{"id":1224,"date":"2019-06-22T08:45:18","date_gmt":"2019-06-22T15:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/?p=1224"},"modified":"2019-11-19T00:16:57","modified_gmt":"2019-11-19T08:16:57","slug":"michael-jayes-just-so-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/2019\/06\/22\/michael-jayes-just-so-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Jaye’s Just-So Story"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In a world without oceans, the spires of mighty Mu and Atlantis tower above the abyssal plains\u2014until an icy doom plunges from the sky, and floodwaters deluge the deeps of the Earth.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

No, this is\nnot a trailer for a hackneyed sci-fi movie. It is a self-styled \u201cscientific\u201d\nproposal that aims to up-end current models in geology, oceanography,\nevolutionary biology, paleoanthropology, and archaeology, and replace them\nwith\u2026the Truth. It is the brainchild of Michael Jaye<\/a>, a retired army vet who taught mathematical\napplications at West Point and later at the Naval Postgraduate School in\nMonterey, CA, with a PhD from Rennsselaer Polytechnic Institute. He is also a\nman with a mission: to correct the grievous error Geology fell into nearly two\nhundred years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That error,\naccording to Jaye, began with Adam Sedgwick\u2019s<\/a> 1831 (partial) recantation of his belief in a worldwide Noachian\nflood. Since then, it seems, geologists have been indoctrinated into a \u201cno\nflood, ever\u201d mentality, where they deny, misinterpret, or suppress geological\nevidence to hide the fact that a global flood indeed took place\u2014only it flooded\nthe empty ocean basins, and not the land. The geologists are, he says,\npracticing anti-science. In particular, he is dismissive of plate tectonics\n(there could not possibly be currents or plumes of magma moving under the crust\nand slowly pushing the plates around) and turbidity currents<\/a> (formations like the Monterey Canyon<\/a> must<\/em> be remnants of subaerial river systems from\nbefore the Deluge.) The fact that both those processes are ongoing, observable,\nand well-supported by multiple lines of evidence does not faze him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is Jaye\u2019s version: throughout most of its existence, up to about 12,800 years ago, Earth owned only a fraction of its current supply of water, scattered around the globe in insignificant puddles. Sixty-five million years ago, two monstrous impactors<\/a> (neither of which was the Chicxulub object<\/a>) struck Earth simultaneously near Australia, tilted the axis to its present angle, and sent the continents skittering about like leaves in a high wind into their current positions, all in the space of about twenty minutes. The continents have not moved since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Fast forward to 12,800 years ago<\/a>. Humankind had meantime evolved, not\nin Africa, but in the lowlands between the continents, soon to become the ocean\nfloor. White people evolved in the deeps, and brown people on the upper slopes,\nbecause of the relative strength of UV radiation at those elevations. (Jaye does\nnot think much of the hominine fossil record.) Atlantis grew into a mighty\ncivilization in what would become the Atlantic, while Mu flourished in the future\nIndian Ocean. Apparently, Gobekli Tepe had been founded as well, so there must\nhave been some<\/em> people living on the continents. Then came the Day of the\nComet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And no\npiddling little ordinary comet, either. Jaye\u2019s comet was a 2500-km-wide monster-ball\nof porous ice, loosely packed around a dense metallic core about 100 km in\ndiameter, with a mass of about 2.88×1015<\/sup> tonnes<\/a>.\nThat\u2019s just the core. Jaye estimated the mass of the water frozen into the\nouter layer at a whopping 1.29×1018<\/sup> tonnes, enough to fill all those\nempty lowlands and abysses with meltwater to an average depth of 3.57 km. And\nthat, O Best Beloved, is how the Earth got its oceans. Less than thirteen\nthousand years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mind you, it\nwas not a gentle process. Atlantis and Mu were overwhelmed by the floodwaters,\nalong with all but a few thousand humans. (The people of Gobekli Tepe somehow survived,\nto record the event.) The Americas were pockmarked with small impact craters\nwhere chunks of ice had fallen off the Impact Object (IO) as it fragmented in\nthe atmosphere. The sudden influx of all that meltwater disrupted ecosystems,\ndrove the megafauna to extinction, destroyed forests, and brought about the\nYounger Dryas cold snap. Yes indeed, this is a version of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis<\/a>, though I somehow doubt other YDIH\nproponents will thank Jaye for his contribution. This is because it is a\nbreathtakingly stupid idea. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The evidence that Jaye claims should trump two centuries of geological research is mainly a kind of Google Earth pareidolia. There is a crescent-shape on the border of the Indian and Southern Oceans, between Madagascar and Antarctica, which represents the IO\u2019s massive crater. Little circular or oval formations all down the Americas, particularly in Patagonia, represent the impact of ice fragments in the comet\u2019s wake. A gigantic grid pattern on the Atlantic sea floor northwest of the Canaries represents the wrack of the Plain of Atlantis, devastated in the Deluge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Here is Jaye\u2019s\nscenario: the massive IO started breaking apart as it hit the atmosphere,\nshedding chunks of ice all the way, and thudded to a halt in the arms of its\nnew crater. The dense metallic core skidded along the seabed for 1000 km,\nleaving an enormous trough behind it. The size of the crescent reveals the\ndiameter of the IO; the break between the crescent\u2019s two arms indicates that\nthe IO, being porous and fragile, was splitting as it fell. Then all the ice\nmelted, absorbing enough energy to bring about the Younger Dryas cooling event\neven as it filled the ocean basins from the bottom up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are\nproblems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, the dry, dry antediluvial Earth. Jaye claims his comet delivered 1.29×109<\/sup> km3 <\/sup>of water. Earth\u2019s total water at the moment (not counting the vast amounts tied up in the core) is about 1.386×109<\/sup> km3<\/sup><\/a>.  This means that Earth had to struggle along for four and a half billion years on 9.6×107<\/sup> km3<\/sup>, or about 7% of our current holdings, out of which we had to budget for glaciers, ice ages, all those ancient sedimentary seabeds, biogenesis and evolution, the extensive forests and great river systems Jaye mentions, and eventually the needs of advanced pre-Deluge civilizations with huge irrigation systems. He hand-waves away the overwhelming evidence for oceans going back at least four billion years, because all geologists continue to be brainwashed by the ghost of Adam Sedgwick. But\u2014what about the hydrologic cycle? What about salinity? Marine fossils? The sedimentary deposits of ancient seas? Whales?<\/em> Penguins?<\/em> And so much more. No, this part of Jaye\u2019s thesis is such folly that one could really stop right there. But I won\u2019t, because I\u2019m something of a masochist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consider the\nmorphology of Jaye\u2019s IO. He informs us confidently that it consisted of a dense\nmetallic core about 100 km in diameter, surrounded by a porous shell of ice\nabout 2500 km across. A comet with a metallic core? A comet that was orders of\nmagnitude larger than anything ever known to come out of the Oort Cloud? This\nstrains credulity even before the IO reaches Earth. But even worse is that Jaye\nblithely skips over the effects of such a huge mass hitting the Earth at cometary\nspeed. He seems to assume that, since most of the mass was ice\/water, and it\nwould break up in the atmosphere, the blow would be cushioned. With a diameter\nof 2500 km, however, most of it would still be high in the exosphere, still frozen,\nat the time the leading edge touched down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking at the two components of the IO separately, Jaye\u2019s figure for the mass of the ice shell works out to 1.29×1018<\/sup> tonnes. The estimated effect, using Impact:Earth!<\/a> and figures derived from Jaye\u2019s paper and book, is shown in Fig.1: 1.4×1029<\/sup> megatons of TNT, a seismic wallop of 14.1 on the Richter scale, and a melt pool larger than the final crater (a phenomenon which has never actually been preserved, since an impact of this magnitude has not taken place since the Late Heavy Bombardment<\/a> in Earth\u2019s infancy). The ice would not collect in the basin and proceed to melt in a civilized fashion; it would vaporize, along with a hefty chunk of crust. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But forget\nabout the ice for the moment; the metallic core would make a pretty grand\nentrance of its own (Fig.2). Using Jaye\u2019s claim of 100 km in diameter and a\nmass of 2.88 x 1018<\/sup> kg, this puppy would outmatch the Chicxulub impactor\nby up to an order of magnitude, and we all know how well the Chicxulub impact turned\nout. It would also be difficult for the core to leave that tidy 1000-km skidmark\nalong the seafloor, since it too would have vaporized on impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Jaye appears\nto have derived much of his concept from \u201cnew evidence\u201d\u2014that is, the fruits of much\ndiligent poring over Google Earth looking for things that look like things. He\neven compares Google Earth to Galileo\u2019s telescope<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the telescope led to the end of geocentrism, so the new data (e.g. Google Earth) [will] nullify geology\u2019s prevailing paradigm that has us all believing that there was never a worldwide flood.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Alas, Jaye\nmade some unfortunate choices of things that look like things. His 12,800-year-old\ncrater, for example: the segment on the west is the Crozet Islands<\/a>, a small volcanic archipelago that began to form over a\nlocal hotspot about nine million years ago. The segment on the east is the Kerguelen Plateau<\/a>, a microcontinent situated on\nanother major hotspot, originating as long as 130 million years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\n\u201cice-impact craters\u201d down the length of the Americas are a mixed bag. Fig.3 in\nJaye\u2019s article shows a nice view of some maars<\/a> from the Pali Aike volcanic field<\/a> in Patagonia, which has been active\nfor nearly four million years. Some on his list that I randomly checked out are\nclearly playa lakes or kettle lakes<\/a>, or even dugouts, while others are indeterminate from a\nsatellite photo. Nowhere does Jaye justify his claim that they all date from 12,800\nyears ago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Most face-palming\nof all, Jaye trots out the long-debunked \u201cgrid\u201d on the Atlantic seabed west of\nthe Canaries, identifying it as the plains of Atlantis described by Plato. It\nis not an artefact of a pre-Holocene high civilization; it was an early Google-Maps\nartefact of combining datasets and images<\/a> of differing resolutions from\ndifferent sources, and has now been corrected. The grid is not there<\/em>.\nJaye doesn\u2019t buy that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, Jaye doesn\u2019t buy any geology. He has total confidence in his startling rewrite of Earth\u2019s history\u2014it is the geologists who are practising pseudoscience.  From his website:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The task remains: how do we get geologists to recognize their error?  Should we treat them with derision? Do we mock them for adhering to an incorrect tenet as if it were religious dogma? I am not sure, but this much is certain \u2013 they must recognize their error. They must be asked: Why do you believe there was never a flood?<\/em> and Do you not recognize the logical error committed by your predecessors?<\/em>  We must make them reform. We must carry out the task of correcting the most profound error in the history of science.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Where have we heard this kind of thing before? Well, we hear it all the time from, say, Flat Earthers and Creationists and fringe scholars, the von Danikens and Hancocks and Tsoukaloses of the world. But we\u2019ve also been hearing it from an odd source: qualified, intelligent scientists who are apparently perfectly competent in their own field. We heard it from Danny Hilman Natawidjaja<\/a>, who presented a pile of columnar andesite as a pre-Holocene pyramid, and wrote a very silly self-published book<\/a>. We heard it from Martin Sweatman<\/a>, who constructed an elaborate prehistoric fantasy shored up by ill-conceived statistics, and wrote a very silly self-published book<\/a>. We hear it now from Michael Jaye, whose work is even loopier than the first two, and who wrote a very silly self-published book<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sweatman, in\nparticular, has consistently claimed the academic high ground because he published\nhis theory in a peer-reviewed\nscientific journal<\/a>. Funnily enough, Jaye also published his theory in a peer-reviewed\nscientific journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even funnier, it was the same<\/em> peer-reviewed scientific journal\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Note: My inimitable colleague Carl Feagans has also written an article on Jaye’s theory, with further insights: https:\/\/ahotcupofjoe.net\/2019\/11\/the-pseudoarchaeology-of-michael-jayes-worldwide-flood\/?fbclid=IwAR1H9TpuAInWjfM-2KnYPX1KIIs_Tm1B04q48msDTbf9hU1-g4qnNamuDjE<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a world without oceans, the spires of mighty Mu and Atlantis tower above the abyssal plains\u2014until an icy doom…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,20,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-science","category-skepticism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1224\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}