Posted on 08/23/2006 5:58:47 PM PDT by blam
Santorini eruption much larger than originally believed
Media Contact: Todd McLeish, 401-874-7892
Santorini eruption much larger than originally believed; likely had significant impact on civilization
KINGSTON, R.I. – August 23, 2006 – An international team of scientists has found that the second largest volcanic eruption in human history, the massive Bronze Age eruption of Thera in Greece, was much larger and more widespread than previously believed.
During research expeditions in April and June, the scientists from the University of Rhode Island and the Hellenic Center for Marine Research found deposits of volcanic pumice and ash 10 to 80 meters thick extending out 20 to 30 kilometers in all directions from the Greek island of Santorini.
“These deposits have changed our thinking about the total volume of erupted material from the Minoan eruption,” said URI volcanologist Haraldur Sigurdsson.
In 1991 Sigurdsson and his URI colleague Steven Carey had estimated that 39 cubic kilometers of magma and rock had erupted from the volcano around 1600 B.C., based on fallout they observed on land. The new evidence of the marine deposits resulted in an upward adjustment in their estimate to about 60 cubic kilometers. (The eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia in 1815 is the largest known volcanic eruption, with approximately 100 cubic kilometers of material ejected.)
An eruption of this size likely had far-reaching impacts on the environment and civilizations in the region. The much-smaller Krakatau eruption of 1883 in Indonesia created a 100-foot-high tsunami that killed 36,000 people, as well as pyroclastic flows that traveled 40 kilometers across the surface of the seas killing 1,000 people on nearby islands. The Thera eruption would likely have generated an even larger tsunami and pyroclastic flows that traveled much farther over the surface of the sea.
“Given what we know about Krakatau, the effects of the Thera eruption would have been quite dramatic,” said Carey, a co-leader of this year’s expeditions. “The area affected would have been very widespread, with much greater impacts on the people living there than we had considered before.”
Thera has erupted numerous times over the last 400,000 years, four of which were of such magnitude that the island collapsed and craters were formed. Some scientists believe the massive eruption 3,600 years ago was responsible for the disappearance of the Minoan culture on nearby Crete. Others link the eruption to the disappearance of the legendary island of Atlantis.
While investigating the seafloor around Santorini, the scientists explored the submarine crater of the Kolumbo volcano, just 5 kilometers from Thera and part of the same volcanic complex, and discovered an extensive field of previously unknown hydrothermal vents. Using remotely operated vehicles from the Institute for Exploration, the scientists recorded gases and fluids flowing from the vents at temperatures as high as 220 degrees Centigrade.
“Most of the known vents around the world have been found on the mid-ocean ridges in very deep water and in areas where there are geologic plate separations,” Sigurdsson explained. “The Kolumbo and Santorini volcanoes are in shallow water at plate convergences, the only place besides Japan where high-temperature vents have been found in these conditions.”
“The high temperature of the vents tells us that the volcano is alive and healthy and there is magma near the surface,” added Carey.
The scientists said that, in addition to fluids and gases, the vents are emitting large quantities of metals, including silver, which precipitate out to form chimneys on the crater floor up to 10 feet tall and 2 to 4 feet wide. The floor of the crater is covered in a layer of red and orange mats of bacteria 2 to 3 inches thick that live on the nutrients in the vent fluids. Bacteria also cover the vent chimneys, and 4- to 5-inch long, hair-like bacterial filaments extend from the chimneys making them “look like hairy beasts, like woolly mammoths,” according to Sigurdsson.
The expedition was part of a longer research cruise led by National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Robert Ballard, a URI oceanography professor and president of the Institute for Exploration, which included a search for Bronze Age shipwrecks in the Black Sea and a survey of the seafloor in the Sea of Crete. Additional details can be found at www.uri.edu/endeavor/thera or www.oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/06blacksea/.
The research expeditions were funded in large part by the National Science Foundation, with additional support from the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration, the Rhode Island Endeavor Program, the Institute for Exploration, and the National Geographic Society. The April expedition was conducted aboard the Greek research vessel Aegaeo, while the June cruise was aboard the URI vessel Endeavor.
Live video of the June expedition was broadcast over the internet 24 hours a day by Immersion Presents, which also broadcast four, 30-minute live programs each day to museums, school districts, science centers and Boys and Girls Clubs featuring Sigurdsson, Carey and Ballard.
The high temperature is exactly what Velikovsky predicted; Venera 4 found 95 per cent CO2 in the atmosphere; sulfuric acid was conjured out of spectral data gathered from Earth in the early 1970s.
Or maybe historical memory goes back further than most people allow. IAC, scientific theories tend to have the self life of bananas when they deal with events earlier than last week.
Both the Exodus and Atlantis stories suggest otherwise.Which Atlantis story? The only ancient one (and therefore, the only actual surviving source) is Plato, and he doesn't say anything about any eruption in the Aegean. The modern myth of Thera-was-Atlantis was invented for the tourist trade and to sell some books. Also, there is absolutely nothing in the Exodus account about the Israelites following a volcanic column far to the north -- they were headed east. In addition, there's nothing a Thera volcano could have done to produce the parted seas.
Oh. Thought this was a Rick Santorum thread. My bad.
There are some extinct volcanoes in the Sinai, but they've been extinct for a very long time. There's an ancient account ("Periplus of Hanno") that apparently describes the eruption of Mt Cameroun (a volcano which is still active) and of course Pliny the Younger's account of the eruption of Vesuvius and death of Pliny the Elder. By and large, the reaction to an eruption has been the same throughout history -- run for your lives, in the opposite direction.
Velikovski wanted oil, which is lacking.
Or maybe historical memory goes back further than most people allow. IAC, scientific theories tend to have the self life of bananas when they deal with events earlier than last week.That's the approach taken by Ryan and Pitman in "Noah's Flood" -- but they screw that up by taking the one tale from the Aegean basin which explicitly refers to a flood and tell us that it doesn't really say what it says. :') The reason Herodotus (who discusses Thera) and Plato (who doesn't) don't record a notable eruption on the island is, it didn't happen until Herodotus and Plato had been dead for centuries.
There was the Burning Bush, which is kind of puny for a volcano even if Moses came down half blind and badly scarred.
Yelikovsky said that hydrocarbons and carbohydrates exist in the clouds; while its possible that the high temperature has broken down the C-H bonds, there hasn't been any effort to look for them, and the spectral data actually suggests that they are there. Problem is, finding either or both could easily mean the end of a promising career.
There was the Burning Bush, which is kind of puny for a volcano even if Moses came down half blind and badly scarred.That sounds more like a natural burning well, a case where naphtha or natural gas seeps out and burns, an apparent eternal flame. It was commonplace in the Near East (and maybe elsewhere?) to see such phenomena as sacred spots and the like. Burning offerings is pretty Biblical.
[ DU ] If there were oil on Venus, BushCo would have invaded it by now. [ /DU ]
It is possible life can exist high in the atmosphere where it is cooler. Doesn't mean it does, but it can't be ruled out.
Unless you dismiss the Exodus account entirely, the plagues suggest a natural catastrophe of some magnitude.
There was also a voice. A burning gas jet might make a sound like a voice.
Thanks! But no action. ;')
Halliburton and Sclumberger are both represented in this town, no surprise. Halliburton gear looks dingy, dented, old and used. Schlumber has a new trailer that is shinier than any oilfield gear I have ever seen. If they put it in orbit it would outshine the ISS I am sure. I would expect BushCo to invest in SLB rather than HAL.
Regarding timelines, there is a tendency to confine human history to the last ten thousand years when the fossil and other evidence suggests that modern humans have been around for much longer than that, 100,000 years or more. We have become open to a less static view of the history of the globe, what with the awareness that asteroids have bashed into us in a regular basis. But scientists tend to be as blinkered.near-sighted as the rest of us. We tend not to see what we do not see.
Or maybe he had a vision. You are assuming that spiritual beings do not exist.
Unless you dismiss the Exodus account entirely, the plagues suggest a natural catastrophe of some magnitude.Yes, I wholeheartedly agree, but I doubt that a single volcano would do it.
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