Re: The Equator
"John Holmes"
25 Jan 1997 17:59:51 GMT
Jason Morris wrote in article
<5c819b$dmj@godzilla.gol.com>...
> Just a general question to anyone who may be able to help.
>
> I am an English teacher in Japan, and in one of my conversation
> classes, I certain issue came up which we could net resolve and which
> I am very interested in finding out for the sake of interest.
>
> The north of Australia is 3 times as far away from the Equator as the
> north of Japan, and yet winter in the north of Australia is warm
> enough to swim and yet winter in the north of Japan brings snow so
> thick that roads are blocked off. Does anyone know why this is so.
>
> Sorry if this seems like a silly question, but it is something that I
> just can't work out, considering the fact that the equator is the
> closest part of the earth to the sun it seems common sense that the
> north of Australia would be much further away from the sun and
> therefore much colder. My only guess is that it is weather brought
> across from Siberia, but then Siberia is the same distance from the
> Equator as Australia, so why is Siberia colder than Australia, South
> America or Africa in the first place.
>
> Thankyou.
>
> Jason Morris.
> tops@gol.com
>
Jason,
I think you should take your atlas back for a refund! It sounds to me
like it has the equator marked about where the Tropic of Cancer should
be.
In fact Hokkaido has about the same latitude as Tasmania in the south
of Australia. The north of Australia has about the same latitude as
Manila. The south of Japan (say Kagoshima) has about the same latitude
as Perth or Sydney.
That said, the major cause of difference between northern and southern
hemisphere climates is that the south has a large circumpolar ocean,
whereas the north has large land masses surrounding the pole. The ocean
moderates the climate because the sea does not cool down in winter as
much as land does.
Snow does fall in south-eastern Australia in winter, but normally only
at elevations above 500-1000 metres.
Hope this is some help,
John
Re: Wanted info on iridium
"H.W. Stockman"
Sat, 25 Jan 1997 13:51:01 -0700
Manley Hubbell wrote:
>
> hw> Sudbury. It is also found in placers around ultramafics, usually
> Yes, here in Oregon, on the Pacific Coast, of the USA
> there are stories of Black Sand Deposits in the sea
> Adjcent to the "ultramafic" formations in the SW
> corner of the STATE.
> those however were not the sample sizes i was refering to
> in my eariler posts concerning this SUBJECT.
> the story i'm telling has to do with the supposid occurance
> of IRIDIUM in hard rock asociated with pyrite crystals as i recall
> anyway the deposits are in the NE corner of the state. UP near
> the Cornocpia Mining district and the Willawa Batholith ??/??
I think I was responding to another fellow's post.
I did my thesis on gold and platinum group elements from
the Josephine Peridotite area in SW Oregon. Some of the
results were published in Stockman and Hlava, Economic
Geology, 1984 (sorry, I don't remember the vol#). In brief,
there was a strong association of chromitites and high Ir
content, and we found platinum group minerals, including
Os-Ir-Ru-Pt alloys in the chromititites. I also panned
Os-Ir from black sands in the streams.
There were some excellent monographs on mineral resources,
published by the Oregon Dept. of Geol. and Min. Indust. ("DOGAMI").
Norm Page of the USGS oversaw some of the analyses.
My memory is dimming, but I also did some analyses of samples
from a pyrite mine in the area, and two copper mines. They
had elevated PGE, but not exceptional (if I recall correctly).
I can't remember any association with pyrite in the NE part
of the state, but an "UnCover" literature search might turn
up the reference. Certainly there are lower-T deposits, where
PGE are associated with base metal sulfides, in other parts of the
world, but a sulfur activity high enough to produce pyrite would
be incompatible with *metallic* Ir. I recall seeing pyrite
analyses with elevated Ir (e.g. ppm vs ppb), done by Jim Crocket,
for Sudbury. I think the Witwaterstrand (sp?) has pyrite.
Re: Helka 3
August Matthusen
Sat, 25 Jan 1997 13:09:14 -0800
jojones@netcomuk.co.uk wrote:
>
> Does anyone have any text sources that I could get hold of, re the effect
> of Helka 3 eruption on tree rings in Ireland and elsewhere?
> I'd be most grateful for some pointers.
> Mnay thanks,
> Jo
There are several pubs on tree rings and other chronological
markers for Hekla 3.
Baillie (1989, Hekla 3: How Big Was it?, _Endeavour_, V 13, No 12, pp
78-81) discusses dendro and Hekla. He also has a new book out on
dendro called _A Slice Through Time_ which I have heard about but
have not read; he may discuss Hekla 3 there. You might have a better
chance to obtain this book as it is published in the UK.
Peter Kuniholm et al. "Anatolian tree rings and the absolute
chronology of the eastern Mediterranean, "2220-718 BC, (Nature,
vol. 381, 27 June, 1996.) He notes an anomaly that matches, within
a year with an anomaly noted in European tree rings which has been
attributed by Baillie to the Hekla 3 eruption in Iceland.
Kuniholm also has a web page for the Aegean dendro work at:
http://www.arts.cornell.edu/dendro/
but it has not been updated with 1996 results yet.
There have been quite a few recent pubs on tephrochronology in the
journal _The Holocene_. There may be more recent ones as I haven’t
checked this journal lately. Some of those that I’ve seen are:
Dugmore, Larsen, and Newton (1995, Seven
Tephra Isochrones in Scotland, _The Holocene_, Vol 5,
# 3, pp 257-266).
Hall, Pilcher and McCormac, 1994 ("Icelandic
volcanic ash and the mid-Holocene Scots pine decline in the north of
Ireland: No Correlation," _The Holocene_, Vol 4, 79-83.
Another in _Radiocarbon_:
Dugmore et al (1995, "Radiocarbon dating tephra layers in
Britain and Iceland," _Radiocarbon_, vol 37, #2, pp. 379-388)
Pang and Chou (1984, A Correlation between Greenland Ice Core Climatic
Horizons and Ancient Oriental Meteorological Records, [abs.], _Eos_, V
65, # 45, p 846 and 1985, Three very Large Volcanic Eruptions in
Antiquity and Their Effects on the Climate of the Ancient World, [abs.],
_Eos_, V 66 # 46, p 816) attempt to correlate the eruptions of Etna in
44 BC, Hekla 3 in c. 1150 BC, and Santorini in c. 1400 to 1600 BC [note
this is the best date for Thera that was available at the time] with
ancient Chinese records of yellow fogs, rains of dust and gray rains,
snows in summer, unseasonal frost, unripened crops, dim suns, and
famines. Steffi Weisburd (1985, Excavating Words: A Geolgical Tool,
_Science News_, Vol 12, Feb 9, 1985 pp 91-94) discusses the work of Pang
and Chou in more detail than their abstracts.
Baker et al. published: "The Hekla 3 volcanic eruption recorded in
a Scottish speleothem?", _The Holocene_, vol 5, #3 pp336-342.
A very old issue of _Science_ gives an uncalibrated radiocarbon date
for Hekla 3 from Iceland in vol 122, November 18, 1955, page 960.
Hammer et al (_Nature_, vol 288, pp 230-235) provide a date derived
from acidity markers in the Greenland ice sheet
And in a post on sci.archaeology, Frank Yurco (an Egyptologist
from the Univ. Chicago wrote:
fjyurco@midway.uchicago.edu (Frank Joseph Yurco) writes:
>The next
>major event was Hekla III's eruption cycle, 1159-1140 B.C. This is all dis-
>cussed in my upcoming paper in Dr. Edward F. Wente's Festschrift, to be
>published by the Oriental Institute, Chicago.
I don’t know if this has been published yet.
Hope this gets you started. If you come accross
some new pubs on this, I'd appreciate if you could
e-mail me the citations.
Regards,
August Matthusen
[posted and mailed]
Re: Mudpots (=mud volcanoes)
Tom Schweich
Sat, 25 Jan 1997 16:59:19 -0800
Pierre A Plauzoles wrote:
>
> The area near the south end of Salton Sea is well known for having a
> number of mudpots. Is this the only area in the US (with the exception
> of Bumpass Hell (near Lassen Peak), and Yellowstone? If not, where are
> the others? Are there references to them that would include maps?
>
> Thank you.
>
> --
> Pierre Plauzoles ae779@lafn.org
> Canoga Park, California
Hot Creek Geologic Site, near Mammoth Lakes, has some mud pots. For a
map reference, use the AAA map of the eastern Sierra, on Hwy 395, north
of Bishop, turn right on Benton Crossing Rd., follow the signs.
--
Tom Schweich, schweich@well.com
http://www.well.com/user/schweich/
Re: Creationism VS Evolution
Lawrence Foard
Sat, 25 Jan 1997 22:33:22 -0800
Leslie J Bertsch wrote:
>
> Eleanor, the Megaflow Junkie (megaflowjunkie@enterprise.net) wrote:
>
> : Surely if God wishes to change his creation once it has come into
> : existance he can, and that would by necessity give all of the
> : appearance of being evolution; one form would become another...
>
> This is a possibility, but where is the evidence?
> There are absolutely no transitional figures in
> the fossile record. Even Darwin speculated that
> by our century many should be unearthed. Where are
> they?
The problem is very simple, kind of like a glass being half
empty or half full. Every time a missing link is found
creationists are thrilled because there are now two more
missing links :-)
I'd suggest going to a decent museum, ask the tour guide
to see fossil discovered this century. For example Lucy,
walks upright on human like knees, yet has an ape like
brain.
>
> The odds that even the simplet cellular life could
> have evolved are 1x10(40000) power. Who would stake
> their life on such odds? That's what you do when
> you reject the Creator in favor of evolution.
And how do you derive this number? If we are going to
just sling unsupported numbers around I'll say its 99.44%
probable for a single celled organism to develop on an
earth like planet. And those odds may be way to low...
> One more point before I sign off. When's the last
> time you saw a wrist watch form by random chance?
Not that long if the intermediate wrist watch stages
can duplicate. Evolution like routines are used frequently
to solve circuit board routing problems.
> Isn't the universe infinitely more complex, and
> magnificent than a wrist watch? The universe itself
> contains tons of evidence of design. Where there
> is design there is a designer.
So lets follow this line of reasoning for a bit:
A watch must be designed by something more complex than
a watch (a watch maker). Therefore we assume that the
watch maker was made by something more complex than himself.
But we haven't gotten anywhere, because who designed the
designer of the designer or the watch? In every stage we
must assume a more complex being.
On the otherhand we can assume the universe started off very
very simple, and is sometimes through random chance able to
generate something complex. These complex things sometimes
through random chance are able to create something more complex,
etc.
I have a creator, but it isn't some omnipotent being, its
the billions of generations of animals, plants, bacteria,
molecules etc I'm descended from.
