"..The map that John Moore has on his video shows Wisconsin as a waterway, dividing the US in half. ...

You and I really do think alike
As I said early I don't buy into all that he says but I think allot of what he has presented is at the very least PLAUSIBLE...
The Russian/China connection is a little to Tin Foil Hatish (is that even a word ) for me..

Actualy the Chinese do have a base in Southern California. They have ships dock there. It was an old Navy base. They have guards with machine guns guarding the place. It is said that they supply guns and drugs to gangs in California from there.

Oozy new military robot can squeeze through tiny spaces
Published on 10-18-2009

Source: ANI

http://www.newstrackindia.com/newsdetails/128516

London: A technology company has developed a new military robot that resembles an oozy blob, which has the ability to squeeze through all manner of cracks and crevices.

According to a report in The Sun, the ‘ChemBot’, made by technology company iRobot, can ooze and pulsate across the floor.

This little robot is not just a fun gimmick, as the company were in fact given military funding to build the blob.

The idea is that the palm-sized machine can assist in reconnaissance or search and rescue missions by transforming to fit through tiny spaces.

Its secret is a process called “jamming” which sees material changing between a semi-liquid and solid state by increasing and decreasing its density.

The ChemBot, short for chemical robot, features compartments filled with air and loosely packed particles within its flexible silicon skin.

When the air is removed, the decrease in pressure constricts the skin and the particles shift slightly to fill the void left by the air, resulting in the solidification of the compartment.

Beneath the skin is an incompressible fluid and an actuator that can vary its volume.

Still at an early stage of development, potential applications for ChemBots include space exploration, military operations and medical devices
that can be implanted in the human body.

They might also prove useful for rescue operations in hostile environments such as subterranean or undersea mines and caves. (ANI)

Tin foil hatish sounds okay to me. I agree with you, John Moore knits together his evidence in quite a coherent fashion.



Right...I know there are a lot of Koreans and Japanese in southern California. If my memory serves me right, didn't you post a story several months ago about how the Chinese are buying up large tracts of land in the US, or was it Brightstar or mountaintiger?

--------------------------------------------------------------------

If you like flying bugs you'll love this story:-

U.S. military create live remote-controlled beetles to bug conversations

<snip>Spies may soon be bugging conversations using actual insects, thanks to research funded by the US military.

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has spent years developing a whole host of cyborg critters, in the hopes of creating the ultimate 'fly on the wall'.

Now a team of researchers led by Hirotaka Sato have created cyborg beetles which are guided wirelessly via a laptop.<end>

Read more at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... z0UPo8tpU0 or watch the video below:

US Dept of Defense - DARPA Program Brings Sci-fi Capability to Warfighters
Published on 10-18-2009

Source: ISRIA

http://www.isria.com/pages/16_October_2009_220.php

Moviegoers were captivated as they watched a metallic assassin morph before their eyes in "Terminator 2." The villain turned to liquid before assuming new forms capable of squeezing through narrow openings and transforming its arms into bladed weapons and solid metal tools.

Scientists at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency were wowed too. Now they're working to deliver that same kind of technology to support the good guys: warfighters on the battlefield.

Mitchell R. Zakin, program manager for DARPA's Programmable Matter division, said he's convinced the concept depicted for decades in blockbuster movies and comic books has real-life applications.

He's leading up the effort to develop "programmable matter," which he calls "the ultimate adaptable material." It will be capable of changing size and shape and taking on new properties for one use, he explained, then adapting to a whole different form for another use.

Zakin clarified that he's not out to change warfighters themselves, just the equipment they use, the clothing they wear and the loads they carry.

"Warfighters carry an incredible amount of stuff and they don't have any more room to carry more," he said. "Yet they are facing much more complicated battle spaces. They're going into caves and working in cities. They need more sophisticated tools to deal with these environments, yet they can't carry them."

The logistical challenge of getting equipment to remote areas such as Afghanistan exacerbates the problem, he said.

Enter the concept of programmable matter, a convergence of the fields of chemistry, information, mathematical theory and engineering.

Zakin envisions a day when warfighters will be able to reach into their kit, pull out a lump of programmable matter and form it into whatever they need.

Think of it as carrying a paint can with a bunch of particles inside, he advises anyone struggling to understand how it all would work. The particles could be different shapes and sizes, be made up of different materials and have different functions.

Depending on the requirement, the warfighter would instruct the particles to become whatever was needed at the moment -- a wrench, a hammer, a spare part. The particles would then organize themselves to form it. After using the device, the warfighter would return it to the bucket, where it once again would become a bunch of particles until instructed to become something else.

The same principle would work for uniforms, which could change their thermal insulating properties according to the climate: the deep freeze of the Afghan mountains, the blast furnace of summertime in the Middle East.

Fantastic as this all sounds, it's on its way to becoming a reality.

Five university-led teams are participating in DARPA's Programmable Matter program, and by the middle of next year, at least one is expected to emerge with a demonstration project. Halfway through the program's second and final phase, all five teams are making convincing progress that it's all possible.

The teams began the first phase of the program doing computer modeling, but got so excited by the project that they jumped headfirst into the second phase and began building actual prototypes, Zakin said.

By the end of the second phase, they're expected to demonstrate that they can take a single set of building blocks and create five different geometric shapes with the strength of engineering plastic.

"Everyone is making progress toward meeting these goals in a very meaningful way," Zakin said. "I'm confident that most, if not all the teams, will succeed."

The ultimate benefit to warfighters would be mind-boggling. "Imagine the possibilities: an entire toolbox originating from a single material form, or flexible clothing or equipment that can adapt to the immediate and changing needs of the warfighter, perhaps even 'smart' bandages embedded with diagnostic sensing capabilities," Zakin said. "The possibilities are endless."

In the simplest terms, programmable matter would bring warfighters "maximum capabilities with minimum carry weight," he said. "It would give them the ability to carry a little amount of stuff and do a lot with it. It creates a whole new paradigm in flexibility for the warfighter."

But the implications go far beyond warfighting, Zakin said. Aircraft wings built of programmable matter could change in flight to provide the best aerodynamic properties. Everything from computers to televisions to cars could be programmed to automatically update themselves with the newest features and configurations. Clothing could morph into the latest fashion styles.

In a nutshell, nothing would ever have to become obsolete.

"This is not fantasy, actually," Zakin said. "Aspects of this already are being done in this project."

Programmable matter also has the potential of turning the entire manufacturing process on its head. No longer would one design and one manufacturing process be needed for every single consumer product.

"Personal manufacturing" could take over. Consumers could go online, buy a blueprint for whatever they need, download the instructions, then feed them into a personal assembler that makes the product before their eyes, he said.

In some ways, Zakin said he's been preparing for the Programmable Matter program since he first saw as a young boy the concept depicted in the 1950s sci-fi movie, “The Blob.”

"Most of my programs come out of the movies or comic books," he said. "It's what I do for a living."

Decades later, he said, it's gratifying to be at DARPA, where he's on the leading edge of helping bring fantasy to life.

"It allows us to do something very, very important, and something no one else has ever done before," he said. "It's very DARPA-like."

Selene, there are so many maps out there. Are they all right, or wrong? I wish I knew!

One thing I do know is that for about 12 years now there has been a rush for big factories to clear out of Wisconsin. They all left and went to the South! Anywhere but Wisc. I always wondered why. Answer, They want to continue after the shift. Big business donates big to government. Their reward is inside information. So not only watch which way the leaders run. watch which way the factories go! And many of them are going to the South. Some just shut down and who knows where the owners go.

Hey I am NOT endorsing the site just providing links to save people time searching...

GT,
Sorry my post came off like that, I did not mean to imply that you endorsed the site.
I oppose those trying to make $$ out of GC event.
If it is really true and they really need money and they are STO alined at most they should ask for donations.
Making money off others misery and misfortune has got to be a crime.

MT7

Canadian Military prepares for worst
Scenarios include war in the Arctic and fighting terrorists Worldwide


http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php? ... leId=15746

.
Global Research, October 20, 2009
The Chronicle Herald - 2009-10-18

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Toronto: The Canadian military has been looking a decade ahead as it tries to prepare for various worst case scenarios that it may be faced with in the future, and some are pretty scary.

The Toronto Star reported Saturday that a report by the Canadian Forces Aerospace Warfare Centre lays out likely trends, as well as hypothetical situations that could occur — emphasis on could.

The centre predicts oil prices could quadruple by 2019, unmanned attack aircraft will police the skies, and the Arctic will become the zone of interest for the world’s great powers.

An all-commando Canadian army will fight terrorists in a region called the "arc of instability," stretching from western Africa, through the Middle East and into Southeast Asia.

The report also talks about the introduction of national military service for new Canadians in 2016 to tackle large immigration flows and a depleted military.

There’s a scenario where war between India and Pakistan sparks clashes in B.C.’s Lower Mainland and Ontario suburbs between refugees and immigrants from the two countries.

And another has a Taliban sleeper cell poisoning the Montreal water system, killing and sickening thousands — hospitals are swamped, the U.S. border closes and tourism plummets.

Though seemingly improbable, a University of Ottawa study earlier this year that looked at security threats to Canada in 2020 came up with similar outcomes.

PM warns of climate 'catastrophe'

The UK faces a "catastrophe" of floods, droughts and killer heatwaves if world leaders fail to agree a deal on climate change, the prime minister has warned.

Gordon Brown said negotiators had 50 days to save the world from global warming and break the "impasse".

He told the Major Economies Forum in London, which brings together 17 of the world's biggest greenhouse gas-emitting countries, there was "no plan B".

World delegations meet in Copenhagen in December for talks on a new treaty.

'Rising wave'

The United Nations (UN) summit will aim to establish a deal to replace the 1997 Kyoto treaty as its targets for reducing emissions only apply to a small number of countries and expire in 2012.

Mr Brown warned that negotiators were not reaching agreement quickly enough and said it was a "profound moment" for the world involving "momentous choice".
“ Once the damage from unchecked emissions growth is done, no retrospective global agreement, in some future period, can undo that choice ”
Gordon Brown

"In Britain we face the prospect of more frequent droughts and a rising wave of floods," he told delegates.

"The extraordinary summer heatwave of 2003 in Europe resulted in over 35,000 extra deaths.

Grim warning

"On current trends, such an event could become quite routine in Britain in just a few decades' time. And within the lifetime of our children and grandchildren the intense temperatures of 2003 could become the average temperature experienced throughout much of Europe."

The costs of failing to tackle the issue would be greater than the impact of both world wars and the Great Depression combined, the prime minister said.
ANALYSIS
Richard Black, BBC News

During his term as chancellor, environmental groups often accused Gordon Brown of not paying enough attention to climate change, and the Treasury of blocking "green" policies. He was sometimes compared unfavourably to Tony Blair.

However, Mr Brown promoted the inclusion of developing countries in climate finance during the UK's term as G7 president in 2005. And this year, his involvement has become much more overt.

He was the first head of government to commit to attending December's UN summit in Copenhagen; and his recent call to establish a $100bn (£61bn) per year fund for climate adaptation is widely seen as giving impetus to those negotiations.

Whether current scientific understanding warrants his warning of "catastrophe" for the UK if greenhouse gas levels rise unchecked is perhaps open to question. A recent report by Kofi Annan's Global Humanitarian Forum found the UK was one of 12 nations least likely to be affected by climate impacts.

The world would face more conflict fuelled by climate-induced migration if a deal was not agreed, he added.

He told the forum, on the second day of talks in the capital, that by 2080 an extra 1.8 billion people - a quarter of the world's current population - could lack sufficient water.

Mr Brown said: "If we do not reach a deal at this time, let us be in no doubt: once the damage from unchecked emissions growth is done, no retrospective global agreement, in some future period, can undo that choice.

"So we should never allow ourselves to lose sight of the catastrophe we face if present warming trends continue."

Agreement at Copenhagen "is possible", he concluded.

"But we must frankly face the plain fact that our negotiators are not getting to agreement quickly enough. So I believe that leaders must engage directly to break the impasse."

Environmental campaign group Friends of the Earth said Mr Brown had rightly identified the importance of securing a "strong and fair" climate deal.

Executive director Andy Atkins said the environmental and economic impacts of failing to tackle global warming would "dwarf anything seen before".

He said: "The next few weeks are crucial in determining the long-term future of the planet. The world must pull back from the brink and take urgent action to slash its emissions."

In recent days there have been a number of warnings that progress is stalling.

Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told Newsweek magazine "the prospects that states will actually agree to anything in Copenhagen are starting to look worse and worse".

The Major Economies Forum is not part of the formal UN process and so firm commitments are unlikely to come from the meeting.

It is seen instead as a gathering where countries can explore options and positions in a less pressured environment.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/u ... 313672.stm

Published: 2009/10/19 14:56:33 GMT

© BBC MMIX

UCLA Study: The Internet Is Altering Our Brains

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,568 ... latestnews




Adults with little Internet experience show changes in their brain activity after just one week online, a new study finds.

The results suggest Internet training can stimulate neural activation patterns and could potentially enhance brain function and cognition in older adults.

As the brain ages, a number of structural and functional changes occur, including atrophy, or decay, reductions in cell activity and increases in complex things like deposits of amyloid plaques and tau tangles, which can impact cognitive function.

Research has shown that mental stimulation similar to the stimulation that occurs in individuals who frequently use the Internet may affect the efficiency of cognitive processing and alter the way the brain encodes new information.

"We found that for older people with minimal experience, performing Internet searches for even a relatively short period of time can change brain activity patterns and enhance function," Dr. Gary Small, study author and professor of psychiatry at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, said in a statement.

The UCLA team worked with 24 neurologically normal volunteers between the ages of 55 and 78. Prior to the study, half the participants used the Internet daily, while the other half had very little experience. Age, educational level and gender were similar between the two groups.

The participants performed Web searches while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans, which recorded the subtle brain-circuitry changes experienced during this activity. This type of scan tracks brain activity by measuring the level of blood flow in the brain during cognitive tasks. While the study involves a small number of people and more research on this topic is needed, small study sizes are typical of fMRI-based research.

After the initial brain scan, subjects went home and conducted Internet searches for one hour a day for a total of seven days over a two-week period. These practice searches involved using the web to answer questions about various topics by exploring different websites and reading information. Participants then received a second brain scan using the same Internet simulation task, but with different topics.

The first scan of participants with little Internet experience showed brain activity in the regions controlling language, reading, memory and visual abilities. The second brain scan of these participants, conducted after the home practice searches, demonstrated activation of these same regions, but there was also activity in the middle frontal gyrus and inferior frontal gyrus – areas of the brain known to be important in working memory and decision-making.

Thus, after Internet training at home, participants with minimal online experience displayed brain activation patterns very similar to those seen in the group of savvy Internet users.

"The results suggest that searching online may be a simple form of brain exercise that might be employed to enhance cognition in older adults," Teena D. Moody, the study's first author and UCLA researcher, said in a statement.

When performing an online search, the ability to hold important information in working memory and to take away the important points from competing graphics and words is essential, Moody noted.

Previous research by the UCLA team found that searching online resulted in a more than twofold increase in brain activation in older adults with prior experience, compared with those with little Internet experience. The new findings suggest that it may take only days for those with minimal experience to match the activity levels of those with years of experience, said Small.

Additional studies will be needed to address the impact of the Internet on younger individuals and help identify aspects of online searching that generate the greatest levels of brain activation.

The findings were presented Oct. 19 at the meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Chicago, Illinois.
click to delete

Pole Shift? You want to talk about Pole Shift

Sorry guys the only Pole Shift I see happening in the next decades is this one..

The Polish Moving Out of Poland and taking over much of the EU! *Grin*

Seriouslly,

I've looked at all the data both Scientific Geological Records for the Earth and Solar System.. There is simply no crediable data for it have ever happened in Our Solar System before! Now it did indeed happen when our Solar System was just forming and in the Cosmic Shooting Gallery sort of speak..

That is why Neptune was flipped on it side. Yet this was when the planets were just forming and sucking in massive amounts of cosmic debrie to form their cores..

As much as the Nancy Lieders and such are thought provking.. granted.. Yet there is no data to support their claims... That is my personal opinion of course and your more intitled to your own.

As for preparing for possible disaster... Well thats a good thing and habit getting into. I'm sure we'll all need it soon due to OTHER pressing matters.


Just my 2 cents Shady

True Polar Wander
Let us now praise crazy men

By Andrew Alden, About.com

Recently some highly respected earth scientists went out on a limb. In the 25 July 1997 issue of Science, a team of researchers led by Joseph Kirschvink1 asserted that about 550 million years ago, the whole Earth slewed halfway around, putting its polar lands down at the equator, over a rather brief period—15 million years. (That doesn't sound brief, but for something this profound it's pretty darn fast.) The story got wide coverage in the major newspapers, but the most thorough treatment is the Caltech press release2. For me, the whole thing is a bit of déjà vu, a reappearance of the alluring notion of "true polar wander."
How Poles Wander

In the decades before plate tectonics was accepted, the orientation of the ancient magnetic field was a severe puzzle. A grain of magnetite (or any other magnetic mineral) naturally tends to point toward the poles, like a miniature compass needle. Either it turns that way while it is in soft sediments before they become rock, or it forms in a body of lava and has the prevailing magnetic field stamped into it the minute it cools enough to hold a magnetic "charge."

But in rocks all over the world of all different ages, these micro-magnets point in many different directions. Either (1) the rocks got tipped or bent, or (2) the continents they sit in moved, changing their various orientations with respect to the poles ("polar wander" for short), or (3) the whole Earth shifted with respect to the poles ("true polar wander")—or, of course, some bewildering combination of all three. For some 50 years, specialists have been sorting out the first factor, then the second, to see if the third one enters the picture at all.

The pile of magnetic data has been untangled into an intricate tale of ordinary polar wander that we know today as plate-tectonic motions. But in the 1950s the early workers considered the idea of true polar wander, then set it aside. It wasn't demanded by the evidence, and pretty soon people were too busy with the details to talk about grand motions. Besides, true polar wander had a bad aura clinging to it.
Polar Wander, an Outsider Idea

In making its way toward truth, science depends on a delicate mixture of method and madness, of care and creativity. Vision is unreliable, but there are times when you have to use it. The years before plate tectonics was accepted were one such time, and lots of people called upon this particular crazy idea. Some were respected insiders, but outsiders had been there first:

* Emmanuel Velikovsky, whose dizzying tales of careening planets had Earth being knocked off its axis in every other episode, gained a disturbing degree of popularity.

* Alfred Wegener3 was a less virulent example, being a meteorologist whose unsophisticated theory treated the solid Earth like the fluid atmosphere, but he had been largely considered discredited since his heyday in the 1920s.

* Charles Hapgood, a tenured historian of science, invoked the mechanism in his 1953 book Earth's Shifting Crust, notable mainly for its preface by the old and vulnerable Albert Einstein. (Hapgood is not forgotten—visit this site4 for a glimpse of that brand of craziness.)

Responsible Polar Wander

Keith Runcorn5 was one of the insiders. His early work showed that the evidence favored continental, not global drift, but he continued to think about true polar wander after it left the cutting edge. I heard him present talks in his later years that used it to explain the gross architecture of the Moon and Mars.

The late Warren Carey6 of the University of Tasmania, too, was a freewheeling thinker who invoked large-scale reorientation of the Earth for many years. It was a key part of his expanding-Earth theory (which he staunchly supported to the end), one of the craziest theories ever to be taken seriously. But Carey and Runcorn never lost the respect of their colleagues.

Still, the subject of true polar wander has been off the table for decades and out of the major journals. Its dramatic reappearance in 1997 may succeed in bringing it back to Earth from its exile on other worlds. Perhaps Kirschvink can tip Earth—and Earth science—off its axis for good. This is not his only big-screen idea: he has published on the panspermia hypothesis7, on earthquake prediction from animal behavior8, a grand unified theory of biomineralization9, and Snowball Earth10. Surely that makes him a crazy man in the best scientific sense.

PS: There ought to be crazy women in geology, but only in the last 50 years or so have there been many at all. (Read about some in the Famous Women in Earth Science11 list.) For most of the 1900s, women were routinely steered toward microfossil studies, and an unsung army of women built the enormous microfossil database that is still the gold standard of rock dating (one of them, Helen Tappan Loeblich12, won the Moore Medal in 1984). Full equality will not come until women feel as free as men to spin wild theories without destroying their careers.

This About.com page has been optimized for print. To view this page in its original form, please visit: http://geology.about.com/od/tectonicsde ... wander.htm

©2009 About.com, Inc., a part of The New York Times Company. All rights reserved.
Links in this article:

1. http://www.gps.caltech.edu/users/jkirschvink/
2. http://pr.caltech.edu/media/lead/072497JLK.html
3. http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/wegener.html
4. http://www.poleshift.org/
5. http://www.copernicus.org/EGU/awards/keith_runcorn.html
6. http://geology.about.com/od/biographies ... ncarey.htm
7. http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12087.html
8. http://www.gps.caltech.edu/users/jkirsc ... iction.pdf
9. http://www.gps.caltech.edu/users/jkirsc ... lwfigs.PDF
10. http://geology.about.com/od/controversi ... learth.htm
11. http://geology.about.com/od/biographies_women/
12. http://www.ess.ucla.edu/faculty/loeblich.asp

May 14th, 2008
Pole Shift on Europa?

http://www.universetoday.com/2008/05/14 ... on-europa/


Written by Nancy Atkinson ShareThis





Curved features on Jupiter's moon Europa may indicate that its poles have wandered by almost 90°, a new study reports. Researchers believe the drastic shift in Europa's rotational axis was likely a result of the build-up of thick ice at the poles. “A spinning body is most stable with its mass farthest from its spin axis," says Isamu Matsuyama of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism. "On Europa, variations in the thickness of its outer shell caused a mass imbalance, so the rotation axis reoriented to a new stable state" An extreme shift like this also suggests the existence of an internal liquid ocean beneath the icy crust.

The research team, led by Dr. Paul Schenk of the Lunar and Planetary Institute and joined by Matsuyama and Dr. Francis Nimmo of the University of California, Santa Cruz, used images from the Voyager, Galileo, and New Horizons spacecraft to map several large arc-shaped depressions that extend more than 500 kilometers across Europa’s surface. With a radius of about 1500 kilometers, Europa is slightly smaller than the Earth’s moon.

By comparing the pattern of the depressions with fractures that would result from stresses caused by a shift in Europa's rotational axis, the researchers determined that the axis had shifted by approximately 80°. The previous axis of rotation is now located about 10° from the present equator.

Such a change is called "true polar wander" as opposed to apparent polar wander caused by plate tectonics. There is evidence for true polar wander on Earth, and also on Mars and on Saturn's moon Enceladus. "Our study adds Europa to this list," says Matsuyama. "It suggests that planetary bodies might be more prone to reorientation than we thought."

The study also has implications for liquid water inside Europa. Many scientists believe Europa has an extensive subsurface ocean based on spacecraft photos showing a fractured, icy surface. The ocean beneath the crust would be kept liquid by heat generated by tidal forces from Jupiter's gravity. The presence of heat and water may make life possible, even though the subsurface ocean is cut off from solar energy.

"The large reorientation on Europa required to explain the circular depressions implies that its outer ice shell is decoupled from the core by a liquid layer," says Matsuyama. "Therefore, our study provides an independent test for the presence of an interior liquid layer."

Original News Source: EurekAlert

Filed under: Europa

http://www.physorg.com/news75725492.html

*
* Find more articles on true polar wander

Planet Earth may have 'tilted' to keep its balance
August 25th, 2006 Planet Earth may have 'tilted' to keep its balance




Imagine a shift in the Earth so profound that it could force our entire planet to spin on its side after a few million years, tilting it so far that Alaska would sit at the equator. Princeton scientists have now provided the first compelling evidence that this kind of major shift may have happened in our world's distant past.

By analyzing the magnetic composition of ancient sediments found in the remote Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, Princeton University's Adam Maloof has lent credence to a 140-year-old theory regarding the way the Earth might restore its own balance if an unequal distribution of weight ever developed in its interior or on its surface.

The theory, known as true polar wander, postulates that if an object of sufficient weight --such as a supersized volcano -- ever formed far from the equator, the force of the planet's rotation would gradually pull the heavy object away from the axis the Earth spins around. If the volcanoes, land and other masses that exist within the spinning Earth ever became sufficiently imbalanced, the planet would tilt and rotate itself until this extra weight was relocated to a point along the equator.

"The sediments we have recovered from Norway offer the first good evidence that a true polar wander event happened about 800 million years ago," said Maloof, an assistant professor of geosciences. "If we can find good corroborating evidence from other parts of the world as well, we will have a very good idea that our planet is capable of this sort of dramatic change."

Maloof's team, which includes researchers from Harvard University, the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as Princeton, will publish their findings in the Geological Society of America Bulletin on Friday, Aug. 25.

True polar wander is different from the more familiar idea of "continental drift," which is the inchwise movement of individual continents relative to one another across the Earth's surface. Polar wander can tip the entire planet on its side at a rate of perhaps several meters per year, about 10 to 100 times as fast as the continents drift due to plate tectonics. Though the poles themselves would still point in the same direction with respect to the solar system, the process could conceivably shift entire continents from the tropics to the Arctic, or vice versa, within a relatively brief geological time span.

While the idea that the continents are slowly moving in relation to one another is a well-known concept, the less familiar theory of true polar wander has been around since the mid-19th century, several decades before continental drift was ever proposed. But when the continents were proven to be moving under the influence of plate tectonics in the 1960s, it explained so many dynamic processes in the Earth's surface so well that true polar wander became an obscure subject.

"Planetary scientists still talk about polar wander for other worlds, such as Mars, where a massive buildup of volcanic rock called Tharsis sits at the Martian equator," Maloof said. "But because Earth's surface is constantly changing as the continents move and ocean crustal plates slide over and under one another, it's more difficult to find evidence of our planet twisting hundreds of millions of years ago, as Mars likely did while it was still geologically active."

However, the sediments that the team studied in Svalbard from 1999 to 2005 may have provided just such long-sought evidence. It is well known that when rock particles are sinking to the ocean floor to form layers of new sediment, tiny magnetic grains within the particles align themselves with the magnetic lines of the Earth. Once this rock hardens, it becomes a reliable record of the direction the Earth's magnetic field was pointing at the time of the rock's formation. So, if a rock has been spun around by a dramatic geological event, its magnetic field will have an apparently anomalous orientation that geophysicists like those on Maloof's team seek to explain.

"We found just such anomalies in the Svalbard sediments," Maloof said. "We made every effort to find another reason for the anomalies, such as a rapid rotation of the individual crustal plate the islands rest upon, but none of the alternatives makes as much sense as a true polar wander event when taken in the context of geochemical and sea level data from the same rocks."

The findings, he said, could possibly explain odd changes in ocean chemistry that occurred about 800 million years ago. Other similar changes in the ocean have cropped up in ancient times, Maloof said, but at these other times scientists know that an ice age was to blame.

"Scientists have found no evidence for an ice age occurring 800 million years ago, and the change in the ocean at this juncture remains one of the great mysteries in the ancient history of our planet," he said. "But if all the continents were suddenly flipped around and their rivers began carrying water and nutrients into the tropics instead of the Arctic, for example, it could produce the mysterious geochemical changes science has been trying to explain."

Because the team obtained all its data from the islands of Svalbard, Maloof said their next priority would be to seek corroborating evidence within sediments of similar age from elsewhere on the planet. This is difficult, Maloof said, because most 800-million-year-old rocks have long since disappeared. Because the Earth's crustal plates slide under one another over time, they take most of geological history back into the planet's deep interior. However, Maloof said, a site his team has located in Australia looks promising.

"We cannot be certain of these findings until we find similar patterns in rock chemistry and magnetics on other continents," Maloof said. "Rocks of the same age are preserved in the Australian interior, so we'll be visiting the site over the next two years to look for additional evidence. If we find some, we'll be far more confident about this theory's validity."

Maloof said that true polar wander was most likely to occur when the Earth's landmasses were fused together to form a single supercontinent, something that has happened at least twice in the distant past. But he said we should not worry about the planet going through a major shift again any time soon.

"If a true polar wander event has occurred in our planet's history, it's likely been when the continents formed a single mass on one side of the Earth," he said. "We don't expect there to be another event in the foreseeable future, though. The Earth's surface is pretty well balanced today."

Source: Princeton University

Bloomberg

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... 3LwGRCFHGE

Mars Caves May Hold Secret to Life on Planet, Shelter Explorers


By Ryan Flinn

Oct. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Scientists have discovered a series of caves on Mars that might provide shelter to future explorers and may hold evidence of life, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The caves were probably formed when lava cooled and solidified on top of channels created during ancient volcanic eruptions, making tunnels, said a statement today from the USGS.

The formations may hold evidence of microbial life that would have been destroyed or buried on the surface of the planet, said Glen Cushing, a USGS physicist who made the discovery.

“There’s even been speculation that lava tubes could be sealed and pressured to create a habitat for long term use,” said Cushing in a telephone interview from Portland, Oregon. “That’s in the pretty far distant future, but it’s seems like a fairly reasonable prospect once we do get to that level.”

NASA is currently planning to return humans to the moon by 2020 as a step toward an eventual manned mission to Mars.

Cushing, 39, discovered the caves by studying images of grooves on the planet’s surface, some longer than 100 kilometers (62 miles), with depressions he said are skylight entrances into the tunnels.

While every planetary body likely has some sort of cave system, the eight examples found on Mars are the first to be discovered off of Earth, he said.

“It’s not surprising to find them, and we figure they almost certainly had to be there, we just hadn’t located them yet,” he said.

The depressions were detected on high-resolution images beamed back from orbiting satellites.

“By finding caves on Mars, USGS scientists have demonstrated once again that real, cutting-edge science is more exciting than the best science fiction ever written,” U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in the statement.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ryan Flinn in San Francisco at rflinn@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: October 19, 2009 16:05 EDT