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Enceladus "Sea" Mystery Deepens
Smivs writes "The BBC reports that an ocean may not be the source of the jets emanating from Saturn's moon Enceladus. Controversial research questions the moon's promise as a target in the search for life beyond Earth. A chemical analysis of Enceladus, led by University of Colorado planetary scientist Nick Schneider, failed to detect sodium, an element scientists say should be present in any body of water that has been in contact with rock for billions of years. Spectral analysis with the Keck Telescope found no sodium in the plumes or in the vapor in orbit around the moon. At stake is whether Saturn's moon could support alien life and is thus a worthy target for a NASA exploratory mission to detect it. Such a mission to Enceladus is one of four currently under review for further development."
Oh man, I'm in trouble now!!!
"A man cannot begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows." --Epictetus, 1st Century A.D.
I made the point very clearly. You cannot evaluate mythology and ancient documents with mathematics. Either those stories and writings contain useful astronomical information or they do not. The only way to determine this is through a logical analysis of the stories and writings themselves, and by investigating the archaeological details of the last major extinction event.
I see your evidence. Now, let me show you mine. One of the huge, gaping problems that you specifically have -- and I believe that you are honestly unaware of the problem -- is that there is strong archaeological evidence that the mammoths were mostly killed off in a single, catastrophic instant freeze at the end of the last warm period, around 3,500 years ago. Any reasonably intelligent and objective person can pick up Ginenthal's book on the Mammoths and determine from the overwhelming evidence that it is so. We know this because huge quantities of the tusks have been perfectly preserved (well enough to sell on the ivory market) since their extinction, and tusks do not preserve like that unless they are instantly frozen, and then remain frozen. Tusks will normally turn yellow and then brown, just like bone, if exposed to the elements, and the numbers of tusks found in this state rule out the possibility that these are isolated incidents. We also know, contrary to unfortunate theories involving Clovis people, that the mammoths had to have lived in a warm environment. This is apparent for *many* good reasons, the most important of which relates to the fact that they required something on the order of 200 lbs of vegetative biomass per mammoth within the herd -- a staggering amount that could not be generated on ground that possesses any reasonable permafrost. Emphasizing the point is the fact that we observe entire forests (like the cedar forest in New Jersey) from this time period, the trees of which have all been literally broken off above ground. The only known force capable of doing this is a tsunami. In fact, vast stretches of permafrost in the Arctic region consist of bits of trees, gravel, bones, ivory and preserved mammoths. There is so much evidence to support the case of catastrophe that it takes Ginenthal 300 pages to recount all of it. The *only* data supporting the extinction of the mammoths at 10,000 years ago is the dating itself. *Everything* else -- the physical facts -- points to a far later date, and arguments that the extinction was related to the Clovis people's apparent Ice Age migration can be dismissed surprisingly easily.
Why does that matter? Because 3,500 years ago is within a reasonable range of human writings and story-telling. If *one* of the possible explanations for the extinction of the mammoths is a global catastrophe of some sort -- and the evidence certainly meets that weak argumentative goal -- then it is completely within reason to argue that ancient people wrote and told stories about that possible event. In fact, we'd expect in that scenario that these stories would actually play a prominent role in many cultures.
What I'm saying is that there is a trail of archaeological evidence that strongly suggests that we do indeed need to look to mythology and writings to determine what exactly happened. If people were there during that catastrophe, then what *was* the catastrophe? What did the survivors see? These are the legitimate questions that the public will eventually ask when they are properly told the evidence associated with the extinction of the mammoths. And the evidence will have to be evaluated, piece by piece, oftentimes without any assistance from mathematics whatsoever. This is what I mean when I say that the evidence must stand on its own. Our only recourse is to look closely at the evidence surrounding that last extinction event, and then to investigate the stories of mythology using techniques within the discipline of comparative
"A man cannot begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows." --Epictetus, 1st Century A.D.