The alien device had been returned from NASA after it had been thoroughly examined by Herman Swartz and his colleagues at the Johnson Space Center. It now sat in a dusty corner of Miller’s office covered with bags full of rock samples that he had collected several months ago but never analyzed. In spite of the fact that Herman Swartz returned the disk housed in a five-inch-thick lead box, it still emitted pulsating green light.
The latest report from NASA indicated that many of the pyramids throughout the world were still emitting strange radio-like signals, which NASA managed to pick up from the International Space Station. Swartz indicated that the NASA mainframe computers could not make any sense of the signals. However, they probably represented some sort of beacons for landing purposes. Herman found it surprising that these hadn’t been picked up by NASA before.
There was nothing new to report on the metal comprising the disk or the green crystal in the center of the disk. Both the metal and the crystal were harder than diamonds. The light rays being emitted from the disk were also enigmatic. Miller found it curious that they even penetrated the thick walls of the lead box. Swartz said the rays were probably harmless.
Dolores Clark informed Miller that the archaeologists she had contacted were still having problems with the inscriptions on the box and the disk. The Mayan hieroglyphs were of a type that no one was familiar with. However, they were able to translate the bit about the Mayan Calendar that Swartz’s NASA mainframes had noted. Apparently, there was mention of a Mayan Calendar date corresponding to either December 21, 2012 or December 21, 2013. Most Mayan Calendar experts indicated that the first of these dates was the one picked by the Mayans for the world to come to an end. A minority of experts believed that this interpretation of the Mayan Calendar was a year off and that the world would instead come to an end on December 21, 2013.
Miller reflected on what could be going on inside the alien disk. It was hard to believe that the disk had anything to do with the end of the world. However, why should he worry; he had almost two years before the event predicted by the Mayan Calendar occurred. His reflections were rudely interrupted when Gary burst into Miller’s office saying, “Frank, let’s do lunch. We can talk about what we are going to do in the geology workshop tomorrow afternoon over a beer. Let’s go to that Mexican restaurant called Mesa Real. It’s supposed to have pretty good food.”
“Okay, I’m game; it’s better than sitting in my office and staring at that damn green flashing light. I think it’s about to hypnotize me. Let’s go.”
After ordering a beer, the two geologists started discussing how to handle the workshop on Tuesday.
Gary said, “We need to pick a theme for the workshop course this semester. My idea is to make it ‘Current Tectonic Events.’ So far, we’ve had some big tectonic events already, what with volcanic eruptions of the Eyjafjallajökul volcano in Iceland and the terrible earthquake in Haiti last Tuesday. If we can get the students to think about these events—focusing on speedup of convection in the core and mantle—we should have a good show.”
Miller responded, “This sounds great. I think I remember hearing some idiot geophysicist from Sonora Tech saying that there was no relationship between the Iceland eruption and the Haiti earthquake. This sort of view is extremely myopic. To me, it’s obvious that events such as these are related and reflect speedup in mantle convection, and they could foreshadow serious problems to mankind throughout the world. If I am right, we should have quite an interesting workshop course this semester and perhaps the next several semesters.”
Gary said with something of a grimace, “Yeah, it’s amazing how nearsighted some geoscientists are. You always taught us to look at the big picture. You know, if you think about the Iceland eruption, it is worth noting that Iceland really represents nothing more than a mountain peak on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Because most mid-ocean ridges represent belts of mantle upwelling and the formation of new oceanic crust, we probably are actually looking at a speedup in mantle convection. After the eruption, Rosita and I looked at a globe that shows the topography of the sea floor in all of the ocean basins. She pointed out that north of Iceland, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge extends beneath the polar ice cap. She wondered whether some of the melting of the ice cap mentioned by various politicians might really be due to heat from the ridge.
“This whetted my curiosity a bit. I began looking for reports in the literature about this topic and discovered that the extension of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge beneath the Arctic ice cap between Eurasia and Siberia is called the Gakkel Ridge. In 1999, a group of scientists from Woods Hole and other oceanographic institutions aboard an American atomic submarine discovered that the Gakkel Ridge was dotted with numerous active volcanoes. Apparently, in 2007, a Woods Hole expedition aboard two icebreakers collected samples from the Gakkel Ridge and discovered that volcanic ash and other explosive volcanic debris covered an axial valley of the ridge for a distance of over six square miles. This was the first time that anyone had discovered pyroclastic deposits of this sort along an oceanic ridge. Until this point in time, we all believed that it was impossible to get explosive volcanic activity at oceanic depths of over seven miles because of the great water pressure. I also found out that two other ridges parallel the Gakkel Ridge to the west: the Lomonosov Ridge and the Alpha Ridge. Like the Gakkel Ridge, they trend in a southwest– northeast direction. No one has reported explosive volcanic activity along the other two ridges. However, I suspect that they have been unstudied because of the greater thickness of the Arctic ice cap in this area.”
Miller said, “We definitely need to get the students to look into all of this in the workshop. This is really pretty exciting stuff. It suggests that some politicians are barking up the wrong tree with global warming. With this sort of volcanic activity going on beneath the ice cap, it is no wonder that melting occurs periodically. Another question is what happens to all the CO2 that’s generated by these explosive eruptions. This makes it clear that mankind’s contribution to global warming may be insignificant and Mother Earth is at the controls.”
Gary said, “It’s worth putting all of this into historical perspective. I think we need to point out that the discovery of mid-ocean ridges in the 1950s by a group of oceanographers at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory led to the Hess plate tectonic hypothesis in the 1960s.”