From Armchair Archaeology to Pseudo-Science, What Can’t Google Earth Do?
Written by Chad on August 26th, 2008Ok, it is one thing to be an armchair archaeologist or geologist using Google Earth.. but I am sorry, I have to draw the line at archir scientist and pseudo-science. Not sure what I am talking about? What I am talking about is a “scientist” looking at imagery and going “Hmm, they seem to be pointed North all the time. So it has to be the Earth’s magnetic field doing it!”
Dr Sabine Begall and colleagues from the University of Duisburg-Essen looked at thousands of images of cattle on Google Earth in Britain, Ireland, India and the USA. They also studied 3,000 deer in the Czech Republic. The deer tended to face north when resting or grazing.
And just by looking at imagery…
“We conclude that the magnetic field is the only common and most likely factor responsible for the observed alignment,” the scientists wrote in an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.
What they did was correlation, a very tiny part of a scientific study and not something to put a whole theory on. So, I REALLY hope this article just made it look like they just used Google Earth.. because of that is all they really did.. that is a sad state science is moving too.
For my insight into this “study”.. I grew up on a farm, there are dairy farms all around.. cows will face ALL directions when at rest and will roam anywhere.
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Have another one
http://www.thedailyjournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080819/NEWS01/808190301/1002
This is NOT real. The impact is postulated at 545 Ma, the rocks at the surface range from about 2000 Ma to <50Ma (bit long to preserve an impact shape, with major orogenies occurring in the interim). You can see a vague round shape in Worldwind BMNG, but not easily in GE, funnily enough. But the real kicker is having the crater rims preserved in the spinifex (see piccies down the right hand side) - think about it, a modern dunefield (16000 to 25000 years old last active) preserving 545 million year old shapes. The mind rather boggles.
-radhock
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I think it was just a slow news day and they needed to report something. A bit like the UPS drawing thing….