Grand Canyon Demoted by New Discovery
A canyon longer than Grand Canyon has been discovered under the ice of Greenland. Scientists are surprised that it has persisted through the ice ages.
Science Magazine announced the discovery of a giant “mega-canyon” in bedrock under Greenland’s ice pack by airborne radar in NASA’s Operation IceBridge. The BBC News includes a radar map of the canyon, and a video explaining the significance of the never-before-seen feature.
It’s less than half as deep as the Grand Canyon (800 m) but over twice as long (800 km), and comparably wide. Live Science is calling it the “world’s longest canyon.” It flows from the center of the island northward to the sea, entering the sea below sea level. National Geographic also reported the discovery.
When did it form? Geologists believe it is “paleofluvial,” meaning it formed as a river system before the ice sheets covered the surface. But that creates a mystery; why didn’t glaciers smooth it out and obliterate it? “Indeed, none of the profiles are typical of glacially eroded valleys,” the paper states. “…The canyon follows a meandering path more typical of a large river system.”
From the BBC article:
Prof David Vaughan from British Antarctic Survey (Bas) told BBC News: “The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets hide a lot. It’s pretty surprising to find this canyon. Greenland isn’t that big for a canyon of that size, and for it to survive in its pre-glacial form after successive glaciations is quite something.”
The discovery was a “jaw-dropping experience” to the Operation IceBridge team. Science Daily quoted a geologist saying, “It shows how little we still know about the bedrock below large continental ice sheets.”
This canyon should be examined by creation geologists not beholden to millions of years. That a fresh-looking canyon in bedrock has not been eroded into a glaciated valley by huge amounts of overlying ice may point to problems with long age beliefs and the secular scheme of multiple ice ages (instead, there was just one ice age relatively recent and short). That a canyon this size exists on a relatively small continent may provide evidence for catastrophic flood geology. If nothing else, the discovery was unexpected by secular geologists, and points out how little is known about features under the ice in Greenland and Antarctica. We still live in an age of discovery.
Comments
It’s good that God has left some proofs about the world-wide flood! It’s good to read about some of those proofs.
I never did trust those “400,000-year-old ice cylinders” from Greenland anyway. The place was ice-free as recently as 4,000 years ago, as was (at least) the Antarctic coast, which is supposed to have been covered by ice for a million years. Interested readers might want to check out the Piri Reis map from 1531 A.D., which shows that Greenland is actually two islands, a fact only recently discovered by modern mapping methods. See http://www.world-mysteries.com/sar_1.htm.
Ray
You mean evidence for a very old Earth.
jyjones
Were you there?
Ashley
Good article and editors comment.
It does show how ideas are still confusing even to this crowd who so easily say time created everything.
The canyon either was from water flowing off the land at the end of the flood or some event after the flood. Possibly by a rise in the water levels of earth as I suggest.
Yes its lack of deforming from ice suggests there was never any moving ice.
Rather the ice formed, I suggest, from freezing rain episodes created by volcanic nuclear winter type of climate a few centuries after the flood. The ice cores therefore only show rain episodes and not yearly accumulations.
Never suspected because they never put together a sudden volcanic problem happening at once.
It all works for YEC hypothesis.