6 research outputs found
Traditions connected with the pole shift model of the Pleistocene
As is well known, during the Last Glacial Maximum, about 20'000 years ago,
the ice was asymmetrically distributed around the present North Pole. It
reached the region of New York, while east Siberia remained ice free. Mammoths
lived in arctic regions of east Siberia, where now their food cannot grow.
Therefore the globe must have been turned in such a way that the North Pole was
in Greenland. The required rapid geographic pole shift at the end of the ice
ages has been shown to be physically possible, on condition that an
astronomical object of planetary size in an extremely eccentric orbit existed.
In this postulated situation it was red hot and a disk shaped gas cloud reduced
the solar radiation on Earth in a time dependent way. A frequent objection to
this hypothesis is that the phenomena should be reported in old traditions.
This paper quotes such traditions from passages of Platon, Herodotus, Ovid,
papyrus Ipuwer, Gilgamesh, the Bible, American Indians and other civilizations.
Far from being exhaustive the examples show that apparently strange traditions
can report observed facts. This connection is of mutual benefit for science and
humanities
Arctic ocean chronology confirmed by accelerator 14C dating
The role of the Arctic Ocean in Earth's climatic and oceanographic development is significant but has become controversial because of disagreements concerning a reliable Arctic chronology. The first Arctic Ocean chronology based on U-Th and 14C data was in agreement with magnetostratigraphy developed later but these data have been challenged by recent amino acid diagenesis dates. New accelerator 14C data support the earlier U-Th-magnetostratigraphic dates and confirm the reliability of the established Arctic Ocean chronology
Radioisotope dating with the ETHZ-EN-tandem accelerator
During the last three years the ETH-EN-tandem accelerator facility has been adapted for the quantitative determination of the rare isotopes 14C and 10Be in mg samples. The goal of this project is to routinely achieve a 1% accuracy when measuring 14C/12C ratios with a minimum expenditure of human resources and beam time. The concept is similar to that proposed by Purser and Henley (1978). The early evolution of this dating facility was described previously (Suter et al, 1981a,b). This paper is a brief report on the current status of the system and its development