Acksblog

Figure 1. Touchet beds near Lowden in the Walla Walla valley. Note distinct layers.

There is another well known geologic feature which exhibits approximately one hundred equally thick layers, corresponding to the captures and release of priori-Mars. It is a sedimentary deposit in the American Pacific Northwest associated with the Channeled Scablands discovered by geologist G. Harlan Bretz. In 1923 he surmised correctly that the scablands must have been catastrophically carved by enormous floods, caused by releases of vast amounts of water from glacial dams which formed an enormous Lake Missoula. During each flood, flow through the Wallula Gap was slow enough such that water pooled in a temporary lake, Lake Lewis. Lake Lewis backflooded up the Yakima, Walla Walla, Touchet and Tucannon River Valleys. In these relatively calm arms of the lake, the slack waters were thick with suspended materials eroded from the scablands.  Some of the suspended materials settled out, creating thick Touchet Formation layers or rhythmites (equally thick horizontal layers) which are found throughout these valleys (Figure 1). The layered formation records the actual number of flood events. As many as ‘eighty-nine’ have been counted. Counting the exact number of layers is not a favorite task for geologists since the more they find, the more difficult it becomes to explain them. Making their task even more difficult is the fact that each bed is separated by varved intervals (thin yearly depositions) indicating ‘fewer than forty’ years passed between the floods. Geologists cannot imagine a mechanism by which so many equally deep deposits could have formed in such a short time, in fact, some argue that there was only one big flood and that the many equal layers somehow resulted from the ‘sloshing’ associated with that single event.  Of course this could never explain the equal thickness of each deposit or the ‘less than forty’ varves between layers.

The proposed cyclic catastrophism explains these formations quite well. The vast amount of water and the dams were part of the glaciation centered at the temporary north pole, in central Canada, which accumulated for fifteen years each time Mars was captured in geostationary orbit. When this planet was released into its alternate orbit around the Sun, the region of glaciation suddenly reverted to its present latitude and the ice began to melt quite rapidly. Geologists date these events at approximately 16,000 years ago, but they actually formed between 3687 and 687 BC, contemporaneously with the Deccan Traps.  But in contrast to the Deccan Traps, the lava of which records their magnetic latitude during each encounter, the magnetic orientation of the Touchet beds is normal because they formed after each encounter, when the Earth’s mantle had returned to its normal orientation.  Unlike the Deccan Traps, each layer of which accumulated and hardened throughout a fifteen-year encounter, each Touchet bed layer formed very quickly at the end of each encounter. Thus, the time between their deposition was thirty years, not fifteen. Fifteen of the varves (yearly deposits between major events) were laid down when the Earth’s mantle was in its normal orientation and fifteen more when closer to the (temporary) north pole. Thus geologists have found ‘less than forty’ varves between events.

~ by Angiras on August 5, 2009.

Posted in catastrophism, geology, mythology, Paleontology, planetary science, Uncategorized