Mudslide

As part of our ongoing exploration of things that are big and scary and powerful and can kill you, today we have: underwater avalanches.

It's a topic I looked at a while back apropos of the Storegga Slide, which sounds like a bizarre mashup of Swedish folk music and a country line dance but isn't.  This was an undersea avalanche that occurred a bit over eight thousand years ago, a catastrophic slope failure between Iceland and Norway that displaced over three thousand cubic kilometers of debris and triggered a methane clathrate explosion -- resulting in a tsunami estimated at thirty meters in height which went on to inundate large parts of coastal northern and western Europe.

Underwater avalanches are a vastly understudied -- and therefore underestimated -- danger.  The reason it comes up today is a paper this week in Science Advances about a newly-discovered one that was on the same scale as Storegga, but in a different location.  This avalanche occurred an estimated sixty thousand years ago in Agadir Canyon, off the coast of Morocco.

The Agadir Canyon avalanche seems to have started small, possibly triggered by an earthquake.  But like snow avalanches in mountainous regions, once a bit of material starts to move, it causes other parts of the slope to fail, and pretty soon what you have is a monster.  From seafloor analysis of the sediment layers, what appears to have occurred is that the initial slide involved about 1.5 cubic kilometers of debris (itself not an inconsiderable amount), but by the time it peaked, the sediment flow was a hundred times that volume.

"What is so interesting is how the event grew from a relatively small start into a huge and devastating submarine avalanche reaching heights of two hundred meters as it moved at a speed of about 15 m/s, ripping out the sea floor and tearing everything out in its way," said Chris Stevenson, a sedimentary geologist from the University of Liverpool, who co-led the research, in an interview with Cosmos.  "To put it in perspective: that’s an avalanche the size of a skyscraper, moving at more than 64 km/h from Liverpool to London, which digs out a trench thirty meters deep and fifteen kilometers wide, destroying everything in its path.  Then it spreads across an area larger than the UK burying it under about a meter of sand and mud."

Yeah, that puts it in perspective, all right.

The path of the Agadir Canyon avalanche [Image credit: Christoph Bottner, Aarhus University]

The Agadir Canyon avalanche undoubtedly caused a massive tsunami, but given how long ago it occurred, it'd be hard to find evidence at this point.  Let's just say that it would have been a very bad time to live along the west coast of Africa or east coast of the Americas.

"We calculate the growth factor to be at least a hundred, which is much larger compared to snow avalanches or debris flows which only grow by about four to eight times," said Christoph Bottner of Aarhus University in Denmark, who also co-led the team.  "We have also seen this extreme growth in smaller submarine avalanches measured elsewhere, so we think this might be a specific behavior associated with underwater avalanches and is something we plan to investigate further."

The problem is, just about every continent is surrounded by a region of relatively shallow water (the continental shelf) with the abyssal regions just beyond its edge; at the boundary between the two is a very steep region called the continental slope, where the depth increases drastically over a relatively short horizontal distance.  These areas are prone to failure, and while most events are minor -- comparable to a small mudslide on a mountainside -- some of them, like Storegga and Agadir Canyon, can grow to colossal proportions.

And at the present, we don't know which areas are likely to be safe, and which are at significant risk.

So that's our unsettling science story of the day.  This kind of thing is why I always get a grim chuckle out of people who say how benevolent the Earth is, some even going so far as to describe the universe as "fine-tuned for our existence."  This ignores the inconvenient fact of how much of it is actively hostile -- and some of the most hostile bits are right below the seemingly tranquil surface of the ocean.

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The postman always rings twice

When I started this blog five years ago, I knew that I was gonna get hate mail.  It was inevitable, given my own strong opinions and the nature of the topics I write on.  I try to be as fair as I can, but I have no problem with identifying bullshit as such, and that has the effect of pissing a lot of people off.

The thing that never fails to amaze me, though, is which posts get people stirred up.  I write a post comparing Donald Trump to Hitler, and nary a peep.  And yesterday I get two -- count 'em, two -- vitriolic screeds, one from the post I did in 2013 about the claim that hair is basically extended nerve endings, and the other about the claim I looked at a year earlier that there are giant glass pyramids on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean that collect and focus cosmic ray energy.

The first one lambasted me for not going out and doing a study on the topic myself before criticizing it, despite the fact that the story I was responding to had no evidence presented whatsoever except for an alleged study by someone whose name was changed to protect privacy.  Because, presumably, studying hair is frowned upon by the scientific community and could result in death threats, or something.  The original article was also laced with claims that were demonstrably false (such as that hair "emits electromagnetic energy").  But I guess my pointing this out pasted a target on my chest:

Humans have predators in the natural world...you're trying to say that our primitive ancestors were as lazy and non-attentive as some random douche canoe 'skeptic' on his computer, shovelling Bugles into his mouth in his Family Guy jammie pants?  HA!  No. They slept in fucking trees to stay alive (hence the hypnic jerk) and had to intuit and be aware of their surroundings.

No, what I'm saying is that hair, being dead strands of keratin, are not nerves.  Being that I teach a neuroscience class, I'm well aware that we have sense organs, and the evolutionary origins thereof.

You honestly believe that there is NO WAY somebody with longer hair might be able to sense changes in the wind, movements from other animals around them, foreign predatory energy (as in E=MC squared) approaching?  REALLY?  It makes SO much sense, that it warrants a study, and it should be done.

Actually, if you'll read what I wrote, you'll see that I did say that hair increases skin sensitivity, and that whiskers in many animals function as tactile sensors.  And did you really just say that Einstein's mass/energy equivalence has something to do with picking up "foreign predatory energy?"

And as far as this warranting a study, I'll simply quote Christopher Hitchens: "What is asserted without proof may be dismissed without proof."

You clearly have no fucking CLUE what you're talking about, and that's coming from somebody who actually comes from the scientific community.  Stop trying to play scientist; you're bad at it.  So many of you Atheist/skeptics/whatever say the things you BELIEVE a scientist would say, when they would NEVER say it; you don't have the knowledge to back a claim, and just go around saying something is bullshit because you think it makes you appear intelligent...but something you clearly don't know is that an actual researcher or scientist would know WITHOUT A DOUBT that something was correct or incorrect before saying so.

 Cf. my earlier comment about my teaching neuroscience.  Your move.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

The second one was, if possible, even snarkier.  It began as follows:

The thing that makes me fucking angry about idiots like yourself is that you dismiss stuff you've never seen.

Another quote comes to mind, this one from Delos McKown, to wit: "The invisible and the nonexistent look very much alike."  But point made.  I've never been to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.  Do continue.

If something doesn't fit the way you think the world is, you say it doesn't exist, piss on it, and walk away. 

It's hard to see how I'd piss on something that doesn't exist.  Even worse, how I'd piss on a nonexistent object that's not at the bottom of the Atlantic.  But all purely mechanical problems aside, I guess I was a little dismissive.

How do you know what the effects of cosmic rays are on the energy of the planet?  You talk like you have proof that pyramids couldn't be channelers of energy, but you can't prove it because you never leave your fucking armchair long enough to do anything but scoff.

I get out of my armchair pretty frequently, actually.  As far as how I know what cosmic rays can and cannot do, I once again feel obliged to point out that I have a degree in physics, teaching certificates in physics, biology, chemistry, and mathematics, and the ability to read.  Those put together give me at least a reasonably good ability to understand actual science.

And another thing: there's this fallacy called "shifting the burden of proof."  If you make an outrageous statement -- such as there being giant glass pyramids in the ocean that focus quantum energy frequency vibrations -- it is not the responsibility of those who say "bullshit" to prove they don't exist.

The pyramid guy ended by saying:

I bet you don't even have the balls to post this comment on your blog.  People like you hate it when you're challenged, because you want to be right without doing any work.  Anyhow, fuck you.

You're right that I'm not posting it, because it is, as you point out, my blog.  (Although I am writing an entire post about it instead, the irony of which does not escape me.)  Let me be plain about this: commenting is a privilege, not a right.  I'm happy to post contrary points-of-view -- not that I enjoy being wrong, mind you, but having new information brought to light is how we learn.  I've more than once printed retractions when I have been dead wrong, an experience which is profoundly humbling but is necessary for honesty's sake.

But it's a little frustrating to be accused of being a shallow-minded scoffer by people who retort with shallow-minded scoffing.  If someone has legitimate science -- not just a screaming post of "it could be so, and you can't prove it isn't" -- I'm happy to listen.

Until then, I'm sticking with my original stance, and don't expect me to rise to the bait and argue with you.  Or even post your comment.  Call me a douche canoe skeptic, but there you are.

In any case: keep those cards and letters coming.  I'm not fond of hate mail, but as Brendan Behan put it, "There's no such thing as bad publicity."  If people are sending hate mail, at least they're reading what I write, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Hamster balls to Bermuda

Some of you have probably heard about Reza Baluchi, extreme sports enthusiast and marathon runner who was attempting to travel the 1,033 miles from Miami to Bermuda in what amounted to a giant amphibious hamster ball.  Baluchi had been training for the event for months, and took donations from sponsors that were to be given to a needy children's charity.  His plan, he said, was to run until he got tired, cool off by taking dunks in the ocean, and to live off protein bars and bottled water.  For sleeping, he had a hammock, and was going to navigate with a GPS.

Things didn't turn out so well.  Baluchi got fatigued and disoriented, and finally was spotted simply bobbing in the waves seventy miles offshore from St. Augustine.  (You gotta give him credit, though; that's 69 more miles than I'd have gotten.)  He basically asked the Coast Guard vessel that came upon him, "Which way to Bermuda?", and after a back-and-forth in which he initially refused to leave his craft, they persuaded him to abandon ship.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

So far, all we have is an odd, if well-intentioned, effort by an athlete to accomplish something no one has ever done before.  But far be it from the woo-woo contingent to take something like this, and accept it on face value -- that a guy overreached a little, bit off more than he could chew, and is honestly damn lucky someone came across him, because (face it) the Atlantic is fucking huge.

But no, it can't be that simple.  Especially since the terminus of his voyage was supposed to be... *cue scary music*

... Bermuda.

If you're thinking, "Oh, no, don't tell me that they think this has something to do with the Bermuda Triangle," you're way ahead of me, and you also have an excellent sense of the way woo-woo minds work.  (Whether this is a good thing or not, I'll leave it to you to decide.)  Of course they think it's the Bermuda Triangle, despite the fact that the whole thing has been debunked over and over (for a good summary of the argument against, check out what The Skeptic's Dictionary has to say about it).

So poor Reza Baluchi launched off all unawares into the midst of a scary triangular vortex of negative vibrational quantum energies.  Or whatever they think explains this non-existent Danger Spot.  Listen to what Mysterious Universe had to say about Baluchi's failure:

What could possibly go wrong?  When dealing with the Bermuda Triangle, just about anything... We all know that the Bermuda Triangle eats ships and planes like they’re candy.  So when it sees something in the shape of a giant ball with something soft inside, it’s probably thinking “Cadbury Egg!”  That could explain why a man trying to run around the entire Bermuda Triangle inside a homemade floating human hamster ball failed only three days into his trek.

Right!  Because we need some kind of paranormal force to explain why a guy failed on a thousand-mile solo voyage over the ocean in a hamster ball!

You know, sometimes it strikes me that lately the woo-woos aren't even trying very hard.  If something happens in New Mexico, they kind of wave their hands in a listless fashion, and say, "Meh.  It's aliens."  Someone sees an ugly dog in Texas?  "Must be El Chupacabra."  Here, just the fact that the guy was in the western Atlantic made it inevitable that someone was going to bring up the Bermuda Triangle.  If he'd succeeded, the article would have been about how lucky he was to have escaped its evil snares.

So I'm gonna issue a challenge, here.  Come on, woo-meisters, give it all you've got.  I'm sure you can come up with something more interesting than the same tired old schtick.  At least in the fine old days of the Weekly World News, we could look forward to hearing periodically about how BatBoy's presidential campaign was coming along.

But now?  Same old, same old.  So I'm challenging you woo-woos to really knock our socks off.  Give us something we haven't heard before.  I know you've got it in you, you've just gotten complacent, and maybe we skeptics have, too.  We're like two old cats who just hiss a little and swat, more for show than anything else.

So go ahead, give me your best shot.  I can take it.  Let's see if we can spice things up around here.

'cuz lord knows, the Bermuda Triangle sinking this dude's hamster ball is not doing it for me.

Well, that should take care of your "Bieber Fever."

So San Francisco made it through yesterday without being obliterated.  I'm pleased about that, because San Francisco is a great place and it would suck if it was destroyed by an earthquake even if it is a hotbed of "sexual immortality" (as one of the prophecies of doom called it).

Of course, the same bunch of prophets also called it a "Bowl of Iniquity," which is just funny.  It sounds like the breakfast they serve in hell's deli, doesn't it?  ("Hey, hon, can I have another Bowl of Iniquity, with some milk and sugar?  Thanks.")

But of course, this failure of the Lord to keep his word and smite the hell out of California isn't going to stop the prognosticators of doom from moving on to the next Holy Warning.  In fact, a reader told me we already have one that has cleared the starting gate, and it's a doozy.  Ready?

FEMA has been caught in the act of sending shiploads of plastic coffins and other corpse-transport devices...

... to Puerto Rico...

... because there's going to be an asteroid impact in the Atlantic Ocean...

... causing an enormous, 200-foot-tall tsunami...

... in order to kill everyone at the October 19 Justin Bieber concert in San Juan.

Well.  I certainly can't top that.  And I have to state, for the record, that I can understand why the Lord might want to smite Justin Bieber.  Destroying Puerto Rico in order to do it sounds like it might be a bit of an overreaction, however.  On the other hand, if you read the Old Testament you'll find that this sort of thing happened all the time, with the Lord having a bad morning and smiting the shit out of everyone who happened to be in the vicinity, so I guess there's precedent.

The Lord Works In Mysterious Ways, after all, and if killing everyone in Puerto Rico is his way of dealing with Justin Bieber, then who am I to question it?

So, there you have it.  The next prophecy to look forward to.  Much more creative than a silly old earthquake, don't you think?  And just think!  If it's true, we'll never have to hear "As Long As You Love Me" again.

Breaking news: scientists once again don't discover Atlantis

Geology buffs probably heard about the announcement last week of the discovery off the coast of Brazil of a large slab of granite.  It's a geological anomaly; granite doesn't form in the deep ocean.  It's associated with silica-rich magma that cooled slowly, underground.  Granite forms the most abundant "basement rock" of continents, and most of it is very, very old.  This piece seems to have been left behind as Africa and South America split when the Atlantic Ocean opened 160 million years ago, and was completely covered with water ten million years ago.

So far, a story that would be of interest only to those intrigued by oddities of plate tectonics.  So, of course, the media can't report it that way.  Let's see... block of rock off the coast of South America, once above water, now not...

I know!  Let's report that the scientists have discovered Atlantis!

Don't believe me?  Check out how HuffPost's Meredith Bennett-Smith trashed this story, opening with the following highly scientific paragraph:

Nearly 2,600 years after Greek philosopher Plato wrote about the fabled metropolis of Atlantis, vanished forever beneath the sea, a Japanese-manned submersible has discovered rock structures that may be evidence of a continent that similarly disappeared beneath the Atlantic Ocean many, many years ago.

Yes, Ms. Bennett-Smith, 2,600 years and ten million years are both many, many years.  How very astute of you.  But let me clarify something for you: this is not Atlantis.  I know this for sure, because Atlantis was fictional.

RT went even further, heading their article with the following image:

Two of the scientists, Shinichi Kawakami and Roberto Ventura Santos, put fuel on the fire by referring to the block of rock as "Atlantis" when they spoke to reporters.  Santos evidently felt some trepidation about this (which he should have), and added, "We speak of Atlantis more in terms of symbolism.  Obviously, we don’t expect to find a lost city in the middle of the Atlantic."

Really, Dr. Santos?  Then don't refer to the damn thing as Atlantis.

So, of course, now all of the woo-woos are having multiple orgasms over this "scientific proof" that Atlantis existed, as advertised, complete with cities and people and everything else described in Plato.  By this morning, we have ha-ha-we-told-you-so articles appearing in The Truthseeker,  The Controversial Files, Before It's News, The Hollow Earth Insider, and Godlike Productions, not to mention hundreds of theoretically more reliable news sources.  Although a handful of them mentioned Santos' wishy-washy disclaimer, most of them burbled on and on about Plato and the fabled island of the philosopher-kings, because that's clearly more valid than the actual science.

Let's get this straight.  Ten million years ago, when the last bit of this continent went beneath the Atlantic Ocean, our nearest ancestors were chimp-like anthropoid apes somewhere in Africa.  The earliest Australopithecenes didn't evolve until about four million years ago, and considering their brainpower, I'm doubtful that even they were "philosopher-kings."  And by that time, this block of continental granite had already been sunk for six million years.

This isn't Atlantis.  Atlantis never existed.  It's a folk tale, a myth, a legend with no basis whatsoever in fact.

Of course, I don't expect this to convince anyone who wasn't already convinced.  Especially because they have pictures.

Okay, I'll stop now, because my forehead hurts from all of the headdesks I did while researching this post.  I've got to chill out a little, because if I keep digging into this stuff I'll run across someone who claims that they found Shangri-La in Nepal and the remains of Minas Tirith in Bulgaria, and at that point I'll just take Ockham's Razor and slit my wrists with it.