Mike Sowden
@mikeachim.bsky.socialOK, this is wild. In September 2023, geophysicists across the world started monitoring a very odd signal coming from the ground under them. It was picked up in the Arctic. And Antarctica. It was detected everywhere, every 90 seconds, as regular as a metronome, for *nine days*. What the HELL? 1/
In seismology, the term for this is a USO: an Unidentified Seismic Object. And perhaps if this discovery had leaked into mainstream news in the way potential alien biosignatures tend to do, we’d currently be seeing a big comeback for the HOLLOW EARTH ‘theory’. Thankfully this wasn't the case. 2/
Instead, in the best collaborative tradition of modern science, researchers across the globe - 68 scientists from 40 institutions in 15 countries - joined forces to track down the signal’s source. What they found was something astonishing! (Yes yes, I'm getting there.) 3/
This is King Christian X Land in eastern Greenland - and outlined in red is Dickson Fjord, first surveyed in 1899. On the 16th of September 2023, part of the glacier forming its back wall collapsed, plunging 25 million cubic meters of rock & ice into the waters of the fjord... 4/
The resulting cataclysmic backsplash of water - a MEGATSUNAMI - was around 200 metres tall, and sent 100-metre-high waves racing across the fjord to smash against the other side of it. (This is still not the crazy bit!) 5/
This part of Greenland is visited by Arctic cruise ships, so it’s exceptionally lucky that none were nearby at the time. (An island 70 kilometres away was hit with 4-metre-high waves that tore away $200,000 of infrastructure from an abandoned research station. All the yikes.) 6/
But then the waves refused to dissipate. They pounded back and forth across the fjord again and again... The technical term for this is a SEICHE, pronounced “saysh” - a standing wave in a large body of water - and it can be dangerous as hell. (In 1844, one in Lake Erie killed 78 people.) 7/
For 9 days, this seawater sloshed back and forth like disturbed bath-water, transferring energy into the bedrock of the fjord with every impact... And that regular 90-second beat rippled out across the WHOLE DAMN WORLD. www.youtube.com 8/
For 9 days, the whole of our planet rang like a bell. BONG BONG BONG. We are all connected by bongs! (No, I don't mean....ok, I might try to disable the replies on this bit.) And when the paper on all this was published a year later... 9/
...it concluded since the landslide was triggered by the melting glacier, and since *that* happened due to rising global temperatures... This was a signal - and a warning - from our rapidly changing world, heard in every single part of it. Best we listen up. www.science.org 10/
If you like sciencey stories like this, maybe give my newsletter a go? It's free to sign up: everythingisamazing.substack.com And I'm indebted to @legalnomads.com for unearthing this amazing story in her newsletter. Go follow her right now. Thanks for reading! 🙏 /FIN
And lastly, if you want another science story on a similarly bonkers scale, try this one: bsky.app
A while back I learned something mindblowing about the geological history of the Mediterranean Sea, and I just can't get it out of my head. Now I'm going to make it *your* problem too. Sorry. Hang onto your hat. This is wild. 1/
UPDATE ON ORIGINAL THREAD: OOPS. bsky.app
NARRATOR: And this was how Mike discovered in his haste to pick a stock photo he'd picked *the wrong* photo. 😂 bsky.app/profile/did:... There are in fact no penguins in Greenland (and in my original article I used that pic to illustrate how far the signal reached, ie. the *other* side of the world.)