Abstract

Ancient accounts from around the world describe a time when the air was choked with dust, sand, and falling stone. Floods, tsunamis, and downpours of water submerged much of the land. Oil also rained down day and night. Hurricane-strength winds scoured the earth. Many of the stories appear to describe earth-altering catastrophe punctuated by electrical events on a continental scale. The described events imply a global redistribution of dust and sand. The transport of windborn material would have been interrupted by higher ground acting like a snow fence, with self-perpetuating deposition leading to drifting or duning. In this paper we consider the possibility that a high-energy "aurora" extended to earth's surface, with associated electromagnetic effects, such as the Bennett pinch, attracting and lithifying the airborne dust. Drainage of rain and flood waters quickly cut into the dunes, generating a thick slurry. According to recent demonstrations, the slurry could be deposited in extensive stratified alluvial fans. The result of the envisioned events appears to be massive dune formation on dry land, to create mountain ranges, with slurry runoff into the surrounding (receding) water, creating new dry land. Electric discharges within the plasma environment could then convert the fresh material into many forms of rock, especially granite, sandstone, schist, and basalt. Anciently remembered "rivers of fire" appear to have flowed up many drainage channels, burning, lithifying, and eroding cliff walls in processes similar to industrial electrical discharge machining (EDM). The effects of the hypothesized events are easy to see when traveling through the mountains and deserts, as will be shown in this photographic journal. Then the convergence of plasma physics with the ancient accounts seems to make sense.