The Adams Event | Hacker News Reader

The Adams Event

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90 pointslayer821 comments

Great, except cave art in the identical tradition, on Sulawesi, dates back 46,000 years and more. Conservative reasoning must assume, at least for now, that it spread west from there, reaching Europe many millennia later.

For most of the past 40,000 years, sea level was 400 feet lower. Probably most ancient cave paintings are now deep underwater, and we only find the ones made up in the hills.

So Sulawesi cave art long precedes the Adams Event. Maybe that was the trigger for it to begin to be carried west.

the entire purpose of the article is in the last sentence.

this is bad, but worse with climate change, so we must fix climate change before this happens again.

While quote "we must fix climate change" is true, you and I know that will never be "fixed". Luckily wind/solar in some regions is getting quite cheap.

But how about fixing the electric grid, we can all be on 100% renewals tomorrow, but if this event happens, no electricity anyway so it does not matter what the power source is.

Forcing companies to shield and get ready for massive failures for this and CMEs is rather doable, just costs money and is really not political. More likely a very large CME will occur before the flip, but both will end modern society rather quickly.

This is not too dangerous as long as the phase transition is not instantaneous. A one year weakening period is more than enough for man made intervention. We have ways of making an artificial magnetosphere (see literature by NASA's James Green). Models have been calculated for Mars. It is not cheap but doable. A nuclear reactor+superconductor satellite in orbit. Borderline exotic by commercial standards but relatively normal for military proposes.

A more worrying threat is supernovae. Those can't be easily shielded against with current technology.

I don't think we have a solution to shield from all incoming radiation. I think you underestimate the scale.

A partially redacted story talking about some effects of this is in the CIA FOIA vault

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp79b00752a000...

Interestingly it's called the Adam and Eve story

There’s a plausible-if-untested mechanism - placing a magnetic shield at the L1 lagrange point. This is far enough from earth that the magnetic field wouldn’t need to be exotically powerful to deflect a substantial fraction of the solar wind.

Interesting... But it does seem pretty far fetched relative to our current public space engineering ability

To save other people some time, the OP's link to the CIA vault is only to an Erich von Daniken-type crackpot history book that somehow ended up in the CIA archives, not to serious government-commissioned science.

Your prejudicial dismissal hardly saves people time, what if there's something there for them? Then you cost time. It's not for you to judge for others. Your inability to extract utility from this is more about you than about the work itself. If you're open minded you wouldn't impose you biases on others and pretend it's truth. No need be scared of other people making up their own minds and thinking for themselves hm. Running from that is the true crackpot.

I also wasted my time having a look. GP's description "Erich von Daniken-type crackpot history" seems accurate enough to me. Also not sure how on earth it's relevant to this thread in any way. I've heard that "open minded" talk before, from New Age people who believe every crazy thing they read.

You say "It's not for you to judge for others" yet the comment I'm replying to does little else.

Chillout, Scully, I'm just saying keep an open mind.

I think Scully was too generous...A good dismissal that works in conversation but not in text. So here's a more fitting reply: It seems you're just trying to be mean because you're sore other people are "allowed" to think things you disagree with. To you, they're all crazy. And any coherent dissent to your delusion of monopoly on the truth could only be hypocritical. Likewise the only meaning of invoking "open minded." For a guy who has a whole section on his website dedicated to being open-minded you sure crafted a solid, self-contained mental cage for yourself. So I guess my initial comment applies to you too: being scared of other people thinking for themselves and reaching their own conclusions and running from that is the true crackpot. Your opinions shouldn't require the comfort of consensus, instead you should be comfortable reaching them yourself, then you won't need to try to coerce other people into agreeing with you.

I get if you were confused and misinterpreted what I said as judging for others. The distinction is I'm not telling people how they should take it, I'm saying make up your own mind, and don't discourage others from doing the same, nor try to shame them for reaching conclusion different to you. If it still doesn't make sense let me be even more clear. If either of you had just said oh I think it's s** blah blah blah blah this is my opinion, I won't care but when you try to pretend that anyone reaching a different conclusion must be crazy or wrong, and should not read it and not think for themselves, then I push back against that.

I guess you didn't read enough of it to see the obvious connection with this thread. This thread is about a magnetic pole reversal on the Earth and that story is about the effects of a magnetic pole reversal on Earth.

You're clearly sharp but I think it's a mind that's wasted when you limit the scope of your own inquiry by prejudicing yourself and holding contempt above inquiry. Whatever conclusion you reach about this work that can be the only conclusion about your choice here for how you try to pretend that anyone who disagrees with your holy truth must be wrong or crazy.

I feel sad for you to have to hear all this but I didn't push first. I'm just pushing back against what you said... so maybe next time before you open your mouth with something trying to be mean telling other people what to do you'll think a little more first. And that would be better for you and your karma I think. You're free to disagree (with being cool that other people think for themselves) of course, just remember all your choices have consequences.

This seems to discuss the crust of the earth shifting from the poles to the equator. Not the magnetic poles shifting due to some change in the core.

Relevant passage begins on page 20 (labeled page 13): https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP79B00752A0003000...

How did they use those kauri trees to figure out when the flip happened? The article mentions radiocarbon dating and counting tree rings but those seem like 2 different ways to date the event, not what they actually looked for in the tree to signify the event. Also, TIL about kauri trees.

There are kauri trees of different ages, and the thickness of the rings varies with weather, so they can line them up and stitch together series from lots of trees to get all the way to the present. (Don't need kauri trees for the most recent stuff.)

Also, you can check the carbon ratio in a particular ring. That gives you a sample of the air from that year. Because, you know, trees are very, very literally made out of air.

> Because, you know, trees are very, very literally made out of air

Humans too. When burning fat, most of it gets breathed out as CO2!

Update: They don't have trees between 40kya and more recent ones. So this tree just happens to straddle the period of interest, and to provide carbon samples from each year, in labeled sequence; but without exact registration to specific years you can get from trees less than (exactly!) 12,311 years back.

There are other ways to get annual carbon samples, e.g. peat bogs, but they are subject to various kinds of corruption, such as roots, and disturbance, so it's harder to establish the ironclad evidence you get easily from tree rings.

Dating events by tree reings is called dendrochronology. The priciple use for this tree's evidence is dendroclimatology, and maybe dendrogeomagnetology.

That sounds terrifying.

Also with no magnetic shield, I wonder would animals (humans too) have seen higher occurrences of cancer, related diseases?

That’s a possible cause for punctuated equilibrium evolutionary theory

Possibly exposure radiation created additional mutations, some that proved to 'catch on' evolution wise? That's interesting.

Without ozone, UV-C gets through and kills plants and microorganisms. Those losses rapidly ripple-up the food-chain faster than cancer.

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