The magnetic fingerprint

Back in 1963, Frederick Vine and Drummond Matthews came up with a groundbreaking idea (pun very much intended); that the Earth's crust is divided into a bunch of chunks called plates that are all moving relative to each other, and that this is what causes virtually all earthquakes and volcanoes.

The main evidence for this dramatic paradigm shift in our understanding of how geology works came from the discovery on the ocean floor of regions of hardened lava that have opposite magnetic signatures.  When molten rock freezes, tiny magnetic particles that were free to move when they were in a liquid become locked into place, acting like billions of little compass needles recording the direction of the Earth's magnetic field at the time.  As you undoubtedly know, the positions of the magnetic poles flip, on average every three hundred thousand years (although the actual intervals vary greatly, for reasons that are still unknown).  So the rocks Vine and Matthews studied, on either side of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which showed symmetrically-arranged parallel stripes of magnetic signatures, showed that new oceanic crust was being formed all the time at the ridge, driving the plates apart and gradually widening the Atlantic Ocean.

Well, it turns out that lava isn't the only thing that can record what the magnetic field is doing.  According to a study last week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, so can pottery.

When clay is fired, its chemical structure changes, fusing into ceramic.  Different clays fire to different temperatures; in our kiln we fire our work to 1220 C (2232 F), which works for the clays classified as stonewares and mid-fire porcelains.  If we were to fire a high-fire porcelain to that temperature, it would still be brittle and not water-tight; fire an earthenware clay to that temperature, and it (literally) would melt.  (The difference is in the formulation of the clay, which is a complex subject about which I am still learning.)

But when you fire any clay to the correct temperature for that type, it effectively turns to stone.  The particles fuse together, giving it strength and resistance to breaking.  And this has the effect of locking into place any magnetic particles the clay may contain -- same as with Vine and Matthews's solidified lava on the ocean floor.

White stoneware vase with a cobalt splatter glaze

The reason this topic comes up is the discovery by a research team out of University College London of the fact that some earthenware bricks dating to the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon (605-562 B.C.E.) show a magnetic particle pattern indicating a strange and sudden surge in the strength of the magnetic field -- something that has been nicknamed the Levantine Iron Age Geomagnetic Anomaly.

"It is really exciting that ancient artifacts from Mesopotamia help to explain and record key events in Earth history such as fluctuations in the magnetic field," said study co-author Mark Altaweel.  "It shows why preserving Mesopotamia’s ancient heritage is important for science and humanity more broadly."

Noting this odd magnetic fingerprint -- the cause of which is as yet unexplained -- has another added benefit; once they've identified it in items of known age (as with the bricks, that had an identifying stamp), it can be used to date ceramic items that have no such marks.

It makes me wonder what kind of record I'm creating in my own pottery.  When we have pieces with too many flaws to be worth keeping, we shatter them against the cement wall along the back of our house (there's now a pile of pottery shards at the base of the wall).  We think of it as our ongoing effort to confuse future archaeologists.  But supposing they do piece together some of our failed attempts at bowls and mugs and various sculptures, maybe they'll find out something more than our dubious skill at making pottery -- but what the Earth itself was doing in 2023.

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As hath been foretold by Mr. Prophecy

Worried about the End Times?  Concerned that you and your family might not prosper during the Apocalypse?  Upset that the Four Horsepersons might end up trampling your prized daffodils, or that the Beast With Seven Heads might eat your poodle?

Do I have news for you.

We now have hope, thanks to Jason A. Prophecy.

At least I think that's his name.  On his YouTube video called "The World in 2017: The End of America" that's how he's listed.  Or maybe he's using it in the sense of "A Prophecy by Jason."  It's ambiguous.  So I will continue to consider Prophecy his last name, because I think that gives what he has to say considerably more gravitas.

I was sent a link to his video by a loyal reader of Skeptophilia, with the message, "Good news for those of us who are probably damned in any case."  So I sat down and watched it.

Well, I watched part of it.  The whole thing is a little under an hour long, and patient man though I am, I'm not going to sit through 52 minutes of a guy telling me that America Is Doomed over and over.  To save you the trouble of watching it yourself, let me summarize his main points.

• America is doomed.  In case I hadn't made that point clear enough yet.
• President Obama is going to be the last president of the United States.  Interestingly enough, Mr. Prophecy doesn't seem to consider the upcoming conflagration to be Obama's fault, which is kind of unusual amongst these types.  It was going to happen anyway, he says, and Obama just happens to be the one who's going to bear the brunt of it.  So unfortunately, we don't even have the satisfaction of saying "Thanks, Obama" after the Seventh Seal is opened.
• World leaders, including the Pope, know all about this because it's predicted in the bible.
• Yes, I know that the bible doesn't say anything about the United States, because it was written two millennia too early.  Instead, in the bible the United States is code-named "Babylon," so everywhere you read "Babylon" you should understand that the writers meant "the United States."  (Which reminds me of the anecdote about Reverend William Spooner, of spoonerisms fame, who was preaching to his congregation one Sunday morning and noticed that everyone was looking at him with an expression of complete bafflement.  He suddenly brightened up and said, "Oh!  I'm so sorry!  Everywhere I said Aristotle, I meant St. Paul.")
• The reason that Babylon is referred to as female in the "Holly [sic] Book" is because what it's really talking about is the Statue of Liberty.
• Babylon is going to be destroyed.  *cue scary music*
• Vladimir Putin is going to be the one who causes America/Babylon's downfall, because he's the evil "king of the north" mentioned in the Book of Daniel, chapter 11.
• So what Putin is going to do is to launch an "electromagnetic pulse weapon" to knock out the entire electrical grid of the United States (the implication is that it will also cause automobiles and airplanes to malfunction and crash), and then invade and destroy us.

So while I'm watching this, I'm thinking, "If we're all doomed, why is he bothering to warn us?  This is a little like shouting 'Look out for the ground!' at a guy who's fallen off a cliff."  But then at the end, we get to the good news that the alert reader who sent me the link had referenced:

Mr. Prophecy has written several books about how to survive all of this nasty stuff, and they can all be yours for only $39 (plus postage and handling).

He tells us that he was tempted to give them away for free, but "people don't value what they don't pay for."  Evidently, surviving the apocalypse is not a sufficient motivator.  You also have to think, "Dammit, I paid cold hard cash for this book!  I'd better actually read it and find out how not to die!"

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

So anyway.  Predictably, I'm not going to buy the books, because (1) I suspect that when the authors of the bible said "Babylon," they meant "Babylon," (2) even Vladimir Putin is smart enough not to launch an attack against the most heavily-militarized country the world has ever seen, and (3) I have better uses for $39, which in my opinion would include using it to start a campfire.  

And I'm not worrying about Obama being the last president, honestly.  I'm spending more of my time worrying about who's gonna be the next one.  I wonder if the Book of Daniel had anything to say about that?