[SunkenCiv]

from a file dated Sept 28 1998:

Earth's Changing Orbit Explains Ice Ages
7.49 a.m. ET (1149 GMT) July 23, 1999

[V]ariations in the Earth's orbit around the Sun could explain why ice ages, which occur about every 100,000 years, have not been more regular... Jose Rial, a professor of geophysics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill... looked at isotopes, or variants, of oxygen found by drilling into the sea floor. Such "heavy" oxygen is found more commonly when it is cold. Rial found evidence of both the 100,000 and 413,000 year cycles, but said they were not so easy to spot because the two "interfered" with each other in much the same way that interfering with radio waves -- a process known as modulation -- allows broadcasters to send information in the form of sound. He said the pattern looked like an FM (frequency modulated) radio wave. He does not know the physical mechanism behind this but says it helps explain why the ice ages seemed to occur at irregular intervals.

Not easy to spot, doesn't understand why it happens, but this help explains irregular intervals. Uh-huh, yeah, right.

[Fred Nerks]

You're a brilliant teacher but you give far too much homework, I'll be in my dottage before I finish this lot, LOL!

(Before you came along I couldn't spell Astrophysicist and now I are one.)?

Thanks for the ping... PS. I don't believe a word of it.