To the east of the state of Washington, in the United States, there is a place that escaped the understanding of scientists and geologists who for years studied the strange forms of relief found in this area , until finally the answer came from the least expected place.A high school teacher dared to question the accepted scientific dogmas and made a discovery that surprised the experts.Find out what it is.
The place formed by mega floods that was an enigma for scientists during decades
In the middle of a desert , located east of the US state of Washington, which receives less than eight inches of rain a year, there is what was once one of the largest waterfalls in the world.
It is a waterfall three miles wide and four hundred feet high.To understand the great magnitude of it , we can say that there easily fit ten Niag Falls ara.The immersion pools at its base suggest that the huge flow of water had a great erosion power , however, at present there is not a drop of water running through this area.
In what scientists call the Columbia Plateau , Dry Falls is not the only anomaly that attracts attention.There are hundreds of dry waterfalls spread over 41,500 square kilometers, as well as canons without nearby rivers that could have carved them, piles of gravel as high as skyscrapers, deep holes in the bed of rock that block entire blocks of the city, and rocks in strange positions.
The first farmers from this area they called the rocky areas "scablands" (bare/eroded land) and promptly discarded the c to consider them useless, since there they could not sow their crops.However, geologists did not lose interest.The formation of the mysterious Scablands was an enigma for them and after decades of debate, a response finally emerged.
A high school teacher named Harley Bretz was the one who came up with the information that would solve this enigma.In 1909, the native Seattle professor visited the University of Washington to see the new topographic map of the Quincy Basin , a large area on the west side of the Columbia Plateau.
Despite his short 27 years and his lack of formal training in geology, when Bretz looked at the map, he noticed an amazing feature: a huge waterfall (like Dry Falls) on the western edge of the basin, a place where water seemed to spill from the basin and into the Columbia River, carving a canon several hundred feet deep.The falls would have been larger than the Niagara but There was no apparent source of water for them , no sign of a river leading to the waterfall.
Bretz went to the university to ask them about the issue, but did not receive Some answer.Some say, that was the moment when decided to become a geographer and got his Ph.D from the University of Chicago four years later, he changed his professional name from Harley to "J Harlen" to sound more respectable, and in 1922 he returned to eastern Washington to take a closer look at the plateau.
It was then that, after two field seasons, the professor reached a dramatic conclusion: the only possible explanation for the characteristics of the entire region was a massive flood , perhaps the largest in the history of the Earth-a disaster that swept the Columbia Rock plateau, carving canons and waterfalls in question of days."All other hypotheses respond to fatal objections," he wrote in a n article of 1923.
What do you think? Has this mega flood also made you think of the Universal Flood?
Images: Wikimedia Commons
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