Month: September 2022

RACE AGAINST TIME. “His 2015 paper was the last published before Warren’s death, but it did not mark the end of his writing. Over the next three years and into his final month, he worked toward an even broader synthesis that would represent a culmination of his career: “Toward a myth-free geodynamic history of Earth and its neighbors.” He knew this project was a race against time, but refused to take shortcuts in the painstaking work. Time won that race, just barely.” https://lnkd.in/dNVjJKA9 View in LinkedIn

WITH THE HELP OF FRIENDS. “Warren passed away leaving behind a manuscript of more than 39,000 words, which he judged to be 95 percent complete—with “all the hard parts” done. Colleagues, friends, and family have picked up this legacy and carried it the last steps. The great man’s final paper will be published posthumously in 2019.” https://lnkd.in/dNVjJKA9 View in LinkedIn

WARREN’S EPITAPH. “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to fit facts.” Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson, in A Scandal in Bohemia (A.C. Doyle, 1891). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012825219302636?via=ihub View in LinkedIn

MAGNETIC SHIELD THESIS. “The Cambrian explosion of evolution produced almost all phyla of modern animals within about 50 m.y., possibly because the newly-formed strong dipolar magnetic field provided a shield against ionized radiation.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012825219302636?via=ihub View in LinkedIn

THE PERSISTENT MYTH. “Precambrian paleomagnetism? Evidence often cited for a permanent liquid core and ancient plate tectonics comes from paleomagnetic interpretations that may be in error.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012825219302636?via=ihub View in LinkedIn

TECTONIC MINDSET. “Phanerozoic lithosphere motions are well documented by paleomagnetic recordings of plate-tectonic sundering of supercontinent Pangea and complex dispersion and assembly of major fragments to present-day configurations during the last 600 m.y.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012825219302636?via=ihub View in LinkedIn

THE ORIGINS OF THE MYTH. “Because 1970s conjectures that whole-mantle convection and plate tectonics operated throughout most of Earth history dominate paleodynamic literature, studies of the magnetization of Precambrian rocks have mostly interpreted data in these terms.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012825219302636?via=ihub View in LinkedIn

TECTONIC SUPERCONTINENTS. “Illustrations have been devised of analogous plate-tectonic activity in the form of disruption and reassembly of hypothetical successive but similar Precambrian supercontinents Columbia and Rodinia.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012825219302636?via=ihub View in LinkedIn

PATCHY DATA. “The database of geomagnetic paleopoles thought to be of Precambrian age is ambiguous and undersampled. Age of magnetization is the most critical and least known parameter and only selectivity of data has enabled consistency with popular conclusions.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012825219302636?via=ihub View in LinkedIn

EO Wilson. “Ants are possibly as close as we will ever see to what higher social organization might look like on another planet. They communicate almost entirely by smell and taste. They have extremely complicated societies.” https://youtu.be/RcGeewpiCr4 View in LinkedIn