Friday, June 28, 2019

As dinosaurs saw it

I had never thought to ask this before:  where are the oldest landscapes on Earth which are pretty much the same as they were in the days of dinosaurs?  An article in Science answers this:
Scientists have shown that several plateaus in Brazil are likely Earth's oldest known landscapes, surviving largely unchanged for 70 million years despite heavy, erosive rainfall. For decades, geomorphologists have fixated on regions where plate tectonics accelerate geologic change, thrusting up mountains, opening rifts, and creating traps for oil and gas. But armed with new geochemical tools that can measure the erosion history of a landscape, geoscientists are turning on to the charms of the slow parts of the planet. Researchers hope these lands, typically plateaus that have had their surfaces armored by rain-induced chemical reactions, can provide new windows to Earth's deep history.
Hey, what's more - it notes that this is research from University of Queensland:
Climbing to the top of the Urucum plateau, a shock of rust-red land thrust 1 kilometer above the Brazilian savanna, is a journey into Earth's deep past. Despite the region's heavy, erosive rainfall, the surface of the plateau has remained largely unchanged for some 70 million years, making it Earth's oldest known landscape. Walk along it and you're only a few meters below the surface that dinosaurs once trod.

That startling picture emerges from a study published this month in Earth and Planetary Science Letters by a team led by Paulo Vasconcelos, a geochemist at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Until recently, scientists could estimate erosion only by looking at the sediment sloughed off of a surface. But new geochemical tools developed by, among others, Vasconcelos and his colleagues measure erosion from rock that's left behind. “They all converge to the same story,” Vasconcelos says. “Though it's taken some time to convince people.”

6 comments:

GMB said...

Its not really possible to have a dinosaurs terrain on the planet right now. Because gravity was so much lower back then. About a third the current gravity during the dinosaur era.

Steve said...

Dare I ask: what is making gravity stronger over time?

Sinclair Davidson said...

Supernovas generate gravity waves that travel faster than light and arrive a Earth (perhaps looking for a new home) and so gravity increases.

GMB said...

There are no such thing as gravity waves. But gravity and light are a function of aether and we know what waves along the aether is .... we call this light. Great Thor and Odin Sinclair. You cannot so much as get your own field of study right.

There is a law of physics called the conservation of mass law. This says that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. The Einstein deception added a bit of a wrinkle to this but thats just a Jew jumping from one foot, like a juicer in an old cowboy movie, dancing to avoid bullets.

Now not only is this not a valid law. Its actually a logical impossibility. Look around your room. Look outside your window. Everywhere you look you see matter. If matter could neither be created nor destroyed ..... there would never have been any matter ever.

Now supposing we are in logic class. The logician teacher says "Supposing chocolate can neither be created nor destroyed .... Then how much chocolate, do I right now have in my pocket?" The answer is of course that there is no chocolate in his pocket under the conservation of chocolate law.

But then you go down the street to the Jewish seminary. And the rabbi aggressively claims that chocolate can neither be created nor destroyed? He's pretty animated about it but on closer inspection it turns out that he's made of chocolate. You have been listening to a chocolate rabbi. Is he telling the truth? Or is he another rabbi selling donut holes to the children?

Now there is a rumour going around, that in a university near you, there are physicists some of whom (not all not all) are made of matter. And some of these physicists are very energetic when they proclaim their alleged truth that matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed? Now in logic are they lying or not? Yes they are lying or they are deluded.

Astronomy tells us that there are massive areas of space as comparatively small areas of matter. Which means the matter is made on location. It turns out that the matter is made in large rotating bodies. The earth was growing at only a tiny rate for many billions of years, but now its hit a sweet spot and its growing very quickly from a proportionate point of view. Moons grow to planets grow to gas giants grow to stars grow to bigger stars. Grow to giant black spinning objects with their own galaxy around them. At most stages all of these can explode.

It was around the time when the dinosaurs went extinct that the earth became pretty efficient at new matter creation. We know this since the earths ocean floors have been dated and they are all quite young. There is no formula for new mass creation but we can make a stab of how it comes about and why you need to reach a large size before it becomes efficient. The smallest object for which we may have evidence for new matter creation is Ceres, but it probably just amounts to hydrogen gas. Whereas with Pluto its absolutely proven that we have new matter creation. But it won't make Pluto grow all that fast for many billions of years, since its probably still mostly gasses.

GMB said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
GMB said...

All this is indisputable when racism in physics is set aside. Take the giraffe. At one tonne he has reached the upper limit to his size in his niche. That is the niche wherein you are so big you don’t worry TOO much about predators and you have near monopoly access to the diet of leaves that no-one else can reach.

In his weight division his brain has to be small or he will get brown-out dementia. So he’s as stupid as box of hammers but it’s worth it to have unfettered access to free food.

He’s got very high blood pressure. The main arteries in his legs are lodged deep inside and he often bleeds from the ankles. So he simply cannot be bigger.

Yet Apatosaurous was at least 30 times as big 150 million odd years ago, and he filled the exact same niche as Mr Giraffe.

Racist inbred troglodytes in science is no small problem. Anyone who disagrees with me on this dinosaur business is just playing silly-buggers. There has to be a reason why these obvious facts are not recognised more generally. These people can make such a cult out of reprobate dumbasses like Einstein that you have to suspect that they are suffering from messiah-deprivation.