Slashdot Mirror
Tsunami Hit New York City Region In 300 BC
Hugh Pickens writes "Scientists say that sedimentary deposits from more than 20 cores in New York and New Jersey indicate a huge wave crashed into the New York City region 2,300 years ago, dumping sediment and shells across Long Island and New Jersey and casting wood debris far up the Hudson River. Steven Goodbred, an Earth scientist at Vanderbilt University, says that size and distribution of material would require a high velocity wave and strong currents to move it, and it is unlikely that short bursts produced in a storm would suffice. 'If we're wrong, it was one heck of a storm,' says Goodbred. An Atlantic tsunami is rare but not inconceivable, says Neal Driscoll, a geologist from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who is not associated with the research. The 1929 Grand Banks tsunami in Newfoundland killed more than two dozen people and snapped many transatlantic cables, and was set in motion by a submarine landslide set off by an earthquake."
The 1929 Grand Banks tsunami in Newfoundland killed more than two-dozen people and snapped many transatlantic cables, and was set in motion by a submarine landslide set off by an earthquake
This is exactly why you shouldn't stack submarines. The fools!
a big wave hits new york and new jersey. now just backtrack where the origin was, and boom! atlantis found.
They will have to make a blockbuster movie about this before I will believe it
...because Rudy Giuliani was mayor at the time and handled it well. And never passed up an opportunity to mention that he did so, either.
This ain't rocket surgery.
One of the side effects of a story like this is the young earth creationists tend to latch onto it and say it's proof there was a great flood. I'm not sure it even syncs up with their made up timeline, but you just wait and see they'll start touting this as proof.
And that was the last Terry Fox run I ever participated in.
300 years BC and you call it news? Good job Slashdot!
A few years ago I had a relative who was involved in a lot of the disaster planning for New Haven. Some scenarios were so bad that he more or less concluded that there wasn't any point in trying to make any substantial preparations because there wouldn't be anything they could do that would help. A large tsunami hitting New England was one of the situations. Either you get a warning on time or you don't. Not much local governments can do about it.
I can't remember the name of it, but I read about an island somewhere off the coast of Africa. It's a giant chunk of rock that's split in such a way that its eventual collapse into the ocean is near certain. When it happens, the amount of water suddenly displaced could potentially cause a tsunami that we here on the East coast would definitely notice.
Do you have any idea how long it takes to dig graves for twenty-three oak trees?
Atlantis sank, the displacement caused tsunamis, case closed.
A more important question is why do kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch?
They'd call it neighborhood improvement.
> and it is unlikely that short bursts produced in a storm would suffice. "If we're wrong, it was one heck of a storm," says Goodbred.
And this is what makes science, science. The fact that it COULD be wrong and (good) scientists not only recognize it, but relish the possibility.
Before you design for reuse, make sure to design it for use.
is what caused it.
If this is true, there'd have to be other sediment deposits in nearby and maybe even not so nearby places on the east coast? If not, I think the author tried to fabricate a sensational title...
Now, I admit, I didn't RTFA, but since when is that a requirement :)
Totally from in 3 Nephi 8 in the Book of Mormon. They are just ~300 years off.
5 And it came to pass in the thirty and fourth year, in the first month, on the fourth day of the month, there arose a great storm, such an one as never had been known in all the land. ...
6 And there was also a great and terrible tempest; and there was terrible thunder, insomuch that it did shake the whole earth as if it was about to divide asunder.
9 And the city of Moroni did sink into the depths of the sea, and the inhabitants thereof were drowned.
Cumbre Vieja is a volcano in the Canary Islands that if it were to blow could cause a tsunami from the eruption or, worse from a large landslide. Its tsunami would hit the East Coast of the US.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbre_Vieja
http://www.iberianature.com/material/megatsunami.html
It would indeed take a big wave to sweep across Long Island and New Jersey, but a rush up the Hudson isn't that surprising. LI & NJ sit at almost right angles to each other, with the mouth of the Hudson right in the corner. Any tsunami or storm surge will get magnified and funneled up the Hudson.
Supposedly New York City is the third most at-risk for devastation in the country (after Maimi and New Orleans), with the potential of a relatively mild storm to flood Manhattan.
I grew up 5 miles from the water on Central Long Island's "South Shore". When I was a kid my friends father had a large garden, about 80 yards by 20 yards. Every year when he would till/turn the soil, large crumbling shells would turn up. We always wondered why they were so close to the surface in a place that had been above sea level for millions of years. Maybe this is the answer.
This is often touted by religious people but einstein himself said he did not believe in a personal god, but like a force of nature. he was a "deist" in the wide sense, but with Nature (with a big N) as being a non personal , non abrahamic god.
Choosen quotes :
A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty - it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man. (Albert Einstein) I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. (Albert Einstein, 1954) I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings. (Albert Einstein)
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
There was a tsunami, triggered by the Grand Banks 1929 earthquake, but I wasn't aware of it killing many people at landfall. Then again - two dozen people is only a couple of years of Canadian oil exploration deaths, so it's still not that many.
But the cable snapping has generally been attributed to the progression of a "turbidity current" (often crudely described as an "underwater landslide", but there are significant differences that make the terminology awkward).
Whether the turbidity current and the tsunami are directly associated is less clear ; no-one disputes there was a common ultimate cause - seismic stress in the area, but which is the chicken, which the egg, or are they both consequences of a common cause? It is credible that the earthquake caused a turbidity current which caused a tsunami. Or that the earthquake caused a tsunami (by moving the seabed) and a turbidity current in different parts of it's energy-distribution pattern. Or even, that an "underwater landslip" (due to deglacial rebound changing slopes) caused a turbidity current to start downhill (underwater!), which resulted in relocation of considerable mass on the continental slope (and so changed stresses in the crust, and shortly led to the earthquake) which also involved moving considerable volumes of sediment from one point of the seabed to another (and this caused the tsunami).
I'm not sure that those possible sequences have been differentiated, in this case. The events are clearly related, but their exact interrelationships are not clear. Does this have any practical significance? Well, it does to me : if I knew which of those chickens came before which eggs, it would affect my interpretation of (for example) an earthquake under the Haltenbanke off the Norwegian coast (Wikipedia calls the event the Storegga Slide, but it's been long known as the "Haltenbanke event" too. Whatever). It could make the difference between me running uphill, stopping to get a bicycle to get my uphill faster, or conning a car dealer into letting me take a test drive (uphill). Assuming that I was down hill near the harbour ; at home I'm above (just) the wash line from the last time that bank failed, so I'd only need to walk up hill to the NATO bomb target. Oh, it might have consequences for Edinburgh, Hull, London, Rotterdam and Amsterdam which are likely to get hit, hard, and to be very difficult to evacuate fast enough.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
It was likely a meteorite, see http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/12/081231-new-york-tsunami.html This is discussed in TFA.
From the discussion in these news reports it seems that the findings can be explained by a much smaller event in which the impactor struck the coastline or an estuary since both onshore and marine debris was found (actually it wasn't specified if the shells were marine or freshwater). A much larger meteorite would be needed to generate a tsunami and this would have created debris layers over a much greater area.
Verbum caro factum est