January 30, 2004
Mississippi evaporates, bears and raccoons hardest hit...
Jay Random found this quote:
In the space of 176 years, the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself 242 miles. That is an average of a trifle over a mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oölitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upward of 1,300,000 miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod.Posted by John Weidner at January 30, 2004 07:50 PM | TrackBack– Mark Twain, with an early example of a failed model in the earth sciences
Comments
"In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore...in the Old Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long...seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long...There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact."
Posted by: FredKiesche at January 31, 2004 06:00 AM
