8 ms·
Mediterranean Sea filled in less than two years: study
- ksgifford 11y agoXKCD did a comic about this phenomenon a few years ago. The story is set in the far future when the Med has dried up again, and the next flood that refills it is imminent. http://blog.xkcd.com/2013/07/29/1190-time/ http://blog.xkcd.com/2013/07/29/1190-time/
- mirimir 11y ago"video": http://geekwagon.net/projects/xkcd1190/ http://geekwagon.net/projects/xkcd1190/
- intrasight 11y ago"Oh noes, something has gone wrong!"
- teh_klev 11y agoWhat's special about the "Special" frames, in particular "Debated" frames?
- pavel_lishin 11y agoAccording to the readme - https://github.com/deplicator/xkcdTime_atyourownpace/blob/master/readme.mediawiki https://github.com/deplicator/xkcdTime_atyourownpace/blob/ma... > Special frames are selected by popular vote. The vote calculation is done automaticly, but new special frames won't show up right away (about a 10 minute delay). For a frame to attain special status it must receive a certain number of votes, and it must have a higher number of votes for it than against it. The exact numbers for this are still being determined. > Debated Frames are frames that have recieved a number of both yes and no votes.
- teh_klev 11y agoAppreciated.
- aidenn0 11y agoThe special frames are ones where people have voted that it demands extra attention (e.g. text to read) that wouldn't be possible at multiple FPS. Debated just appears to be that there are significant yes votes, but insufficient to make it special.
- skykooler 11y agoAnd even won a Hugo award for it!
- eganist 11y agoEntirely offtopic, but how is it that the xkcd blog suffers from such a terrible spam comment problem?
- clort 11y agoIts a test, to measure how intelligent the spambots are getting. See https://xkcd.com/810/
- jeffwass 11y agoWhat's the best way to 'read' that xkcd storyline?
- BurningFrog 11y ago>"We do not envisage a waterfall, as is often represented: instead the geophysical data suggests a huge ramp, several kilometres wide, descending from the Atlantic to the dry Mediterranean...," the scientists said. Can anyone help me get a mental image of this?
- beeboop 11y agoImagine a big ass river. Pretty much the same concept, but in reverse.
- ceejayoz 11y agoSomething like this on a much, much larger scale. https://youtu.be/_yCnQuILmsM?t=1m19s https://youtu.be/_yCnQuILmsM?t=1m19s
- intortus 11y ago> ""We also know that the velocity of the water flow must have been more than 300 kilometres an hour." I'm not sure how to visualize this.
- nerfhammer 11y agoI feel like the friction against the air would be enough to cause tornadoes.
- ars 11y agoA snow avalanche is probably the closest thing you can see today. Try to find one where it hits trees and see what it does to them, otherwise it's hard to really see the scale and force.
- alva 11y agoIt is an incredible thing to think about!
- chiaro 11y agoThere's a few simulations around: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xQeEgPhSfI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xQeEgPhSfI
- anotheryou 11y agois that the flood the bible refers too?
- johnloeber 11y agoNo, this happened about 5.6 million years ago, according to the study. That's well before the advent of the homo sapien or any prehistoric ancestors developing a language complex enough to tell such a story. Fwiw, there are more recent large floods that serve as possible inspiration for the flood stories you can find in any major religion.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y agoFor example: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/evidence-for-a-flood-102813115/?no-ist http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/evidence-for-a-... A lot of the older books of the bible were collected from Mesopotamian mythology. Based on the stories it's likely something big really did happen, but no one is quite sure what. I've always been fascinated by the Scottish Tsunami/Storegga Slide of ~6000BC, which was about 70ft high at the coast and ran some 50 miles inland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storegga_Slide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storegga_Slide
- duaneb 11y agoI mean, Mesopotamia was flooding quite frequently. I don't think much further inspiration is necessary.
- shiro 11y agoI thought the world wasn't 5 million years old according to the bible.
- ygmelnikova 11y agoA common myth. The bible doesn't say the world was created in 6 days, but in 6 'yoms'. A yom in Hebrew means 'a defined period of time'. Like an epoch, or a year, a day or a minute etc. The bible was translated into English in the middle ages. Wikipedia has a definition as 'A long, but finite span of time', among others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- curtis 11y agoThere is a similar theory about the Black Sea: the Black Sea deluge hypothesis [1]. From Wikipedia: The Black Sea deluge is a hypothesized catastrophic rise in the level of the Black Sea circa 5600 BC from waters from the Mediterranean Sea breaching a sill in the Bosphorus strait. (This one, if true, is pretty interesting because it occurred within fairly recent human history.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis
- DrScump 11y agoThis has been theorized to be the origin of Great Flood myths, both Biblical and those of earlier cultures.
- lostlogin 11y agoThe embellishing is pretty amazing, and added the bit about it going down again. Maybe if we repent hard enough we can get the sea level lower?
- Arnt 11y agoIf we drink hard enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Atgar%C3%B0a-Loki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Atgar%C3%B0a-Loki
- yeldarb 11y agoIs there a contemporary basin ripe for a catastrophic flood from the sea in the event of an earthquake?
- Mandatum 11y agoNew Orleans, many areas of China (see 1931 China Floods), areas along the Ganges Delta, also look at the Special Flood Hazard Areas assigned in the US.
- maaku 11y agoNetherlands.
- nostromo 11y agoDeath Valley could flood if there was some way for sea water to get to it. If the climate changed and it started to rain there often, it could also make a massive inland freshwater lake. There once was many lakes in this region: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/Pleistocene_Lakes_and_Rivers_of_Mojave.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/Pleistoc...
- cossatot 11y agoIt does occasionally get standing water during winter/spring rainstorms. I remember hearing about someone windsurfing there in 2005.
- cmsmith 11y ago>freshwater lake Death Valley has no outlets (is endorheic), so it would be a salt water lake (at least after all the surface salt had time to dissolve).
- Tuna-Fish 11y agoNothing the size of the Med, of course. There are several major below-sealevel basins in Northern Africa. The most significant is probably the Qattara Depression[1], which probably won't ever naturally flood, but is the target of many plans to flood it intentionally for power production and improvements in local climate. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression
- grumblestumble 11y agoIf you like Sci-Fi, spoiler alert but Julian May's Pliocene Saga is set around this event.
- rodgerd 11y agoJust don't read too far into the series. The first four books are pretty good, but the further on it goes...
- grumblestumble 11y agoGood to know. I read the original series about 20 years ago and was recently thinking of catching up on the rest of it.
- lakkal 11y agoThe Gandalara books by Randall Garrett as well.
- dredmorbius 11y agoWildwoodClaire's video on the Messinian Salinity Crisis gives an excellent backround on the paleogeology of the Mediterranean basin, particularly as expressed through salt deposits up to 3500 meters thick, but also with considerable evidence of ancient channels both in the regions surrounding the Mediterranean (as at the Aswan High Dam) and underneath the existing sea. Her enthusiasm is also infectious. https://youtu.be/U5qTQpws5H0 https://youtu.be/U5qTQpws5H0
- sandra_saltlake 11y agoMesopotamia was flooding quite frequently.
- keypusher 11y ago[2009]
- tim333 11y agoIt reminds me of the Red Sea Dam idea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Sea_Dam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Sea_Dam