- CINCINNATI -- Sifting through
rocks snagged from twin boreholes punched deep into the planet's crust,
scientists have detected an unearthly substance hidden for eons in Ohio's
basement.
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- And its presence 1,412 feet beneath the forests and farmlands
near Serpent Mound in south-central Ohio -- already on par with Britain's
Stonehenge and Egypt's pyramids as one of Earth's most mysterious manmade
structures -- adds to a puzzle shrouded in legend and lore for centuries.
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- When scientists peered into the geo-strata that emerged
from beneath the mound, they were confronted with pure, weird data. Under
their microscope, they saw quartz crystals with flaws like those found
at nuclear test sites and in moon rocks brought back by astronauts.
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- It pointed toward a massive energy burst that left behind
telltale traces of a cosmic crash.
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- Now, those findings are rattling through the world of
geology, shaking up long-held conceptions and misconceptions about Ohio's
distant past.
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- "I think we can say with authority today that this
is an impact from a meteorite," said Mark T. Baranoski, a state geologist.
"It affected the region in a spectacular way."
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- Rock samples from beneath the mound contain significantly
higher than normal concentrations of iridium, an extremely rare metal.
Because it is so heavy, iridium seldom shows up anywhere but near the planet's
molten core.
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- At Serpent Mound, the levels measured were 10 times beyond
what is usually present in the Earth's crust.
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- Occasionally, volcanoes bring it up in lava. But there
are no lava fields in Ohio. So the questions started. Where did the iridium-rich
rocks come from?
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- While iridium is scarce on Earth, the silver-gray metal
is common in asteroids and comets.
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- In other words, it often is a strong sign that the sky
has fallen.
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- Geologists, including researchers from the Ohio Department
of Natural Resources, describe the recent discovery as powerful new evidence
that Serpent Mound sits upon a slightly oblong crater created when a massive
extraterrestrial object slammed into Earth.
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- They have reported that the heavy metal find is "good
evidence for an impact origin" and that dark, stony material recovered
from the deepest borehole has a "significant enrichment" that
must have come from outer space.
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- Iridium is already at the center of another scientific
mind-bender - the disappearance of the dinosaurs.
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- In a widely accepted doomsday scenario, an asteroid the
size of Manhattan plunged into the sea off Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula 65
million years ago. The explosion devastated the planet and unleashed a
worldwide wipeout that caused 70 percent of all living things to die.
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- Scientists say they have found an iridium line in the
Earth's crust that few species crossed. Under the great extinction theory,
the iridium showered down in debris after the asteroid struck.
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- Not all scientists accept the doomsday scenario, but
many say it does seem to explain why the dinosaurs died off.
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- A similar event - although without those dramatic global
effects - looks to have taken place in Ohio.
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- The crater touches portions of Adams, Pike and Highland
counties, about 200 miles southwest of Cleveland in the state's rolling
Appalachian countryside.
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- The mound, built about 1,000 years ago, straddles land
near the crater's southwest edge and may have had a religious function,
although nobody knows for sure what philosophy and beliefs shaped its origin.
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- Of course, that hasn't stopped people from speculating
about Serpent Mound's builders and what they were up to. Some say they
were mystics and priests. Others say magicians and soothsayers. Still others
see them as prophets.
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- There are those who claim that the builders were shamans
who practiced human sacrifice, while some believe that they were ancient
astronomers who were the intellectual caste of woodland America.
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- Fact is, nobody can say. The mound builders left no written
records.
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- Erosion and Ice Age glaciers have erased most of the
crater from the surface.
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- But underground it's a far different story, and the boreholes
exposed the geologic record.
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- Fine grains of sand taken from 1,439 feet down appear
deformed when viewed under a microscope. There even seem to be particles
of soot left from scorched limestone, although researchers say additional
work is needed before the strange black material is positively identified.
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- Still, everything seems to point to a cosmic jolt. While
some aren't convinced, they agree the evidence is piling up.
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- Mike Hansen, a retired state geologist who runs an earthquake
warning system and teaches at Ohio State University, said there is no doubt
that the Serpent Mound area was disturbed by some unknown force. But Hansen
thinks the stresses were triggered by natural shifts in the Earth's crust.
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- Around the time the rocks were deformed, Hansen said,
Africa was pushing into North America and the Appalachian Mountains range
was thrusting up higher than today's Himalayas. He said a major tectonic
event like that could have created the underground chaos at Serpent Mound.
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- Still, Hansen concedes that the meteorite hypothesis
is gaining adherents among geologists.
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- The object, if it did strike Ohio, would have been gigantic.
Maybe up to three times larger than Cleveland Browns Stadium. Traveling
up to 45,000 mph, it would have been moving much faster than a speeding
bullet.
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- The searing heat, blast and shockwaves from such a crash
would have instantly carved a 1,000-foot-deep hole and crushed rocks miles
below the five-mile-across crater.
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- That is exactly what samples from the two boreholes show.
Researchers have spotted microscopic cracks in quartz crystals far beneath
the surface and horsetail-shaped fractures called "shatter cones"
in geological formations from the ground on down. The cracked crystals
have patterns resembling those appearing after U.S. nuclear weapons tests
in Nevada.
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- Other than iridium, there is no trace of an asteroid
or comet.
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- It would probably have vaporized when it hit 256 million
years ago.
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- "I don't think we'll ever find it," Baranoski
said. "It would have gone up in smoke. If anything was left near the
surface, it would have been eroded away."
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- Doyle Watts, a geophysicist at Dayton's Wright State
University who worked on the international team that studied the core samples,
said the impact theory explains why so much of the terrain around Serpent
Mound appears jumbled.
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- Some rock formations rise 1,000 feet above the ground.
Others look like they have slid straight down.
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- Those oddities were first noticed not long after Europeans
settled Ohio.
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- John Locke, a geologist who explored the area in the
1830s, thought he had found a "sunken mountain" and reported
that "a region of no small extent had sunk down several hundred feet,
producing faults, dislocations and upturnings of the layers of the rocks."
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- Even more weird was the 1,348-foot-long Serpent Mound,
which looked like an undulating snake atop a plateau overlooking Brush
Creek.
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- Watts said he believes that the Indians saw the strange
features in the land and were moved to build the mound, perhaps as a sacred
monument. He said the Indians were deeply attuned to the natural world.
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- "It just begs the questions: Why would Native Americans
lug tons of soil and shape it into a slithering serpent? Why would they
choose to do so on the scar of an ancient impact when they had all of Ohio
and the Midwest?" Watts said.
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- "My guess is that they could have noticed something
strange about the rocks. It has to be more than coincidence."
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-
-
- Comment
- From Ted Twietmeyer
- tedtw@frontiernet.net
- 4-15-5
-
- There may exist a serpent mound connection to an alien
race - a race that we may have been lead to believe was only a product
of sci-fi.
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- It's already known that the artist who painted the giant
murals for the Denver Airport, was told what to paint when he received
the commission. When he was approached about the content of the paintings
he refused comment on who told him what to paint. The airport's theme
is global government and disarmament. So how is this connected to the mound?
It may be indirectly, through a sci-fi television show.
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- Stargate, an incredibly popular sci-fi series has been
running about 7 years now. It has threads of globalist ideals throughout
the series. There was an episode where a reporter went into a rant about
the New World Order. It was strongly negative and like what Alex Jones
would say.
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- Could there be a connection between the gua'uld on Star
Gate and the Serpent Mound? Many have observed that when social engineers
desire some concept or idea to become mainstream, that these are often
seeded into sci-fi movies and televisions by the government.
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- A ship may have crashed in Ohio at the Serpent Mound
according to recent borehole evidence. I have a theory that quite possibly
in the distant past there was an earth - serpent race connection. Quite
possibly the mound with the serpent figure is like a "memorial marker"
for the event. Stargate may be used to get us "accustomed" to
the existence of such a race. If so, it can only mean ONE thing - that
a serpent-based race IS STILL A THREAT and therefore is real. (To some
this may seem like a bit of a stretch, but then so thought people Edison,
when he spent countless hours creating the light bulb.)
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- And consider this:
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- 1. Was there already a serpent-based race here that created
the mound ?
- 2. Or was the mound created by ordinary humans that WORSHIPPED
that race?
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- Ted Twietmeyer
-
- PS: Radio programs are also used to influence and shape
society. Most people don't even realize that George Noory, the only person
with that name that can be found on whitepages.com, has (or at least was)
is an Alexandria, VA telephone number. And for those that don't already
know, Alexandria, VA is a suburb of Washington DC. Its just a short I-495
beltway trip to several intelligence agencies. Another coincidence, of
course. But consider the often controversial material presented on Coast
to Coast: material (which some call "fringe") that really can't
be presented in other media very easily, yet promotes certain concepts
into the mainstream.
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