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Geological Curiosity This journey back to Atlantis actually began a few years ago for me and it's quite a winding tale, but I'll simply begin here: I was studying geographic features of the Earth with a particular interest in areas of geohazards, earthquakes especially. One reason for this was living due north of New Madrid, Missouri, and close enough to know that if the New Madrid Seismic Zone shakes very seriously, I would no doubt be in the thick of it. While questing for information about New Madrid, I also researched other such places around the world. I wanted to be able to compare features and statistics. Call it a temporary hobby or perhaps even an obsession. The longer I surveyed the Earth and the closer I looked at the details, the more fascinated I was with the topic; no longer just hazards, but all sorts of interesting bumps and dips on the surface. In a sense, I was practicing a form of geo-phrenology. I wanted to know what all those characteristics meant or what affect they have.
I learned what an antipode is: a point truly on the opposite side of the planet from another point. I learned that these two spots are not antipodes of each other. However, they are indeed close to being opposite each other in one hemisphere. To me, this was sufficient impetus to investigate further.
While scanning these two areas, I noted particularly deep points, so I reviewed the deep places in the Earth's oceans. Well, the deepest of them all is in the Pacific Ocean, Challenger Deep within the Mariana Trench, which is located to the northeast of that South Pacific configuration which had me so curious. The second deepest place is Milwaukee Deep in the Puerto Rico Trench in the Atlantic Ocean, on the northeastern edge of that other interesting spot, the Caribbean. How odd. How uncoincidental.
 The third deepest place in the world's oceans is apparently unnamed but it's marked within the Java or Sunda Trench in the Indian Ocean. This sounds as though it's completely unrelated BUT the Java Trench actually curls around the west side of those Pacific islands. Now I have another reflected aspect, a northeast point balanced by a southwest point? So, my next question was, what's to the southwest of the Caribbean Sea?
As it turns out, there are a lot of pits and bumps to the west of Central America because of the 'Ring of Fire'. It's the boundary of the Pacific tectonic plate where lots of earthquakes and volcanoes may be found all along the western coastline of the Americas. However, there was a peculiar isolated spot which begged special notice.  To the southwest, outside the slice of Central America and into the eastern Pacific Ocean, there is a place called Hess Deep. It's not in the top list of deepest places because the Pacific Ocean has so many. But, it is at a tectonic plate triple junction. A triple junction is where three tectonic plates meet and in this case it's three ridges coming together. Because ridges push upward, Hess Deep isn't as comparatively deep as the other three points, but this appears to be the most significant point anywhere to the west of Central America.
I also noticed that the distance between the sets of points looked awfully similar at a glance. In fact, I discovered that if you draw two lines, one across the South Pacific island cluster, and one across the Caribbean Sea, between those two special east/west points in each area, then you have two equal lines. What are the chances? I thought. I said it aloud when I realized that the angles of the resulting lines are also very similar. This is far far beyond 'chance'. So then I began to wonder... What happened here? Next in Sequence Select From Menu |
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 uicksilver
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