the Earth or some
man-made material. Their unique configuration can be seen in acrylic blocks that
have been instantly charged with thousands of volts at high amperage, leaving a
tracery of the electrical pathway visible in the otherwise transparent plastic.
It seems possible that
lightning bolts of sufficient power could do the same thing to minerals in
the Earth on a continental scale.
Indeed, Martian topography demonstrates “erosion” patterns like those in Yemen.
The same
multi-branched canyons, steep walls,
flat bottoms, sinuous rilles and rims with scallop-shaped cutouts are so
much like the ones in Yemen that transplanting Mars to Earth or vise-versa
would be undetectable. If Chesapeake Bay were located in an area with no water
and no precipitation, it would look very much like its dry cousins on Mars or
its arid brother here on Earth.
By Stephen Smith
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