The shift in the Earth's crust was as sudden as it was devastating. It moved with such deadly force, with such overwhelmingferocity that it caught everything in its path unaware and unsuspecting. It came like a great white shark from the ocean depths its jaws open wide ready to close on its victim. Nothing signified its approach, nothing warned of its danger.
Like a thief in the night, the deadly force moved, secretly and silently, propelled by centrifugal forces, its primeval power multiplying in strength, multiplying in intensity and with ever increasing velocity it carried its deadly power encased in the frigid ice of the poles, and with a suddenness born of seeming desperation, it tore the planets rigid crust asunder. There was a moment of seeming indecision, and then the earth virtually ignited in angry response as volcanos erupted and deadly earthquakes shook the globe.
The cataclysm came literally out of the blue, shattering the earth's crust and driving the ocean into a maelstrom of death as the waters, riling in rage, burst across the land in 100 foot waves that afforded no warning to the inhabitants, no mercy for the living. A great civilization was reduced to rubble. With the passage of time only a legend of the dream of the Golden Age that had been remained in the minds of those who survived. Those that could had sought protection in the hills, others, less fortunate but no less determined, fought it out with nature with a courage born of desperation. Few prevailed, but those that did wandered the ruins like wild children. They had been stripped of their basic necessities and their dreams of tomorrow that their civilization had provided. Bewildered, their trust in God, in Nature, and even in their fellow man, shattered, yet driven by the instinct to survive, they began the task of forging a living from what remained, knowing nothing of what tomorrow would bring! It wold be many years, and countless aftershocks, before the event was over, so, without choice, they lived minute by minute with an anxiety born of panic, wondering, always wondering, if, or when, the earth would shift again.
Dramatic? Perhaps, but no less true. Newly published evidence that is as exciting as any Hollywood disaster script, or a synopsis of an historical geological event that transpired in remote antiquity, demonstrates that there was a geological Armageddon of such magnitude that it is almost beyond comprehension. Catastrophic earth changes of this magnitude have been a part of earth's history since time began, and with no less certainty they will be a part of its future. So as unpleasant as it may seem, it behooves us to take an investigative look at the theories that have attempted to explain these great periods of global death and extinction. Strangely, few theories have come from the orthodox community, but those that have are better characterized as let-me-guess theories that seem to answer nothing. The more effectual efforts have come from a few seriously dedicated authors who have picked up the reins from Professor Charles H. Hapgood and have advanced his work to the level of a working model.
Many readers will identify with Professor Hapgood for the cautious and comprehensive manner that he drafted his landmark books, Earth's Shifting Crust, (1958); Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age, (1966); and The Path of the Pole, (1970). Professor Hapgood is perhaps better known to the geophysical community for having laid out the hard evidence, as indeed many modern researchers are now coming to realize, that the science we see at the dawn of recorded history was not science at its dawning, but represents the remnants of the science of some great and as yet untraced civilization. In my own book on this subject, 5/5/2000, Ice: The Ultimate Disaster, I sought to answer the many questions that were before me by inviting other professionals to share their thoughts through interviews that I replicate for the reader. The beautiful thing about an interview is that they solicit spontaneous responses that often express a deeper meaning than if the words had been prepared in advance for publication. Some of the interviews were so thoroughly thought provoking that I felt exhilarated by the experience, and would sit quietly for long periods afterward just wondering:
From where did the marvels of this earth, of this incredible world, originate? Reflecting on this, one questions...how accurate are we in our belief that one continent, Pangea, broke up and dispersed its part? And how accurate are we in our belief, though there is no modern analogue, that 17,000 years ago, glacial ice began to form in the temperate climates of the mid-latitudes as an onset to the Ice Ages? And how accurate are we in our belief that a 5000 mile front of ice could retreat thousands of miles northward with no other earth change being apparent. There is no modern analogue for events of this magnitude! Do mountains form, and rivers run, again, for reasons that have no modern analogue?
How is it that every natural phenomenon that we are in witness to today has no analogue known to science? Nothing seems to be caused by anything that we are the least bit familiar with! Why is this the case? Why, when we're confronted with the overwhelming geological evidence that this insidious calamity has destroyed our ancestral civilizations on more than one occasion, haven't we learned the cause? Have we become so sophisticated, so arrogant in our thinking, that we feel immune? Or have we, mankind, not wanting to face the horrifying truth of surging waters, chosen instead, like the Lotus-Eaters of Greek mythology who ate of the fruit of the lotus, forgotten our past and live now in blissful indolence? Whichever the case, whether its arrogance, or indolence, the cause has eluded identification and has solicited silence. But silence, as the universal refuge, has become insufficient because the question: “What could cause these hideous calamities?” thunders forth demanding an answer. In the paragraphs ahead, we will seek an answer to this geological mystery. We will seek the cause.
I receive many books through the mail each year by new authors wanting me to review their work, or give a cover endorsement. These arrive usually unsolicited, because 5/5/2000, has had the affect of type-casting me as one who has openly sought answers and as one who is open to this type of inquiry. And genuinely I am, so I read them all seeking the cause of the shift. In many respects, as their vogue is catastrophic earth changes, I find them much alike, yet on another scale, each is as varied as the sea is from the land. This maintained an element of curiosity with me until a suggested answer came, strangely enough, from one of these unsolicited books, The Gods, Gemini, and the Great Pyramid, by James Bowles, who, in addressing these very same wonders, wrote:
There have always been differing views...some authors, following a course of evolution, have found evidence of slow movements of the continents and the gradual evolution of life forms. Others, differing from this course, formulated a role for catastrophic intervention that usurped the tranquility of the planet in brief episodes of chaos. Different as these views are we might conclude that they found their origin in worlds apart. But how is that possible? They all used the same geological and fossil evidences...after all there is but one! Then how did they separate in view and come to opposite conclusions?
In answer, Bowles quotes R. J. Campbell:
If the intellect were thoroughly reliable there ought to be no room for differences. But unfortunately it is not, so, two individuals both intelligent and both conscientious, may form diametrically opposite judgements from exactly the same evidence.
If Campbell is right, and instinct assures me that he is, than perhaps the philosophic differences between the proponents of gradual evolution, a theory modernly coupled with Uniformitarianism, and those of the catastrophic earth-change camp, or Catastrophism, though seemingly worlds apart, may not be one so much of fact, as perception. Initial acceptance of this as a rudimentary truth could bring us to a point of agreement, on one issue at least, that being that it should be outside of the realm of debate, as this author reminds us, that there is but a single set of cultural, geological and fossil evidences in existence for any of us to explore [or exploit]! That accepted as a basic truth, we can reasonably take the next step and find a second point of agreement based on the original premise; this being that the philosophic difference between Uniformitarianism and Catastrophism is not one based on fact but of interpretation.
If we were to consider signing a pact of agreement on these two issues, perhaps we could consider a third point. For instance, isn't it true that the securable evidences, once limited by geographical barriers and the austere nature of the investigative tools, has changed dramatically since geological investigations turned serious in the 18th century; a time when Uniformitarianism was born? If we concede this point, wouldn't it then be incumbent upon us to take on the proverbial reptilian character of shedding old coats that are no longer useful, shouldn't we begin to give serious consideration to closing the drawer on old scientific paradigms and move on in favor of new ones that better explain the evidence?
These facts or perception queries, are not new to this article. They were originally submitted by the most noted of all authorities on this matter, the very same British biologist who gave up his own biological research to champion Darwin's theory of evolution, Professor Thomas Henry Huxley, (1825-1879). So, in acknowledging the impeccable credentials of this most noted scientist, I humbly submit that few modern day biologists, or earth science researchers, would likely withhold agreement with the Professor, who in 1869 addressed the Geological Society with the proposition that catastrophe was part and parcel with uniformity. Huxley wrote:
To my mind there appears to be no sort of theoretical antagonism between Catastrophism and Uniformitarianism; on the contrary, it is very conceivable that catastrophes may be a part and parcel of uniformity.
Let me illustrate my case by analog. The working of a clock is a model of uniform action. Good timekeeping means uniformity of action. But the striking of a clock is essentially catastrophe.
The hammer might be made to blow up a barrel of gunpowder, or turn on a deluge of water, and by proper arrangement the clock, instead of marking the hours, might strike all sorts of irregular intervals, never twice alike in the intervals, force or numbers of its blows.
Nevertheless, all these irregular and apparently lawless catastrophes would be the result of an absolutely Uniformitarian action, and we might have two schools of clock theorists, one studying the hammer and the other the pendulum.
So if uniformity and catastrophe, rather than being the antagonists that perception has separated into evolutionary and creationist camps, became the new paradigm of agreement instead, what specific action would it take to bring the metaphorical hammer & pendulum into synchronous motion so that the pendulum, in laying out the passage of geological time, was coordinated with the striking of the geographical patterned hammer? A unification theory perhaps?
There have been various attempts at unification, but each has failed, largely, I suggest, because insufficient consideration has ever been given to the fact that Nature's Laws are in control of the motions of the hammer & the pendulum; but scientists don't know what laws these may be, or where to look, or where to go or what to do to find out, and so to this very day, these laws remain undefined. The hammer & the pendulum parable that we have been discussing here, so that we keep it fresh in our minds, is about the earth sciences. We are talking about the formation of continents, of mountains, of the re-establishment of stagnant rivers to their primeval heights. We are talking about earthquakes, volcanos, and the earth's magnetic field. We are talking about catastrophic episodes that have churned the crust into a menagerie of the dead. We are noting the fact that nothing is original; every particle of the earth's crust has been re-cycled. The evidence is so pervasive that its very presence is proof in itself of catastrophe. There can be but scant debate on this issue, for the entire expanse of the crust's upper layers, top to bottom, side to side, is one huge grave yard.
The remains, which number in the tens of millions, are interspersed in the tundras of the North, the caves and fissures of the mid-latitudes, and the sedimentary rock of the continental and ocean basins! Fossil and un-fossilized, bone and tissue, human and animal. There are sea shells buried on mountain tops and trees standing upright on the ocean floor. There have been crustal fissure openings of such dimension that the hot magmas flowed so freely as to cover thousands of square miles of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho in the United States with lava hundreds of feet thick in a region called the Columbia Plateau. The lava floods of India, known as the Deccan Traps, spilled an incredible 480,000 cubic miles of lava across the earth. Another, twice the size of Alaska and over 25 miles thick, called the Ontong Java Plateau, lies on the ocean floor near the Solomon islands, and similar fields are found in Siberia and elsewhere, and across it all lies the undisguised evidence of glacial scouring.
The History of Physics, which I found as an article recently, is not the commonest of reading subjects, but on this occasion I immersed myself in its detail. It must be known that the subject bears far more than I could ever hope to remember, but one detail did stand out above everything else, and that was how few scientists, actually how few people, were responsible for what we know in the field of physics today. There were names like Newton, Kepler, Euler, Faraday, Maxwell, Fermi, and Einstein, but strangely, there were not many others. But, for me, the names James Clark Maxwell and Michael Faraday stood out like neon lights for two powerful reasons that are appropriate to mention here. In the preface to Maxwell's, A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, Maxwell, (1831-1879) attacked the scientific community on two fronts. First he was furious over the abuse afforded Faraday and his work because the attacks were based solely on the establishment's disdain for Faraday's research methods. Do you believe it? His research methods! It didn't suit them. It's a wonder, because Faraday's discovery that electricity flowed from the forces of magnetism, is the solitary principle governing the operation of every single electric motor, generator, solenoid, or transformer ever built! Maxwell, for those not familiar with his work, was a mathematical genius who, at the end of the last century, virtually defined the field of electricity and magnetism. But what did you say the names of those scientists were who were so distraught over Faraday's methods?
The other point of Maxwell's attack can only be appreciated from his own words. Here he is utterly frustrated over the fact that good works are mixed with bad, both are written in unintelligible language and then put together in a drawer never to be seen again! Maxwell wrote:
There is a considerable mass of mathematical memoirs which are of great importance...but they lie canceled in the bulky Transactions of learned societies. They do not form a connected system, they are of very unequal merit, and they are, for the most part, beyond the comprehension of any but professed mathematicians.
Maxwell's statements are clearly rather contemptuous of the orthodox system, but the points that he makes are well taken. How can we progress, he asks, if we can cast aside genius because we object to, or perhaps don't understand, their methods; and how can we progress if what others have accomplished lies canceled from the public eye? We must face these facts and events square on if the evolutionary and creationist camps are to form a new paradigm of agreement. It is time that we do this, for it is no longer satisfactory to deny the evidence of 40 million animals that lie buried from a single event that occurred less than 10,000 years ago that anyone with a shovel can unearth. The evidence favoring catastrophe is just too powerful, too pervasive, and it demands that we abandon the 18th century paradigm and consider an alternative that fits the observable facts!
We are not left without choices in this matter, because there have been some wonderfully intuitively-correct theories advanced by some of these new authors. There is one in particular that should be mentioned here, because not only does this theory address the causal forces involved in the catastrophic processes, but the same theory, unmodified, is applied in answer to the common questions of origin of earthquakes, volcanos, and the earth's own magnetic field. The theory is based on a process that the author, James Bowles, in his book, The Gods, Gemini, and the Great Pyramid, calls Rotational Bending, or simply the RB-Effect. The principles that the RB-Effect advances are new to science and will require some detailed discussion which I will develop later, but the concept lends itself well to illustration and casual narration, so in Bowles' words:
The discovery of the RB-Effect started out as a simple pig roast. We chose to roast the pig on a spit over a bed of coals, but the mechanism is not easily described so rather than trying I’ll just illustrate it, except to say that the spit is better portrayed as a one and a half inch diameter galvanized water pipe rather than a proper spit. This is important to the story, because halfway through the night, the pipe broke, and the pig fell in the fire. Actually it was pretty funny. It was, however, on the second morning anniversary of this event that I was suddenly struck with the realization that the pig had solved one of the most enigmatic problems facing science today. When the pig fell into the fire, it wasn’t just because the spit broke, rather it fell into the fire because the spit broke from fatigue. What I’d realized was that my hapless spit, which was bending under the weight of the pig, had been constantly rotating and the combination, the bending and the continual rotation, was doing a fatigue number on the pipe. It was creating internal tension and compression stresses, and the rotation was continually walking these stresses around and around inside the pipe and heating it and wearing it out in the process.
The same thing can be shown to happen to the crust of the earth. In a simplified fashion, and liken it to the adventure with the pig, this is what takes place. First! Think of the crust, because of the subsurface plastic layer, as having some independent freedom to move. It would be a little like loose cargo moving about on the deck of a ship, and think of the crust being caused to bend along the plane of the ecliptic by the gravitational pull of the sun and the moon while it is in a state of simultaneous rotation. It rotates under this loading condition at a thousand miles an hour at the equator, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, on and on for all eternity. The rotation and simultaneous bending has the consequence of fatiguing the crust and eventually exhausting the plastic layer’s resilience. The crust’s ties to the inner earth will eventually break and everything will be set to fail. It plain out-and-out fails from fatigue!
Throughout his book, Bowles emphasizes, while quoting the works of scientists and other professionals that have spoken on the same issue, that all of earth's processes are controlled by forces, not energy, not momentum, and not any deeply hidden principle of unknown character, just forces. By example, forces are what propels cars, bicycles, and the water from the faucet, they provide lift for an aircraft, cause a baseball to curve, and a golf ball to go into the brush. They cause electric motors to turn and they raise mountains. We merely have to observe the physical consequence of their action to establish their identity. I'll expand on this point below, but for the moment I want to establish for the reader my intent in the continuing pages of this article. So here, as concise as I can state them, are the issues!
THE DEBATE: Evolution vs. Creation, Uniformitarianism vs. Catastrophism.
UNIFORMITARIANISM: What does it mean?
CATASTROPHISM: What does it mean, and does its consequence affect us today?
A SOLUTION TO THE DILEMMA: A Unified Theory
THE UNIFYING THEORY: The RB-Effect
THE DEBATE: Evolution vs. Creation, Uniformitarianism vs. Catastrophism.
If we were to examine the level of informational-bureaucracy in the earth sciences today, we'd be so confused that it'd take a month of blue moons to re-gather our thoughts. Let me give you some for-instances. There are more glossary terms than there are stars in the sky. There are more unsolved mysteries than you could find from every ancient culture in the world. There are more adversarial topics than there are “synonyms for the antonyms” written in all the dictionaries that have ever been, and if we were to sum up what we know, that is to say, what we are really sure of, we'd be forced to admit that we know virtually nothing! Why is that? It is because the debates that have hampered discovery have been around for so long that they have all acquired names.
Catastrophism verses Uniformitarianism, Evolution verses Creation, The Big Bang verses Creation, Plate Tectonics verses Catastrophism, Plate Tectonics verses Shifting Crusts, or Plate Tectonics verses Shifting Axes. We don't know whether isostasy is a process or a condition, or whether the geo-magnetic field is formed deep within the earth's core, or from processes that go on in the upper mantle. We don't know whether recent elevations of the Himalayas are the result of crustal collisions or due to some unknown deep earth process, and we're in constant debate over whether the earth originated as the product of accretion or as a fiery primordial ball. And we still think that human culture evolved in a lineal assent from the primitive to the advanced, that Columbus discovered America, and The Great Pyramid was constructed using slave labor.
So there we go! Nothing seems to be caused by anything that we are the least bit familiar with! Why, and I must ask this again, why is that? I've said that I read all the books that the new authors send me, and I've drawn some conclusions from the new ideas that have been proposed. So here is where I stand: I'm on record in my own book, 5/5/2000 Ice: The Ultimate Disaster, that I support the Catastrophism view, and I have given up on the theory of pure natural selection in the evolution of new species, in favor of a form of natural selection which is signatured by catastrophic interludes that prompt episodes of spontaneous mutation.
I favor brief cataclysmic episodes and shifting crusts over plate tectonics, and isostasy as a process. I favor the answers concerning the origin of the geo-magnetic field and the recent changes in elevation in the Himalayan mountains to be addressed as a product of upper mantle processes. I favor accretion over a fiery primordial ball, and I'll not even comment on pyramid slave labor, or the Columbus debates, preferring instead to label them ludicrous. What I've done here is to take my computer-mouse and clicked on every option that I felt had any chance of survival in an open debate where substantial elements of real-proof had to be submitted in advance as a condition for participation. As my last selection, I clicked on Creation over the Big-bang because of articles that appeared in two U.S. periodicals, U.S. News and World Report, and Newsweek where it was said that many of today's scientists are having a difficult time with the big-bang theory without some consideration being given to divine intervention.
I think the advantage of the high ground in terms of the unifying theory that we will be discussing below, goes to those who can demonstrate that they can put a position paper together that doesn't provide multiple answers to questions, and doesn't put all the controlling principles that they're administering in conflict with one another. How many debate camps would we have if these were the rules? I have to admit, though grudgingly, because it was a great idea, that forming a position paper of this sort was not my idea. It came from Mac B. Strain, author of The Earth's Shifting Axis. He fashioned his position paper on page seven as an open challenge to scientists. He challenges the concept of thermal energies powering tectonic movements, and he challenges the corollary theory of subduction. He challenges the validity of paleo-magnetism, and “the notion,” [his term] that the ice and coal ages, which he views as concurrent antipodal events, relate in any way to changes in solar heat, or that the Siberian mammoths died a slow death, and he suggests that the glacial fingerprints in India, Africa, and South America are not those of drifting continents. Most remarkably in my opinion, he challenges the validity, and even the advisability, of elevating what he calls “working theories” to the status of fact before they have earned the right. Plate tectonic theory and its corollaries, he suggests, being a single, but classic, example! For my part, I have little problem with any of these!
Bowles on the other hand doesn't give us a position paper per se, that is to say he doesn't list them all in one place, rather they are scattered throughout the 288 pages of text, illustrations, and photographs, but he leaves no question as to where he stands on the issues of debate. On page one Bowles describes the process, that is the cause, the actual mechanics, for the catastrophic episodes that we have been discussing, and which he argues, [quoting Hapgood] “...is responsible for not only the ice ages, not only the mountain ranges, but possibly for the very history of the continents and for all the principle features on the face of the earth.” He doesn't just say it, he lays out the physics of the process in words so plain and simple that they could be taught in high school science classes. In consideration of the reader, however, the mathematics are held for the appendix but his description is clear enough.
UNIFORMITARIANISM: What does it mean?
Uniformitarianism is generally credited to the Scottish geologist, James Hutton, who in his dogged stand against catastrophe wrote in his controversial Theory of the Earth, (1788) the often quoted phrase: “As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.” He goes on to say:
Not only are no powers to be employed that are not natural to the globe, no action to be admitted of except those of which we know the principle, and no extraordinary events to be alleged in order to explain a common appearance, the powers of nature are not to be employed in order to destroy the very object of those powers...Chaos and confusion are not to be introduced into the order of nature, because certain things appear to our partial views as being in some disorder. Nor are we to proceed in feigning causes when those seem insufficient which occur in our experience.
There is an inherent attractiveness to this statement that needs our exploitation, because Hutton's words have been modernly misinterpreted to mean simply that, “Chaos and confusion are not to be introduced into the order of nature, because certain things appear to our partial views as being in some disorder.” This suggests, of course, that catastrophe is outside of the natural order of Nature. However, as any reader can clearly see, this limited interpretation was not the intent of his statement. Let's look!
Chaos and confusion are not to be introduced into the order of nature, because certain things appear to our partial views as being in some disorder...no action to be admitted of except those of which we know the principle!
It is a clear admission that if the extraordinary events, the chaos, and the confusion that Hutton refers to, could be defined in terms for which “...we know the principle,” they would fall within the scope “...of the order of nature.” So it is my on-going intent to show that there are forces, for which I can demonstrate the principles that influence the extraordinary events, the chaos, and the confusion so that we might finally end this debate!
CATASTROPHISM: What does it mean, and does its consequence affect us today?
There is nothing born in the knowledge of the catastrophic processes that the earth experiences that will help mankind survive the deadly consequence of the next event. We can apply what understanding we have and attempt to secure safe haven. But we'd have to share what little safe ground there may be with three billion other people. We'd have to drop our daily chores at the first sound of chaos, but I don't know what chaos sounds like! A freight train perhaps? But I'd hate to be put into a panic every time I heard a freight train! So I think it's apparent that knowledge for knowledge's sake is not going to be very helpful unless there is a constructive way that we can apply that knowledge.
The obvious question that this solicits is this, “What constructive good can come from acknowledging the forces of catastrophe? The answer, though hidden from us now, is as obvious as the question. Before I answer it, however, I want to outline for you what catastrophe meant to those ancient peoples that survived to rebuild their lost civilization!
Families and cities, mining and manufacturing, retail, libraries, governing agencies, communication and infra-structures would all be disrupted or totally destroyed; and perhaps worse, man's trust in God, in Nature, and his trust in his fellow man would be shattered.
Disaster would have prevailed on the high seas and inland to the hills from waters disrupted from their normal course. Earthquakes would have devastated all that the waters hadn't reached, and volcanic eruptions would have filled the atmosphere with dust and sound so overpowering as to be maddening. Man's origins, his genealogy, his heritage, his dreams were thus buried under one more layer of debris.
Elevations changed, new mountains formed, rivers once slow and clogged with silt gained new heights to become in power like the canyon forging torrents of the primeval Colorado.
There would be mass extinctions of plant and animal species; and if history repeated itself, there were spontaneous mutations of both plant and animal; where, as proof from events as recent as 10,000 years ago, mastodons became elephants, saber tooth tigers became Bengal's, giant sloths and beavers were reduced to rodents, and the wooly rhinoceroses changed color and shed their hair.
The first dawn would shed its light over a new motif of islands and deserts, forests and rivers; it would see the glaciers begin to reform at the poles, and the RB-Effect beginning anew to tear at the crust to start the process all over again.
Perhaps now you are wondering what earthly good does knowing serve? Well I said that the answers were as obvious as the questions, so let's ask questions, and I invite you to refer back to the answers above as you contemplate these!
Why are the remains of the ancient civilizations so scant?
Why does our image of civilization go back only as far as a few centuries B.C.?
Why, when we have known erosion to take down mighty mountains, are our rivers still flowing strong, our fresh water lakes still clear, and the waterfalls around the world still encased in their original escarpments?
Why, when we can find sabertooth cats, mammoth's, and mastodons etched on cave walls and laying in shallow graves, do we have tigers, and lions, and bears today? And here is a good question for you, why do we find dinosaurs in graves no deeper than those of the sabertooth cats, mammoth's, and mastodons?
Knowing the truths of yesterday answers our questions of today! It should no longer be a surprise to any of us if a breaking news story reports an oil find in Iceland, or a child's doll is removed from a well drilling core in North Dakota, or a breed of dinosaurs, previously reported as indigenous of the polar wastes of the Antarctic, are found to be a warm blooded, swamp feeding creature of gentle disposition! Because now we know that it is the “...natural order of Nature.”
A SOLUTION TO THE DILEMMA: A Unified Theory
Let's take a look at why the development of a unifying theory should be, or more precisely, why it should have been, a major item on the discussion table of all universities, corporate boardrooms, and in the minds of all earth science researchers. The best means at hand for us to do this is to take a detailed look at the quandary we're in for not having done it years ago. The most obvious is that we can see the consequence of catastrophe but we can't explain it. There are many more natural circumstances of catastrophic origin that are discussed openly in our schools and appear in our books that we can use as examples. The feature that is common to them all, however, is that there are no explanations! Let's look at a few. But while we're at it, let's also examine them in light of the new theories that have been advanced that offer reasonable solutions.
The origin of the heat within the earth has been the subject of ongoing investigations for a long time. Gutenberg writes,
Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the origin of the earth's internal heat...some include radioactivity others gravitational contraction...a vast amount of research has been devoted to this subject, but the fact remains...it continues to be one of the outstanding unsolved problems of science.
This is an excellent case in point. Here we have an outstanding unsolved problem of science that has already consumed vast amounts of research time and money and we are nowhere. Nothing! The reason should be obviously clear. The current working theories simply do not embrace this circumstance. But I wouldn't want the question to go unanswered so I want to give you an answer here. We've been talking about the RB-Effect in terms of its candidacy as the Unifying theory, and I see an opportunity for it's application here. So while addressing the question of earth's internal heat, Bowles, using the process by which we break a piece of wire as an example, says:
When we try to break a piece of wire from a coat hanger we bend it back and forth wanting to fatigue the wire so it'll break, wear it out as it were. It doesn’t work very well, not because that isn’t a good way to go about it, but because bending the wire back and forth changes the structure of the metal by work hardening it. The hardening comes about because the internal friction from the bending heats the wire and hardens it in the process. We should keep this idea of frictionally induced heat from bending in mind because it applies to the earth as well.
The RB-Effect causes the earth's crust to flex continuously, not unlike the wire example, day after day, year after year, millennium onto millennium, and the heat brought on by this continuous flexing heats the upper reaches of the crust, just as Bowles suggests. Another dilemma of science concerns the Hawaiian island chain.
The Hawaiian Islands break the surface of the Pacific in an apparent arc whose form has been variously described as the outgrowth of a moving volcanic hot spot beneath a stationary crust, and alternatively as that from a moving crust across a stationary hot spot. We want to examine these respective theories for their analysis, before we do, however, we should give thought to whether these opposing views are reconcilable under a single unifying theory. In contemplating this, I would like to discourage the consideration of any theory that would depict a process as its theme, because a process is simply a recipe for change and they offer no solution. Behind the recipe are the ingredients, and behind the ingredients are their biological beginnings, and behind their biological beginnings are the forces that put them into residence, and this is really where we want to be! So by definition a unifying theory must be one that describes the forces that put the system into motion. This has been put in concise language by Bowles:
Only forces produce motion, nothing else works. So if there is motion, ie., if the wind is blowing, or the clouds are moving, or if a tiny seed begins to sprout, or a mighty mountain explodes and fills the atmosphere with dust, or we see a flash of lightning streak across the sky, we know a force has caused it. This principle is so fundamental, so straight forward in its implications, that it is a pure waste of time and energy to worry about anything else until the forces involved have been identified. It is fundamental!
The insistence that a unifying theory have its foundation based on forces is also expressed in the same apt form by Mac Strain:
Scientists would like to reduce the explanation of each phenomenon into a fundamental equation...If we were to reduce the Dynamic Axis Theory into a fundamental equation, it would have to be F=ma, where F are the forces...
There is an elemental beauty in this doctrine in that whenever motions are delineated and the forces are defined, we have, with elemental certainty, described the event and arbitrated the cause, and who, if I may paraphrase Professor Thomas Henry Huxley, would withhold agreement? There is not a single scientist, engineer, physicist, or mathematician in the entire world that would challenge the primacy of forces to accomplish work; and for the inner-cellular forces of a tiny seed to crack the shell and produce a sprout, is a feat of work, pure and simple. It is simply outside the realm of debate!
There is a corollary beauty derived from this axiom in that force and motion actually define the concept of work, and sequentially work defines the level, or the expenditure, of energy. Interestingly, however, it is impossible to move backward through the realm of energy to produce work, hence to produce motion, even in a tiny sprout, without converting to a force first, and as before, there is not a single scientist, engineer, physicist, or mathematician in the entire world that would challenge the primacy of this axiom. It is simply outside the realm of debate! So it might be said, No! it should be strongly emphasized, that any scientific theory that bases its explanations and motive powers on energy sources, is in serious need of revision.
There are other natural events whose explanation are outside of the scope of orthodoxy. Not the least of which is the origin of earthquakes, volcanos, the magnetic field, the Ice Ages, fossils on mountain tops and trees on ocean bottoms, sandy ocean beaches at 15,000 foot elevations, ancient coral in northern ocean waters, and one of the most obvious of all, the terrain around lake Titicaca in the Peruvian Andes. Here, in the history of Lake Titicaca, lies one of the best records of catastrophic earth change in existence. The Lake, about 140 miles long by 70 wide, is situated 360 miles east, as the crow flies, of Nasca, and lies right on the border between Peru and Bolivia at an elevation of about 12,500 feet. Graham Hancock, author of the best selling, Fingerprints of the Gods, tells the story, which I paraphrase:
Though now more than two miles above sea level, the area around Lake Titicaca is littered with millions upon millions of fossilized sea shells. This suggests that at some stage the whole of the Altiplano was forced upwards from the sea bed. It has retained, until the present day, an ocean marine rather than fresh water fish and crustacea...the lake’s extent appears to have fluctuated enormously, indicated by the existence of an ancient strand line visible on much of the surrounding terrain...
Much harder to explain is the irrefutable evidence that the city of Tiahuanaco, [pronounced T‘´a-wa-nö´kÇ] was once a port, complete with extensive docks, and is now] marooned about twelve miles south of the lake and more than 100 feet higher than the present shore line.
Let's go back now and look at the circumstance of the Hawaiian island arc that we mentioned earlier. Mac B. Strain, now retired, was a Professional Civil Engineer with the U. S. Geological Survey, National Mapping Division. He'd held previous positions as Chief of the Technical Service Unit and as Chief of the Technical Planning Section, among other similar positions. His book, The Earth's Shifting Axis, introduces a concept that he calls, The Dynamic Axis Theory. This theory suggests that the earth's rotational axis, in an otherwise stable planetary mold, shifts position forcing a new equatorial definition. In consequence, there are corresponding changes in elevation at all latitudes associated with the shift meridian. Critical to this concept is the theory of the existence of magma seas whose radial influence puts pressure upon the underside of the crust. This pressure, by Strain's analysis creates tensile stresses that initiate crustal fracturing, magma intrusions, and relates to the theory of magma up-welling in crustal spreading zones along mid-ocean ridges. Strain is explicit in his announcement, and he has my full endorsement, that these magma-sea-intrusions are totally incapable of propelling the crust in any lateral dimension what-so-ever. [The concept of lateral crustal motion powered by thermal energies and magma intrusions, as you'll recall, is part and parcel to plate tectonic theory, and by implication Uniformitarianism.]
Strain describes the Hawaiian circumstance:
Extending north-northwest from the Hawaiian Islands is a row of sea-mounts whose curved orientation led scientists to the hypothesis that the crust moves over a fixed grouping of hot spots in the asthenosphere. Inspection of the National Geographic Society's Physical map of the Pacific Ocean, however, reveals the existence of not one, but several aligned chains of sea-mounts. The Hawaiian Ridge from Midway Islands to Hawaii is the most prominent. A second chain known as the Emperor Sea-mount Chain, appears to be an extension of the Hawaiian Ridge but with a dog leg that gives it a more northern alignment.
Strain points out that if these two chains were created by the same hot spot grouping and by the same crustal motions they should be near parallel. But the physical evidence provided by the National Geographic Society's maps of the Pacific Ocean bottom clearly shows that they are not! This in turn, he suggests, makes it difficult to accept the notion that they were created by tectonic motions. Strain then suggests an alternative concept that introduces a system of slow moving, atmospheric like, magma tornados whose random movement at the lower crustal interface would give an accounting for not only the non-parallel alignment of the sea mounts, but would provide an explanation for other short lived events that have formed small randomly positioned mounts on the ocean floor that orthodox science has no explanation for.
The dynamics suggested by plate tectonic theory in relation to the Pacific sea-mounts is also discussed in a 1992 Scientific American article, titled “Dynamics of Kilauea Volcano,” by Dvorak, Johnson, and Tilling.
The mystery of Kilauea, and the age pattern of the Hawaiian islands, and other analogous mid-plate volcanos, was explained by J. Tuzo Wilson, as the slow march of the sea-floor over a deep-seated, relatively fixed upwelling of molten rock in the earth's mantle, which he termed a “hot spot.” As the pacific plate drifts to the northwest, he postulated, the hot spot creates a linear succession of volcanos.
While acknowledging that the mantle plume model does not identify where the hot spot magma originates, J. Tuzo Wilson suggests that the hot spot grouping feeds magma to five volcanos. This mechanism which combines thermal energies with Archimedes Principle, though not naming them as such, is offered as the driving influences for this process. The article continues:
As solid material ascends from the deep, it undergoes a tremendous decrease in pressure. The reduced pressure enables some previously solid material to melt. Because of its lower density, the lighter, melted fraction of the rock moves upward, separating from the solid residue as it rises...this rising magma, called lava at the surface, forces its way through the solid upper mantle by flowing through lens-shaped cracks, to feed the heat and material for volcanic eruptions.
So here we have a process that on the surface seems to answer the question. However, recalling that a process is simply a recipe for change, we can see that this formula falls short in explaining where the hot magma originates, or where the heat that powers the system comes from.
FORCES, WORK, AND ENERGY
How then do we reconcile the fact that the arcs exist, that we can see the lava flowing during eruption, and in the case of all too many volcanos, we can see the explosive power of pent up pressures. Where then, if not in the energy of the system, are the forces?
The answer comes from the forces, the bending moments, and the associated vibration, fretting, and underplating activities associated with the RB-Effect, [See Figures 4, 5, 7, 8, & 9]. These are all gravitationally induced by the sun, the moon, and, to a lesser extent, the other planets in the system, and as such they are feeding earth's internal system. They are external forces, ie., gravity acting upon earth's mass, and they produce motion within it, which some scientists have called tidal waves within the crust. The combined force-motion scenario represents work performed upon the earth, and work converts directly into energy. But while force, by its very nature, is hidden from view, the consequence of its presence is not hidden. Forces produce motion, and motion is detectable. Forces that produce motion are doing work, and work converts to energy, and the expenditure of energy is visible. We need only to identify the energy expenditures, while being mindful that in doing so we are on the third rung of th ladder. The first rung of the ladder that structures the unifying theory are forces, the second rung is work! Forces, work, and energy!
Allow me to make an analogy at this point. We all recognize that an automobile engine provides the motive power to each of the respective systems within the vehicle. The wheels, for instance, through the transmission, the air conditioning, power steering, and alternator are all belt or gear driven and they in turn distribute the forces produced by the engine. So whereas we can easily relate to the primary force produced by the engine, we are incomplete in our thinking if we ignore the apportioned forces associated with these other systems. With this in mind, let's go back to the RB-Effect and see how this force is apportioned between the systems it drives! There are two of particular interest. One is the system that breaks the crustal ties, and the other is the system that officiates over the ongoing readjustment of surface elevations. Neither of these, until the RB-Effect was discovered by Bowles, and defined in The Gods, Gemini, and the Great Pyramid, have ever been investigated in terms of the initiating force. So this will be the first time this concept, in terms of a unifying theory, has ever been presented outside of the book itself.
THE UNIFYING THEORY: The RB-Effect
Simply stated the RB-Effect is brought about by the continual rotation of the earth within the gravitational fields of the sun, the moon, and on 5/5/2000, by the alignment of the combined planets in our solar system. Bowles writes:
We rotate, tilted at an angle of 23º 27', while the moon, pulling relentlessly at us, circles. With no change in time we orbit the sun and again we experience the relentless pull of gravity. The combined gravitational effects from the sun and the moon, and to a lesser extent that of the planets, pull at the crust from this oblique angle, relentlessly wearing the crust down until it is wrested from its moorings and fails from fatigue. We’re being torn apart. It is from the effects of Rotational-Bending that a weakening bond in a zone just below the crust called the “plastic zone” forms and allows the crust to separate from the inner mantle. Once the inner ties between the crust and the inner mantle are broken, centrifugal forces acting on the great masses of ice at the poles move the crust toward the equator in a crashing search for equilibrium. Eventually stability is found and the major shifting comes to a halt. The effects are devastating. Most devastating are the waters. Hundred mile an hour walls of ocean water sweep the latitudes killing everything in their wake. The destruction is beyond imagination, but, amazingly, there have been survivors.
Bowles reminds the reader that the moon's orbit about the earth is not synchronous with the earth's orbit about the sun, and the earth responds in vibration. This vibration, Bowles points out, causes a condition known as fretting at all interface boundaries below the outer most crust. He relates the fretting process to a number of earth processes:
There has been much interest shown in the continental root phenomenon and it has been awarded extensive investigation as a result. Our interest in the phenomenon relates to the question of root origins because we believe that the growth areas are the breeding grounds for some earthquakes, and that a demonstrable relationship exists between root growth and the processes of isostasy. So we'll take a look at these processes with an eye towards the RB-Effect and the fretting phenomenon. The process is obviously continuous and apparently not very precise, as the continents are forever rising and falling as the mechanism hunts for a stable condition. It is a little like the balancing act we might see in a circus where the juggler will adjust his position under his charge in a hunt for its center of gravity.
The reference to earthquakes is not an idle eye-catcher, its relationship to the RB-Effect and deep earth vibrations was confirmed by independent research by Dr. Myeung Hoi Kwon & Dr. Randal D. Peters:
...we have almost continuously observed long period oscillations of the earth during January to August in 1990. Periods of those vibrations are correlated with more than ten of known long periods of spheroidal and torsional oscillations of the earth which result from the occurrence of large earthquake. The amplitudes of the fluctuation we have observed are correlated with the lunar synodic period, indication that they are driven by tidal forces....[ie., the RB-Effect]
Bowles describes fretting as a heat producing wear phenomenon that exists where low amplitude vibrations exist between two mating surfaces, adding that it is adhesive in nature and is usually accompanied by corrosion that produces a chemical debris in its path. Vibration, he stresses, is its essential causative factor, giving this as an example: You’ve purchased a brand new pick-up truck and have installed a bed-liner to keep the bed clean. Now, six months later, you are taking the liner out to clean under it and low-and-behold the bed looks like it has the measles. Everywhere the liner touched the bed the paint is worn down to bare metal and only an unidentifiable residue remains. The condition was caused by fretting, slow vibrational agitation between the liner and the truck bed.
Fretting, Bowles reminds us, isn't just a condition, it is a solution. The unifying principle that it occasions, ie., the principle that bonds the theories of mantle roots, their origin, and the condition of isostatic equilibrium together with a term associated with the chemical debris left by the fretting process, labeled underplating, is Debris Controlled Hydrostatics.
If we applied the principle of Debris Controlled Hydrostatics to test whether the Himalayas were rising because of root growth, rather than the prevalent theory that suggests a collision event with the Indian sub-continent, then we would expect the average density of the mountain to decrease with time, since underplating deposits low density material, and we would expect the central body of the mountain to be rising and the hinterlands to be sloping away radially. With further proof being demonstrated by a circumferential crack pattern rather than one parallel to the coastline!
The two books that I've been discussing, The Gods, Gemini, and the Great Pyramid, by James Bowles, and The Earth's Shifting Axis, by Mac B. Strain, both answer questions that have stalled the earth science debates by offering proposals that advance a unifying theory. The two differ somewhat in terms of the ultimate answer, but they are unified in the question. Both challenge the tenets of plate tectonic theory. Both challenge the popular notion that the Ice Ages were brought about by climatic anomalies, and both challenge the notion that drifting continents had anything to do with mountain building. Both answer more questions than they raise, and both leave you with the conviction that if a theory resorts to a multiple-choice response, there is something drastically wrong with the theory.
Let me give you another example where orthodoxy fails to provide satisfactory answers. Most earthquakes, it is said, occur within a few miles of the earth’s surface by the process of “...brittle fracture and frictional sliding.” But many scientists, dismayed at the inadequacy of this explanation, have asked how it was possible for rock to fracture and slip if the enormous pressures of the mantle rule out brittle fracture in the first place? Clearly, there is no agreement!
In contrast to the multiple-answer theories, both of these authors, Strain, and Bowles who is also a graduate civil engineer, recognize that there is but one governing law that controls the powers of Nature, and it, like a ship's engine, drives the ship and its many internal functions. They stress that this law, which they call, The Law of Nature: Force, Work, and Energy, is in no way different than that published in any physics or mechanics handbook, except, in its newness to applications in the earth sciences, and in the unique fact that its consequence is visible! They express it in this manner!
Forces, and only forces, control the power of Nature! Forces produce motion, and motion is detectable. Forces that produce motion are doing work, and work converts to energy, and the expenditure of energy, is visible.
Force, Work, and Energy, nothing else works!
Our Violent Planet & Vanished Ancient Civilizations:
Is our civilization next?
Dr. Albert Einstein wrote the Forward to Professor Charles H. Hapgood's book, Earth's Shifting Crust. One sentence, in reference to a crustal shift, should be repeated today:
I think this rather astonishing, even fascinating, idea deserves the serious attention of anyone who concerns himself with the theory of earth's development. I would say the same for the two books we have briefly glimpsed above. Both, The Gods, Gemini, and the Great Pyramid, by James Bowles, and The Earth's Shifting Axis, by Mac B. Strain, are works pleading for priority and careful study. Both contain original thinking on the geological behavior of our planet, and both should stimulate scientific thought and debate.
Hapgood's extraordinary ability to marshal data from many diverse fields and put the information into a comprehensive and understandable form, make his books, Earth's Shifting Crust, Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age, and The Path of the Pole, an excellent library resource for both reference and casual, exciting, reading. In these books, Hapgood, and other distinguished scholars like him, collaborate on a world scale, connecting bodies of knowledge, which to other minds would have been lost, abandoned, or destroyed today. Anyone who concerns himself with geology, or history, will find these invaluable works a riveting read.
There are few records extant prior to six thousand years ago. What we have instead, thanks to the great book burners of history, are legends, myths and folklore of cultures world wide, which curiously agree as to past watery conflagrations and pole shifts. Given generational amnesia and the insistence of society to incorrectly diagnose its past, I sincerely hope, The Earth's Shifting Axis, and The Gods, Gemini, and the Great Pyramid, awaken a sleeping public. They both present undeniable evidence of worldwide geological catastrophes. They both make it clear that the great shifts of the past, at some point, will revisit us with geological upheavals of inconceivable violence.
Common sense dictates that we should attempt to determine at what point in the future we may expect another visit. How close in geological time are we to the next striking of The Hammer? I am reminded by these thoughts of an appeal, “...to follow one's instincts to ask and to question,” that Charles H. Hapgood made in his book, The Path of the Pole:
Let me say a final word to the students, the young men and woman in our colleges and high schools: The mysteries of the earth beckon to you. What man now knows is little enough, and most of his general concepts in every field are vitiated by the artificial concepts he has created to cover his ignorance. These concepts must be destroyed. One tool exists that can accomplish this destruction, and this tool is in your hands. It is simply curiosity - the instinct to ask and to question. It should be kept sharp and used without mercy.
ENDNOTES
1 James Bowles is a retired civil engineer who worked for NASA sub-contractors on the Apollo moon program. He finished his 20 year engineering career in the industrial manufacturing industry, while teaching physics and mathematics evenings at the college level.
2 Hapgood, The Path of the Pole, Chilton (1970) Pg. 294
3 Mac B. Strain, The Earth's Shifting Axis, ATL Press, Inc., 1997. Pg. 49
4 Lewis Pyenson, Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc., 1995
5 Lewis Pyenson, Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc., 1995
6 James Clark Maxwell, A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, Unabridged 3rd. edition, Dover Publications, New York, 1954. Preface
7 What came before creation, by Gregg Esterbrooke. U.S. News and Report, Vol 125 #3, July 20, 1998, Pg. 44-52
8 "Wilson's World: Harvard Naturalist," by Geoffrey Cowley, Newsweek, Vol 131 # 25. June 22, 1998, Pg. 58-61
9 Charles H. Hapgood, The Path of the Pole, Chilton 1970, Pg. 224
10 John J. Dvorak, Carl Johnson and Robert I Tilling, "Dynamics of Kileuea Volcano," Scientific American, August 1992, Pgs. 46-53
11 Dr. Myeung Hoi Kwon & Dr. Randal D. Peters, "The study of Eigenmode Types and Source Non-linearity in the Free Earth Oscillations," Journal of Korea Physics Society, 1995
12 Frohlich, Cliff, "Deep Earthquakes," Scientific American, January 1989, Pg. 54
13 Charles H. Hapgood, The Path of the Pole, Chilton, 1970, Pg. 324 The Hammer and the Pendulum. Copyright November, 1998