Tsunami Lays Down 600 Ft High Deposit

It seems that in Madagascar there are these 600 foot high “chevrons,” according to Sandra Blakeslee. What is a chevron? It’s a “wedge-shaped sediment deposit.” You can see them in the gutter after a heavy rain. But 600 feet high? Well you take a look at this photo from Google Earth. (It’s the arrowhead object going from top left to bottom right in the picture. Yes, with Google Earth you can convert the overhead satellite photo into an oblique perspective view. Amazing! The picture in the Times ain’t got nuttin’ on this.)

The theory being advanced by research scientist Dallas Abbott is that the chevron in the picture was deposited by a giant tsunami from an asteroid impact in the Indian Ocean south-east of Madagascar. She and others in “Holocene Impact Working Group” think that the impact occurred at the Burckle Crater, out in the Indian Ocean “900 miles southeast from the Madagascar chevrons.” In the picture above, that would be over the horizon. The idea is that the tsunami occurred about 4,500 years ago.

Of course, it’s all speculation right now, but scientists are grappling with the possibility that catastrophic impacts from extraterrestrial objects are a lot more frequent than we have liked to think.

“We’re not talking about any tsunami you’re ever seen,” Dr. Bryant [of the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia] said. “Aceh was a dimple. No tsunami in the modern world could have made these features. End-of-the-world movies do not capture the size of these waves.

Yeah. Makes you think, doesn’t it.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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