Something's Rotten

As is said... Where might this decayed garbage be hiding? Somewhere, or we could say nearly everywhere, in the Great Lakes.

Today we're going to drag our selves back out of the infinite into the local view. That's simply because I'm interested  in the planet we live on, as well as ones our race may some day occupy.

Lets look at the corpse as it lies today. We have five lakes that comprise the largest body of fresh water on the planet. Three of the five lakes live inside a giant(!) stone bowl. This bowl is (from a suitable viewpoint) almost perfectly circular and hundreds of miles in diameter. That seems a might suspicious to me. Before we look a lot closer at that fact, let's give a glance at the rest of the crime scene.

Initially we have an immense salt bed. Immense like it contains 35 percent of the salt on Earth. We'll leave the obvious question of how salt, supposedly laid down in the world's biggest shallow bay happens to be that circular aside for a bit.
Now, over top of the salt deposits that form hundreds of feet thick we get a layer of limestone. Ok, you say, limestone is formed by marine deposits. That leaves aside the issue of why we suddenly have thousands of years of tiny marine life surviving in what might be said to be a giant salt pan. Anyway, we now have the salt bed with an overlay of soft rock of an unknown initial thickness.

Then the whole thing gets much cooler. Literally. We start suffering chills. Alternating periods of intense cold and what we would consider warmth. Maybe not 'heat', but warmth. That meant ice. Lots and lots of ice. Dirty ice, of course. Rivers of ice spreading out from the poles. The weight bearing down is numbers beyond human scales to the extent that it becomes meaningless, because we don't have a human scale that big. That weight is pushing the crust of the earth down.

Then it gets warm. Much warmer than the melting point of water. The ice sheet over a mile thick suddenly goes away in spectacular fashion. That gives plenty of fresh water to wash away those hundreds of feet of salt. 'But wait', you say, 'the salt didn't get washed away!'. True.

Here is where things stop following any sort of logical sense. Now we have even more fun. This circular patch in the middle of the limestone turns into something else- Dolostone. It's much harder than limestone, but limestone is the base material that gets "recrystalized" into Dolostone. Geologists don't say why or how it gets changed or why that change doesn't affect all of the limestone in that formation or why the Dolostone is perfectly circular.

Let's start thinking about that. If salt water (ground water in aquifers under this hard Dolostone layer) can change limestone left from marine deposition, then every ocean must have Dolostone flooring, right? ... They don't??? Hmm...

All right. Now, the shape. Perfect circle. What do we know that produces perfect circles?

Aha. Now we're getting somewhere. What's that you say? Craters? Why, yes, craters are perfect circles. And the size? Yes, we do know several craters of that scale and bigger, a couple on Earth. The dinosaur-killer made a crater 150 miles or so across. Is there any supporting evidence of the crime? Actually, yes. Notice we originally mentioned only three lakes. The other two, Superior and Ontario aren't at all like the other three. Those two were formed by the ice sheet grinding out immense valleys formed by Basalt. Yes, Basalt extruded by volcanic action. Rifts, according to geologists. These rifts radiate away from that giant stone bowl. Hmm again.

So... Giant metamorphic stone bowl, perfectly circular, with big-ass cracks in the Earth's crust radiating away from it.

Starts to add up, eh? Yes, ice is involved in trying to wipe out the evidence of the crime, but it's not involved in the original scene. So lets apply logic from the way we know the process works:

Salt gets laid down over millions of years in a very shallow salt lake, about the same time as coal beds are forming in nearby swamps. Finally the sea level rises and the limestone forms. This process uses up more eons, forming the cap over the salt.

Now comes the crime itself- an asteroid (ten mile diameter at a shallow angle? Or even a graze?) blasts a hot circular crater in the middle of a gigantic covered salt bed. There may even be a real hole hidden under things in the center. Who knows? No-one has looked. No-one believes there's anything to look for. Limestone in a wide area slumps into a puddle of melted rock, perfectly circular as craters usually are, forming a protective cap over the salt. That protects it from the ravages of the flood of meltwater that retreating glaciers release. Radiating cracks from the blow release rivers of Basalt from deep below the crust. The resulting 'nuclear winter' actually causes the glaciers to expand into ice sheets. The rest proceeds as normal: ice melts, releasing oceans of water, first digging, and then filling the lakes. The land underneath is still bouncing back from the last ice age- 1800 feet so far, according to a program I just watched. So we now can figure out where the material came from that created the continental shelf. Not to mention the water that has submerged the shelf to today's about 400 foot level.

I leave it you to decide whether or not logic upholds either of these theories. I find the accepted theory a bit shaky when you try to build a story of what happened. Just remember that their version didn't come together until mere decades ago, so it's not like something discovered by Einstein, much less Newton.

Cairn

Cairn - a pile of local rocks marking a trail intended for backtracking or for others to follow...

Sorry that I haven't posted lately, but sometimes I get tied up in other things and don't get the time to eat 3 meals a day, much less post a blog.

I've been watching one of the Science Channel's shows about the current X Prize competition. The X Prize sponsors the privatization of space flight and the current target is the moon. Not that it's the only target, but that's the one they're leaning on right now. I have to admit that the presence of Helium3 and the prospect of nearly limitless clean power for our sadly depleted planet has a lot of appeal. In fact, I like it a lot more than the chances for fusion reactors happening any time soon.

Then we get to that next target: Mars.

I know... it's stale news to you young 'uns, but us old buggers were raised at a time when just reaching the moon was a marvel and Mars was about as reachable as the Holy Grail. The one outfit, SpaceX, that seems serious about going to Mars in person has a unique qualifier for people who want a shot at becoming Martians- it's a one-way trip. That's right, they're not offering any return trip. They still got over 8000 applicants, of course. Sadly, there are only 24 initial seats. Those who go will have to suffer all the usual crap that happens in an alpha test situation, plus the burdens imposed on their bodies by living in a low-g environment: muscle and bone atrophy and likely nightmares, though the public hasn't been informed of anything like that. They'll need to grow their own food, as well and someone will be tending the saw grass (that's the most efficient plant for photosynthesis). Sadly, the current NASA timetable pegs Mars to happen around 2035. Is it soon enough?

Clearly we're going to learn a huge amount simply by having people just living there on a permanent basis. Things that will be vitally important when we develop a starship.

Speaking of which, I have begun to wonder just what's going on. I mean that. Is the government entirely run by stupid (clinically deficient in intelligence) people? Could it possibly be? I've been wondering if we're just not being filled in on any progress towards a starship or has everything so far been a total failure? That's the basis for my earlier questions. If they're not stupid and they ARE working on the engineering part of it, then surely some progress should be evident. And they should not only say so, they should shout it off the roof of the White House. It would give us poor plebes some glimmer of hope. Not all of us on the outside are stupid.

We know that we are going to need an escape hatch sooner than later and we'd better damn well have one handy. Skip military spending or put a tax on sugary soft drinks, but get it done!

Enough. I would expect that astronomers will be refining the orbit track of Apophus in the next dozen years. If things turn ugly or just unlucky, I think it will leak and we can all panic in plenty of time to kiss our butts goodbye. That's when we'll find out just how smart we are. Are you smarter than a dinosaur?

Other than this, things have been remarkably quiet. At least quiet if you don't count certain volcanoes and earth quakes. I do have my own theory about quakes. It holds up pretty well so far. It seems obvious that if one edge of the Pacific plate, let's say in Alaska, lets go, then the other edges will have to adjust. Note that the latest initial tremor was around San Francisco, the next was in Alaska. Now, give the plate a year, maybe, to catch up the slack, then either New Zealand, Indonesia, or Japan is going to catch hell. South America isn't precisely safe, but they expect it. The one sticky wicket is southern California. That part hasn't really moved in far too long. Get this: small quakes are good. They show that the plates are sliding along and stress is minimal. Now Man comes along. He sucks as much water out of the ground as he can. Suddenly, the plate doesn't have the lubrication it needs and sticks... Until BOOM, very big quake. And that is not good. Or maybe you get a lot of sudden rain. And you get mudslides. And things get slippery...

Think about that next time you're out there watering your lawn....

Light the Way

I'm not sure how to slide into this subject.

'In the beginning there was darkness upon the face of the void...'

Before I run face first into this post, I have to wonder- was this just an expression in poetiic terms or did it intimate that people knew more about the universe than we have ever given them credit for? I suppose it was the former... I guess I'll go ask the Dogon People. Considering that the phrase was written circa 410 A.D., it leaves the question open to at least a teensy bit of wonder.

Now. It's suddenly 2.5 and something million years ago. Somewhere out there, a galaxy the size of our own is just as it is when we look at it right now and it's about to hit ours.

HMMM???

Yes, I thought that might cause you to stop dead. I haven't done the math all the way through; I do have a few other things to do besides sit here and write. Consider that  our neighbor M-31 (fondly known as the Andromeda galaxy) is going to 'hit' ours. That's a fact, so I'm assured. That galaxy was 2.54+- light years away when the light we see it by left that body of stars, etc. So... it's not really  where we see it, right? It's been trotting along during all that time. It's more complicated than that. I think there's some doppler effect there (the light is blue-shifted) and that may affect when we're seeing it.

Where does that leave us? Or when? I'm not at all sure, but I have this sneaky feeling that it's quite a few miles closer than it looks through Mr. Hubble's namesake. Now, I don't think we need to duck for cover just yet. Given the space between stars, we may not have to worry even comes the day the collision happens. It is, however, at least interesting to think about that day when the leading edge comes this way. Makes me wonder if anyone has calculated where the solar system will be in relation to the wedge-point. I couldn't find an intelligible reference for how fast M-31 is going relative to us, which doesn't make it any easier.

And this little exercise can be applied to other things. I speak of local stars. I don't have any idea if any  are headed this way, but given how close they are, I'd be real interested to know. If we saw something 4 lightyears from here, headed this way at half light-speed, I might be willing to get nervous. What's giving me a headache is trying to figure out just how much closer that thing would be. And just how long until we really do need to duck or run.

Remembrer what I said about building starships?

Mixed Bag

As the title says, a mixed bag. There are things going on in the world that are of interest. 

First off, NASA is said to be working on an interstellar drive. That's encouraging. At  least someone is doing something. I shouldn't say that. I'm sure there must be other groups working on this, they're simply not letting anyone know about it. Does that sound sort of like the usual m.o. for the government? What bothers me is that the government isn't widely known for having active imaginations working there. We need it sometime this century, after all.

Speaking of space, did you notice that our planet nearly got into a fender-bender this weekend? Well, it was minor. A rock 'only' the size of a house... Remember Meteor Crater in Arizona? About that size rock. Might put a little kink in your commute. It was first noticed about a week ago and they rather sat on the news until they were more sure it wouldn't hit us. Now, there seem to be a number of organizations working on detecting rocks like this, but the one I like best is the B612 Foundation. They want to put an infra-red satellite in an orbit a little closer to the sun and look back to the space around Earth in order to see things headed our way. They need donations to get the bird up by 2017, so please consider donating.