Scientists studying recent rock samples taken from beneath an ancient earthen mound are trying to determine what caused unusually high concentrations of a metal rarely seen anywhere but near Earths molten core or in asteroids and comets.
Serpent Mound, an earthen snake effigy believed to have been built from about 1000 B.C. to A.D. 200 is about 60 miles east of Cincinnati. Some believe the 1,348-foot-long mound had a religious function for its builders, although nobody knows for sure what philosophy and beliefs shaped its origin because the mound builders left no written records.
Geologists only recently discovered high concentrations of iridium 1,412 feet beneath the mound.
The levels of the silver-gray metal, occasionally brought up in lava from volcanoes, measured 10 times beyond what is usually present in the Earths crust.
Since there are no lava fields in Ohio, some geologists point to the iridium as evidence the mound sits upon a slightly oblong crater created when a massive extraterrestrial object slammed into Earth.
http://www.chillicothegazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050418/NEWS01/504180308/1002
Popular Posts
-
Very dry, dull book with some basic financial info like ROI and cash flow. Not a lot here.
-
Some good stuff from a Canadian futurist: - The rising power of the knowledge worker - Continuous training replaces job security; respect is...
-
Brad Dalton is the first to admit his theory is far-fetched: that bacteria could account for odd light emissions, as well as the reddish hue...
-
I had the pleasure to attend the IBM Think conference in wet and chilly San Fran from Feb 11-14th of this year. The event overall was ...
-
It's been almost exaclty three years since I've updated this blog. In that three years, I've achieved a lot -- I've gone aft...
-
Here's my (edited) journal entry for this event dated 12/01/98: Wow. I just sessioned and started reading "The Tao of Physics...
-
Nother confirmation Of einstein... the first images of light escaping a black hole show that they lose energy. In this case, it was a superm...
-
Not a bad audio book, but I expected more. Big ideas: Build a high performance, high-trust culture; Identify desired results and un...
-
Increasingly, the overstretched and overburdened have a new answer to work lives of gunning harder for what seems like less and less: Dont j...
-
The probes findings have provided a few salient new notions about the nature of cosmic reality. For starters, the universe is 13.7 billion y...