Slashdot Mirror
Researchers Complete New Gondwana Map
An anonymous reader writes "A new computer simulated map has revealed the past position of the Australian, Antarctic and Indian tectonic plates, demonstrating how they formed the supercontinent Gondwana 165 million years ago. 'It was a simple technique, matching the geological boundaries on each plate. The geological units formed before the continents broke apart, so we used their position to put this ancient jigsaw puzzle back together again,' said Lloyd White of Royal Holloway University in a press release. 'We found that many existing studies had positioned the plates in the wrong place because the geological units did not align on each plate.'"
Aren't all the continents still connected? The only thing that has changed is where the low points are that are filled in with water.
When is google maps going to have this? I want to trace where my house was back then.
For God, a thousand years are like a day. But a year has 365 days (ignoring leap days for simplicity), so 5000 years have about 9 million days. With every day counting as 1000 years, we arrive at an age of the world of about 9 billion years. This is clearly longer than 165 million years, so everything is fine.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
When did they change it from Gondwanaland to Gondwana? Was no-one looking after the sign?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Neat article! But... um... where's the map?
The God created Earth 5000 years ago. There is no evidence of Gondwana plate or even Earth 165 million years ago.
Tectonic plate theory, geophysics, botany and a host of other branches of science respectfully disagrees with you.
Skip the regergitated article and go strait to the press release to see the map, and a video (and a link to the paper if you have access or are willing to pay $30).
In searching for the actual new map of Gondwana, the researchers in the article have this video of three continents separating.
http://vimeo.com/68311221
The God created Earth 5000 years ago. There is no evidence of Gondwana plate or even Earth 165 million years ago.
Tectonic plate theory, geophysics, botany and a host of other branches of science respectfully disagrees with you.
Even creationists say he's off by a thousand years...
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I was gonna say "pics, or it didn't happen." Video works, thanks.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
In another paper I saw that Norway+Sweden was next to Colombia and Finland next to Venezuela:
http://www.deepdyve.com/lp/elsevier/baltica-amazonia-and-the-samba-connection-1000-million-years-of-6ICpDpEcbF
The "baltica-amazonia-and-the-samba-connection" :)
This was apparently long _before_ the Gondwana.
There is more to the Earths history than many want to understand.
The reconstruction has India moving West away from Australia with the Indo-Pacific archipelago presumably part of Laurasia in a relatively static position as Australia eventually moves northward. Most authors seem to have India moving east upon breakup with Africa and then colliding with southern Asia. Africa presumably splits from South America by moving east relative to South America, so the eastward rather than westward movement of India seems to be correct.
Obviously, a lot is missing from this reconstruction most notably the position of continental margins peripheral to the map projection. The relative timing of the events from an Australian-Antarctic perspectives seems to be correct but the positioning seems centric to the limited projection used and holding Australia in fixed position is probably the culprit here since positions in the central Indian Ocean are not indicated.
None, of course paleo-dating from fossils in marine muds and radioactive dating of the series of banded sediments on the seafloor as a result of seafloor spreading in a very regular, almost linear mapping away from spreading zones that just happen to agree with each other almost perfectly.
The next time I take vacation in Gondwanaland.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Stop Continental Drift!
Have gnu, will travel.
Hey, you should tell the scientists they are doing it all wrong, I'm sure they'd listen to you.
The ones in cancer research are...
"His name was James Damore."
God couldn't have created Earth 5000 years ago since man didn't create God until 2000 years ago.
You always settle for sloppy seconds?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
And New Zealand just pops into existence at the end like some just anchored a boat and fished it up out of the sea
Recycle PCs and build a wireless community network www.hillsborough.org.nz
Pangaea is the original unified supercontinent. Animation of its breakup is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pangea_animation_03.gif
Gondwana is one of the units formed as a product of the Pangaea breakup.
This study claims heightened accuracy of the Gondwana breakup
A thousand years?!?? I wanna cause mass extinctions right now!
- Ed Gruberman
More than 30 years. I dated a Hodgkin's survivor in 1980-81, and she'd been in remission for about 5 years at that point.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Mr Spock says, "The true scholar values all drafts, early and late."
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
If you lived in the other supercontinent and had to crank out some code, you'd be out of luck.
Not really. The Laurasians simply outsourced all their code-cutting to Gondwana - part of which would later become known as...
(Finishing that sentence is left as an exercise for the reader)
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
I'll freely admit that I believe in the unpopular-around-here Genesis account of a literal seven-day creation event, but nowhere in the Bible does it say something along the lines of, "And God created the continents, seven in total. Seven continents did God create, and He saw that they were good." If anything, you could probably make an argument that since the Genesis creation account only mentions one "land", that it may have been meaning a super-continent. Besides which, the Bible makes no claims that would contradict the idea of a super-continent existing prior to the Noahic Flood, and the Noahic Flood would also provide Christians with a reason for why the continents might have split, given that the Bible talks about "the springs of the great deep burst forth" and things of that sort in Genesis 7, indicating that there may have been some significant tectonic events occurring at the time of the flood.
Long story short, there may be difficulties reconciling the 165 million year age with the Genesis creation account, but there aren't any difficulties in reconciling the idea of a super-continent with the Bible.
The devil is in the details, therefore God does not support the details, because that would mean to support the devil.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Boot to the head
For God, a thousand years are like a day.
And a thousand years is like a day, so perhaps there is something more to this than a strict conversion factor?
Even creationists say he's off by a thousand years...
He's not a 1000 years off, he's living in the middle ages.
Damn, that s a shitty article. Sourcing a poorly hand drawn illustration of a dinosaur that isn't even relevant to the discussion from Wikimedia commons?
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Learning: you're doing it wrong.
Besides that one passage in that one book, there is nothing we have discovered that supports this claim. Nothing.
And you believe in it.
Learning: you're doing it wrong.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
The theory of a 6000-year-old Earth was made by Archbishop Ussher in the 1640s, not in the Middle Ages which ended 400-500 years earlier.
It was a valid theory at the time, based on the best available evidence, but wrong. Even today there are many theories which are commonly accepted as scientifically valid, but which are most likely wrong in part or entirely. Our descendants will laughingly mock anyone who still believes them, just as some of us dare to mock today.
Reunite Gondwanaland! - the Pangaean Liberation Front.
mark
I have no idea if you're being specific about my belief in a super-continent or the age of the earth being younger than what most here believe, or if you're being general and attacking my belief in the Genesis creation account in whole. Depending on what "one passage" you're referring to and the extent to which you believe the evidence for Gondwana, your comment could apply equally well to any of those three.
It's pretty hard to learn anything when there are folks like you "teaching" without even providing the information necessary to understand the context of their remarks.
I'll freely admit that I believe in the unpopular-around-here Genesis account of a literal seven-day creation event, but nowhere in the Bible does it say something along the lines of, "And God created the continents, seven in total. Seven continents did God create, and He saw that they were good." If anything, you could probably make an argument that since the Genesis creation account only mentions one "land", that it may have been meaning a super-continent. Besides which, the Bible makes no claims that would contradict the idea of a super-continent existing prior to the Noahic Flood, and the Noahic Flood would also provide Christians with a reason for why the continents might have split, given that the Bible talks about "the springs of the great deep burst forth" and things of that sort in Genesis 7, indicating that there may have been some significant tectonic events occurring at the time of the flood.
Long story short, there may be difficulties reconciling the 165 million year age with the Genesis creation account, but there aren't any difficulties in reconciling the idea of a super-continent with the Bible.
Or a big Tsunami.
That's the back conversion. Duh.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
The Group Of Drunks.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Actually it wasn't a theory and it wasn't based on evidence. It was derived from ancient religious belief.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
That's a mistranslation. A more correct translation is: "First, God turned on the lights." Cause when you want to do some serious work, you need to see what you're doing.
The real result is here linked from the press release page. There is a citation to the refereed journal in the pressrelease.
http://vimeo.com/68311221
What the article probably argues for is that correlation of units on Antarctica, and Australia are well correlated. The number of linkages for India seem to be fewer, but other geologic features elucidate that history pretty will, It begins about 165 MYA, but this latest reconstruction dates the split of the rest as much more recent, about 35 MYA. I assule that the magnetic anomaloies in the sea floor shown in the video are well dated, but the innovation is the correlation of terraines. Before there was more uncertaintly of how the pieces we have today were connected. Now that picture might be much more constrained, as the video suggests. We will have to wait and see if the conclusions hold up. I haven't tried to get to the journal article, I expect it to be behind a paywall, and hence not available for detailed reading. All I expect to see is the abstract.
The article cited in the press release is behind a paywall, and the abstract for it isn't even available.
If research is funded by public funds, journals should make an e-copy available for free. Journals should not be able to hide research, especially that funded by a government, for profit. Even the need to find reviewers does not justify that they get to charge for access, at least ot an e-copy. IMHO.