CompuServe Messages

>>As these passed by the area where the seas had gathered the life the ocean with life poured into these mile wide and 50 mile deep cracks. The intense heat at that depth cause the water to flash to steam as the cracks closed. This was repeated for weeks as the star made its journey. This is the only way I can see large volumes of fresh meat can get buried under miles of rock.<< Kamron – Thanks for laying this out, it puts the various comments you have made in the thread into a good overall picture. The idea is of course pretty speculative but also includes novel ideas for an old problem (I guess — actually I'm pretty new to the problem!). It would hit me as quite remarkable that mega, mega quantities of bio could be neatly wrapped up and tucked away deep underground by *anything* (disregarding short time interval); that they wouldn't just be smashed to smithereens. How close would this star have had to come? withOut actually hitting the earth, right? and then it hung around awhile somehow? I'm not sure I'm catching the physics here… wouldn't an active star have baked the earth, undoubtedly causing a major extinction, if close enough to greatly warp it? A little black hole would do as well; at least it wouldn't fry the earth and does not otherwise conflict with the theory… could have been a dwarf or something though I suppose(??). Perhaps a humongous meteor impact(s) could at least get a lot of bio stuff covered up, although not deep underground. Would there (or not) be tectonic evidence left of a massive cataclysm like that? I don't know whether it would still "show" in the plates or be lost in "the noise of time". Thanks for being brave(?!) to come forward with the alternate idea… what do you think of my "alternate comebacks" <g>… (P.S. It's frustrating to me to be "armchair" without knowing enough of the field itself to even know what is the limits against which an idea can be tested… like not knowing to what extent complex/OA molecules have been found in oil, or even really knowing much at all about precise contents of oil…) Cool! – Mike