Not far from ancient Pskov, there is an amazingly beautiful place - Izborsko-Malskaya valley. Sometimes it is called Pskov Switzerland. Forested slopes with terraces, steep gullies with babbling streams, lacustrine basins, streams in reed lowlands. And boulders are scattered around. “This beauty was created 10 thousand years ago by the Valdai glacier, which expanded and filled the valley of a large preglacial river with sediments,” the guides tell admired tourists. - Sweeping away everything in his forest, he moved sand and stones together with the ice masses … During the melting of the ice, the bottom of the valley turned out to be a reservoir for melt and atmospheric waters. And here lakes and river beds were formed. Of course, no one doubted this story. From school we all know about the glacier …
THEORY: DRIFT FROM FLOOD TO GLACIER
Such relief landscapes adorn not only the north of the Russian Plain, but also Northern Europe and America. And everywhere there are boulders - granites, gneisses, quartzites. These breeds are typical for Karelia, Scandinavia. What kind of wind carried them so far from their homes?
Now science says that the reason is the glacier. However, until the 19th century, scholars judged differently: the boulders were brought by the Flood. It was the powerful streams of water that so polished them, left furrows. Based on these scratches, Cambridge mathematicians even calculated the velocities of flood currents …
But in 1840, the Swiss Louis Agassiz put forward a new hypothesis: the boulders brought polar glaciers. He decided that they behave like the Alpine, which advances and retreats at a rate of 1 m per year. The glacier carries along sand, clay, stones, which are deposited at the edge of the ice cover.
Agassiz's version was eventually picked up by uniformitarian adherents led by Charles Lyell. They saw from Agassiz confirmation of their theory of slow formation of relief: since the glaciers move only 1 m in a year, it means that they have moved boulders from Scandinavia a thousand kilometers south in tens of thousands of years. And the flood that broke out about 5 thousand years ago has nothing to do with it. However, according to the uniformitarianists (evolutionists), it did not exist at all.
By the end of the 19th century, the idea of a glacier had triumphed. Over time, the doctrine of the ice age became one of the pillars of official science.
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ICE AGES: COLD-HOT
The supporters of uniformitarianism-evolutionism divide the history of the Earth into geological eras. In their opinion, the time of the great glaciations is the Quaternary period, which began 2.58 million years ago and continues to this day. The Quaternary period is subdivided into Pleistocene and Holocene, which began 11.7 thousand years ago together with the retreat of the last glacier. We may be living in an interglacial era.
By the way, even today our planet can freeze in no time. If modern glaciers (8% of the land) increase by only a few percent, the entire earth will be covered with ice. Glaciers reflect solar radiation well, which causes a cold snap and a snowball effect.
But while the era of great glaciations remains the Pleistocene. According to the glacial theory, during this period the plains of the temperate latitudes were repeatedly - for tens of thousands of years - covered with thick ice up to 3-4 km thick. And during the maximum glaciation, ice sheets occupied almost a third of the entire land.
Harsh glacial ages alternated with relatively warm interglacials. Some pundits have counted up to 20 glaciers. However, why did warm times return again? The official science has enough explanations: "suddenly" volcanic processes began, the amount of solar energy grew, or asteroids regularly crashed into the Earth, turning up the bowels with heated rocks.
American researchers calculated that under modern conditions the glacier could melt in only 30 thousand years. To speed up the process, the air everywhere had to warm up to African temperatures. Why would it suddenly? Yes, these are asteroids "gave the heat".
And after thousands of years, the glacier came again. Why? Among the reasons are called … cosmic dust, from time to time absorbing the sun's rays. And again, another asteroid: if it fell into the ocean, the heated waters evaporated, then fell out in the form of snow. And gradually the glacier was advancing.
It turns out that asteroids, like balls, fell on our planet first on land, then into water. It is cold, then hot … However, the asteroid hypothesis is quite real, but, probably, not in such a "regular performance". More on that later.
WHAT IS THE POWER OF ROLLING BOLS?
Boulders became the cornerstones of glacial ideas. More precisely, round. This pun can be considered a reflection of the paradoxes of glacial theory.
According to the officially dominant version, the glaciers eroded hard rock, producing huge boulders. And if there are layers of boulders in the rocks, then there was a glacier here.
Boulders are found everywhere - up to South America and Africa. Moreover, they lie in layers among dolomites, limestones, coal, which gave rise to warm seas and lush tropical plants. It was this layered cake that made scientists think: warm periods were replaced by glacial ones more than once.
But are boulders necessarily a product of glaciers? This is just a hypothesis. But it is known for sure: boulders are accumulated by any powerful water flow. The higher the flow rate, the larger the boulders begin to move. Experiments have shown that to move boulders with a diameter of 50 cm, a flow rate of at least 5 m / s is required.
As studies have confirmed, glacial landslides are not capable of "crushing mountains." Even the soil and vegetation cover are preserved during the movement of glaciers - this was the conclusion of the scientific expedition to the Tien Shan back in the middle of the 20th century. A similar picture is typical for other mountain ranges. Moreover, from under the Alpine and Greenland glaciers, the monuments of the Roman era, Norman settlements sometimes "melt".
In the mountain glaciers, however, there are enough boulders, rock debris, but they were brought there by water flows, avalanches, mudflows, and not broken out of the rocks by the glacier.
Academician Nikolai Shilo argued that to recognize the ability of glaciers to destroy rocks means to attribute mythical properties to them. And his opinion is shared by many.
REMAINS OF ANCIENT MOUNTAINS ON THE RUSSIAN PLAIN
In Greenland and on the Arctic islands in the lower layers of glaciers, the layer of moraine (fragments of stones) is very small - a maximum of 70 cm. And for some reason in our native plain it reaches several meters.
On the ancient maps of Ptolemy, the Hyperborean mountains are visible, stretching across the Russian plain, and to the south of them - the Riphean mountains. Now only moraine ridges are left of them - overgrown ramparts from fragments of rocks, clay, sand. They are arranged in parallel chains, forming arcs convex to the south. It looks like these ring shafts were washed ashore by giant waves.
Even glaciologists believe that not only the glacier is involved. According to the Russian scientist Mikhail Groswald, the epicenter of these waves lay in the depths of the Arctic Ocean. And at the edge of the Arctic ice a giant lake was formed, where the waters of the northern rivers carried. In the end, the lake overflowed and the waters rushed to the south, overflowed over Western Siberia, Kazakhstan … But this is just one of the hypotheses.
Therefore, there is reason to assume that moraine ridges and boulders are the result of the action of the Flood.
WORLD FLOOD WITH ICE FINAL
The global flood, which opened the "springs of the great abyss", provoked earthquakes and volcanic eruptions on land and under water. According to a number of astronomers, after the flood, a huge asteroid hit the Earth: after analyzing dozens of ancient observations, scientists concluded that around 2345 BC. e. the tilt of the earth's axis has increased sharply. From the blow?
The change in the tilt of the axis was one of the factors that caused the cooling. In addition, flood showers played an important role, which "washed" a lot of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which caused the greenhouse effect. Volcanic ash also intervened: post-Flood eruptions filled the atmosphere with ash and “covered” the Earth from the sun's rays.
The temperature began to drop. Meanwhile, the water evaporated from the ocean heated by volcanoes, found itself in a cooled atmosphere and turned into snow. Gradually, glaciation covered most of North America, Eurasia and even South America.
This is how many creationist scientists see the picture, who support the idea of the Creation of the world and consider the real biblical age of the Earth - 7-8 thousand years.
When did this happen? According to the creation theory, there was only one ice age, it began after the flood - about 4.5 thousand years ago - and lasted for about 700 years.
Gradually, the climate stabilized: volcanic ash settled, the earth warmed up, the glacier melted. As a result, only the polar ice caps of the Arctic and Antarctic remained. And also mountain glaciers.
YOUTH LANDSCAPES
Creation scientists believe that the modern oceans were created by the Flood. Water dominates the land. To flood it, the oceans only need to increase by 8%. If you look at the Earth from space, the continents seem to be islands in the ocean. All of this could be a reminder of the Flood.
According to the geographer Yuri Golubchikov, the landscape around us is young, as if it had recently "come out of the water." The forests are not at all dense, there are few tiers of the stand, and the species composition of plants is relatively small. The wide valleys do not correspond to the rivers flowing along them. But many of these rivers were navigable a couple of centuries ago! It cannot be ruled out that the former high-flowing rivers and vast valleys are a trace of catastrophic water flows from the Flood, and the glacier is secondary here at best.
Will the glacial theory be revised? Time will tell. Much here depends on the conjuncture, and not on the desire to get to the bottom of the truth.
By the way, the glacial theory literally makes it difficult to get to the bottom. Philosopher Valery Demin noted that a hypothetical glacier has shackled the picture of human history and freezes archaeological excavations in areas where glaciation allegedly reigned: there seems to be nothing to look for …
But in the strata of moraines or under the ice sheets there may be monuments of ancient times.