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Fig. 1 Identical rock layers on the surface of Mars

The Cyclic Catastrophism scenario involved one hundred 14.4-year encounters of Mars with the Earth between 3700 and 687 BC. These are recorded in a number of places on both planets in the form of sedimentary deposits.  What is most impressive, and least discussed by planetary scientists or their geologlist counterparts, are ‘rythmic’ formations with as many as one hundred layers of nearly equal thickness and similar weathering.  Figure 1 is a NASA HIRISE image of rock layers in the crater Becquerel on Mars. These layers are currently imagined to be the result of ‘Milankovich cycles’ – cyclic changes in Mars axial tilt (obliquity) with respect to the plane of the solar system, calculated to have a period of  124,000 earth years.  This time span between layers is comparable to the phenomenon  thought to have caused the ice ages on Earth.  Thus scientists are hypothesizing that that each layer shown in the Becquerel crater in Figure 1 corresponded to an entire ice age on the Earth in spite of the global dust storms we observe every few years on the Red Planet.  An added irony is that neither the Earth or Mars has experenced more than 6,000 years of these calculated obliquity cycles.

Fig. 2 Identical sedimentary rock layers in groups of 10. (NASA HIRISE)

Figure 2. gives another view of the Becquerel crater deposits, emphasizing their mysterious groupings of roughly ten.  These are sedimentary rocks, not sand dunes, as evidenced by faulting.

Cyclic Catastrophism

Because of Mars’ devastating encounters with proto-Venus, which raised the Tharsis Bulge and tore open the huge Valles Marineris fault, followed by its one hundred 14.4-year geostationary encounters close to the Earth between 3700 and 687 BC, practically all geologic features on Mars are less than 6,000 years old.  Planetary scientists today use an archaic method of estimating the age of the various surface areas on Mars (and all the other planets, except where they don’t like the answers, like Venus) by counting the number of large craters per square mile.  These are then compared with the craters and their ages on the near side of the Moon, which are imagined to be around 4 billion years.  This is

Fig. 3 Similar layering in Danielson crater. (NASA)

beyond ironic, because the maria  on the near side of the Moon were actually created by a rapid-fire sequence of fourteen bodies ejected from Mars (the legend of Isis and Osiris) as it orbited the Earth less than 3,000 years ago.  Therefore the dates of the material sampled in the maria are merely indicative of the age of Mars. Similar layering is present in Danielson crater on Mars (Figure 3).

Layering On Earth

During the same period of cyclic catastrophism enormous changes took place on the Earth, due to the proximity of Mars in its geostationary orbit above Mt. Kailash in the Transhimalayas.  This tidal locking of the two planets forced the spin axis of the outer shell of the Earth to Hudson Bay for 14.4 years at a time – a total of one hundered encounters.  The great continental glacier now called the Laurentine Ice Sheet, would thicken for 14.4 years and then melt for the next15.6 years when Mars was released into its planetary orbit for 15.6 years.  This cycle of accumulation and melting shows up in the Missoula River Valley as the Toucet Beds.

Fig. 4 The Rhythmic Touchet Beds

These are many similar layers separated by varved intervals shown in Figure 4.   Cyclic Catastrophism suggests that these layers were each formed by separate floods that resulted from the release of glacial dams, part of the Laurentine Ice sheet, each time Mars left the vicinity of the Earth, i.e.every thiry years.  Geologists have been stymied by this rhymic formation for some 50 years because it cannot be explained in their gradualism (uniformitarian) paradigm. However , the latest word, available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missoula_Floods under “The current understanding” states:

The dating for Waitt’s proposed separation of layers into sequential floods has been supported by subsequent paleomagnetism studies, which supports a 30–40 year interval between depositions of Mount St. Helens’ ash, and hence flood events, but do not preclude an up to 60 year interval.^[1] Offshore deposits on the bed of the Pacific at the mouth of the Columbia River include 120 meters of material deposited over a several thousand year period that corresponds to the period of multiple scabland floods seen in the Touchet Beds.  

Also, in conflict with current geological opinion, Cyclic Catastrophism explains that the Laurentine Ice sheet did not form at the time of the ‘Ice Age’, in the Pleistocene, but between 3700 and 687 BC, well into the Neocene Era.

In researching the Columbia River flooding on the internet, I came across the following amazing paragraphs at http://www.nps.gov/iceagefloods/h.htm.  If only these unnamed scientists from NASA and JPL could take the leap of faith out of their little uniformitarian envelope, Cyclic Catastrophism can answer all their questions about the solar system.

“Floods on Mars

Studies of early Martian history indicate that at one point the planet contained an abundance of water. The planet is covered with features that are best explained by the movement of water, either in catastrophic floods or by the slow movement of groundwater. The Mars Channels are thought to have been formed by catastrophic floods of water from massive groundwater reservoirs. The water would have flowed across the terrain, with the upper surface freezing and the lower depths continuing to flow, much as a frozen river might. Researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Arizona State University, and the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston studied the Channeled Scablands area of eastern Washington because it is similar to Ares Vallis, a region of Mars located northeast of the Valles Marineris canyon system. The Mars Pathfinder lander and rover, which landed on Mars in July 1997, set down in Ares Vallis. Pathfinder was the first spacecraft to land on Mars since the Viking Lander 1 touched down on the surface of the planet in 1976. Ares Vallis is much larger than the Channeled Scablands, but the landscapes of the two are very similar. According to scientists at JPL, a catastrophic flood similar to the Missoula Floods occurred on Mars in the Ares Vallis flood channel, washing rocks and sediments from highland regions into the flood basin. Millions of years ago much of Mars was covered with water, and massive floods flattened some parts of the planet while other floods gouged seven-mile-deep canyons. Many planetary scientists theorize that the water on Mars drifted into space about 3.5 billion years ago. Some water also appears to have frozen on the planet’s surface, and some may have settled into the ground. NASA researchers have investigated the spillover paleoflood channels connecting large basins in the northern plains of Mars. These channels are a series of braided channels approximately 500 km long and 130 km wide that connect the Elysium and Amazonis basins. Scientists even suggest that some of these floods were moving at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour, could have lasted for weeks or even months, and were considerably larger than the Ice Age Floods. The floods on Mars were on such a monumental scale that they probably would have altered the climate for the entire planet. Scientists don’t know exactly how the outflow channels on Mars were formed, and probably won’t until they can do fieldwork on the planet. By coming to the Channeled Scablands, they gained valuable firsthand exposure to the kind of surface features a rover was likely to encounter at Ares Vallis.”

1 Clague, John J.; Barendregt, Rene, Enkin, Randolph J. and Franklin F. Foit, Jr. (March 2003). “Paleomagnetic and tephra evidence for tens of Missoula floods in southern Washington”. Geology (The Geological Society of America) 31 (3): 247–250. Bibcode:2003Geo….31..247C. doi:10.1130/0091-7613(2003)031<0247:PATEFT>2.0.CO;2.

~ by Angiras on April 7, 2014.

Posted in astronomy, Astrophysics, catastrophism, paradigm shift, planetary science
Tags: rythmic deposits