“Haud igitur redit ad nihilum res ulla, sed omnes
discidio redeunt in corpora materiai.”
“Non ritorna dunque al nulla alcuna cosa, ma tutte
per disgregazione ritornano agli elementi della materia.”
“Nothing returns to naught; but all return
At their collapse to primal forms of stuff.” (Lucretius, 50 B.C.E)
In these two lines Lucretius defines the paradigms of his cosmology.
Many centuries before Einstein and Wegener, in an angle of the western culture, already there is the intuition that all the phenomena and the expressions of the nature are each others connected in interdependent way, as, for example, the destruction of a part is source of another. At the same time, Lucretius, indirectly, expresses a method of analysis of the nature: reflect upon that you observed and try the answers to interpret the behaviours of the nature without using elements that don’t belong it.
Lucretius turn up, from a high-school past, in Antarctica, and, perhaps, this memory is emerged, stimulated by the daily images of the past of this region in which the processes of transformation seem slowed down, in last thirty - twenty million years, from its same freezing.
The core of the second step of Andrill project carry to the light a geologically short period of time (compared to the comprehensive history of the planet) but for the geologist neophyte they emphasize the continuous activity of the transformation of the planet: the destruction (or better the erosion) of a part behaves the formation of another: the transformation of clasts, ripped to the pre-existent rock layers, in new rocks, sometimes homogeneous, sometimes eclectically combined by the chance of the erosion and its transportation.
Really the chance is, only, seeming.
A careful analysis of the collected data (petrolgysts have counted and classified approximately 90000 clasts of greater dimensions to the 2-3 millimetres) makes us understand that the lack of homogeneity and the disorder are aspects linked to the individuality of the vicinities between the single clasts, but the distribution of the great numbers is not random but it follows rules that the geomorphology tries to find.
The participation inside of the Andrill project of a group of teachers has allowed to follow directly the technical – scientific stages of the plan to obtain implications and ideas to relate inside the curricula of the schools, but in my opinion it has given, above all, the opportunity to observe and to analyse what happens in a group of scientifical research while working.
The research team, from four countries (Italy, Germany, New Zealand, USA), is composed by different subject: sedimentology, paleogeology (nanno, macro and micro fossils), petrology, volcanology, paleomagnetism, geochemistry, engineering of the drilling: specialistic techniques and theories, unified by the method: from the sampling, to the measure, the classification and organization of the data, to their interpretation and therefore, at last, the modelling that must necessarily pass through a stage of synthesis of the single organizations and to a process of interpretative deduction.
The weak point of the modern science is just here in the excessive specialization that can even render more problematic the interpretative synthesis and the unification in a theory. But this is an other speech.
It will have to attend the job of synthesis to understand like in the warmer moments of Miocene (S. Pekar, 2007), whose presence is verified from oceanic sediments to low latitudes (studies on oxygen isotopes), the Antarctic Ice sheet has reacted: how much they retreated and how this phenomenon has modified the water circulation in the oceans and the wind circulation in the atmosphere.
This is a problem that can intersect myth, science – fiction and science and it was a motivating problem for pupils, in our school project.
Science – fiction |
"My name is Arthur Gordon Pym. My father was a respectable trader in sea-stores at Nantucket, where I was born. (......)
I will relate one of these adventures by way of introduction to a longer and more momentous narrative."
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"No doubt the following narrative will be received with entire incredulity, but I think it well that the public should be put in possession of the facts narrated in "An Antarctic Mystery." The public is free to believe them or not, at its good pleasure. (....)
Among Poe's most remarkable works is his tale of the Antarctic seas called "The Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym." I had always supposed the story to be pure fiction of the most fantastic sort; but Captain Len Guy assured me that it must be at least founded upon fact (...) Briefly summarized, the narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym tells how Pym, after many disastrous adventures was left with only one companion.......By some chance, fortunate or unfortunate, they found a gap in the great southern ice barrier which, surrounding the South Pole, usually bars all further advance at about 73° south. Piercing the ice barrier the bold explorers found an open sea..... |
In this way two extraordinary novels of the XIX century begin. The first was written by Edgar Allan Poe (American) in 1838, the second by Julius Verne (French) in 1897. It is plain that the Verne’s history is the continuation of the first Poe’s adventure.
Our history, presented to my pupils, in order to continue, has need of some "scientific" information:
- the first map shows the paths that icebergs walk down in their navigation around the Antarctic continent: a combination of marine currents and winds (J. B. Anderson, 1999),
- the second shows the winds that blow between the 35th° and the 60th° latitude in the southern hemishere (J. B. Anderson, 1999),
- the third show the Antarctic convergence (J. B. Anderson, 1999),
- the fourth map is the "fantastic" elaboration by Philippe Buache of the "Terres Australes" (Di Cuoghi) after 1739. This is an example of the production of maps of this remote zone in periods in that noone had arrived so near. But this map, with its "fantastic" elaboration, has something that is overlapped with the truth.
- The last map (Wikipedia 2007) is a computer elaboration of Antarctica without ice sheets. There is something in common with the fantastic map of Bouche.
The rising out of the water continent occupies an inferior surface in comparison with current Antarctica, covered by ice: the continent is crossed by a great channel.
The fantastic history could become truth! I gave to my pupils this different problems:
A – A little of fantasy
1. Imagine an history, even following the Verne’s and Poe’s adventures, that has the Antarctic continent imagined by Philippe Buache.
2. How could Antarctica be, which problems could you imagine remembering the currents, the winds...how could they change?
3. The climate... as and how much various may it be?
4. Could the continent have been reached by ancient human populations, and from what kind of continents?
5. Do you know the native populations of southern Africa, Australia, New Zeland?
6. And what people were there in the Patagonia, before the arrival of Europeans?
7. All these facts could be useful to your history.
B – A little of scientific modelling
1. Imagine what could happen in that hypothetical geologic period in that Antarctica has lost its glacial covers. You use the computer image that describes it.
2. How, in your opinion, could the currents and winds change?
3. How can be modified the currents that from the Antarctic zone move towards other oceans?
4. But the reduction of the Ice Sheet would involve a modification of the position of the continent regarding the sun and its seasonal lighting, also?
5. Which succession of settlements should you imagine for lands emerged of the Antarctic continent?
As you can see, the questions are many and the potential answers.... innumerable........
Some pupils papers are published on our school website.
As you can see, the questions are many and the potential answers.... innumerable........
Some of these pupils’ works are published (in Italian) on the website of Stefanini school (last reference).
References
Andrill 2007, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANDRILL - https://www.italiantartide.it/dalla-xxi-alla-xxx-spedizione-2005-2015/
Anderson J. B., Antarctic Marine Geology, figure 1.21, pag.14, for the image 1, Cambridge University Press
Anderson J. B., figure 1.28, pag.20, image 2
Anderson J. B., figure 1.32, pag.24, image 3
https://www.diegocuoghi.com/Piri_Reis/Buache.htm - image 4
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:AntarcticaRockSurface.jpg , image 5
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, (Latin and Italian by www.latinovivo.it – in English by William Ellery Leonard http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/Lucretius01.htm)
Pekar S., Resolving Climatic Conundrums from Greenhouse to Icehouse Worlds: Future ANDRILL Projects, conference 17/10/2207, publishing in Mc Murdo Station.
Poe E. A., The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.
Verne J, The Sphinx of Ice Or An Antarctic Mystery.
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