Self-proclaimed sinkhole skeptics claim that the coming of cell phone cameras and The Web is the reason for the increase in news about sinkholes. In other words, it's not that there are more sinkholes, but rather that there are new ways of easily taking photos of sinkholes and publishing them everywhere in an easily-accessed "Google-able" format, resulting in more news of sinkholes instead of more sinkholes.
But is this really true?
Some areas -- for example, in Florida, where there are more sinkholes than anywhere else in the continental United States -- are experiencing a doubling of insurance claims for sink holes in just a few years -- not just more news of sink holes.
Skeptics would blow off statistics like this by attributing them to a greater awareness of the right to make such claims, also resulting from more news of sinkholes, not more sinkholes, or to an increasingly litigious culture.
But if those rationalizations -- which come down to "nothing at all special is happening" -- how does one explain something like the following? ...
Harrisburg, the capital city of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, has been suffering from an astonishing rash of 40 new sinkholes in the last several years, in a rectangular area roughly bordered by Route 81 on the north, Route 83 on the east, Route 83 on the south, and the Susquehanna River on the west. There are now so many of them, so suddenly, in one time period, that Harrisburg can't afford to fix them. In looking at the map, one gets the feeling that we aren't just looking at a "pesky new problem," but rather a prelude to crustal collapse -- a collapse of the section of the Earth's crust which Harrisburg itself is sitting on.
Something like that happened in China many centuries ago, where what used to be level ground as high as the surrounding peaks was punctuated with so many sinkholes over the centuries that the whole area collapsed and the debris became the valley floor between peaks which you see here ...
The difference between Harrisburg and the China example is that the Harrisburg phenomenon is occurring in only a few years -- since 2010.
Skeptics say, "It rained in Harrisburg a lot in 2011 and 2013." Or, they say, "There must be mines down there!" Yes, it did rain a lot, as claimed. But -- come on -- it's next to a river! And, no, there are no reports of mines under Harrisburg. The skeptics' claims motivate one to ask, "Why should heavy rains during 2 of the last 6 years suddenly succeed in opening up so many sinkholes over so huge an area in so short a time -- about 36 square miles -- when a river, and heavy rains over the last thousand centuries have not been able to produce such a frightening result?"
And Harrisburg is only about 320 feet above sea level. I.e., there are no deeply-located underground torrents between Harrisburg and the ambient water table. Further, the map of south-central Pennsylvania karst regions -- areas where the quarternary soils of the surface lie upon a deeper limestone base subject to erosion by water -- shows that Harrisburg is situated upon non-karst -- non-limestone -- rock. I.e., Harrisburg's founders chose a good locale to lay down their city's foundations. It should not be looking like a giant piece of Swiss cheese right now. Hit-up Map 68, here ...
... to verify for yourself that Harrisburg's foundations were situated upon non-karst rock.
Two giant sinkholes recently swallowed up parts of Guatemala City in Guatemala. One of them is the first sinkhole pictured above at the top of this blog piece. There are enormous new sinkholes all over the world. Multiple sinkholes have have suddenly begun plaguing Washington, D.C., including near the White House and Congress. ("Praise the Lord"?)
One very interesting form of sinkhole is the underwater variety. Though such sinkholes are always hidden by the water itself, visually, you can sometimes use your computer to successfully "google" places on Earth where the crustal plate beneath water -- in one case a river has broken through, and and begun flooding down into a sinkhole so that incredible quantities of water, hundreds of cubic miles of water, are simply going someplace "down there"!
What in Heaven's holy name is happening "down there"? And, could this ever happen in Magnolia, New Jersey?
Eight (8) years ago, two of the men working upon the completion of the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland suddenly "freaked-out" and filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court in Hawaii to stop the other scientists at the Large Hadron Collider from turning it on.
They had two arguments. The more comprehensible of the two arguments is this ...
The Large Hadron Collider fires two streams of protons toward each other at fantastically high speeds, and then photographs the "junk" emerging from the collisions.
These streams are so powerful that if you were to walk through the Collider beam as it is accelerating the beams, it would cut you in half.
The Collider scientists admit that their own figures showed that there is a certain ongoing risk that two colliding protons could form what they call a "mini black hole." They said that, possibly, the black hole could smash into the cave walls surrounding the Collider, and immediately gather enough mass from molecules in the cave wall to commence a net downward trajectory toward the center of the Earth, where the Earth's own gravity would force feed the Earth itself to the black hole.
In college, I had a brief love affair with relativistic physics and quantum mechanics.
So when one of the Collider scientists pooh-poohed the lawsuit to keep the thing from turning on by arguing that "mini black holes" would "evaporate" from Hawking radiation emissions "in a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second," I knew that he did not have even the most elementary understanding of Einstein's Theory of Relativity. I called him up on the telephone and I told him, "First, technically there is no such thing as a black hole, because each forming black hole's own forming event horizon keeps the object from completing its formation into a black hole, forever, relative to us. That same slowed formation process prevents mini black holes from finishing their formation, also, relative to us. If they're not fully formed, and if time is effectively permanently stalled for them, relative to us, then they can never 'evaporate.' Voila -- mini black holes last forever."
"But if you're right," he objected, "then mini black holes forming in the upper atmosphere due to the collision of a proton-variety cosmic ray and an atom of hydrogen or helium in the upper atmosphere should occasionally strike the Earth."
"Maybe," I said, "Maybe not. If they retain the electron of the atmospheric atom after the collision, they would probably retain their Brownian Motion potential, and float up, into space. Let's say they can occasionally strike the Earth."
"Yeah!" he answered, "When did that ever happen?"
"Tunguska," I responded.
"Okay," he said, "Let's assume that Tunguska was one. Where did it come out the other side of the Earth?"
I thought, "Huh! How could this guy be a spokesman for the Collider? He has a kid's understanding this stuff!"
I asked, "Why would it 'come out the other side'? Every time the object slams into another atom or molecule in the Earth, it loses more of its forward momentum. Pretty soon, the only thing pulling it into the Earth is gravity -- not momentum. It's gradually going to work its way into the center, and stop!"
He hung up.
In any event -- the judge decided in favor of letting the Collider be turned on.
And so here's my question ...
Is the Large Hadron Collider manufacturing vast quantities of mini-collapsars -- "mini-almost-black-holes" -- and dumping them into the Earth, where they become super-heavy and eat-up the inside of the Earth?
Is that the reason for sink-holes everywhere?
In any event, regardless of the fundamental reason for what appears to be an increase in sinkholes everywhere, it can't be denied that most occur in water-soluble karst rock. Perhaps the process of penetration of and erosion of karst rock is greatly accelerated when a mile-wide tunnel cut by a Collider-generated collapsar travelling sideways through the crust appears beneath it.
Could such ever happen in our little town, Magnolia, New Jersey?
The answer appears to be "maybe," under a small corner of the town which happens to lie over a narrow karst rock line, running northeast-to-southwest, in the ground near Davis Road and Shreve Avenue in Magnolia.
Let's say that someday, a mile-wide tunnel being drilled sideways through the bedrock by a collapsar from the collider in Switzerland happens to pass beneath Magnolia under the karst rock under FedEx. Suddenly, water in the karst rock has a place to go, and it begins to flow and to dissolve-away the karst rock. Finally, boom, the surface gives way to gravity, and Magnolia has its own giant sink hole.
