Newsgroup sci.geo.geology 33412

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Brian Hutchings wrote:
> 
> that is quite an impressive tour, doc.Brown!...
Thank you.  RDB
> I have to wonder, however, seguing back to Pat Moore's observation
> of Moon, if these rim-a-round correlations are not orogenic
> in nature; 
I missed Pat Moore's observation/post.  What was his (her?) point?
did you see the article of a few YA in Sci.Amer.,
> "the Supercontinent Cycle" ??...  
Yes, I did.  Thought it fairly significant dribble.  RDB
as for the Hawai'i "hotspot",
> I really didn't know that it was deadcenter, but
> don't we have one-other example of a similar thing,
> in Olympus Mons on Mars?
Similar in what way?  RDB
>         by the way, are you the same fellow
> who gave the dipolar argument for gravity?...  there seemed
> to be some similarities in style of writing.
Not the same fellow.  Would you like to discuss planetary paleomagnetics, e.g. the way iron asteroid impacts in 
sub-crustal oceanic locations function like "new" and transient magnetic surface poles?  Much of my 
fault-finding of the Sci.Am. article relates to their misinterpretation of the paleomagnetic record.  RDB
>         anyway, are you aying that
> *all* mountainbuilding is the result of impact?...
The term "mountain" is not a well-defined term.  I would say there is a "mountain" of evidence that impacts are 
the most significant causal factor in the creation of mountains on planetary surfaces.  When we see "mountains" 
on planets/moons of the solar system, however, we call them portions of crater rims.  I'd call Olympus Mons a 
volcanic structure, but that does not mean that its original volcanic outflow wasn't caused by gravitational 
accretion, e.g. impacts.  RDB
> that is almost as unsatisfying as the plates-bumping/mantle-currenting
> situation!  
"Plate bumping" does create mountains, but the bumping is secondary, in most instances, to the immediate 
or delayed effects of impacts and gravitational accretion.  RDB
> 
> --
> There is no dimension without time.  --RBF (Synergetics, 527.01)
> (Brian Hutchings -- ba137@lafn.org)

Hi, does someone know the depth human has ever reached?
The information I have is,
  Kola scientific borehole,  10 Km ?
  Mine (South Africa),         3Km ?
But I am not so sure about the above, so I want to be sure and also 
I want to know the following.
  Coal mine,                  ? Km
  Oil drilling,               ? Km
  Geophysical survey,         ? Km
Thank you for your attention.
shin@criepi.denken.or.jp

In article <3231F81A.5597@superlink.net>
Eric Lucas  writes:
> Warren Taylor wrote:
> > 
> > Michael Varney  wrote:
> > 
> > A lot of Archie's words interspersed with his own comments.
> > 
> > Look Michael my boy, your comments were completely inane and the whole
> > post a waste of bandwidth.  If you just ignore Archie we will be all
> > better off.  GET A LIFE; ignore him.
> 
> Look, Warren my boy, your comments were completely inane and the whole
> post a waste of bandwidth.  If you just ignore those who complain about
> Archie, we will all be better off.  GET A LIFE; ignore them.
> 
>         Cheers,
>                 Eric
  I grow weary of the dullness of Lucas. One needs the Bromage and
Evens to make this comedy team palatable in their self-slap-stick. I
did not give Bromage or Evens permission to go on vacation or leave.
Then again, I could never watch for long the Three Stooges before
becoming bored.
  The major thing to learn about Lucas, Bromage and Evens is the idea
that you can think that you are "in" science, when in fact you are
utterly blind to the subject. They show that in 1996, you can still
earn a science degree by relying almost solely on memorization.
Memorization permits one to talk about a science book, remember how to
do a science experiment, etc.
   And I have never bad -mouthed memorization and never will for memory
is to thinking what seeing through eyes is to the 5 senses. That is an
apt analogy in the old way of thinking. Yet , according to my Brain
Locus theory, all memory is ordered up as well as the ongoing thoughts
in the mind, and in the Brain Locus theory there cannot be a
distinction between memory and a current thought. That a past memory in
the Brain Locus theory was ordered up from the Nucleus of 231Pu as well
as a current new idea or sensation or feeling or observation that had
no past memory.

meron@cars3.uchicago.edu writes:
>No, it would've a counter survival value.  It would either generate 
>overcrowding (in which case death would come from starvation, aging 
>not being an issue) or, assuming it would be accompanied by a greatly 
Perhaps, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be an advantage to the
individuals who had the gene.  Have you heard of 'the tragedy of the
commons'?
If you had 12 kids (and successfully raised them to adulthood), more
copies of your genes would reproduce, so in that sense your genes
would have an 'advantage,' i.e., they would be more likely dominate
the future population.  The fact that by doing this, you may be
screwing up the world for everyone in the future makes no difference.
Evolution, so to speak, is blind to that.
-- 
                                              ^-----^ 
 Michael Huemer         / O   O \
 http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~owl             |   V   | 
                                              \     / 

In article  meron@cars3.uchicago.edu writes:
>In article <32349509.5740@netrover.com>, Gaetan Jobin  writes:
>>Michael W. Fisher wrote:
>>snip...snip...snip
>>> .... Measurable
>>> physical deterioration sets in after 30--which if you recall is the mean
>>> age of adult death in pre-technological societies.
>>snip...snip...snip 
>> ... the low age death is not a true
>>mesure at all. In fact in the "old" times people lived just as long as
>>we do. 
>No, not quite.  There were individuals who reached an advanced age, 
>but these were rather exceptions.  Among the rural population (which 
>was the vast majority) very few people reached past 50.
Don't confuse post agriculture with pre-agriculture societies.
Post agriculture, most people led rather rugged lives working hard
in the fields under fairly crowded conditions which were conducive
to disease, so they did indeed not live much past 50.
[My hat is off to them though, for their "sacrifice" ,supporting
the "intellectuals" in the cities, made possible our modern way
of life ultimately.]
Pre-agriculture, population density was low and studies have shown
that the hunter gatherer lifestyle requires only 5 or 6 hours of
labor a day.  So they may have been better off than we are.
More exercise, less fatty diets, plenty of sleep, very little alchohol...
Women may have died a bit earlier than today due to the rigors of
pre-caesarian childbirth, but aside from violent death, they 
probably lived as long as we do (until the age of the first bypass anyway).
Tom Clarke
>Mati Meron			| "When you argue with a fool,
>meron@cars.uchicago.edu		|  chances are he is doing just the same"

froups trimmed
In article , meron@cars3.uchicago.edu wrote:
| In article <512l78$5aq@news.cc.ucf.edu>, clarke@acme.ucf.edu (Thomas
Clarke) writes:
| >In article  meron@cars3.uchicago.edu writes:
| >
| >>No, not quite.  There were individuals who reached an advanced age, 
| >>but these were rather exceptions.  Among the rural population (which 
| >>was the vast majority) very few people reached past 50.
| >
| >Don't confuse post agriculture with pre-agriculture societies.
| >Post agriculture, most people led rather rugged lives working hard
| >in the fields under fairly crowded conditions which were conducive
| >to disease, so they did indeed not live much past 50.
| >[My hat is off to them though, for their "sacrifice" ,supporting
| >the "intellectuals" in the cities, made possible our modern way
| >of life ultimately.]
| >
| >Pre-agriculture, population density was low and studies have shown
| >that the hunter gatherer lifestyle requires only 5 or 6 hours of
| >labor a day.  So they may have been better off than we are.
| >More exercise, less fatty diets, plenty of sleep, very little alchohol...
| >Women may have died a bit earlier than today due to the rigors of
| >pre-caesarian childbirth, but aside from violent death, they 
| >probably lived as long as we do (until the age of the first bypass anyway).
| 
| There were pluses and minuses in this lifestyle.  Less labor, that's 
| true, also less risk of plagues due to low population density.  On the 
| other hand less stable food supply (there were always better and worse 
| years and in bad years people starved and the violent death you 
| mention wasn't such a rare occurance.  Hunting carries some risks.  
| Overall it is not easy to weighall these factors and decide which 
| dominate.
| 
| What I'm sure is that most of the natural selection for intelligence 
| occured in the pre-agricultural period and not later.  In farming 
| stupidity may carry a penalty but it doesn't have to.  Among hunters 
| (especially those using primitive weapons) on the other hand the 
| longevity of fools is quite limited.
| 
IIRC, hominid encephalisation covers a period of extensive climatic
change, especially around the Rift Valley, and extends through 20 (?) ice
ages (going from memory of Leakey's _Origins Reconsidered_). It was
complete by about 60kya, or in other words, some 52ky before agriculture.
William Calvin argues that these rapidly (geologically speaking) changing
conditions selected for a generalised rather than a specialised
(facultative rather than obligate) life cycle.
David Rindos has argued that the health of preagricultural hunter
gatherers was considerably better than their sedentary agricultural
descendants, due in part to the fact that while carbohydrates were more
plentiful, protein and other nutrients were not, until quite recently.
-- 
John Wilkins, Head of Communication Services, Walter and Eliza
Hall Institute of Medical Research

It is the glory of science that it finds the patterns 
in spite of the noise - Daniel Dennett

Irrelevant newsgroups trimmed.  If you think your newsgroup is
relevant, that's not my problem.
________________________________________________________________
Richard S. Brice wrote:
> 
> >
> >Not in Nature.  Nature always does everything bass-ackwards.  A good engineer
> >looking at the way biological systems are constructed will throw up his hands
> >at the sheer amateurishness of the designs.  Why do we have backup nostrils
> >and lots of toes but only one heart or spinal cord?  Why is our vital heart
> >muscle supplied by arteries that are barely large enough to carry the load and
> >tend to get clogged more easily than any other blood vessels in the body?
> >
> 
> A good engineer would first try and understand what the design
> tradeoffs were and why the choices were made before offering
> alternate designs.  And, the alternate designs would be made
> credible by a thorough design tradeoff analysis.
> 
> Engineers make tradeoff decisions based on some set of
> target criteria, e.g. manufacturability, survivability,
> cost, weight, maintainability, ...  So far as I know,
> we don't yet have a list of mother nature's target
> criteria (although some have been proposed, e.g. DArwim).
> 
> R. Brice
One way of developing new products is to take old products that worked
and add new
features, subtract features that aren't valued, alter size and shape of
parts.  This
is the paradigm of automotive designers and many others.  It's also the
only option
for living systems.  We can't radically redesign our offspring, and it
would be 
nonadaptive to do so.  That is, we wouldn't propagate *our* genes. 
Nature doesn't 
understand its design parameters.  It tries everything and whatever
works is multiplied.
To answer the questions about the heart, I have some ideas.  Arteries in
the heart work 
under high pressure, especially when the heart is working hard. They
don't have to be
very big to handle the flow rates because the pressure is high.  Also,
their small diameter
may help them handle the pressure, because the same amount of blood
flowing through larger
tubes would have higher pressure, increasing the risk that the walls
would blow out.  
If you lower the backpressure, you have to either do it globally or put
in a pressure
regulator upstream.  Heart vessels are vulnerable to blockage with fat
(choleserol).
But that blockage takes a long time to build up if you're eating a low
to moderate fat
diet, like most of our ancestors did.  Our bodies are optimized to meet
the survival needs
of our ancestors.  We can't expect these genes to be optimal if we
subject them to 
brand new challenges.

Hi, I'm a geology student in Brisbane and I'm curious as to whether any
Australians in this field use these newsgroups.

Jeremy Huffman wrote:
> Good response, but I'd also like to add (and I think this will answer his
> question more directly) many species (including humans) have what are
> called vestigial body parts. For instance, some snakes have what look
> like diminished hip bones, since they evolved from reptiles. Humans have
> a tailbone. There are many other examples of this sort, which show that
> animals are in a constant state of evolution. Although I think humans
> have achieved a static environment. Any evolution in our species will
> have to come from genetic engineering.
I disagree with your last statement.  
Evolution happens in several phases (as in liquid vs gas, not sequential
phases).  A species under extreme stress is held to few surviving
individuals and can change quite rapidly because a mutated individual
represents a large fraction of the gene pool, and the changes can spread
to a significant fraction of surviving individuals quickly.  In this
phase, change accumulates quickly but continuously over many generations
until the species developes into a stable niche or goes extinct.
When a species is experiencing low stress (expanding population,
habitat, and food supply) as humans have been for the last few thousand
years (because of culture and technology, especially farming) evolution
allows a large variety of individuals to survive simultaneously without
significantly redefining what the "typical" individual is.  The tallest,
shortest, thinnest, fattest, and any other -est human that ever lived is
probably alive today.  
This means our next evolutionary transition will occur during the crash
at the end of this current explosive expansion.  Then, whoever survives
the plague, corn blight or whatever will either be the best suited to
the new high stress situation or just the luckiest if the destruction is
random.  Whatever, the definition of "typical human" may be much
different even though the surviving examples were in the population
before the bust.  This phase of evolution might be discribed as
"apparently nothing happening followed by instantaneous but modest
change". 
I suspect that these two phases typically alternate as a species
fortunes wax and wane. 
This was not meant to be rigorous but to give a conversational view to
beginners on the subject.  The point is, that even when it appears that
nothing is happening, variations are accumulating to prepare for the
next bust.  All forms are transitional in one of these two phases.
The only opinions I express are my own.
John Popelish

On 8 Sep 1996 09:44:08 GMT, Dr.Turi@worldnet.att.net (drturi) wrote:
>
>Dear Sir, I do not only predict earthquakes but also fires! Free 
>astropsychology--- 
I suppose that you do great card tricks, too. 
What's that?  Are you quacking again? 

> In evoloution the eye has occured 19 times, wings 3 times INTELLIGENT
> once only.Has any one considered that humans may be an 
introduced species?
For all I can see humans do not really fit in to 
this ecosystem an behaves very much as all 
introduced species, ie creating a big unbalance.
Francicsoc A. Shi

> In evoloution the eye has occured 19 times, wings 3 times INTELLIGENT
> once only.Has any one considered that humans may be an 
introduced species?
For all I can see humans do not really fit in to 
this ecosystem an behaves very much as all 
introduced species, ie creating a big unbalance.
Francisco A. Shi

Among the dozen new free promotional CD-ROM offers just added to the
website maintained by the CD-ROM Users Group, is one from a company
offering  geotechnical and geo-environmental software. Looks like a
powerful suite of applications. 
You can reach the FREE CD-ROMS site at:
http://www.west.net/~cdromug
Go have some fun. FB

Among the dozen new free promotional CD-ROM offers just added to the
website maintained by the CD-ROM Users Group, is one from a company
offering  geotechnical and geo-environmental software. Looks like a
powerful suite of applications. 
You can reach the FREE CD-ROMS site at:
http://www.west.net/~cdromug
Go have some fun. FB

In article <3234D312.36AE@navix.net>,
Robert D. Brown  wrote:
>Chuck Karish wrote:
>> In article <323477D8.1BB1@navix.net>,
>> Robert D. Brown  wrote:
>> >Steve Thomas wrote:
>> >>   What pushes continental plates around, if not the
>> >> oceanic plates?  Is it just convection?`
>> 
>> I don't know of a storage mechanism for such tectonic energy.
>
>Large impacts are the single most important cause of geological change
>on Earth, and affect change in a non-linear manner, e.g. abruptly (H.R.
>Shaw, Craters, Cosmos, and Chronologies: A New Theory of Earth,
>Stanford University Press, 1995, 688 pages, 2000+ contemporary
>references, edited by William Glen, Editor at Large Stanford University
>Press, former editor of Eos: Transactions of the American Geophysics
>Union).
I was quoted out of context here.  The claim in Mr. Brown's article to
which I replied was that major tectonic events are initiated by the
release of pre-existing energy by impact events.
>Large impacts are rare events in chronologies measured by reference to
>the age of human record-keeping.
OK, I'll buy that.  What does this have to do with geology?
We have a historical perspective that goes back billions
of years.
>Because of
>the extemely rapid motion of impactors (7-25 km/sec relative to Earth),
>combined with the non-compressibility of water, oceanic impacts deliver
>a near-instantaneous shock force that is distributed in a radial manner
>away from the impact site.  This may cause island chains to slam up
>against (and fuse with) continental plates and can also (in the case of
>very large impacts) cause the plates themselves to undergo
>translational motions relative to the underlying mantle.
This is nonsense.  The water in the ocean doesn't have enough
momentum to transfer this much energy to the sea bed before
it's splashed away.  Besides, water is more compressible than
the rocks of either the continents or the ocean floor, which
transmit most of the energy of an impact by a meteor bigger than
a few hundred meters across.
>The impact
>that created the Hawaiian "magma plume" was the last (most recent) very
>large oceanic impact on Earth and it occurred approximately 65.1
>million years ago.
Two questions:
- Where's the astrobleme from this event?  It should be
  northwest of Midway, but I know of no recognized disruption
  of the sea floor there.
- What formed the Emperor Sea mounts, going back in age to
  about 106 My, if it wasn't the Hawaiian hot spot?
It's hard to understand how a major impact event can fail
to disturb the deposition of sediments on the sea floor.
The fossil record has been examined carefully from sediments
collected all along the track of this hot spot.
>Many now believe that the Chixilub crater off
>the Yucatan peninsula is the site that "caused" the extinction of the
>dinosaurs, but that impactor was much smaller than the one that formed
>Hawaii.
If this is true, there should be an astrobleme 300 km. across
associated with the Hawaiian event.  Where is it?  The sea floor
across the entire western Pacific Ocean is old enough that
it should be preserved.
>The age of the Hawaii impact site is difficult to date (with precision)
>because it is based upon an estimate of oceanic crustal motion (cm/yr)
>over the mantle coordinates of the "magma plume".
This is not true.  The ages of the sea mounts that have resulted
from motion of the Pacific plate across this plume have been
established by micropaleontology.  The ages of the sediments
that immediately overlie the dead volcanoes in the chain are
well known, and in fact this provides some of the information
that was used to measure the rate of motion of the plate.
>We can tell that the Hawaii volcano/magma plume represents an impact
>site because:
>
>(A) The "focality" of the eruptive site.  A magma plume rising off the
>core should be geographically widest at its "top", while the track of
>an impactor into Earth's substance will be focal and remain that way
>(the case in Hawaii).
This presumes quite specific knowledge of the mechanism by
which heat and matter are delivered to the surface of the
Earth by a hot spot.  I'd be more comfortable seeing this
sort of description as a speculative conclusion in a
treatment of hot spot processes, rather than as the starting
point for further speculation.
>(B) The volcanic magma is highly enriched in iridium, the marker of
>extra-terretrial material.
The surface of the Earth is depleted in iridium because the core of the
Earth is enriched in it.  Any mechanism that brings up material from
the core/mantle boundary can bring up plenty of iridium.
Besides, the volume of material that's been erupted by the Hawaiian hot
spot is enough to have swamped the contribution of iridium from an
impactor.  We're talking about perhaps fifteen hundred cubic kilometers of
impactor and several hundred thousand cubic kilometers of eruptive
material in the sea mounts.
>(C) The magma chamber appears to originate only some 25-30 km deep into
>the interior (not extending into the core-mantle boundary).
That's a high-level feature caused by heating of the upper mantle by
magma that comes from a deeper source.  Movement at much deeper levels
can be detected by its sound:  microearthquakes as deep as 200 km.
>(D) There is a circular impact crater rim centered on Hawaii (the
>Rockies, Central America, the Andes, the trans-Antarctic Mountains, the
>Western Australian Rise, the Phillipine Islands, a portion of the
>Himalayans, the Kolyma Range of Asia, the Brooks Range of Alaska, and
>the McKenzie Range of Canada.  The "instantaneous" shock wave
>associated with the Hawaii impact created these mountains, which lie on
>a great circle of the Earth centered on Hawaii as it lay 65 million
>years ago.
Someone had best break this news carefully to the scientists
who have been examining cores of Pacific Ocean sediments for
the past thirty years, which record an undisturbed sedimentary
regime that goes back much farther than 65 million years.
>(E) The final good reason to consider this an impact site is because we
>know from our observations of other planets (and our Moon) that most
>mountain systems on planetary structures 1) form circles like the one
>just described, and 2) most "mountains" on planets (and lunar
>structures) are impact derived.  Only on Earth have we "decided" that
>the mountains were formed by mechanisms unrelated to impacts, a form of
>"mystical" reasoning.
What's mystical about observing present-day processes (including impact
cratering) and comparing the results of these observable processes to
those that we can observe in the ancient record?
Studies of the ages of craters on the Earth's moon show that the most
intense bombardment came in the first few hundred million years of the
Moon's history.  We don't have a comparable record of the early history
of the Earth, largely because most of the Earth's crust has been
recycled several times by non-catastrophic processes.
The common wisdom among earth scientists is that the Earth was, indeed,
clobbered pretty thoroughly by impactors in its early history, possibly
including one event that created the Moon and gave the Earth a new bulk
composition and a totally new surface.  Later major impacts may have
stopped the development of life on Earth more than once.
There is, however, a good record of continuous life on Earth for the
billion year period just past.  This is not compatible with the
hypothesis that the Earth was struck 65 million years ago by a bolide
big enough to have created the Pacific Ocean.  Such an event would have
abruptly killed all land animals, not just the more vulnerable ones.
We're talking about ionizing the atmosphere - turning it intoa plasma -
and dropping a couple of meters of dust and bigger debris over the
whole surface of the planet.  The residue from such an event would
be easy to find in the sedimentary record.
>(F) The isotopic rock dates confirm the co-simultaneous formation of
>the above-named mountains when these dates
> are corrected for the anisotropic geographic shifts in rock isotopic
> ratios that was produced by the "mother of all impacts on Earth", the
>impact associated with lunar genesis.
This is gibberish.
>(G) Large scale impacts are a logical consequence of the nebular
>accretion theory for the origin of the solar system, which depicts
>larger and larger impacts occurring over time.
That model has planitesimals forming bigger and bigger objects
by mutual gravitational attraction.  Once the Solar System matured,
there was no longer a supply of such objects in planet-crossing
trajectories, so the rate of cratering declined.  This period
of "larger and larger impacts occurring over time" ended some
four billion years ago.  The history of the Moon shows the
rate of crater formation and the maximum size of craters
decreasing steadily through time.
--
    Chuck Karish          karish@mindcraft.com
    (415) 323-9000 x117   karish@pangea.stanford.edu

In article <32333055.58169FFA@alcyone.com>,
Erik Max Francis   wrote:
>Would either you care to back up your claims with some numbers?
>
>Numerical simulations have been done with Mars-sized objects impacting Earth
>at long angles; in some cases you _do_ get a Moon-sized ejecta.
Is there a 65 million year old moon orbiting the Earth that
I haven't noticed?
Who painted the floor of the Pacific Ocean with magnetic stripes
and with nice, even layers of older sediments after this impact?
--
    Chuck Karish          karish@mindcraft.com
    (415) 323-9000 x117   karish@pangea.stanford.edu

Chuck Karish wrote:
> As would all geologists who've seen pictures of it...
I don't know how old you are, but in my lifetime, geologists used to say that all of the impact craters on the 
other planets and moons were caused by volcanism. RDB 
> 
> >but that does not mean that its original volcanic outflow wasn't
> >caused by gravitational accretion, e.g. impacts. RDB
> 
> Impacts that have been completely covered by volcanic flows
> and are thus impossible to verify. 
Wanna' play "peek-a-boo".  Infants reason this way. RDB
>

> Is there a 65 million year old moon orbiting the Earth that
> I haven't noticed?
No, just a few rocks like AH84001. RDB
> Who painted the floor of the Pacific Ocean with magnetic stripes
> and with nice, even layers of older sediments after this impact?
A gal named Gaia.  RDB

Robert Dinse wrote:
>      I do find the impact theory to be actually fairly plausable, but early
> in the Earths history, late enough for gravity to have differentiated the
> elements but early enough that there would be no evidence of an impact crater
> today.
> 
Earth is the most siderophile-enriched object orbiting the Sun.  The Moon is the most siderophile-depleted 
object orbiting the Sun.  Other than the siderophile differences, Earth and Moon has fairly close compositions. 
 The differences have been explained by the planetary scale impact that created the Moon, which caused the 
impactor's core to accrete with Earth.  RDB

Dear Archi & others,
Eric wrote:
>So please write in your vote , no matter if you are a foreigner or not, in > fact post >your vote to the newsgroup sci.chem and show your support for the > Next to be Elected >President of the United States -- Archimedes Plutonium
>
>  ELect Archimedes Plutonium as the next president of the US
>
>         Cheers,
>                 Eric Lucas
> 
Archi wrote:
:   Why thank you Eric,  as my first official act in office , I will
: appoint you as the moderator of sci.chem. Would you like that?
 Nice talk guys :) OK, hopefully my letter will do the same :)
 entertain a few people out there - I've started to use UseNet 
 few days ago, and what I see is that UseNet has a little
 to do with positive exchange of people's experiences, ideas,
 of anything... What a nice World we live in - I wonder, do
 you guys really find happiness in saying that other are stupid
 and only you know the truth??? If that's so, I feel sorry for you...
/ Archimedes Plutonium has his web site at :                     /
/ http://www.dartmouth.edu/people/atom/                          /
/ For those who don't know him; his theory tells that the whole  /
/ Universe represents one Atom, please read more on his web site /
/ It's not a short letter, so, you can skip the introduction and /
/ go to: "And now, discussing your thoughts!" if you prefer that /
Dear Archimedes Plutonium,
That is the reason of this letter - to hopefully contribute in
finding a credible explanation - a closer truth. I think that's
the same reason of why you have "created" your Atom theory.
I'll be glad to hear your opinion and I hope we'll have something
to share. I haven't read all of your "articles", yet, but it is clear
to me, with reading just a few of them, that you are a clear thinker...
Bye the way, sorry if I'll say something you've already explained, well,
I will take the time to read all of your articles, but until then I hope
this letter will be enough interesting to show you I have some
answers which could contribute to the Truth we are all seeking...
(also, sorry for my language, I'm from Slovenia and not an native
English speaker... English is a third language to me...)
Bye the way, I'm just writing mine "theory" of, say, the Truth. 
With finding your web site I've found a good source to help
my theory, which rely on quite different approach, but fits yours!
Wish you all the best in enjoying this reading as I did yours!
First, a different point of view:
Your whole theory rely on past science. The truth is not in that,
the truth is in what you know without any knowledge at all.
Is in feeling/being aware, not just in thinking! The truth is
in our spiritual growth not in knowing matter. Matter is "just"
like an egg where we, our energy, evolves... (this is just a 
part of my theory of the Truth and needs whole explanation
to have a clear picture - it's here just to make you think of)
How would you explain yourself, your life if there would not
exists name Plutonium or moreover no atoms theories and no
laws, like electromagnetism, etc. ???
Well, I believe science is very important, but it can't give
all answers! That's way I've started that way...
I do not think the only point in giving the whole truth is "just"
answering on questions of how matter function, what is the
World we live in, in explaining it with math, physics, etc.,
all the facts of which surround us. What's the purpose of
explaining the facts, yes, the Universe is a fact, our life is
a fact. Why "just" explaining how the Universe function, how our
life function, what about the questions, why our Universe exist,
why is functioning, why our life function and meaning of it???
I think that question "why" is as powerful as "how"... so, to get
the whole Truth any question should be answered and each answer
can help other questions...
For example, you write:
"... But the competition for life is not far behind us, even if we are
the most advanced...."
The questions I haven't seen you've answered are quite different
from what you've answered and are equally important to understand
the whole truth. From your upper sentence there is a very important 
question to be answered, why the "competition for life", which
force does that and why it does... don't you agree with me that
these kind of answers are equally important???
So, that's why I've said "First, a different.... ", because if you
come to here then it means I'm not boring and that you are open to
other human ideas as well. I'm glad if you are, because if one
thinks he knows everything then he claims he is a God, he is
the holly truth, but if he is that then he would have no problem
with convincing others he is what he claims he is. He'd have no
problems at all showing others the truth - anyone would believe
it at once and understand it - don't you agree with me?
Do not think I would like to go against your PU theory, I think
it's very imaginative and very close to mine truth - you know,
you should know, that everyone has his/her own truth and that
"all we do" in our life is making our truth better. We do that
alone and with help of others, someone believes at once, without 
thinking, others build their own theories, like you.... and as you
can see, like me... Again, what I'd like to do and achieve is to
try communicating with you, exchange ideas and hopefully
build up the kind of truth which would attract as many people
as possibly... You know, the only and the right truth will be
the one when everybody would be able to believe it without
doubts - that's the only truth, for we are all one and we are all the
same inside - basically, so, maybe you will find this opportunity
interesting to make even a better theory of your already existing
theory which is very impressing. 
As I said, your theories rely on science and on past knowledge, the
other way of explaining things is mysticism. I'm not a mystic or
anything similar, I think of myself just as a part of a Whole which
we are all part of and I think of my ideas as about something everybody
should contribute to our goal (I'll tell latter what that is).
Before I say my thoughts, I would be very glad if you take some
time and check out the web site of the best mystic (not "just" mystic,
he know of any science knowledge he talked about) I ever had a chance
to met. Please go to: http://osho.org and read his "talks" - he
covered any possible issue of modern man. His explanations are
very clear, simple and credible. I hope you will enjoy his
reading as I did. Moreover, you will find out that his
explanations fits your theories...
Sure, I don't think just we three are capable of contributing to a
better truth, NOT AT ALL! I think everybody can participate, but people
are usually so much under repression of schools, politics and religions,
etc., that just a few can think freely and with no fear of being
contradictory, with no fear having a different explanation from
others - the fear which don't permit them to think freely,
because if they do, they think, they fear they will go mad...
(maybe I sound "mad", but I'm more aware of ordinary things others
do and believe in, so, even if I'm "mad" that's not important...)
While I was writing this letter, a guy come here in my office, and
I've asked him if he ever questioned himself about such questions,
explanations/meaning of life etc. I knew what he would say, he said,
don't talk to me about this, I rather don't think about this. I saw
he feels pain when thinking about this, one reason, because he is so
proud of himself he can't allow himself to think of such things because
he believes he can't get an answer... to think about this and search
for answers one has to be very open-minded and accept that he is just
a part of everything, that he is not his own World and his own God.
Also, the most difficult part in all this is sharing opinion with
others without getting arguing to the point there is no progress.
He says that's the reason he stopped to think about this, because
they were always arguing and there isn't a way to find the truth.
That's very wrongly interpreted, if we wouldn't share our opinions
we wouldn't be humans, there wouldn't be any evolution any growth
and improvement. But yes, this is a very sensible issue, because
it touches our very personality and it can hurt us. How to avoid that
and still having communication about it, simply, with admitting
that everybody's truth is the right one! Well, as long it is his/her
own truth and not borrowed from others, like from religions, etc.
The one who founded the Christianity had his truth but as soon as
others believe to it without uderstanding that isn't their truth
anymore, simply because if the truth would be the right one, anyone
would believe to it, no matter where, how and why and most of all
he would understand it!
I have one very strong question I'd ask believers of any religion.
Let say you believe in Christianity, I'd ask you, if you would be 
born in India or in Japan or any other place as you were born which
would be your religion??? It would be the one where you were born,
agree? So, religions are not the truth, but yes, the core of
all religion is the truth!
Everybody believes in it, in thinking positive, in being
aware what's wrong and what's not... even the most dangerous
criminals know when they do the wrong thing, the fact that they
don't care about it is different problem, but they DO know...
That's the one truth and another which would help the whole humanity
to act better is Karma, in knowing that everything what we do has
consequences, if I kill someone I'll pay for it, so to speak, and if
contribute positively to our whole existence I'll be awarded for it,
again, so to speak...
If we admit that we can freely exchange and share our experiences,
our thoughts with no fear of being hurt, because I know, you know,
we both have our truth and our intention is not convincing the other
who has right but in trying to improve our own truth, intention
is to make one credible truth for everyone.
What do you think about all this???
Osho is the man who was called as the most dangerous man in
history after Jesus Christ, not dangerous to the "people", but to
politic, to religion, to any suppression and even to science...
(btw, your science is different!) So, please let me know what
you think about his talks.
__________________________________
And now, discussing your thoughts!
You say:
>Nucleosynthesis is the meaning of our life...
...
>The prescription part of an atom totality is that we now realize full well what
>our future direction, our purpose is-- to make more atoms. The purpose,
>the mission of life is nucleosynthesis of the higher atomic numbered
>elements. The purpose of life is to nucleosynthesize transplutonium
>elements, the nucleosynthesis of atoms all the way up to and including
>element 190.
....
>Our collective mission is nucleosynthesis. Life
>is a progression, a teleological progression superdetermined
>by the Atom Whole.
I'm amazed how close we came without knowing each other.
Your idea is the same as mine, but there is a conclusion missing...
(You don't need to believe in it, I don't expect that, but I'd be
glad if you will find it interesting and if you'd like to hear
more about it.)
You call it nucleosynthesis, I call it energy evolution...
What I'm missing in your explanations is what is the goal of
nucleosynthesis, why it's happening, etc. My theory is simple,
very simple indeed, as it's your! The real truth must be very simple,
but we complicate it. You know, big inventions were always so simple
but just few could imagine them. Simplifying the whole Universe to one
atom if so genius, so simple, that is has to be the truth. But there is
more to be answered and I hope I will contribute to your, or better to
say, to our theory - I mean our as of everybody!
I won't write here my whole story, but just part of it...
The matter has to obey laws. There are many, different regarding
dimensions. Such as electromagnetism, nuclear weak and strong
force, gravity (you say gravity doesn't exists, I believe it does, but
I agree with you that gravity is not the basic law).
The basic law to all matter is time and the irony is that time is even
not considered in math and physics as it should be. Take for example the
well-known paradox. You are at the beginning of the stadium and you'd
like to reach the end of it. So, before reaching the end you have to
make a half way to it, and before making a half way, you have to walk
halfway of halfway, repeating that to infinity. Trying to explain that
mathematically? You just can't, you will never reach the end of the
stadium! Why? As I've said, because in mathematics the time is not
included. To make any movement we need time, photons need time to "fly"
and that time is equal to their speed - that's also why photons are
"eternal", they aren't destroyed when flying such a distances, because
in their dimension scale of the time the time stops, therefor they
don't decay.
Moreover, there is not just one time - there are many! But there sure
is one above others, that's the one who rules the greatest dimensions
and others... 
So, what would your conclusion be on what I've said so far? Okay, I'll
give you one more information. We all know, feel, think, believe that
our goal, our seek as a human beings is to become and be happy, so to
speak... I don't mean being partly or momentary happy, but feeling
that immense joy, which everybody can imagine - constantly. So, how
can we reach that? Yes, with nucleosynthesis, with evolving our energy
(we as beings are in fact energy, but composed of different forms of
it) So, what's the aim of nucleosynthesis, of energy evolving? It's in
getting rid of all laws, for laws are nothing more than limitations.
The intention of nucleosynthesis is in becoming completely "free",
meaning absolute awareness, absolute truth, or God or whatever you
will call it. And how that possible? In my opinion, when whole
Universe energy will evolve to the state of consciousness. Our
consciousness is a highest state of energy - which doesn't rely on
matter. The final goal is getting rid of matter. Meaning, there are
no laws, no limitation, but just the pure energy. We as a human being
are a final state of matter which makes possible for energy to involve
in us and became pure energy. But that's a very difficult process...
People who became enlightened became a pure energy and their energy is 
waiting for us to join them - and in joining, after every human being
evolves to the state of being enlightened, there will be a Universal
change. The matter will disappear, the Atom will disappear, where a
new state of existence will take place - a full, unimaginable
awareness, with no limitations at all! 
You write:
>And since our every thought is a Coulomb
>interaction coming from the protons of the nucleus of the plutonium atom
>to our observable electron universe of which our brain is a part thereof, so
>if we would strike against nucleosynthesis, then the Pu atom has already
>superdetermined that we should strike against nucleosythnesis, and make
>us go extinct.
Yes, I believe our mind works like that, but there is more, we are aware
and our consciousness is above matter, beyond atom!
>If the purpose of life is nucleosynthesis then our species
>only on the planet Earth in the entire observable universe would be
>sufficient for the atom totality.
Atom totality is on step before all matter is transformed to pure
energy... Therefor Atom totality is also our goal...
>In abstraction, time is merely the count of atoms and how those atoms are
>geometrically arranged. Because the count of atoms in the future is more
>than in the past it is impossible to time travel into the future or past. Time
>travel means that the exact number of atoms and how those atoms are
>arranged must be reduplicated. Impossible, hence time travel is impossible.
The exact number of atoms and how those atoms are arranged can happen
to be the same, why not? It's like playing cards. Imagine that the
deck of cards is increased by a completely new card (or cards) each time
a new game starts. If you get ten cards, the chance you get the same ten
cards exist even if the deck has now million cards, the first time
you've got that ten cards the deck had just fifty cards... So, the time
is the main problem to be explained and as I said, the matter, atoms,
are
under its law, limited... Possibility of traveling in past exist, but
not
in the state of matter, traveling in future can't exist simply, because
it hasn't happened yet, and if you'd be able to say you've traveled in
the future that's not the future any more, that's the present for you...
Well, time is simply infinity and because our mind is finite we can't
quite understand it - who understands infinity thoroughly??? Our mind
is a perceiver of time, which can perceive a tenth of second or so, 
therefore our understanding is very limited...
Future is misinterpreted, even if you manage to go ahead and get ten
years ahead of others you haven't traveled in the future you have
jumped to the next scale of time, which "commands" the other dimension.
It's possible to travel along the time, but in limitations of global
one - the above one... Sure, the travel is impossible for us, for we
rely on matter... But maybe that's possible when traveling just with
our spirit, our consciousness, our mind - whatever you call it.
That's it for now...
If you find my thoughts interesting I'd be most glad to write you
more and I wish to hear your opinion - even if you will think
totally different from me, I'd like to hear it anyway...
Wishing all the best,
BD (my name is not important!)
PS I wonder what was the public reaction to your theory - I know there
  were some negative, I'm more interesting in those ideas which
  supported yours... maybe you have put up a page about that???

Ralph Sansbury  writes:
>What and How are these measurements of magnetic direction and magnitude 
>made and interepreted?
If I understand your question correctly, you are asking how we come by
measurements of the earth's magnetic field intensity in oceanic regions.
These are not normally taken on the sea floor, but near the sea surface,
either by a ship towing a magnetometer a few tens of metres behind it,
or by a 'plane flying at a height of a few hundred feet.
The instrument used in early measurements (and not infrequently for
shipborne measurements today) is a proton precession magnetometer.  It
is a very simple device (basically a bottle of water with a coil around
it) which measures the total intensity of the earth's field.  More
sophisticated instruments are also available either offering greater
resolution, or measuring the vector field (i.e. direction as well as
magnitude) or measuring spatial derivatives (gradiometers).
The dominant signal observed is the Earth's internally-generated
magnetic field, onto which are superimposed time-varying fluctuations
associated with the rotation of the Earth and disturbances in the
external magnetic field.  It is standard practice to apply various
corrections to remove this time-varying component, so that what remains
is the spatial variation of field intensity as it would have been
observed at a fixed point in time.  Reduction to a single point in time
allows measurements made at different times to be integrated.  After
that integration, typically, the long-wavelength components of the
internally generated field are removed.  What remains has to be due to
the effect of fairly shallow rocks, either as a result of their
magnetic susceptibility locally distorting the internal field, or
because they have been magnetised in the past.  The latter explanation
is only open in respect of shallow rocks, because magnetic minerals
lose their memory at high temperatures (above the Curie point).  We can
also use various mathematical formulae to calculate other aspects of the
field geometry.
As a sweeping but nevertheless useful generalisation, it is mostly
igneous rocks which contain significant quantities of the magnetic
minerals.  As a result of the processes of crustal generation at
mid-ocean ridges, the uppermost part of the crust produced is magnetised
according to the polarity of the Earth's field at the time of
production.  As that crust moves away from the ridge, a series of
magnetic stripes are generated within the ocean floor, which can be seen
as undulations on individual records from magnetometers towed across the
deep ocean.  Ron Macnab, Jacob Verhoef and other colleagues have
recently completed an integration of many magnetic datasets covering the
entire North Atlantic and Arctic, on which these stripes are
spectacularly displayed in 3-D.  Information, including details of how
to obtain a wall-poster of the compilation, can be found at
   http://agcwww.bio.ns.ca/pubprod/of3125etc.html
There are a variety of techniques for interpretation of this data.  Most
textbooks describe simple graphical methods, but in practice most
professionals will use much more sophisticated methods such as downward
continuation, Euler or Wiener deconvolution, and 2.5D or 3D forward
modelling and model fitting, especially where other information on the
underlying structure is available (e.g. from seismic surveys).
Hopefully, that's more than enough detail.  If you want even more, come
hear my review lecture on this at the Atlantic Frontier conference in
Aberdeen on 8th October!
Russ

In article <3232260C.29A6@ix.netcom.com>, Bill Oertell  writes:
> > And considering the size of the Pacific - that's one heck of an impact
> > crater.  :-)  Should have splattered the planet into an asteroid belt,
> > you ask me.
> > 
> 
>    Agreed.
>                                Bill
     Actually it well may have... Initially but you need to consider a few
things.  The asteroid belt doesn't form a planet (possibly again if you
believe Tom VanFlanderin (and forgive if spelling is wrong)), because of
the perturbing effects of the gas giants, particularly Jupiter.
     I do find the impact theory to be actually fairly plausable, but early
in the Earths history, late enough for gravity to have differentiated the
elements but early enough that there would be no evidence of an impact crater
today.
     The reason for I believe this is the relative abundance of light and
heavy elements in the Earth and moon and they density of the earth relative
to the other planets.
     In general, if you find that as you get farther from the sun, planets
tend to be made of lighter and more volatile elements.  This makes sense as
young stars tend to have rather healthy solar winds and thus drive off
volatiles near them.
     So you would expect Mercury to be the densest planet, Venus to be less
dense, Earth to be less dense still, and Mars to be even less dense, but
actually Earth is more dense than either Venus or Mars, while the moon is
considerably less dense and made up of mostly silicates which are abundent
in the Earths crust but not in the earths interior.
     If something substantial collided with the Earth while it was old enough
for gravity to had a chance to differentiate materials, but young enough to
still be mostly liquid, at a glancing angle, it could have knocked a
substantial portion of the Earths silicates, which then would have made up
a larger fraction of a larger Earth, and imparted them with sufficient
angular momentum relative to the Earth that they could not fall back but
instead orbited and eventually congealed into our moon.
     This would leave an Earth with an unnaturally higher percentage of heavier
elements thus denser than it would otherwise be expected to be, and a moon of
mostly silicates, which is what we have.
     This probably would have happened very early on, maybe 4 billion years
ago, and since the Earth was still forming and not cooled substantially, there
would be no remnant of an impact crater.
-- 
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 Eskimo North: More Unix, Usenet, Internet for Less $$ (206)For-Ever Eskimo.Com
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SHIN wrote:
> 
> Hi, does someone know the depth human has ever reached?
> The information I have is,
>   Kola scientific borehole,  10 Km ?
>   Mine (South Africa),         3Km ?
> But I am not so sure about the above, so I want to be sure and also
> I want to know the following.
>   Coal mine,                  ? Km
>   Oil drilling,               ? Km
>   Geophysical survey,         ? Km
> 
> Thank you for your attention.
> shin@criepi.denken.or.jp
Hi:
"Geophysical surveys" have no direct depth measurement associated with
data gathering. The data are measurements of geological/geophysical
aspects which are inturn analyzed and depths estimated.
As such, to answer your question, the deepest measurement made via earth
directed geophysical exploration methods would be the diameter of the
earth.
tedd
______________________________________________________________
sperling@geophysics.com

In article <3234F1E0.12A5@navix.net>,
Robert D. Brown  wrote:
>>         anyway, are you aying that
>> *all* mountainbuilding is the result of impact?...
>
>The term "mountain" is not a well-defined term.
Huh?
If you're pretending to use the word in a geological context,
what's wrong with looking it up in the AGU Glossary?
>When we see "mountains" on planets/moons of the solar system,
>however, we call them portions of crater rims.
Who's this "we" that recognizes only craters on other
planets?  There are plenty of volcanic features described
on Mars and on the Moon.  I don't know of a definitive explanation
for the topography of Venus; we don't have that much information
about it.
>I'd call Olympus Mons a volcanic structure,
As would all geologists who've seen pictures of it...
>but that does not mean that its original volcanic outflow wasn't
>caused by gravitational accretion, e.g. impacts.
Impacts that have been completely covered by volcanic flows
and are thus impossible to verify.
--
    Chuck Karish          karish@mindcraft.com
    (415) 323-9000 x117   karish@pangea.stanford.edu

In article <50vh59$3vt@news.ios.com>, mvcs@gramercy.ios.com (Jeff Baldwin) writes:
> jadamski@usgs.gov (James C. Adamski) wrote:
> 
> >However, recent genetic studies (most recent issue of Earth magazine, I believe)
> >indicate that modern lineages of mammals diverged 100 million years
> >ago, well before the end of the Cretaceous. The researchers used genetic
> >material from people (primates), mice (rodents), and cows (ungulates). I think
> >the researchers found similar results with birds. I can verify the article this
> >evening if someone wants to know more.
> 
> Please send this verification. Thanx.
> 
> Jeffrey L. Baldwin, Mind & Vision Computer Systems
> "Intelligent Processing Systems for the Energy Industry"
> Voice/Fax/Data: (713) 550-4534     (800) MVCSTLM
> email: mvcs@gramercy.ios.com       73051.1316@compuserve.com
> http://www.worldenergy.solutions/WorldEnergy/Companies/Mind&Vision;/Mind&Vision.HTML;
> 
Greetings,
I read about the above-mentioned genetic study in the October '96 issue of Earth
magazine, p 20. The researchers were a Penn State group led by Blair Hedges. The
article states that the group looked at genes from humans, mice, and cows, and
concluded that mammals (placental) began to diverge 100 MYA. The also compared
genes of pigeons, chickens, ducks, and ostriches and concluded that birds began
to diverge 100 MYA as well. My original question was: if a diverse group of
birds survived the K/T boundary, wouldn't this imply that the bolide impact was
not significant in mass extinctions considering how environmentally sensitive
birds are?
Thanks,
Jim
USGS
Opinions are my own