Posted on 08/23/2006 5:58:47 PM PDT by blam
Santorini eruption much larger than originally believed
Media Contact: Todd McLeish, 401-874-7892
Santorini eruption much larger than originally believed; likely had significant impact on civilization
KINGSTON, R.I. – August 23, 2006 – An international team of scientists has found that the second largest volcanic eruption in human history, the massive Bronze Age eruption of Thera in Greece, was much larger and more widespread than previously believed.
During research expeditions in April and June, the scientists from the University of Rhode Island and the Hellenic Center for Marine Research found deposits of volcanic pumice and ash 10 to 80 meters thick extending out 20 to 30 kilometers in all directions from the Greek island of Santorini.
“These deposits have changed our thinking about the total volume of erupted material from the Minoan eruption,” said URI volcanologist Haraldur Sigurdsson.
In 1991 Sigurdsson and his URI colleague Steven Carey had estimated that 39 cubic kilometers of magma and rock had erupted from the volcano around 1600 B.C., based on fallout they observed on land. The new evidence of the marine deposits resulted in an upward adjustment in their estimate to about 60 cubic kilometers. (The eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia in 1815 is the largest known volcanic eruption, with approximately 100 cubic kilometers of material ejected.)
An eruption of this size likely had far-reaching impacts on the environment and civilizations in the region. The much-smaller Krakatau eruption of 1883 in Indonesia created a 100-foot-high tsunami that killed 36,000 people, as well as pyroclastic flows that traveled 40 kilometers across the surface of the seas killing 1,000 people on nearby islands. The Thera eruption would likely have generated an even larger tsunami and pyroclastic flows that traveled much farther over the surface of the sea.
“Given what we know about Krakatau, the effects of the Thera eruption would have been quite dramatic,” said Carey, a co-leader of this year’s expeditions. “The area affected would have been very widespread, with much greater impacts on the people living there than we had considered before.”
Thera has erupted numerous times over the last 400,000 years, four of which were of such magnitude that the island collapsed and craters were formed. Some scientists believe the massive eruption 3,600 years ago was responsible for the disappearance of the Minoan culture on nearby Crete. Others link the eruption to the disappearance of the legendary island of Atlantis.
While investigating the seafloor around Santorini, the scientists explored the submarine crater of the Kolumbo volcano, just 5 kilometers from Thera and part of the same volcanic complex, and discovered an extensive field of previously unknown hydrothermal vents. Using remotely operated vehicles from the Institute for Exploration, the scientists recorded gases and fluids flowing from the vents at temperatures as high as 220 degrees Centigrade.
“Most of the known vents around the world have been found on the mid-ocean ridges in very deep water and in areas where there are geologic plate separations,” Sigurdsson explained. “The Kolumbo and Santorini volcanoes are in shallow water at plate convergences, the only place besides Japan where high-temperature vents have been found in these conditions.”
“The high temperature of the vents tells us that the volcano is alive and healthy and there is magma near the surface,” added Carey.
The scientists said that, in addition to fluids and gases, the vents are emitting large quantities of metals, including silver, which precipitate out to form chimneys on the crater floor up to 10 feet tall and 2 to 4 feet wide. The floor of the crater is covered in a layer of red and orange mats of bacteria 2 to 3 inches thick that live on the nutrients in the vent fluids. Bacteria also cover the vent chimneys, and 4- to 5-inch long, hair-like bacterial filaments extend from the chimneys making them “look like hairy beasts, like woolly mammoths,” according to Sigurdsson.
The expedition was part of a longer research cruise led by National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Robert Ballard, a URI oceanography professor and president of the Institute for Exploration, which included a search for Bronze Age shipwrecks in the Black Sea and a survey of the seafloor in the Sea of Crete. Additional details can be found at www.uri.edu/endeavor/thera or www.oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/06blacksea/.
The research expeditions were funded in large part by the National Science Foundation, with additional support from the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration, the Rhode Island Endeavor Program, the Institute for Exploration, and the National Geographic Society. The April expedition was conducted aboard the Greek research vessel Aegaeo, while the June cruise was aboard the URI vessel Endeavor.
Live video of the June expedition was broadcast over the internet 24 hours a day by Immersion Presents, which also broadcast four, 30-minute live programs each day to museums, school districts, science centers and Boys and Girls Clubs featuring Sigurdsson, Carey and Ballard.
Enter into the speculative spirit. A spirit might use a burning gas jet to speak. Who is to say not?
Definitely. The role played by impact was stuck in a temporal ghetto, the Late Heavy Bombardment of billions of years ago; this is based on a series of syllogisms and yield false conclusions. The piles of space debris which come whistling by (or bombing in) shouldn't be there under the dying model. So, there will be a resort to catastrophism, there's not really any way around it, even if it is just something like comets shedding material during their trips through perihelion.
What does he need a burning jet to talk to Moses? Why not use Moses brain?
The Scriptures indicate that the cloud/pillar of fire
FOLLOWED THEM, hovered over them as they went.
There was an emphasis on the UNNATURAL nature of the cloud and pillar of fire in it's hovering over them protectively, closely and as they traveled.
I don't think volcano stuff acts that way. Having been through the darkness in midday from Mt St Helens . . . doesn't sound that natural, to me.
What does he need a burning jet to talk to Moses? Why not use Moses brain?For that matter, why use a volcano?
Bombardment is ceretrainly still going on. One of the hugest collisions took place is what is now Germany. The crater is about 20 miles across. The road goes up over a rin several hundred feet high than then descend to a plain. Once upon a time, it will filled entirely by a lake and debris. I doubt one person in a thousand in Germany is even aware of the enormity of the event, even the thousans of school children who has visted the museum. After they have oooed and ahed, they go home and forget.
Ries Basin, a mere 15 million years ago I think. Next time one of those happens it may be with no warning, despite current efforts.
We sit on our perch precariously. When I visted McDonadl's observatory, the visitors' center showed a film that made a great impression. The CGI showed a tiny earth moving through the fiery sea of the suns extreme atmosphere, protected from extinction only by the earth magnetic field. Having seen this I can hardly take serious the global warning crowd. A slight blip in that magnetic field could cause more change than all the works of man. But ditto with some monstrous volcanic event(s). Puny, puny man. Yet....
North Magnetic Pole could be leaving CanadaThe magnetic pole, which has steadily drifted for decades, has picked up its pace in recent years and could exit Canadian territory as soon as 2004, said Larry Newitt of the Geological Survey of Canada. If the pole follows its present course, it will pass north of Alaska and arrive in Siberia in a half century, but Newitt cautioned that such predictions could prove wrong. The erratic pole can jump around considerably each day, but migrates on average about 10 kilometers to 40 kilometers each year. Friend of navigators for centuries, beckoning compass needles from virtually every point on the planet, the North Magnetic Pole is distinct from the North Terrestrial Pole, the fixed point that marks the axis of the turning planet. The magnetic pole is currently 966 kilometers (600 miles) from the geographic one. Because the magnetic pole lies in the Arctic Ocean, scientists attempting to pinpoint its precise location must visit during a brief window in the spring. The North Magnetic Pole historically is resurveyed about once every decade. But Newitt and colleagues, who last studied the site in 2001, might attempt another trek in 2003 to investigate further its accelerated migration.
by Richard Stenger
wandering magnetic pole image
March 20, 2002
Director posits proof of biblical Exodus
The Globe and Mail | 14 April 2006 | Michael Posner
Posted on 04/14/2006 8:58:16 AM EDT by timsbella
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1614957/posts
In 1991 Sigurdsson and his URI colleague Steven Carey had estimated that 39 cubic kilometers of magma and rock had erupted from the volcano around 1600 B.C., based on fallout they observed on land. The new evidence of the marine deposits resulted in an upward adjustment in their estimate to about 60 cubic kilometers.Interesting claim, considering that A) no dating methods are in use by them that anyone would take seriously, and B) that Akrotiri, the town buried (in 200 BC, rather than somewhere between 1350-1650 BC) by an eruption, has 3 to 6 feet of ash -- in spots -- and that 6 feet is the max.
Yes, I remember that line from Yul Brynner very well. BTW, He was part Russian, part Mongolian, if I remember correctly. "Scratch a Russian and find a Tartar," as the Central Asian saying goes. Do you suppose DeMille might have read "Worlds In Collision?" Even the Charlton Heston version of "The Ten Commandments" came out too early to have been influenced by any other of Dr. Velikovsky's books.
For what it's worth, I believe DeMille read Josephus, because of the scene where Prince Moses brings back treasure and a princess from a campaign in Ethiopia. Josephus mentioned that, but it's not in the Bible; if something like that really happened, the author of the Exodus story must have thought it wasn't relevant to anything else Moses did.
Plato clearly puts Atlantis outside the Gates of Hercules and demonstrated a knowledge of true continents beyond Atlantis i.e. North America. This knowledge came from the priests of Eygpt according to him.
I saw that program the other night. Interesting.
Plato was quite explicit as to the location of Atlantis and it was not in the Mediterrean.
thanks. Bet that changes the weather.
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