mirrored file at http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ 
For complete access to all the files of this collection
	see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php 
==========================================================

THOTH VOL VII, No 6
Sept 30, 2003

GRAND CANYON REVISISTED
by Amy Acheson

Ralph Juergens and Wal Thornhill introduced the hypothesis that
Valles Marineris on Mars and the Grand Canyon on Earth are
primarily electrical scars. In both canyons, water erosion (if
any) is only coincidental.

See Thornhill's article here:
http://www.holoscience.com/views/view_mars.htm

Since then, I've been reading geology books and websites about the
Grand Canyon to see for myself how the electrical hypothesis
compares with more traditional theories. Let's begin at the end,
with conclusions taken from Appendix 1 of W. Kenneth Hamblin's
_Late Cenozoic Lava Dams in the Western Grand Canyon_ (hence
called LCLD):

CONCLUSIONS:
"1) Erosion does not take place at a constant, imperceptibly slow
rate ...
2)  ... stream gradients and slopes are at a state of dynamic
equilibrium unless disturbed .... If no ... disturbance occurs,
the Colorado River will not cut significantly deeper....
3) The question of the age of the Grand Canyon and how long it
took the Colorado River to cut the canyon is not a question of how
fast the river can cut...."

AMY COMMENTS:
To be fair, these conclusions are taken completely out of context.
I deleted the hypotheses that modern geologists use to account for
the data in order to emphasize the fact that Juergens' and
Thornhill's electrical scarring hypothesis also fits the data: A
celestial thunderbolt would be expected to 1) carve the Grand
Canyon quickly and 2) come to equilibrium quickly because 3) the
age and depth of the Canyon have very little to do with the flow
of the Colorado River.

Now that we know the conclusions, let's scroll back to the
beginning: The problems.  A news story about the Grand Canyon
Symposium of June 2000 stated these problems clearly:

"Although the Grand Canyon is the United States' most famous
geological feature, geologists do not know for certain how it was
formed."  Plus: "... instead of providing an answer, the June
symposium actually may have expanded the controversy over the
Canyon's origins ...."

SEE ARTICLE HERE:
http://www.aapg.org/explorer/2000/08aug/grandcanyonbeginning.html

According to this article, conventional geologists are divided
into two warring camps.  They both agree that the Grand Canyon is
young, geologically speaking. The evidence has been building since
the 1930's and 1940's that the Colorado River did not flow out of
the Canyon nor across the ridges and valleys of Nevada/California
before 5.5 million years ago.  It didn't dump into Baha California
until after 4.3 million years ago at the very earliest.

The first camp thinks that a proto-canyon completed most of the
excavation of the Canyon first. Later, the Colorado River flowed
into this pre-existing proto-canyon.  The second camp says
evidence for a proto-canyon is inadequate, and the whole canyon
was carved quickly.

One of the comments in the news story has an eyebrow-raising twist
for those familiar with Juergens' and Thornhill's electrical
scarring theory:  A "proto-canyon" advocate expressed his
objections to the "quickly carved" group in these words:  "[I]f
you don't have a pre-existing eastern Canyon, you have to start
the Colorado River way up in the sky."  He obviously felt that
this possibility was so absurd that his side won the debate.  But
if you allow Juergens and Thornhill's hypothesis -- celestial
thunderbolts carving canyons on Earth as well as on waterless
moons, comets, asteroids and planets -- the accusation ceases to
be so absurd.

Which brings us to the middle of my story: the data. Why so much
confusion?  What are these studies finding?  The Western Grand
Canyon intersects the southern tip of a 50-mile long double string
of recent volcanoes (less than 1.8 million years old.) W.K. Hamlin
[W K Hamblin?]
considers this intersection a lucky coincidence.  He says (LCLD,
page 5) "If the canyon had been located 10 km [6.2 miles] farther
south, there would probably be no volcanic activity within the
canyon at all." From an electrical scarring point of view, this
placement of this string of volcanoes may not be coincidental.
The volcanoes themselves may be one of the many side effects of
thunderbolts uplifting the plateau and carving the lower part of
the Grand Canyon.

Coincidence or not, the volcanoes provide useful information about
the Grand Canyon and the eroding power of the Colorado River. Many
of the volcanoes erupted within the inner canyon. The lava from
other volcanoes erupted onto the wider outer canyon and spilled
into the inner canyon.  These lavas dammed the inner canyon of the
Colorado at least 13 times, beginning no earlier than 1.8 million
years ago (conventional dating.) Because remnants of these lava
dams reach all the way to the present floor of the inner canyon,
we know that the inner canyon was approximately the same size when
the first lava flows filled it as it is today. And before the next
channel-filling volcano erupted, the river quickly eroded each dam
to a channel approximately the same depth and width that the
canyon is today.

Hamlin says (LCLD, page 110): "All available information indicates
that prior to the extrusions of lava into the Grand Canyon, ...
the Colorado River had cut down to its present gradient and
stratigraphic position. The size and shape of the canyon walls
were essentially the same as those we see today." ...

He concludes this paragraph with ... "Thus, it is quite clear that
when the first lava dam formed the canyon was cut essentially to
its present depth, and after each dam was eroded, the Colorado
River returned to its former gradient (i.e., its present
gradient.)"

The above idea is repeated in almost every paragraph of Appendix
One. The language (with author's emphasis)is so strong that I am
quoting it here. Paragraph 1:  "This important fact indicates that
slope retreat occurred from the river channel to the original
canyon profile, BUT NO MORE."  Paragraph 2:  "With the destruction
of each dam, and the reestablishment of the river gradient to its
original profile by downcutting, there was also a rapid,
contemporaneous retreat of the canyon slopes back to their
original profile BUT NO MORE!"  Paragraph 3: "In each case, after
a lava dam eroded, the basalt retreated to within a few meters of
the original canyon wall. Then the process of slope retreat
essentially stopped. In many places, the processes of slope
retreat completely removed the basaltic flows, BUT SLOPE RETREAT
DID NOT SIGNIFICANTLY ENLARGE THE CANYON AND GO BEYOND THE
ORIGINAL CANYON WALLS."

This mechanism of restoring equilibrium by rapid erosion of
obstructions is driven by the large supply of water that builds up
behind the obstruction. For this mechanism to carve the canyon in
the first place, there must have been a large lake to the east of
it -- or, as quoted above, "[Y]ou have to start the Colorado River
way up in the sky."

But the data from the lava dams only addresses the inner gorge.
The Grand Canyon is really a two-part canyon -- a broad, flat-
bottomed outer canyon incised by a more-curved steep-walled inner
canyon in which the Colorado River flows today.  What the volcanic
dams tell us is that today's Colorado River is only capable of
eroding the inner canyon.  What carved the outer canyon?  Was it
there before the Colorado flowed into it?  These are the questions
that geologists are currently debating.

The electrical scarring hypothesis has an easy answer for these
question.  When lightning carves a channel on Earth, it creates a
broad outer channel with a narrow more sinuous inner channel.
Celestial lightning does the same thing on a much grander scale.
After celestial lightning uplifted the plateau and carved the
basic skeleton of the Grand Canyon, the Colorado River spilled into
the inner channel.  This reversed the previously northern drainage
of the Southwestern States, allowing them to drain, for the first
time, across Nevada and California to the Gulf of Mexico. The
Colorado River quickly altered the inner channel from its
lightning scar profile to a water-carved canyon in equilibrium.
And every time that profile was blocked by a lava dam, the river
demonstrated how quickly it can return the Canyon to equilibrium.

Earth's rivers make it easy to confuse a canyon eroded by water
with a canyon carved by electricity.  But what about similar
canyons on Mars? Did Mars once have liquid water flowing on its
surface to carve its canyons? Astronomers answer that question
with a strong "maybe." Four spacecraft, including landers, are
currently en route to Mars with the goal of learning if Mars once
had water. But, like the Grand Canyon on Earth, even a "yes" to
the question of whether there was once liquid water on Mars won't
solve the problem of what carved the canyons of Mars.  It leaves
astronomers with more unanswered questions:  What carved similar
canyons on our own airless moon? On tiny asteroids? Or on the
scorched surface of Venus?

~Amy Acheson
editor of THOTH
thoth at whidbey.com