Antarctica

[seasmith]

~
Antarctica's Anomalous

Nov 27, 2013
Steve Smith
http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2013/11 ... ormations/

Landforms - continued
...ROCKS

The Victoria Orogeny is still active, certain sections of the "Great Antarctic Horst" show displaced glacier flow and discordant ice-flow junctions that indicate differential vertical rock movement within the last 10,000 years more or less. However, the summits of some ranges and the interiors of the Dry Valleys have suffered neither ice-abrasion nor rain or cascading water in perhaps 2 million years, perhaps more.


A dry valley ventifact
The result is a display of weathered rocks forms like none seen elsewhere on earth, indeed nothing is so remarkable about the last half century of "research" in the Antarctic as the failure of scientists to recognise the many unique features of geology and process displayed before their eyes.

Certain isotopes notably of Be are formed by exposure to cosmic bombardment but none seem to have been carried out on the higher summits. Ages of more than 1 myr have been claimed for, eg the ablation moraine on the surface of the Beacon Glacier, but such moraine is formed by rock-fall from valleys walls of highly different exposure times. However the depth of the typical cavernous weathering found in dolerites increases in proportion to the height above valley floors. Some near the floor of the Wright valleys (as may be seen in "Dry Valleys") still shows undoubted sign of ice scour and polish. As we ascend the mountain sides, hollows and caverns in the rock become deeper until quite grotesque rock forms are seen.

This is a section we would hope to add more to as more precise dating become available.

Rock may be altered and lie in crumbling flakes, but in almost vertical sill faces, while cracked (presumably by ice formation on) the dolerite stands as towers 50 – 100ft high, separated from the parental massive rocks but quite fresh, at a depth of only a few mm, no sign of chemical alteration may be seen.

The gallery:

http://www.rosssea.info/rock-weathering.html

[Oliver Lightside]

I have noted similar formations on mesas here in Texas Hill Country. This whole area is limestone and other calcium minerals. If you hike up a mesa, you can observe typical EU terracing. Layer after layer of clay to chalk to limestone, repeating over and over. Then as you approach the top edge of the mesa the limestone dominates and becomes progressively more riddled with pores from fist size down to tiny dots. The pores run deeply into the stone and interconnect in manifold ways, like a sea sponge. (The formations don't have the melted appearance of those in your last link, though.) As you crest the mesa and walk away from the edge the porosity dissappears. I'd love to get some closeup views of extraterrestrial mesas, especially those that hint at EDM activity.


I'll try to get some pictures.

[viscount aero]

I have noted similar formations on mesas here in Texas Hill Country....

I'll try to get some pictures.

Please post them.

[Spektralscavenger]

Any research upon near Antartica sea floor? Does it clarify when it was frozen beyond hope or how fast?

[middletom]

Several years ago I saw a program on TV by Jacques Cousteau.It was about Antarctica and he stated that the ice cap on Antarctica has been there 600,000 years. No evidence was given to back that up nor references. I wonder if that was a figure he pulled from his hat

Geoff Blake

[Steve Smith]

I suggest that Cousteau pulled that figure out of a hat. Conventional theory states that it's been frozen as an isolated continent for the last 15 million years.

Trying to estabish a date or timeframe isn't possible, IMO. What yardstick can be used? If Earth's surface has been subjected to cosmic forces in the last 10,000 years, then that's the oldest date that can be used. Radiation exposure and reordering of the landscape would make any dating method useless beyond that period.