Mr. Davidson blog

Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher, wrote of a great civilization called Atlantis founded by a race of people who were half god and half human. They lived in a utopia that held great naval power. But their home, located on islands shaped like a series of concentric circles, was destroyed in a great cataclysm. Science : Atlantis probably wasn’t a real place, but a real island civilization may have inspired the tale. Among the contenders is Santorini in Greece. Santorini is now an archipelago, but thousands of years ago it was a single island—a volcano named Thera. Around 3,500 years ago, the volcano blew up in one of the biggest eruptions in human history, destroying the island, setting off tsunamis and blowing tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere where it lingered for years and probably caused many cold, wet summers. Those conditions would have ruined harvests in the region and are thought to have contributed to the quick decline of the Minoans, who ha...

In ancient Greece, in the town of Delphi on the slopes of Mount Parnassus, there was a temple devoted to the god Apollo. Within a sacred chamber, a priestess called the Pythia would breathe in sweet-smelling vapors emanating from a crack in the rock. These vapors would send her into a state of frenzy during which she would channel Apollo and speak gibberish. A priest would then turn that gibberish into prophesies. Science : The temple was a real place, and scientists have  discovered two geologic faults  running beneath the site, now in ruins. Gas was likely emanating from those fissures when the oracle was in action. But researchers have been arguing over the contents of the euphoria-causing gaseous mix. Theories include ethylene, benzene or a mix of carbon dioxide and methane.

In the well-known story told among Christians, Jews and Muslims (and in movie theaters this week), God chose to destroy the Earth with a great flood but spared one man, Noah, and his family. On God’s command, Noah built a huge boat, an ark, and filled it with two of every animal. God covered the Earth with water, drowning everyone and everything that once roamed the land. Noah, his family and the animals on the ark survived and repopulated the planet. Science : Similar flood tales are told in many cultures, but there never was a global deluge. For one, there’s just not enough water in the Earth system to cover all the land. But, Nunn says, “it may well be that Noah’s flood is a recollection of a large wave that drowned for a few weeks a particular piece of land and on that piece of land there was nowhere dry to live.” Some geologists think that the Noah story may have been influenced by a catastrophic flooding event in the Black Sea around 5,000 B.C. ...