Mystery of the Mega Flood (PBS)

reply to post by punkinworks10


And in reality it might not have been just Mt St Helens. Mt. Rainier ,Mt. Baker and Glacier Peak have been quite active over the past 10-20000 years or so.

pubs.usgs.gov...

That picture is only for the past 4000 years, but you can easily extrapolate it out. All of the northern Cascade range volcanoes have been quite active for quite a long time.

Danno

Originally posted by MoparDanno
reply to post by punkinworks10

 

And in reality it might not have been just Mt St Helens. Mt. Rainier ,Mt. Baker and Glacier Peak have been quite active over the past 10-20000 years or so.

pubs.usgs.gov...

That picture is only for the past 4000 years, but you can easily extrapolate it out. All of the northern Cascade range volcanoes have been quite active for quite a long time.

Danno

Hello,
Very good point, theres a lot of potential for dust and ash to be blown around the area.

Honestly, I don't know how anyone can be so ignorant to think their idea or philosophy is the ONLY correct idea or philosophy. You have to be an idiot to think so and you have to be a wimp to procrastinate the process of telling others your idea in fear of being scrutinized because your idea is so outrageous to those whom can't think outside the box. For example is it too far fetched that asteroids fell upon the earth around the time all the ash showed up in the ground? Is it too insane to say a super volcano erupted around that time? I think it is best in a case like this for any ideas or theories to be welcomed with caution but not thrown out.

Fantastic !
Thanks for this, and I feel like so much is being covered and learned
in ancient civilization and Earth history at this time.
It really is exciting to imagine what's next.

Originally posted by ruthlesstruth
you have to be a wimp to procrastinate the process of telling others your idea in fear of being scrutinized because your idea is so outrageous to those whom can't think outside the box.

By wimp are you talking about JT Pardee mentioned in the video? Yes he seems pretty wimpy to me. He thought he knew the source of the water at that 1920's meeting, which Harlen Bretz needed to prove his theory, yet Pardee didn't say anything about it for over a decade. This was an interesting part of the story to me. Why wouldn't he speak up? There was some kind of "politics" going on with his employer, but I also get the impression he was kind of a wimp. Bretz was no wimp, but it took a long time for his idea to be accepted. These are the interesting undercurrents of the scientific process in this case, geology aside.

For example is it too far fetched that asteroids fell upon the earth around the time all the ash showed up in the ground?

Asteroids don't typically make the same kind of volcanic ash as a volcanic eruption makes. One example would be the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. The layer of debris that deposited contains unearthly amounts of iridium so that's one clue the source was outer space.

We've seen many ashfalls from volcanic eruptions, and we've seen a handful of asteroids. It's possible to tell the two events apart. And the reason we can often tell the source of the ashfall is that the thickest layers build up closest to the source, so find the thickest layers and you've found the source. This isn't a guessing game, it's forensic science.

Is it too insane to say a super volcano erupted around that time? I think it is best in a case like this for any ideas or theories to be welcomed with caution but not thrown out.

It's fine to consider various ideas, but what really counts is whether or not you can support those ideas with evidence. Harlen Bretz had an idea about the megaflood in the 1920s but since he didn't have enough evidence then, his idea wasn't accepted until later when there was more evidence.

The only supervolcano I'm aware of in the vicinity in Yellowstone, and there is evidence it's erupted 3 times in the last 2 million years, the last being about 640,000 years ago, so it's nowhere 15,000 years ago. There's even a map showing the ash beds from the last 3 supervolcano eruptions:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/42a3ed0451bd.gif[/atsimg]
www.earthmountainview.com...
So unless you know of another supervolcano, you might have an idea a supervolcano was involved in this, but I can assure you that your idea will be dismissed if you lack evidence, just as Harlen Bretz' idea was dismissed in the 1920s. It turned out he was right, and you might be right too, but nobody will believe that until you can prove it. That map also shows the last Mt St Helens ash bed, and as you can see there's no overlap of that with the yellowstone ash beds. But as others have pointed out, there are many other possible sources of the ash beds besides Mt St Helens, however, a supervolcano is not a contender, unless you have some new evidence to support that.