http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com/2011/0 ... he-planet/

Scientists do not know what to think about: South America is bursting at the seams. In southern Peru, suddenly appeared a huge crack length of 3 km and a width of about 100 meters.

Anomaly occurred in the district Huakullani Chukuito province near the famous Lake Titicaca. A crack has appeared almost immediately: the earth like a burst at the site of a large tension, the far scattered huge chunks of soil.

Interestingly, the crack did not appear in the earthquake. In general, there was no catastrophe, the earth simply gone. The crack occurred on level ground and is not associated with any disasters. Scientists are confused with this fact. Cracks also appear in neighboring Bolivia. And not so long ago, the crack happened in Africa – Ethiopia. Maybe these phenomena is common nature: the continents literally split in front of mankind. (BetaNovosti)

This isn't the first one, or the only one. If you click the link there are several forming all over the world (check the bottom of the article). I didn't bother to follow every single link, but what do you all make of them?

These cracks exist all around the world, but we can't see most of them as they run up the middle of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans as the mid-ocean ridges. They tend to form there because that is where the Earth's crust is the thinnest. If one has places where continental plates collide, the East coast of Japan being a topical example, there must be places where the plates are made. These are characterised by cracks and upwellings like these. The Ethiopian cracks are interesting as they will eventually form a new sea that will separate the Horn of Africa from the main continent.

When these upwellings occur in the air the CO2 they generate has significant impact on Earth's climate. The Siberian traps was one such example that caused an ancient mass extinction.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... -days.html

I found the Ethiopian cracks to be quite interesting as well. A new sea entering the African Continent might make things more interesting over there, though I don't know how long that would actually take. Roughly 4 million years for that to happen is what the article suggests, and by that time humans might not even be around on Earth or if they are Ethiopia won't be anything near what it is today.

The original article suggests some 2012 related stuff, I'm not really interested in that here on this thread. I'm just wondering what people think of the appearances in places strewn about the world, and maybe the implications.

NeedAnswers wrote:http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18114-giant-crack-in-africa-formed-in-just-days.html

I found the Ethiopian cracks to be quite interesting as well. A new sea entering the African Continent might make things more interesting over there, though I don't know how long that would actually take. Roughly 4 million years for that to happen is what the article suggests, and by that time humans might not even be around on Earth or if they are Ethiopia won't be anything near what it is today.

The original article suggests some 2012 related stuff, I'm not really interested in that here on this thread. I'm just wondering what people think of the appearances in places strewn about the world, and maybe the implications.

The earth's mantle is sheathed by some 50 plates, or what we call "tectonic plates," and their boundaries are "cracks" in ths sheathing caused by plate movements, which are in turn driven by upwelling magma along a fault or by one plate subducting another at a boundary. The earth's sheathing is thus a very dynamic animal, changing all the time, albeit usually only almost imperceptably slow. NASA has reported that the Japanese quake opened up a 250 mile long rift a half mile wide beneath the sea.

In the Horn of Africa two plates are being torn apart so the gap between them, known as the great rift valley in East Africa, is opening up and will one day split completely off. The same sort of thing is happening in coastal California, where the Pacific plate is sliding in a northwesterly direction past the North American plate along the well known San Andreas fault. In South America the plates that underlie the East Pacific are subducting under the South American plate, an ancient process that's been going on for millennia and throwing up the Andes mountains in the process. Ditto the Indian plate, which is subducting under the Asian plate and throwing up the Himalaya in the collision.

Plates are in constant motion all round the world but again usually at very slow rates. So the idea that "cracks" may open up in crustal rocks or sedimentary lands should come as no big surprise. And certainly it wouldn't be very smart to attribute them to unknown geologic or mysterious forces that are ony recently coming into play. This is an age old story that's been going on since the earth first began to cool almost four billion years ago. And it will continue into the future for untold aeons to come.

This story is much adieu about nothing.

It's all a load of hype designed to generate revenue/hits.

Go ahead and hide behind your science, atheists! All believers know these cracks are the Doors to Hell, and on May 31st, 2011, they will split open and the dead will boil up through them like termites going after the Ark! (gopher wood was tasty).

Load your shotguns and sharpen your melee weapons, the Zombie Apocalypse ain't just bad movies any more.

I wonder how they arrive at the conclusion that scientists don´t know what to think about those. They don´t seem to have asked any... What I find interesting is that they note that there was no quake, anyway, according to the map on onegeology and pretty much any paper I could dig up there´s crustal expansion in the N-S direction, with contraction in the E-W direction.

susu.exp wrote:I wonder how they arrive at the conclusion that scientists don´t know what to think about those. They don´t seem to have asked any... What I find interesting is that they note that there was no quake, anyway, according to the map on onegeology and pretty much any paper I could dig up there´s crustal expansion in the N-S direction, with contraction in the E-W direction.

Well, that doesn't jibe very well with what's happening along the North Atlantic Ridge, which runs generally N-S and is spreading both eastward and westward from the fault as new magma wells to the surface. This has pushed the North and South American continents away from Africa and Europe for millions of years.

I think also the rift off the coast of Northern Japan is spreading in E-W directions.

Careful where you stand peeps, and don't stay still too long.

The NAR isn´t in Peru, though.
In the west of South America you have the Nazca plate being subducted and moving eastwards. This compresses the continent in an E-W direction. As a consequence it has to expand in some other direction (after all Rock isn´t all that compressable - you can reduce volume through metamorphosis, but only to some degree), either up (that´s how mountans get so high) or orthogonal to the compression. Usually both, with sideways expansion a common feature behind mountain ranges. If all expansion on the globe was in the same direction, plate tectonics wouldn´t work.

Stretch marks.

Odds are slim that you will live during a time period that the world is going to come to an "end."

However, the odds are also slim that people who choose (want?) to believe in the world ending think they'll be dead before it happens.

I guess it's part of the same logic that argues for creation principally because they feel special - how could a deity possibly end the world without someone as important as them being around to see it?

tolman wrote:However, the odds are also slim that people who choose (want?) to believe in the world ending think they'll be dead before it happens.

I guess it's part of the same logic that argues for creation principally because they feel special - how could a deity possibly end the world without someone as important as them being around to see it?

Only dopes think the world's gonna end any time soon, and dopes count for exactly nothing in the great arc of human history. Avoid the slobbering fools so you don't catch their disease.

FACT-MAN-2 wrote:

tolman wrote:However, the odds are also slim that people who choose (want?) to believe in the world ending think they'll be dead before it happens.

I guess it's part of the same logic that argues for creation principally because they feel special - how could a deity possibly end the world without someone as important as them being around to see it?

Only dopes think the world's gonna end any time soon, and dopes count for exactly nothing in the great arc of human history. Avoid the slobbering fools so you don't catch their disease.

What makes you say that? Impending economic collapse, the rise in highly destructive natural disasters, and the combined efforts of several groups of humans to make life incredibly difficult for the rest of humanity open up a little room for people to suggest that the world is coming to an end as we know it without seeming to be unreasonable.

NeedAnswers wrote:

FACT-MAN-2 wrote:

tolman wrote:However, the odds are also slim that people who choose (want?) to believe in the world ending think they'll be dead before it happens.

I guess it's part of the same logic that argues for creation principally because they feel special - how could a deity possibly end the world without someone as important as them being around to see it?

Only dopes think the world's gonna end any time soon, and dopes count for exactly nothing in the great arc of human history. Avoid the slobbering fools so you don't catch their disease.

What makes you say that? Impending economic collapse, the rise in highly destructive natural disasters, and the combined efforts of several groups of humans to make life incredibly difficult for the rest of humanity open up a little room for people to suggest that the world is coming to an end as we know it without seeming to be unreasonable.

Well, perhaps in casual conversation but what really matters is the evidence that's presented to make the case.

Impending economic collapse?
Groups making life difficult for others?
Natural disasters?

I don't see any utter doom spelled out in those criteria, although I do see some very troubled times ahead because of global warming and climate change, give or take the next 50 years or so. As far as the latter goes I think if you looked at natural disasters over a 5,000 year time frame you'd see that the one's we have been suffering aren't particularly out of the ordinary. We've never seen a disaster that equalled Krakatoa, for example, or the flood that broke through at Gibralter and filled the Medeterrenean Basin with sea water.

Any claim that the world (as we know it) is going to end sometime in the near future because of economic collape or groups of people making life difficult for others or a rising number of cataclysmic natural disasters would have to be taken with a big grain of salt and would not be considered "reasonable" by many, including me and most of those in the science community.

Now, go out 100 years and we could see some fairly significant degradations to civilization we we know it from climate change and a much warmer planet. Economies can be rebuilt, difficult people can be managed, natural disasters can be prepared for, but we can do little about radical climate change. So if you want to see an end of civilization as we know it, that's the most probable cause one could choose or imagine, because once it happens there'll be no turning back.



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the world cant end until the sun enters the next stage of its life cycle

Festeringbob wrote:the world cant end until the sun enters the next stage of its life cycle

You're forgetting the rogue planet that's on a collision course wif the earf.

NeedAnswers wrote:

FACT-MAN-2 wrote:

tolman wrote:However, the odds are also slim that people who choose (want?) to believe in the world ending think they'll be dead before it happens.

I guess it's part of the same logic that argues for creation principally because they feel special - how could a deity possibly end the world without someone as important as them being around to see it?

Only dopes think the world's gonna end any time soon, and dopes count for exactly nothing in the great arc of human history. Avoid the slobbering fools so you don't catch their disease.

What makes you say that? Impending economic collapse, the rise in highly destructive natural disasters, and the combined efforts of several groups of humans to make life incredibly difficult for the rest of humanity open up a little room for people to suggest that the world is coming to an end as we know it without seeming to be unreasonable.

Oh cobblers! That's a classic example of the problem Fact-Man pointed out. Human arrogance. The world has existed for 4 1/2 billion years and could well exist for another 4 1/2 billion years and humanity will just be an episode in its existance. And what's this 'rise in natural disasters' crap? I'll give you an example the Siberian Traps. That was a world changing event, nothing humanity has ever witnessed comes anywhere near those eruptions. There is evidence of pre-historic tsunami waves hitting the west coast of America that went 200 miles inland! To use an old Yorkshire saying 'You don't know you're born lad!', thinking we are seeing anything significant is complete and utter bullshit. Here's another one, Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event with the Chicxulub event verses the Tunguska event. The Tanguska object didn't even make a crater FFS!

What you appear to be suffering from is paying too much attention to media pundits and lunatics.

Tanguska object? You were lucky! When I were lad we Tanguska objects for breakfast and were glad to have them.