SPECIAL UPDATE: Recent news, relevant to this theory and similar ones.
Do you have a cup of coffee? Tea? Soda? No? I'll wait.
...
You're back? Alright, lets get started... I've been putting off this update long enough. Buckle up, this one is link heavy.
OK, one of the places that I get my science news is through the weekly Science & Skepticism podcast Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. I recently learned from them of several new developments that I'd like to mention here.
News Item #1:
From the "This Day in Skepticism" segment that starts the show, SGU Episode #414 featured the eruption of Lakagígar in Iceland. Not a "classic" volcano, it is a fissure and on June 8th, 1783 this fissure opened explosively with 130 craters. The eruption became less explosive after a few days and more Strombolian and eventually Hawaiian in character, but it continued until February 7th, 1784... Eight months.
During this time it released 3.4 cu mi (14 km3) of basaltic lava, 8 million tons of hydrogen fluoride and 120 million tons of sulfur dioxide. By June 22, 1783 the cloud of gas had reached Le Havre France. In Iceland, it killed approximately half the livestock and between the famine and fluoride poisoning, 25% of Iceland's population died. Globally, due to the drastic change in the climate, it is estimated that six million died, making this eruption the second deadliest eruption known.
From the perspective of the WND story, this event can sort of explain the haze that is seen at ground zero... In fact, the hazy area in Inglewood is small by comparison.
News Item #2:
As featured in SGU Episode #415 as a Science or Fiction item, there is new evidence showing that there is a new subduction zone forming off the coast of Portugal. The long term geological implications for this are that over the next 220 million years, the Atlantic Ocean could close and North America gets pulled towards Europe.
This demonstrates how dynamic and changing our planet still is, even 4.5 Bn years after formation. Here's the article over at Science Daily.
News Item #3:
From the SGU Episode #419 News Segment: The Pandora virus, the largest virus ever discovered, both in mass and size of the genome. Is essentially a new form of life that may be worthy of a new domain. So far two have been discovered, the Pandoravirus dulcis and Pandoravirus salinus. These things are so large in fact, that at a size approaching one micrometer, they can be seen with a ordinary light microscope, rather than the electron microscopes that are usually used to look at viruses.
(Life on Earth currently falls under three Domains: Archaea, Bacteria and Eukaryote. This level of discovery is entirely unprecedented.)
To compare, the genome of the virus Influenza A consists of 13,588 base pairs that code for eleven genes. Pd's genome consists of 2.47 million base pairs that code for 1500 genes and Ps's consists of 1.91 million base pairs coding for 2500 genes. (For further comparison, the Human genome is about 3 billion base pairs that codes for 20,000 genes.)
Here's the really interesting part: Through various genome projects around the world, geneticists have built up databases of the life they are studying. Through this it has been learned that many disparate creatures have some of the same genes, even when they are vastly different animals. In these new viruses, 93% of the genes have never been seen before and are completely unknown to any genetic data base.
These things are so large, that they had been previously overlooked. They had been previously discovered but were initially misidentified as bacteria. They weren't described until just last month. It is believed that "we" now know what to look for, it is likely that there are many more of these viruses to be discovered.
Articles HERE and HERE.
There is a lot more I would like to add to this line of thought, but the information I need escapes me... Things along the lines of ancient viral DNA getting incorporated into the non-coding segments in the DNA of extant life.
Alright, time to put my foil hat back on and go stare at pictures of tattoos.
