Solving the Mystery of the Biblical Flood

Dear Edge;

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Hmm, what about the evidence that submergence is related to disance from the divergent plate boundaries? Another relationship that you ignore...

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Quite to the contrary, I view the fact that amount of apparent submergence is related to distance from hot spots and plate edges and continental plates, as very important. First as pointed out earlier, the submergence had to have occurred rapidly enough to kill the coral. Second, adding an enormous amount of glacial water to the oceans in a short period of time would depress the sea floors in a predicted pattern that matches what we find. As predicted by a number of geologists over the years, the depression would push down more on larger basins with less depression occurring in smaller basins and closer to shore. As the sea floor is depressed, it is to be expected that active spreading areas due to the presence of hotter more buoyant magma, would be depressed somewhat less. Then as the surrounding sea floor is pushed down, more of the rising magma would be pushed towards the center of the active area. This would result in less depression in active areas and create the pattern found in island and sea mount elevations. Please remember here that I am talking about a number of cycles here in connection with the swings of the ice age and not just the last one that resulted in a global flood, also not every submerged guyot was recently submerged, some date from much earlier times and may not have recently been near the surface.

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The point is that these raised beach terraces are not high enough to indicate a global flood.

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You have so far been missing the point. I haven't been referring to raised island terraces as evidence of the high water mark for deluge sea levels, they are of course too low in elevation to be used as such evidence as you pointed out. I have been using them to show that the pattern of both high shorelines and low ones far below sea level in many cases on the same island, is inconsistent with the standard model of island creation and only makes sense if the islands have experienced recent movement in both directions. The global distribution of these former shorelines also indicate that the force that created them is not a local force, but is one that has acted world wide. The ages of the more recent shorelines show that this agent has acted recently at the end of the last ice age. The pattern here points towards the island elevation changes having been triggered or caused by very large swings in ocean volumes in connection with the formation and break up of the Pleistocene ice sheets. As you pointed out the pattern seen in sea mount submergence, as described in the above paragraph, matches the expectations of the effects created by movement of the sea floors due to hydrostatic depression and rebound.

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most of the sea floor is 'old and cold'. Are you saying that your mechanism didn't even affect most of the oceanic crust?

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Hydrostatic depression caused by an increase in ocean volume will push the 'old and cold' oceanic crust down, basic geology. Only in areas where there are other factors at work, such as pressure differential or the positive lifting force of rising magma, would local up lift be created in an area under going a general depression. Due to the 'old and cold' ocean floor lacking these other factors that can affect island elevation, the ocean floor wasn't locally uplifted as some islands and other areas were.

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But then where did all that magma go? To the edges of the ocean basin?

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Good, an intelligent question that I was hoping you would ask. When returning melt water depressed the ocean floors, locally some magmas did go horizontally when that route was open, such as near the shoreline or adjacent to rising islands. Most went straight down into the earth to come up beneath land areas in other parts of the globe. As John recently posted, continental crust is very rigid compared to oceanic crust. Where as oceanic crust is depressed like a flexible surface stretched between the continents, continents on the large scale, are more prone to moving up and down as a block. In the glacial maximum, the sea basins rebounded which pulled magma from beneath the continents which caused them to subside. When the glacial waters returned to the sea, the sea floors were pushed back down and the continents were pushed back up. This movement is on a large scale and is a fluid response. Local isostatic adjustments generally are of the plastic type involving horizontal movement such as in the creation of glacial forebulges. In the case of the Pacific ocean, we see both types of adjustment at work, most of the movement was fluidic down into the earth on a global scale, and some was more local and plastic such as around the edge, the 'Ring of Fire' which is the result repeated episodes of plastic isostatic displacement combined with the effects of on going plate tectonics.

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That's another interesting observation since the ocean basins seem to get deeper as the crust gets older. Now which is it? Are the islands attached to a rigid plate or not? You contradict yourself.

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Many times perceived contradictions are due to a misconception on the reader's part, once a better understanding is gained, many of the perceived contradictions disappear. Yes islands are attached to a rigid plate, but that attachment is not always rigid. A new island has a more flexible attachment while a very old island or sea mound is much more rigid in it's attachment. The degree of flexibility is dependent on the local temperature of the magma, hotter magma beneath new islands renders the local crust more soft and flexible, whereas in the case of an old sea mount once hot magma has cooled and the sea mount is no longer supported by the buoyancy of hot magma from below and is now a cold heavy weight on the sea floor. That is also the reason sea floors sink as they age, they cool and become heavier. The sifts in elevations in the ocean basins seen in connection with the swings in Pleistocene ice volumes, are the result of the interplay of changing pressures, elevation effects and flexibility and specific gravity caused by the relative temperature of the local lithosphere.

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Where is the evidence that your flood covered even the elevation of my house?

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Some of the evidence already cited in this thread is from higher elevations and as I have stated before, I am currently involved in on going research on plotting the extent of the post glacial marine transgression.

Dear John;

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Oh gee, wmscott, I'm an idiot and I hadn't figured this out.

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No John I don't think you are an idiot, idiots believe everything they are told, intelligent people question and challenge everything. I wish I had challenged more as you did, what I read some time ago in a geology book on island elevation. You are absolutely right, buoyancy is not a factor in island elevation. You are wrong in some of your examples, but you are right where it counts. The submerged part of the island is buoyantly lifted by the water due to pore pressure just like I stated, but as you pointed out the pressure in the pores is equal, down as well as up. The upward force of buoyancy is balanced by the downward pressure of the supporting water column which cancels the effect of buoyancy as seen from beneath the sea floor. I was in error on my example of the stone column, when it cracks it does get lighter by a third due to buoyancy, but the amount of buoyant uplift is equal to the pressure pushing down on the bottom side of the crack, the two pressures cancel out as you correctly pointed out. In the case of my math model of a cone shaped island when the sea level drops 2 km, yes there is a 2 km slice of rock that is no longer buoyantly supported by the water and is now heavier by the amount of displaced water, but the pore pressure inside the cone pressing down on the sea floor is also less by 2 km and since 2 km the water cylinder is larger in volume than the 2 km cone section, the net effect is less pressure on the island footprint rather than an increase. So on the main point of buoyancy affecting island elevations, I find I have to concede completely. I want to thank you for your insight, this is why I post here, so that people can show me where I am wrong and I can correct such mistakes in the future.That said, the island will still subside due to the island footprint is now heavier in comparison with the pressure reduction seen in the surrounding ocean floor. The loss of buoyancy as a factor cuts the projected about of subsidence in half, but that still leaves half. In consideration, I am ether going to have to learn to be happy with half the subsidence or look more at the effects of shifting pressures causing larger movement beneath the crust. Frankly, I am going to have to revaluate and modify my theories on changing island elevation due to ocean volume changes.

Dear Jimmy;The seven impacts cited all took place in the ocean where they would have no effect on global sea levels. The authors of books that cite this evidence, generally interpret the Biblical flood as a sort of global catastrophe caused by the related events ocean impacts would cause. However since the flood did involve a large temporary increase in global sea levels, ocean impacts are not the cause. They may or may not have happened at the time of the flood which did involve comet impacts on continental ice sheets which would significantly raise the global sea level.I know of no biblical references to the falling of seven stars in connection with the flood. What verse do they refer to? The biblical references to Enoch are very few, and none refer to falling stars ether, perhaps the reference was to the non biblical book called Enoch?

Dear Edge;

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Mainstream geology has explanations for EVERY observation that you make,

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Really? What is the mainstream geology explanation for finding recent planktonic Foraminifera in SE Wisconsin at an elevation of 1000 ft? According to mainstream geology, at the end of the ice age, sea levels slowly rose to current levels and were never significantly above and this area was not significantly depressed in the ice age due in part to the glacial forebulge effect.

Dear John;

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Can't wait to hear the reevaluated theory.

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Me too. It will take some time and research. One thing that could be a factor is gas release. I am currently reading "The Deep Hot Biosphere" by Thomas Gold, and he describes large gas releases as being associated with earthquakes and volcanoes as part of this theory. If he is correct, that would place large amounts of gas beneath volcanic islands. A large reduction in sea level could in theory cause the island to deeply sink down into the area of magma infused with gas like a balloon, then when the sea level increased the gas cold be pressed back under the island which would raise it. Gold's theory is not yet mainstream, but I think he is on the right track and would like to plug his ideals into our discussion and see what happens. Since you shot down my island buoyancy theory, I think you owe me a theory and should at least help me knock together (or down) a replacement. So let me know what you think, see any obvious problems? If not maybe I can expand on this in time.

Dear Jimmy;The book of Enoch is an uninspired, apocryphal book written probably sometime during the second and first centuries B.C. and as such, there is no reason to believe that it has any reliable information on ancient events that took place long before the writer's birth. The reference in Jude to 'Raging waves of the sea' and 'wandering stars' occurs in verse 13 before Jude's reference to Enoch in verse 14 and has nothing to do with Enoch. Jude was warning about 'ungodly men' who were a bad influence in the congregation, and he compares them as being like raging waves and wandering stars, both of which would be great danger to an ancient mariner. Then in verse 14&15, Jude mentions how Enoch had prophesied concerning the destruction of such like people in his day, his prophecy was not fulfilled in the flood but rather refers to the coming judgment day, since the reference in verse 14 to God coming with an angelic army to execute judgment against the wicked is obviously a clear reference to events in 'the end times' and finds many parallels in Revelation. In short, there is no biblical support for comet impacts as being part of the flood event. I do believe that comet impacts were involved and there is some evidence to support that conclusion, it is just that the Bible doesn't say a word on it one way or the other.On the seven ocean comet strikes, I have a book that refers to the same and I have decided to follow up on the references. I have tracked down a few of them so far, but they don't look very conclusive and there seems to be some dating discrepancies. Now I only have a relative faith in absolute dating methods and I am willing to accept they are sometimes in error perhaps by a factor of let's say 10, but some of dating for the comet evidence would require an error factor of well over a 100, possible but not very lightly. But I am still checking, perhaps the book you read has better references. Could you post or e-mail them? If they are older than 10 years I think I have those already. If you have a scanner, scan it into your word program, cut the references and paste them into a list. Then next time you post, paste the reference list in your post.Now as to whether or not these seven comet impacts were part of the flood, I can't really say one way or the other without first looking over the evidence. In doing the research for my book I came across some of this information and decided to leave it out since it wasn't key to the flood occurring and the evidence that I did find was somewhat thin and there was not a good way of tying the events together in a connected way. In fact I did use the possibility of ocean impacts triggering ice sheet surges in my book, but I didn't tie it in to any specific impact event evidence, since due to the limited information, it would too easy to cite the wrong event. But I have since focused more on direct impacts on the ice sheets themselves and have found some evidence to tends to support that conclusion. Ocean impacts may very well have occurred also, but even if they did, they may not have been any of the seven cited. Once the pieces of this puzzle are better understood it may be possible to tie in some of these ocean impacts with the flood, until then, I would rather leave the door open.

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can you explain the evidence which supports the idea that the flood was caused by rising sea levels, as opposed to impact related features such as tsunamis, and . . . melting of the ice fields.

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The Bible describes the flood as lasting about year. A comet caused tsunami would only last a few hours or days at the very most. The biblical ark would have probably been destroyed by a tsunami large enough to strand it on a mountain in Turkey. The Bible describes a global flood that covers even the mountain tops and then slowly recedes over a period of months which would not match with the effects of a tsunami but would match the effects of a post ice age flood. The 40 days of rain does sound like it was caused by an impact and it probably was. Ocean impacts may have occurred, but the biblical description is of a global flood which would require a large rise in sea level. There is or was a way of flooding the world, if the ice age ended suddenly, the huge amount of glacial ice and water returned to the seas would cause a very sudden rise in sea level. During the long glacial period, as much of the world's water was tied up in ice sheets on land, the oceans shrank and the sea floors rebounded which also caused the wide spread lowering of the land. For as the sea bottoms moved upward, there was only one place that could make up the difference and that was the land areas. So if water was dumped back into the oceans faster than the earth could adjust, the seas would flood the land. Then as the increased water depth pushed the sea floors back down, the land would slowly rise back above water. This matches the general description of the flood events as described in the Bible.So the biblical evidence can be seen as supporting a post ice age flood. Physical evidence that supports that conclusion includes the evidence that the ice age did indeed come to a very abrupt end. We have abundant evidence of huge water releases coming from the ice sheets at the end of the ice age, super flood evidence, streamlined drumlins, ice rafted drop stones on land and sea, micro marine traces found far inland and high above sea level, raised shorelines, marine animals living in lakes and some traces in mountain lakes. This is a long thread and we have been discussing some of the evidence for a long time, if you use this web pages search feature suing any of the above terms, it should lead you to one of my earlier posting which describe these things in more detail.

Dear Edge;

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Probably the best explanation is wind blown plankton. Other than that, I have no problem with local lacustrine or other periglacial deposits at elevations above sea level. The point is that there is no need to evoke some fantastic theory to get these deposits, and there is no evidence for a global flood.

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Foraminifera are too large to be carried on the wind. (>57um) These are marine not lacustrine or freshwater. As I posted earlier: According to mainstream geology, at the end of the ice age, sea levels slowly rose to current levels and were never significantly above and this area was not significantly depressed in the ice age due in part to the glacial forebulge effect. Since Marine Foraninifera only come from the sea and are too large for wind transport, so what is the mainstream theory for how they got to SE Wisconsin?

Dear Jimmy;Thank you for posting the references, they are very similar to the ones I have. On checking the Internet, I found two sites that had information on reviewing the evidence for the seven comet strikes, and they were not that well impressed. One site stated- "The geologic evidence is--or should be--less arguable" Page not found | Geophysical Institute indicating that the evidence supporting the seven comet strikes was arguable, they may not have been created by comet impacts and if they did they may not have happened at the same time. The second site was a little bit more specific in some of the problems with the supporting evidence. "Some scientists (e.g. PREISINGER) argue, that the evidence TOLLMANN refers to is not secure, in particular the dendrochronological, ice-core and radio-isotope data." we are sorry... In other words, the evidence that these events occurred together is poor and the event evidence may have been caused by other events than comet impacts such as volcanic eruptions. In fact in one of the references that I was able to track down on the Greenland ice core, the reference attributes the cited evidence to a volcanic eruption, not a comet impact. The article stated "There were six similar periods of elevated sulfate that are interpreted to be associated with volcanic activity during the 2000 years before the Younger Dryas-Holocene climate transition." Seven reoccurring volcanic eruptions over 2000 years is very believable, but seven large comet impacts all occurring in the same general area over 2000 years is not. Perhaps some of these events where volcanic while some where comet impacts, that may be possible, but it high lights how weak the evidence is for the seven strikes theory. Even the evidence for the tektite strewn fields of micro spherules have problems. The Australian tektites are dated hundreds of thousands of years earlier than what the Tollmanns would like, 770,000 years ago according to this site. http://www-phys.llnl.gov/tektite/report.html And the Austrian impact event was probably not an ocean impact anyway. This site http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/LPSC99/pdf/1081.pdf stated that "This suggests that the source crater is in southern Laos or adjoining Thailand or Vietnam. Thus, our preliminary findings are consistent with Schnetzler's [4] conclusion that the source crater is in a limited area near the southern part of the Thailand-Laos border" which means the tektites are not evidence for an ocean impact. This combined with the dating problems pretty much throws the evidence for any ocean impacts in the area of Australia at the time of the flood, out the window. Such an impact may have happened, we just don't have any evidence for it. The map in this article looks a lot like the map generally used for the seven comet strikes. http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2001/pdf/2027.pdf But these are large impacts of greatly varying ages from many thousands of years to millions of years apart in time. In short, the evidence available on impact events doesn't seem to support the Tollmanns' theory. The earth has had many comet impacts and a number of them have occurred in the oceans, and some may have been fairly recent. But there just doesn't seem to be any evidence for the Tollmans' seven large oceanic comet impacts occurring simultaneously. Books like the one you read always sound very convincing until you read another book that contradicts it. One rule of thumb is to read books from opposing points of view to give yourself a more balanced prospective. This will allow you to see both sides of the issue. I have put the references on my list and will attempt to tack them down on my next visit to the university library.

Dear Edge;

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I still believe that forams can be wind transported from dried marine deposits in front of a receding glacier. Do you have evidenc to the contrary?

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Yes of course I have evidence. Only small particles below about 57 um in size are carried any real distance by the wind. Larger particles are carried shorter distances and sand size grains are not truly carried by the wind in a sand storm but are merely bounced along the ground by the wind, only the small dust size particles are carried up to any great height. A web site on wind erosion in talking about the sizes of particles carried by the wind stated. "Grains that are able to be lifted by the air stream but which fall back to the surface after a 'short' distance are traveling in saltation. Soil aggregates and particles larger than ~1000 microns cannot be picked up by the wind but tend to roll along the surface due to wind forces and impacting grains. These grains are moving by creep. Grains less than 20-30 microns are small enough to respond to turbulent fluctuations in the air stream and their motion is defined by turbulent diffusion. These grains are traveling by suspension and may remain airborne until rain washes them out of the air, often being deposited many kilometers downwind." http://www.cahe.wsu.edu/~cp3/erosion/erosion.htm In order to be carried any great distance sand grains have to be below 30 um, which means that particles above 57 um are not carried very far by wind. As you can see, based on this evidence it is clear that forams are not carried very far by wind, and even smaller things like diatoms would not be carried far enough to reach the upper Midwest. So it is clear that only a temporary marine transgression could have left traces of marine forams in SE Wisconsin. So this raises the question of how extensive was this flooding.

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Hmm, why did the sea level rise slowly? According to you it rose quite rapidly. So who is right? You or everyone else? I also think I need to ask you to docuement that the marine waters NEVER invaded this part of the continent.

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Under main stream geology, it took a fair amount of time for the last Ice Age to end, as the Ice Sheets melted back, the water they contained was transferred back to the oceans from which it came. This is believed to have caused global sea levels to progressively rise from their Ice Age lows to the level they are found at today. More recent theories take into consideration the increasing amount of evidence that the Ice Age ended very abruptly with much of the ice disappearing in just a few short years. The newer findings indicate that the sea levels rose much quicker than had once been supposed, but they are still believed by most geologists to have merely increased to present level without any major transgressions. On major marine transgressions of the North American continent, Main stream geology does accept the formation of the Champlain sea which failed to even extend into lake Ontario. Lake Ontario has an elevation of 245 ft, the next lake west is lake Erie at 570 ft and is separated from lake Ontario by Niagara Falls. To cover SE Wisconsin would require a rise in the Chaplain's level by well over three hundred feet. The pattern of ice age and post ice drainage is known, and from this it is known that the areas west of the former Champlain sea were not depressed nearly enough to have once been under its waters. The pattern of fossils is that the finds in the Champlain sea area are associated with marine mud and bottom life showing a long marine submergence. While the other finds farther to the west such as the Michigan whale bones, lack the marine muds and bottom creatures, showing that the submergence in that area was much briefer. What happened is the areas west were only briefly submerged in the flood, and as a result not as much evidence of marine flooding was left behind. The Champlain sea is as close as mainstream geology believes the sea got to the Midwest, which is why the Michigan whale bones are viewed as being moved by man since a marine transgression that far west is not accepted. SE Wisconsin is of course farther west and higher in elevation and was never isostactically depressed enough to be below current sea levels. This is of course shown by the ice age and post ice age drainage patterns. The Mississippi river and other rivers continued to flow, a extension of the sea into SE Wisconsin due to a glacial suppression, would have severely disrupted if not completely reversed their flow. Since this did not happen, we know that the areas drained by these rivers remained above sea level in recent geologic history.

Dear Edge;

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diatoms can be as small as 10 microns and can be blown great distances by the wind.

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And some diatoms are larger. Measuring the image size of some that I have taken pictures of, and reducing the size by the magnification factor, some marine diatoms that I have found measure approximately 130 microns. Which is far too large to have been carried to Midwest by wind. Since some challenged my findings on diatoms and suggested that forams would been more convincing due to their larger sizes, I have found them as well. Since I am using a 63 micron sieve, everything I now find is larger than 63 microns. Some things that I have found range up to and beyond 500 microns. So wind blown is not a possible explanation for what I have been finding.

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Perhaps you should better define just what type of diatoms you are dealing with and then be SURE that they are indeed marine. Though I am not a palynologist, I seem to understand that there are some freshwater diatoms that can look like marine counterparts. Are you sure of your sources?

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Yes, I was concerned about this as well and was very careful. For identifying the diatoms I used a very reliable identification guide that the publisher in private correspondence assured me is widely used and a standard in the field. For the forams I have so far mainly been using the book "Recent Planktonic Foraminfera" which is one of the best available books on the subject.On the Champagne Sea, the distance from where it was and SE Wisconsin is well over 600 hundred miles, and perhaps closer to 1,000 miles. As for using today's elevations, they are the best reference we have. I believe the elevation difference was less than the current 1000 ft, but as I pointed out in my last post, we know from river drainage patterns that the upper Midwest was not depressed below sea level or even close. The Mississippi is a long river, depressing SE Wisconsin below the elevations found to the south, would have reversed the flow of the upper portion of the river, which we know did not happen. I can also tell you that if this area had been submerged by isostactic depression, we would know about, since we would find marine muds as are find in the area of the former Champagne Sea. The lack of such a finding eliminates any possibility of a lengthily submergence due to glacially induced isostactasy. Frankly to argue that my findings of a marine flooding here are due to local glacial depression is a waste of time since my next step is to survey other areas around the country. As I hopefully get positive findings from more areas, are you going to use the same local depression argument for each area?If you still doubt my findings of marine diatoms, as I have offered before, I would be happy to e-mail some of the pictures I have taken and you can identify them for yourself. The identification is actually pretty easy and clear cut once you have the right guide book. Forams are a bit harder and my pictures so far have less clear than what I would like, but in time I hope to soon have some equally clear pictures. Once I have I them, I would be happy to send them as well and you can have a look at them too. Once you see these things with your own eyes and realize what they mean, it changes the way you look at things, the world is suddenly a different place.But diatoms and forams are small potatoes, now for something that will really knock your socks off. I have been sorting through what I find in my slides, which is a real mix of odds and ends. One of the things I have found are these black little balls about 700 microns in diameter that look like perfect little ball bearings. They have been a bit of a inconvenience, being fairly many and making it somewhat harder to find what I have been looking for in my slides. Friday I decided see if I could figure out what they were, see if they were significant. So I took a probe and crushed one, to my surprise the ball cracked like glass and was black and crystalline inside. I got a chill, I realized that I was looking at a microtektite. Microtektites are created by comet and meteor impacts and that as far as I know is their only source. Remember earlier in this thread when I was talking about how it was comet impacts on the Laurentide Ice Sheet that melted the ice and caused the flood, and everyone wanted evidence? Well, now I have it. Microtektites in glacial till with marine micro fossils, the whole story in miniature. Once I get some decent pictures I would be happy to sent some to you also. If any one out there with some experience with this type of thing wants to examine some of these microtektites, I would be happy to mail a sample to you.

Dear Percipient;Prior to publishing, most researchers talk over their findings with their peers. Since I am a amateur scientist, I don't have that luxury, so I use this board to air my opinions and see if anyone can point out the holes in my ideas to me. I do intend to publish and the microtektites have given me a great idea to publish on that I will keep to myself for now. I am refining my tests and preparing to expand the area covered by my findings. Once I have completed this, I hopefully will have results that will interest leading scientific journals. But for now, I would love to have any "professional biologists and geologists" out there review my findings prior to publication. I am always more than willing to e-mail pictures of my findings to any one who wants to take a look.

Dear Edge;Diatoms don't have little wings, their ill regular shape and having a density closer to sea water than silica, will cause them to travel comparatively farther, but only so far. As for the wind blown diatoms in Antarctica you should look at their size. As you yourself pointed out, some diatoms are very small and are easily transported by wind. As I stated earlier, I am working with diatoms and now forams that are far too large for wind transport to account for. On your "wind can be a very effective transporter of sediments up to the medium-grained sand size. This includes grains up to 200 microns" I would suggest you remember your vantage point, standing on the ground I would guess. From such a vantage point you are seeing the saltation effect. To be carried hundreds or thousands of miles, the sand needs to be carried many thousands of feet up into the atmosphere. Ground level blowing will not do the trick. Consider sand dunes, they move by the wind blowing the sand up over the dune and down the other side, the dune is moved slowly inch by inch. The wind doesn't just blow them away up into the air and they come down in another part of the country. The sand grains the dunes are composed of are too large for the wind to carry away. Great rocks are moved by rivers, but of course the rocks don't float and are too large for normal turbulent river water too carry, they are moved as bed load. It is the same with wind blown sand, grains too large to be carried by the air are blown along the ground and near the ground. This is seen in the way sand dunes move in land under prevailing wind conditions. The site I posted the link to in post 441 had information on wind erosion that should be helpful.On the microtektites you stated that "The earth receives some tons of them every day." are you saying that the earth has tons of debris created each day by daily impact events, or are you confusing microtektites with meteor dust? Impact events are fairly common in the geological sense, but they are not a daily event or the sky must really be falling where you live.

Dear Percipient;You are not living up to your screen name. In fact I spend a good part of my free time doing research, reading related books, journal articles and doing field work. In your last post you even commented on my recent finding of tektites, now you say that I am not looking for evidence. As for not listening, visionary thinkers have always had to ignore the ranting of the naysayers. For the most part, that is what most of the objections have been, blanket rejections without a detailed explanation backed up by supporting evidence. Very few have taken the trouble to do their home work and really make a good challenge, and when they have I have answered their objections. A challenge without a detailed explanation of supporting evidence, is in the end, just a statement of faith by the poster in the higher authority they appeal to. I already know where I stand in respect to the authorities, I am challenging them which is what new discoveries do. Appealing to them in this debate without evidence is meaningless and pointless. We are arguing over the evidence, if you have no evidence to post, you are not being ignored since you really haven't said anything.

Dear Percipient;Sometimes I only bother to reply because of the possible audience that maybe be reading this, perhaps some of them have an open mind, and they will see for themselves that there is some merit in what I have to say.

Dear Edge;

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you have not shown that saltation is not a viable mechanism for transporting diatoms in a periglacial environment. Second you have not shown that such altitides are not attainable by diatoms of any size.

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Saltation movement of material causes a good deal of wear and tear, sort of like rolling your car down a mountain side, the method of transportation will be obvious by the damage done. The material I have found is in very good shape so saltation is not viable as an explanation for the transport mechanism. As for lifting diatoms to high altitudes, saltation is strictly a near surface phenomenon. The links and information already posted clearly show that particles as large as the diatoms and forams we are discussing, are not lifted to high altitudes in the atmosphere, unless you wish to invoke Wizard of Oz type wind effects.

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Consider then dust storms that that cover hundreds of square miles...

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Still only a local transport event if it occurs over a sandy area, and the finer sand can of course be carried great distances. If you have a point to make here, you will have to state it more clearly, no point in me wasting my time shooting at shadows.