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Tag Archives: Charles Lapworth

Day 282: A Matter of Convection

10 Tuesday Jun 2014

Posted by simon682 in A Journey into Scotland, Uncategorized

≈ 31 Comments

Tags

Alfred Wegener, Arthur Holmes, Charles Lapworth, Charles Wyville Thompson, continental drift, convection, Einstein, James Hutton, Peach and Horne, plate tectonics

A Journey into Scotland … Part 45

A Diversion into the History of Scottish Geology Act V

The idea of continental drift goes back to 1912 and credit must go to a German geophysicist Alfred Wegener. He picked up the clues that Scottish geologists had found and noticed that they were replicated in different parts of the world. The clues were all in the fossil record. Near identical fossils found thousands of miles apart suggested two possible solutions. Either the creatures had travelled thousands of miles or the continents had. The fossils were often of animals, fish and crustaceans that lived in fresh water. A fresh water organism cannot cross a mile of salt water let alone four thousand miles of it.

Sometimes breakthroughs in science cause rejoicing and acceptance. Often they prove controversial and inspire aggressive refutation. Some scientists are good at aggressive refutation. In the case of theories that turn out to be true, the scientists who are best at aggressive refutation are not necessarily the best scientists. Everything to do with continental drift was contested. Correctly and rigorously by those keen to prove or disprove. Pig-headedly and wrongly by those whose intention was purely to rubbish the theory. Scientists claim to be governed by facts that are provable by experiments that can be repeated. If the experiments are repeated again and again with the same results then theories slowly become accepted facts. In reality good scientists follow these principles. There are plenty of people, who call themselves scientists, who appear to draw conclusions from belief and prejudice rather than an adherence to the truth.

Alfred Wegener

Alfred Wegener

Poor old Wegener had no means of proving his theory. He couldn’t explain how it happened and, even if he could, he had no way of measuring whether it was happening or not. North America and Europe are moving apart at a rate of less than 4 centimetres a years. I’ve had joiners and plumbers working in my house who struggle to measure 4cm accurately. Measuring the same distance from New York to Brittany was simply impossible in the pre-global positioning world of 1912.

So everything was known except whether it happened or not and how it happened. Which is a bit like saying I’ve finished building the house except for the walls, roof, floors and learning how to do it.  It’s one thing to know the different elements that led up to the theory of continental drift. It’s quite another thing to piece it all together and come up with an explanation. It was natural, given the history of geology from the eighteenth century onwards, that it would be a Scotsman who solved the problem: his name was Arthur Holmes.

We like to feat our scientific heroes. We name colleges, professorships and school houses after them. Newton, Darwin and Einstein are well known names to most of us. Even those who can’t tell their evolution from their laws of motion and their awareness of gravity from their mc2 know that what they did was important. What Arthur Hughes worked out was every bit as impressive and every bit as relevant to an understanding of the world around us. It seems to me that we might be being a little selective when we hand out fame and fortune.

Arthur Holmes as a young man

Arthur Holmes as a young man

It started with basic physics. There are three means of heat transfer. I know this because I was making notes in Mrs Delamere’s Physics lesson in 1970. They are conduction, convection and radiation. We were told to list examples of each for homework. I copied of Graham Holmes. He’d written down conduction: a pan on the cooker. Convection: our radiators. Radiation: the sun. I had to copy his down. We didn’t have central heating.

We were left with the impression of conduction and radiation being pretty powerful and convection being swirls of dye dancing gracefully in a beaker of water as it was warmed with a Bunsen burner. We were told that it  means that heat rises and we struggled to cope with this being true given that it is always colder on top of a mountain. We lived near the Lake District; there were lots of mountains near us.

The physics is simple. If you heat a gas or a liquid it becomes less dense and rises above the more dense colder fluid. Hot always moves towards cold. Dig out that lava lamp you were given fifteen years ago and watch convection in action. The blobs of oil are heated by the lamp at the bottom and slowly rise up. At the top they cool and descend again to be replaced by fluid that is warmed in turn.

Holmes knew that beneath the earth’s crust was a huge molten layer called the mantle. Beneath that was the outer core and in the centre of the earth was the solid inner core that contained most of the heavier elements. The heat of this inner core was some 11,000 degrees Fahrenheit. (We understood Fahrenheit in 1970). The heat was caused in large part from the energy from a huge collision between the Earth and a Mars sized planet 4.4 billion years ago. That may seem   like enough time for it to cool but we are talking astonishingly hot temperatures and an astonishing amount of energy*: the impact was big enough to knock enough of the Earth out into space to form the moon.

Just in case any cooling was going to take place many of the heavy elements that sank into the inner and outer core are intensely radioactive and heat producing. They ensure that there is plenty of heat. (Incidentally among all the iron, lead and nickel in the earth’s core there is enough gold and platinum to cover the earth’s surface to a depth of over a foot). On top of that (both figuratively and literally) the earth has developed a crust which has cooled enough for us to stand on, but which keeps the heat in.

Holmes knew that this gave the necessary conditions for convection on a monumental scale. A scale big enough in fact to move continents. During the Second World War he volunteered for fire watch duties. Compared with Glasgow and the Clyde,  Edinburgh wasn’t heavily bombed and this gave Holmes a lot of time to work on the calculations that made him pretty sure himself that he had found the answer. The phenomenal heat from the earth’s core heats the molten rock (magma) of the Earth’s mantle setting up a convection current that rises strongly to the surface where it has nowhere to go but along the top until it has cooled sufficiently to make its way back down to the centre. In effect a conveyor belt is created and carried along this conveyor are the continents of the world. There were points where this hot stream of molten rock reached the surface and these were at the edges of the bedrock that the continents were built on. It was some time before these were more closely identified and given the name of tectonic plates.

Arthur Holmes

Suddenly the mid Atlantic ridge began to make more sense. This was a place where the molten centre was forcing its way to the surface and creating new crust as it cooled in the cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean. It was a time when pieces of the jigsaw suddenly started fitting into place. You didn’t even have to go right down to the bottom of the sea to observe the process. You could actually see part of the enormous mid Atlantic ridge for yourself. It is called Iceland. Here you can actually stand on a point where Europe and America are being pulled apart. And, yes, you can actually measure the process. Professor Pall Einersson of the University of Iceland spends a good part of his working life doing just that: with the benefit of satellite GPS technology.

Holmes had provided the explanation of the near eternal destruction and renewal observed by James Hutton. (Hutton had also been proved right about his theory that the driving force behind this process was great heat from the centre of the earth). Charles Lapworth had said that an enormous sideways force had pushed up the mountains of Scotland. Holmes had provided this force. Horne and Peach had said that the fossils on different sides of the Atlantic suggested that they came from the same place. Holmes had explained this. (At least he had provided the means of explaining it). Edward Bailey had demonstrated the incalculable power of the molten rock beneath the surface and Charles Wyville Thompson had discovered the under-sea mountain range where, in the words of Professor Einarsson, “The earth’s crust is being made.”

Holmes knew that the idea wasn’t going to be universally well received and he seriously contemplated not publishing it. In his 1944 book, The Principles of Physical Geology (I have a copy of the fourth edition on my bookshelf) he leaves it until the last couple of pages before he mentions the whole convection theory. And he takes care to couch it in the language of a theory to contemplate. If this was to be how the continents were moving, then this might be how it works. The diagram he had drawn to demonstrate the process is the last one in the book.

Note the words "purely hypothetical in the 1944 diagram

Note the words “purely hypothetical” in the 1944 diagram

Holmes greatness and modesty go together. It took until the 1960s when the Cold War resulted in hundreds of seismic measuring stations being used, by Soviets and Americans, to monitor nuclear testing that they inadvertently also produced an accurate record of the world’s volcanic and earthquake activity. We didn’t know about it at school. The teachers didn’t know about it. For a few more years it was argued over and disputed. And then, quite suddenly it was all accepted as a truth of geological science and geo-physics. So much so that today it is taught to year 8s. I suppose it’s simple once you know how.

And much of the story of geology happened up here in north west Scotland. On a single day I cycled from Ullapool to Durness. It was further than I could ever remember cycling before in one go. As well as the best part of a hundred miles pedalling I was also travelling though 300 years of the history of geology and through 3.2 billion years of geological history.

 

* energy can change from the kinetic energy of the impact to other forms of energy; heat, light, gravitational potential, electrical or nuclear, etc etc but energy cannot be destroyed or created.

Footnote: Much as plate tectonics seems to be the cause of the world being a dangerous and explosive place, it is actually a stabilising phenomena. I leave the last words to Professor Sam Bowring of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “I think that plate tectonics is virtually inescapable on this planet. It is an exceedingly efficient way to cool the interior of the Earth.”

Day 281: The Big MacBang

09 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by simon682 in A Journey into Scotland, Uncategorized

≈ 25 Comments

Tags

British Geological Survey, Charles Lapworth, Charles Wyville Thompson, continental drift, Edward Bailey, Glencoe, HMS Challenger, James Hutton, magma, Peach and Horne, plate tectonics

A Journey into Scotland … Part 43

A Diversion into the History of Scottish Geology IV

There were many theories to explain why the fossil record of North West Scotland should more resemble North America than England. Scientists and theologians alike, stood side by side and, put forth explanations that allowed them to retain pre-existing beliefs. The idea of a land bridge linking Sutherland with Newfoundland was popular for a while; the Bible literalists adding the nice touch that it had been washed away by Noah’s flood. Unsurprisingly nobody put forward the idea that Scotland had once been part of the American continent and had somehow floated across the Atlantic Ocean to join up with England. Such an idea would have been preposterous.

A few more pieces were needed for this puzzle before even a genius was going to be able to see that there was a jigsaw at all let alone piece it together.

HMS Challenger

HMS Challenger

A jigsaw is a good metaphor though. It was something that had been noted from the time of Columbus. As late medieval cartographers started producing maps of the world, there were people looking over their shoulder saying things like “The west coast of Africa fits rather well into the east coast of South America”. It took a further four hundred and fifty years for someone to point out that there was a very good reason for this.

Just before Christmas in 1872 a ship, the HMS Challenger, set sail from Portsmouth on a voyage that would last four years and cover over 70,000 miles. The vessel was on loan from the British navy, had had many of her military features such as her guns removed and had been kitted out to make the most thorough survey of the world’s oceans ever carried out. An awful lot of the experiments  involved lowering things over the side of the ship; either to take samples of the water or the seabed or to measure the depth. To this end the ship set sail with 291 kilometres of best Italian rope.

p4052

Charles Wyville Thompson

The whole expedition had been suggested by Charles Wyville Thompson of Edinburgh University and the scientific work of the ship was done under his supervision. It was one of the great fact-finding missions of the nineteenth century. One heck of a lot of science was to emerge from that ship. For our story we are mostly concerned with the mapping of the ocean floor. In the Pacific the ship was the first to realise the immense depth of the ocean and located both the Marianas Trench and what is still known today as the Challenger Deep. In the Atlantic it wasn’t just the depths that surprised the scientists but the fact that the ocean seemed so much less deep in the middle. They had located an unbelievably huge ridge that ran all the way down the centre of the Atlantic from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Though under the waves they realised that they had discovered the longest mountain range on the planet. What they didn’t realise is that they had discovered one of the key pieces in the geological jigsaw.

Meanwhile back in the mountains of Scotland we move into the twentieth century and an Englishman. Edward Bailey was part of the British Geological Survey’s work in Glencoe. We’ll overlook Bailey’s Englishness and concentrate on the work that he did in Glencoe. It should appeal to geologists and tourists alike. It certainly appeals to me. In his documentary Professor Iain Stewart spends a good deal of time establishing Bailey as a “gung-ho nutter” and it seems certain that he was a maverick. He did things his way and he did them full-bore. It was an attitude that saw him collect a double first from Cambridge, a heavy weight boxing championship and, later, medals of a different sort, and even greater honour, in the First World War where he lost an eye. He eventually succeeded to the chair of geology at Glasgow University and was director of the British Geological Survey from 1937 to 1945.

Edward Bailey

Edward Bailey

Professor Stewart likes him as someone who toughened himself up by taking daily plunges in ice cold lochs and getting his school friends to hit him in the face. I like him because he used to eat his lunch straight after his breakfast to avoid the need to carry it around with him all morning.

His discovery rather changes the complexion of Glencoe. Its geography and geology is stunning enough as it is. Its history was about to become a whole lot more explosive. He made two discoveries in the field and was able to step from these to an almighty conclusion that changed our view of the highlands and filled another piece in the geological jigsaw.

The team knew that the area contained a good deal of volcanic material but were not able to explain how it came to be there. There were two sorts of such rocks; large crystalled granite that had cooled slowly and small crystalled basalt that had cooled much more quickly. The mystery was how the rocks could be found side by side and in such quantities.

Bailey and his team carefully followed a large crack that led up a mountain out of the glen and mapped it carefully. When they brought their readings and measurements together they discovered that the crack formed a huge circle, eight kilometres across. They realised that what they were looking at was a giant volcano which had grown so huge that the cone had collapsed into itself releasing millions of tons of magma in one of the biggest explosions ever seen on earth. The huge circle mapped by Bailey was a new type of volcanic feature; a caldera. These occur when so much magma is erupted in a volcanic explosion that it empties the magma chamber and there is nothing to support the weight of the mountain above and this collapses into itself. 420 million years ago the west of Scotland was one of the most volcanic areas on earth and Glencoe was the biggest volcano of them all.

Glencoe - Inside the caldera

Glencoe – Inside the caldera

This discovery moved the science of studying volcanoes (vulcanology) forward but its full significance for geology was yet to be realised. It still needed a true genius to see the bigger picture (and here I mean it in its proper sense of being able to make intellectual and imaginative leaps that would be beyond most of us to see a pattern that led to an explanation). But, by now all the main pieces of the jigsaw had been assembled.

  • James Hutton had observed that the creation and destruction of the earth was a continual process that went back further in time than had ever been conceived or imagined. He also put forward the idea that the force controlling this system was likely to be great heat from the centre of the earth.
  • Lord Kelvin had established that the earth had an age that could be measured.
  • Roderick Murchison made some errors (who didn’t) but established that the various ages of rocks could be measured accurately.
  • Charles Lapworth had discovered that solid rock had been pushed sideways to form mountain ranges.
  • Peach and Horne had found fossils in Scotland that matched fossils found 5000 miles away in Newfoundland and Greenland.
  • Charles Wyville Thompson had discovered an unexplained ridge of mountains running down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
  • Edward Bailey had revealed the incredible power inside the earth, and found that the highlands and islands of Scotland were full of volcanoes.
Horne and Peach outside the Inchnadamph Hotel Sutherland

Horne and Peach outside the Inchnadamph Hotel Sutherland

All of these discoveries were incredible leaps forward in the understanding of what made Scotland the place of such indescribable beauty. Individually they advanced learning by leaps and bounds. Collectively they were about to change both the academic world and our way of looking at the physical world. It is the idea that explains how whole continents can become divided by oceans, how volcanoes form and why earthquakes can be expected in some parts of the world and not in others. It was an idea that was to give us new expressions: continental drift, plate tectonics and the Pacific Ring of Fire. It was an idea so huge that it upset as many people from the scientific  (and religious) communities as it satisfied. And the man who came up with it was a Scotsman.

Day 280: Women of Rock

08 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by simon682 in A Journey into Scotland, Uncategorized

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

Benjamin Peach, Charles Lapworth, Elizabeth Anderson Gray, Jane Donald Longstaff, John Horne, Maria Ogilvie Gordon, Scotland, Scottish Geology, Strong women, Victorians

A Journey into Scotland in 1987 …Part 42

 

A Diversion into the History of Scottish Geology Part III

 

The photograph shows a large party of Victorian men and women on a grassy hillside. Some are dressed to impress; there are a number of top hats for the truly distinguished and a dapper straw boater or two. The women are perhaps more sensibly hatted. Their hats are lightweight, wide brimmed and, in many cases, fastened on, either with ribbon or with formidable hat pins. These hats are suitable to the outdoors in the north of Scotland where the sun shines brightly, when it shines at all, and the wind blows most of the time. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the photograph is the fact that there are women there at all; in fact women make up nearly half the party; for this is a group of geologists in Sutherland. The man at the centre is Charles Lapworth who has taken his place in the history of geology. When that history is told it tends to stick closely to the pronoun at the beginning of the noun. Geology is all too often told as HIStory. The story of the men who revealed the secrets of the rocks. In fact, women played a significant role from the outset. And did this despite being discouraged, disadvantaged and often denied the roles they deserved.

Charles Lapworth in the centre

These Victorians may surprise you if you share the belief of many, that they were a prim and proper bunch who had fixed roles for men, women and children. The men to go out and build factories and empires and to come home to a tidy house and soup served from a tureen. The women train to be the angel of the hearth; to busy themselves building a home and providing children for the man. The childrens’ job was to be seen and not heard. And, not seen until after supper when they’d be presented to their father like prefects to the headmaster on founders day.

Expectations were certainly there and social conventions were strong; and where this is the case you will often find strong women to defy the rules and to move outside their proscribed role. By strong women, I don’t mean the battle axe or the rottweiler that have made themselves prevalent in business, schools and politics since the time of Margaret Thatcher, by bullying their way to the top by confusing the word feisty for emotionally illiterate and praising their ability to see things clearly when in reality  they don’t see much at all.

www.scottishgeology.com

http://www.scottishgeology.com

By strong women I include the idea of capable women. Those who were both good at what they did, and determined to do it, despite enormous pressures to conform. Strong women, like genuinely strong men, tend to be pleasant, amiable, intelligent, determined and driven.

Such a woman was Mary Jane Donald. (Better known as Jane Donald Longstaff). Born in 1856, and denied by her gender from becoming a professional palaeontologist, she devoted her life to the study of fossils. Her amateur status meant that she never became connected with a museum or academic institution which in turn meant that she was denied access to the literature and study material she needed. She divided her time between field work and a systematic study which resulted in her gathering one of the more impressive collections of fossils (which are now an important part of the collection at the British Museum) and making a significant contribution to the classification of fossils into genera and families. Her work was at first centred in Cumberland but later travelled extensively around the world, including spending time in Scotland. By her thirties she was publishing papers with the Geological Society. She married an entomologist, G B Longstaff and continued to make accurate contributions to the fossil record until her death in 1935. The fossil record was the first accurate measurement of the age of rocks. The classification of rocks into different ages was the vital link in moving geology from a science of classification into a means of understanding the world around us.

torridon munros

She was a close friend of Elizabeth Anderson. (Elizabeth Anderson Gray). A true Scot and another woman who was happy collecting evidence and samples in the field. Like her friend, she found the active life led to a long life. She lived to be 92 and was still collecting fossils until shortly before her death. She is almost certainly in the photograph with Charles Lapworth though I am afraid I am unable to identify just which is she. She collaborated with the more famous geologist on his work which established that older rocks could be found on top of younger rocks. Lapworth was to establish how this came to be, but the fossil hunters were the people who established the age of the rocks. Anderson Gray was regarded by her peers as being among the foremost experts on Scottish fossils of her time. Her reputation in this field still stands.

Both she and Jane Donald Longstaff received grants from the Murchison Fund to extend their work. Both published extensively and accurately and both were recognised for their work by the leading geologists of the day. It was a great pity that neither were accepted into a university or museum to continue their work with all the benefits that that would have brought, but neither allowed it to slow them down or dampen their enthusiasm. We often (mistakenly in my opinion) regard the first to achieve something as the pioneers, the trailblazers, the archetype. Often overlooked, and all too often forgotten, are the people who constructed the path that allowed the breakthroughs to take place. By the early years of the twentieth century women were being allowed to study at university, women were taking up teaching posts and becoming fellows and dons. Women, in short were being allowed their own status and their owns rights to pursue a path in academic circles; to develop their talents to the full and to make a lasting contribution to their chosen field.

achnasheen 4

This didn’t suddenly happen. Women like Anderson Gray and Donald Longstaff never had the opportunities. Without them the opportunities may never have arrived or would have been delayed for yet another generation. Not only were they important figures in geology and palaeontology, but they were also key figures in the feminist movement. We may think of Victorian women as being the angel of the hearth. The fact that we no longer consider this to be the female role is down to those very Victorians.

Going a stage further with her work and receiving the recognition of degrees from the universities of Edinburgh, London and Munich (the latter two being doctorates) was Maria Ogilvie (Later  known as Dame Maria Ogilvie Gordon).

She was also a close friend and correspondent of Charles Lapworth and had contributed to field work that he had done in Sutherland. She  knew and worked with John Horne and Benjamin Peach. She may well be on the photograph but again I am unable to identify her.

Dame Maria Ogilvie Gordon receiving an honourary degree from the University of Sydney in 1938

Dame Maria Ogilvie Gordon receiving an honourary degree from the University of Sydney in 1938

She is described on the Scottish Geology website as having become a promising pianist. (At what point do you become promising?). She decided against music in favour of science and studied at Heriot-Watt University and at University College in London. Her main research work took place in central Europe, first in Germany and later in Italy and Austria. Access to the field sites was difficult and required her to learn how to climb. So she did. Starting with studies of fossils she went on to give new interpretations and insights into the tectonic structure of mountains. Independently of Lapworth she worked out that mountains had been subject to enormous sideways force that she referred to as thrust movements. She was quite simply a brilliant geologist and a true pioneer of science and of the place of women within that science. In 1883 her work led to her becoming the first woman to be awarded a Ph.D in Geology by London University. In 1900 she became the first woman to be awarded a Ph.D in any discipline from the University of Munich. She published more than thirty scientific papers during her career, was described by her biographer as “probably the most productive female geologist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries” and was awarded the Lyell medal in 1932 by the Geological Society in recognition of her outstanding work.

Oh, and after leaving the climbing boots and geological hammer behind she became active in politics, standing as Liberal candidate in the 1923 Hastings by-election, she became president of the National Council of Women of Great Britain and Ireland, played a strong role in the negotiations that followed the First World War and in establishing the Council for the Recognition of Women at the League of Nations. For this she was made a Dame of the British Empire by King George V.

The role of women in the development of geology in Scotland has been immense. They haven’t always gained the recognition they deserve but that is hopefully changing. I’m enormously thankful. My geological knowledge has always been that of the interested layman but even at that level the pleasure of cycling through these remote parts of Sutherland is greatly enhanced. You can’t help being astonished at the landscape up here. You can’t help wondering how it came to be the way it is. Without these women we might still be wondering.

 

 

Day 278: Shoulders of Giants

06 Friday Jun 2014

Posted by simon682 in A Journey into Scotland, Uncategorized

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

Ben Peach, Charles Lapworth, Cycle tour of Scotland, geology, James Hutton, John Horne, Loch Erribol, Lord Kelvin, Professor Iain Stewart, Roderick Murchison, Scotland, Smoo Cave, Sutherland

A Journey into Scotland in 1987 … Part 41

Up here in Sutherland the earth feels ancient. I’m cycling through the oldest landscape in Great Britain and between some of the oldest rocks on the surface of the earth. Just how old was a very big question in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It’s a question we think we may well have answered in the twenty first.

n.w.scotland 1

According to theologists, the earth was 4004 years plus the year you are measuring from. If it is 1750 then this will mean the earth is 5754 years old. Brilliant if you take a literal view of the bible (and this Christian believer’s belief is based on things being believable) but problematic if you are wondering how that fits in with 540 million year old fossils. Lord Kelvin was the first to make a serious attempt to work out how old the earth was and he did it more with the intention of establishing that the planet had an age rather than to establish just exactly what that age was. He was reacting to the idea put forward by James Hutton that the processes of the earth were on-going and had no obvious point of beginning and no foreseeable point of termination. In its way it is a re-affirmation of the position of ancient Greek philosopher Heroclitus of Ephesus who believed that nothing actually exists in itself but only as a constantly changing form on the way to becoming something else. In this view there is nothing other than flux. No beginning or end; just constant change. He famously expressed this idea by saying that no man can jump into the same river twice. (Geologists have more experience of testing this idea than most.)

James Hutton discusses philosophy with Scottish chemist Joseph Black. Etching by John Kaye National Portrait Gallery

James Hutton discusses philosophy with Scottish chemist Joseph Black. Etching by John Kaye National Portrait Gallery

Hutton’s way of expressing it was to say that he saw “no vestige of a beginning and no prospect of an end”. Kelvin thought this was nonsensical and set out to measure the age of the earth so he could say that there most certainly was a beginning.

According to Lord Kelvin, the earth was molten when it first formed  If you can time how long a measured amount of molten rock takes to cool  to earth temperature, then you can tell how old the earth is. He came up with the answer that the earth was between 20 and 40 million years old. This displeased everybody:

  • it was far too old for the creationists. There would have to be an awful lot more begetting in the gospels to link Jesus’ lineage to Abraham.
  • It was far too young for the Darwinists. Evolution couldn’t have performed its task in so short a time
  • his calculations were based on the entire earth cooling which would have ruled out Hutton’s other idea that the centre of the earth remains red hot and that this heat powers many of the changes in the earth’s geology.

We now know that the earth is 4.6 billion years old and that some of the rocks in north west Scotland have been around for more than two thirds of that span. The rock known as Lewisian Gneiss has been accurately measured as being over 3129 million years old. We know these figures are accurate because we have been told so by the most reliable source there is: by the rocks themselves. (The secret lies in discovering radioactivity and knowing that it is a natural and not a man made phenomenon.)

Lord Kelvin

Lord Kelvin

A third great Scottish scientist enters the scene in the middle of the nineteenth century. Roderich Murchison, like many scientists at the time, was a wealthy man with time on his hands looking for something to do. Either his wife or Sir Humphrey Davy should be credited with suggesting that he gave up fox-hunting and take up geology. The first half of his career was very successful and he was part of the group of thinkers (which included Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin) who were able to classify rocks according to their age. Having been knighted for his work he then went to the north of Scotland where he used all his influence, position , authority and academic record to establish an incorrect idea. Like Kelvin’s inaccurate and wrongly premised measuring of the age of the earth, this mistake held up geological research for decades. Put simply he asserted that the oldest rocks will be found at the bottom and any rocks on top of these must therefore be younger. It makes sense superficially but it denies other reasons why things end up on top.

Murchison’s geological map of northern Scotland followed his own findings and theory to say that the oldest rocks are to be found furthest west and that the rocks become progressively younger as you cross the country eastbound.

Roderick Murchison

Roderick Murchison

The false finding in Murchson’s work was uncovered by a great enthusiast. The only major figure in this story who wasn’t a scot. Charles Lapworth was English, but lived in Scotland, married a Scottish wife and did much of his most important work on the mountains around Loch Eriboll in the north of Sutherland. Diligent and meticulous fieldwork found site after site where relatively young rock was found beneath rock that was by all standards of measurement (except Murchison’s) much older. He needed an explanation and he came up with one; a good one; one that worked then and which works now. An explanation, in short, that allowed further discoveries to be made. He put forward the idea that an enormous sideways force was acting on the rocks which pushed them. He devised a simple experiment to see what would happen. Inside a glass case he laid down layers of different coloured sands. Once he had a good number of these layers he slowly turned a wheel that moved the end wall of the case inwards. The sands were pushed further into the box and as they moved they began to form ripples and then wave patterns and eventually the lower layers were to be found going up and over the top of the layers that had originally been higher. His sands resembled, almost exactly, the patterns of rock layers he had found in the field. He had not only explained how older rocks can end upon top of younger rocks but had effectively explained the process of mountain building.

Charles Lapworth in the centre

Charles Lapworth in the centre

It is interesting that it was an Englishman who explained how Scottish mountains were formed as it was England that played a major part in actually forming those mountains. Scotland provided the layers of sand/rocks; England provided a good part of the sideways force that gave us the Grampians, the Torridons, the Southern uplands; Ben More, Foinhaven and even Ben Nevis itself. But that part of the story is still to come. There remain a few pieces of the puzzle to put on the table.

Murchison was decidedly displeased. Two scientists, John Horne and Ben Peach, were sent to Sutherland to find evidence to disprove Lapworth or at least to undermine his theory. Scientists regard themselves as dealers with the truth but there are a remarkable number of instances where they put their personal reputations and (dare I say it) beliefs, before the scientific facts. Scientists tend to define themselves according to the work of the best of their type and not by the work of those whose efforts have held back the discovery of knowledge. At the same time scientists have developed something of a habit of condemning faith and religion on the grounds that some people follow paths of religion that are wrong, deluded or just plain evil. If we judge scientists by the weaker members of the sect then we have a pretty shabby bunch. But to judge any of us by our failings would leave few of us with much glory. Fortunately Horne and Peach were not the shabby sort.

Horne and Peach outside the Inchnedamph Hotel

Horne and Peach outside the Inchnedamph Hotel

They were sent to disprove a theory and came back having fairly conclusively provided the evidence for the theory to stand, and for science to be able to advance. What is more, they provided evidence to say that if there is a natural union for Scotland, it might make more sense for the country to form links with Canada or the USA rather than with England. They went into Smoo Cave (a place I will visit myself on this cycle journey) and came out with a good collection of trilobites. Nothing strange there. Trilobites had been found all over the British Isles. They are the fossilised remains of marine creatures that swam in warm shallow waters 500 million years ago.

Smoo Cave photo credit www.amazingplacesonearth.com

Smoo Cave photo credit http://www.amazingplacesonearth.com

The trilobites that had been found in England were almost identical to the ones that had been found throughout mainland Europe. Those that were found by Horne and Peach were almost identical to trilobites found in Greenland, Newfoundland and north eastern parts of the North American continent. Something didn’t make sense.

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Scotland 1987

Glencoe
Glencoe
Dalton
Dalton
Ayr
Ayr
Glencoe
Glencoe
Burns' Memorial
Burns’ Memorial
Ben Nevis
Ben Nevis
Rhinns Of Kells
Rhinns Of Kells
Burns' Cottage
Burns’ Cottage
West Highland Way
West Highland Way
Ayrshire
Ayrshire
Loch Lomond
Loch Lomond
The King's House, Rannoch Moor
The King’s House, Rannoch Moor
Way out west
Way out west
Loch Lomond
Loch Lomond
Ulverston
Ulverston
Lion & the Lamb
Lion & the Lamb
Loch Lomond
Loch Lomond
Coniston Water
Coniston Water
Loch Tulla
Loch Tulla
Brig o' Doon
Brig o’ Doon
Pennington
Pennington
Glencoe
Glencoe
Sunset from Ayr
Sunset from Ayr
Glenfinnan
Glenfinnan
Erskine Bridge
Erskine Bridge
The Clyde
The Clyde
Ben More
Ben More
Rannoch Moor
Rannoch Moor
Loch Lomond
Loch Lomond
Rannoch Summit
Rannoch Summit
Near Crianlarich
Near Crianlarich
Way out west
Way out west
Glenfinnan Viaduct
Glenfinnan Viaduct
Near Crianlarich
Near Crianlarich
Rannoch Moor
Rannoch Moor
Coniston
Coniston

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Categories

  • A Cyclist on the Celtic Fringe
  • A Jaunt into The West Country
  • A Journey into Scotland
  • A-Z of England 2014
  • Day Tripping
  • Mostly Concerning Food
  • Music and Theatre
  • Pictures and Poems
  • Reading Matters
  • Travelling Companions
  • Travels with Jolly
  • Uncategorized
  • Western Approaches

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Aberystwyth Alan Ladd Aldi asparagus Ballinasloe Barrow in Furness Betty's Bicycle bicycle tour Bill Bryson Birr Bonnie Prince Charlie Caithness Cardigan Carlisle Charles Lapworth Chesterfield Chris Bonnington claire trevor Cumberland Sausage Cumbria Cycle tour of England cycle tour of ireland Cycle tour of Scotland Cycle tour of Wales Cycling Derbyshire Dumfries Eli Wallach England Glencoe Halfords Ireland James Coburn James Hutton james stewart John Ford john wayne kedgeree Kilkenny Kris Kristofferson Lake District lidl Mark Wallington National Cycle Network New Ross Newtown Newtownstewart Northern Ireland Offaly Oscar Wilde pancakes Risotto Robert Burns Roscommon Scotland Scrambled eggs Shakespeare Shrewsbury Slieve Bloom Mountains Sligo Sperrin Mountains Staffordshire stagecoach Sutherland tagliatelle The Magnificent Seven Thomas Hardy Thurso ulverston vegetarian Waitrose Wales Wexford Yorkshire

Award Free Blog

Aberystwyth Alan Ladd Aldi asparagus Ballinasloe Barrow in Furness Betty's Bicycle bicycle tour Bill Bryson Birr Bonnie Prince Charlie Caithness Cardigan Carlisle Charles Lapworth Chesterfield Chris Bonnington claire trevor Cumberland Sausage Cumbria Cycle tour of England cycle tour of ireland Cycle tour of Scotland Cycle tour of Wales Cycling Derbyshire Dumfries Eli Wallach England Glencoe Halfords Ireland James Coburn James Hutton james stewart John Ford john wayne kedgeree Kilkenny Kris Kristofferson Lake District lidl Mark Wallington National Cycle Network New Ross Newtown Newtownstewart Northern Ireland Offaly Oscar Wilde pancakes Risotto Robert Burns Roscommon Scotland Scrambled eggs Shakespeare Shrewsbury Slieve Bloom Mountains Sligo Sperrin Mountains Staffordshire stagecoach Sutherland tagliatelle The Magnificent Seven Thomas Hardy Thurso ulverston vegetarian Waitrose Wales Wexford Yorkshire

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