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Modeling in 3D I had used everything, I thought. I drew endless patterns on flat maps in a variety of projections. I made cylindrical models and 3D models out of clear plastic spheres even, so I could try to see the correlations through the Earth, and so forth. Never could I get the points to make complete sense. Then finally, I bought a $12 globe, a small model of the Earth. It's well marked and even has some of the geophysical formations in relief. Granted, this globe is a perfect sphere and the Earth is not, but on this scale it's a reasonable facsimile. My other tools were push pins and some non-stretch ribbon. I made several loops the precise circumference of the model globe (ie, some Great Circles) and started playing. After marking the deep points and center points with the push pins, and fitting ribbons on and off and on again, I finally saw a configuration. I might never have guessed it or fallen upon it with only flat maps and the lat/lon coordinates as they are presently. So, I had two ribbon loops on my globe representing two great circles which intersected each other in two places, ie, connecting the two sites. Determining the angle of each great circle was easy. All I had to do was align with the two deep points and their calculated center points. This gave me the correct angle for each circle of ribbon. As it turned out, the circle shooting through Hess and Milwaukee Deeps in AWest continued on and intersected AEast at Java Deep. The circle shooting through Java and Challenger Deeps in AEast continued back around to strike Milwaukee Deep.
Despite the lat/lon grid misalignment, I wanted to see what this configuration looked like on a map. So, with the ribbon-bedecked globe sitting beside me, I tried to map what I was seeing on the sphere. As explained in my notes concerning Great Circles, straight lines from a sphere must become curved lines on the straight surface. When I started to plot the lines I was seeing on the globe, I began to see two waves emerge and they looked for all the world like a pair of identical sine waves. Indeed, I discovered I could take the AWest-to-AEast wave, copy it exactly, and simply move it horizontally until it aligned perfectly to make the other loop I could see on the sphere. The following topo maps look a little odd because I set two of them end to end, duplicating the Americas. In this way, I could see the whole pattern east or west. I could also make sure I wasn't skewing the waves, by verifying that they did indeed strike the same location when they came back around. (Click here to see a simple animation of the wave shift.)
Alright, so IF that's the surface sine wave for the energy, then what might be happening within the Earth? Next in Sequence Select From Menu |
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 uicksilver
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