
Mediterranean Sea filled in less than two years: study - curtis
http://phys.org/news/2009-12-mediterranean-sea-years.html
======
ksgifford
XKCD did a comic about this phenomenon a few years ago. The story is set in
the far future when the Med has dried up again, and the next flood that
refills it is imminent.
[http://blog.xkcd.com/2013/07/29/1190-time/](http://blog.xkcd.com/2013/07/29/1190-time/)

~~~
mirimir
"video":
[http://geekwagon.net/projects/xkcd1190/](http://geekwagon.net/projects/xkcd1190/)

~~~
teh_klev
What's special about the "Special" frames, in particular "Debated" frames?

~~~
pavel_lishin
According to the readme -
[https://github.com/deplicator/xkcdTime_atyourownpace/blob/ma...](https://github.com/deplicator/xkcdTime_atyourownpace/blob/master/readme.mediawiki)

> _Special frames are selected by popular vote. The vote calculation is done
> automaticly, but new special frames won 't show up right away (about a 10
> minute delay). For a frame to attain special status it must receive a
> certain number of votes, and it must have a higher number of votes for it
> than against it. The exact numbers for this are still being determined._

> _Debated Frames are frames that have recieved a number of both yes and no
> votes._

~~~
teh_klev
Appreciated.

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dredmorbius
WildwoodClaire's video on the Messinian Salinity Crisis gives an excellent
backround on the paleogeology of the Mediterranean basin, particularly as
expressed through salt deposits up to 3500 meters thick, but also with
considerable evidence of ancient channels both in the regions surrounding the
Mediterranean (as at the Aswan High Dam) and underneath the existing sea.

Her enthusiasm is also infectious.

[https://youtu.be/U5qTQpws5H0](https://youtu.be/U5qTQpws5H0)

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curtis
There is a similar theory about the Black Sea: the Black Sea deluge hypothesis
[1].

From Wikipedia:

 _The Black Sea deluge is a hypothesized catastrophic rise in the level of the
Black Sea circa 5600 BC from waters from the Mediterranean Sea breaching a
sill in the Bosphorus strait._

(This one, if true, is pretty interesting because it occurred within fairly
recent human history.)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis)

~~~
DrScump
This has been theorized to be the origin of Great Flood myths, both Biblical
and those of earlier cultures.

~~~
lostlogin
The embellishing is pretty amazing, and added the bit about it going down
again. Maybe if we repent hard enough we can get the sea level lower?

~~~
Arnt
If we _drink_ hard enough.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Atgar%C3%B0a-Loki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Atgar%C3%B0a-Loki)

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yeldarb
Is there a contemporary basin ripe for a catastrophic flood from the sea in
the event of an earthquake?

~~~
nostromo
Death Valley could flood if there was some way for sea water to get to it. If
the climate changed and it started to rain there often, it could also make a
massive inland freshwater lake.

There once was many lakes in this region:

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/Pleistoc...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/Pleistocene_Lakes_and_Rivers_of_Mojave.png)

~~~
cmsmith
>freshwater lake

Death Valley has no outlets (is endorheic), so it would be a salt water lake
(at least after all the surface salt had time to dissolve).

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grumblestumble
If you like Sci-Fi, spoiler alert but Julian May's Pliocene Saga is set around
this event.

~~~
rodgerd
Just don't read too far into the series. The first four books are pretty good,
but the further on it goes...

~~~
grumblestumble
Good to know. I read the original series about 20 years ago and was recently
thinking of catching up on the rest of it.

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BurningFrog
>"We do not envisage a waterfall, as is often represented: instead the
geophysical data suggests a huge ramp, several kilometres wide, descending
from the Atlantic to the dry Mediterranean...," the scientists said.

Can anyone help me get a mental image of this?

~~~
intortus
> ""We also know that the velocity of the water flow must have been more than
> 300 kilometres an hour."

I'm not sure how to visualize this.

~~~
ars
A snow avalanche is probably the closest thing you can see today.

Try to find one where it hits trees and see what it does to them, otherwise
it's hard to really see the scale and force.

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anotheryou
is that the flood the bible refers too?

~~~
shiro
I thought the world wasn't 5 million years old according to the bible.

~~~
ygmelnikova
A common myth. The bible doesn't say the world was created in 6 days, but in 6
'yoms'. A yom in Hebrew means 'a defined period of time'. Like an epoch, or a
year, a day or a minute etc.

The bible was translated into English in the middle ages.

Wikipedia has a definition as 'A long, but finite span of time', among others.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom)

~~~
shiro
This is all great info, thanks, but the flood came well after the world
creation, didn't it?

Actually at the first reading it occurred to me, too, that the fact became the
base of the flood legend, but it happened before Australopithecus...

~~~
ars
> but the flood came well after the world creation, didn't it?

It's not that simple. Before the flood human lifetimes are listed as up to 969
years. After the flood human lifetimes are same as modern ones.

The flood was not just water on the earth, it was a total transformation of
the earth and its inhabitants.

Did the clock they used to define "year" change? It's not known.

~~~
shiro
It's interesting that the similar "stretch of lifetime" is seen in Japanese
ancient document (Kojiki), and probably in other cultures, too. Those ancient
tales were inherited orally before recorded. Could it be that the storytellers
tend to exaggerate? Or maybe counting the number of years wasn't that
objective but had more subjective significance?

~~~
kijin
There is a theory that the age of Biblical patriarchs were originally recorded
in months (969 months = 80 years and 9 months, which is quite reasonable) and
somehow got mistranslated into years sometime later. This, however, doesn't
quite work with Enoch who is said to have had a son at age 65.

~~~
conceit
So, maybe he had been married very young to an older female and had a, for him
at the age of 5 a half years surprising, pregnancy attributed to him. His age
of 365 days is still rather symbolic. His father's 81 years at that time are
rather a lot. I'm not even sure that kind of arranged marriage was common. He
was said to be living amongst sinners, anyhow, while his father was said to
have had _many_ children. The Grandfather of the family would have reached
fatherhood at the same 65 (yoms, then), so, whatever.

~~~
3minus1
Or maybe they were just stories that were taken at face value, as they have
been for hundreds of years.

~~~
conceit
I don't know, if yoms has a different meaning, maybe father has, too.

I propose, children would be given responsibilities early on, they had to
start soon. So, maybe being a father at figure 65 months means teaching a
brother or cousin or other newborn and leaving the adults care for the food.
They would form trust for one another while the resentment from biological
parents towards their children, as shown with gods fury over adam and eve,
would be mutual. "Alter" (older) in german can mean big brother, or father,
but generally any subjectively old one.

Of course I mainly agree to the story aspect, but I don't know any other
mysticism about the mentioned figures.

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tim333
It reminds me of the Red Sea Dam idea
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Sea_Dam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Sea_Dam)

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keypusher
[2009]

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sandra_saltlake
Mesopotamia was flooding quite frequently.

