Glaciers

Do you think glaciologists will come visit Denver to observe the receding piles of ice and the power they had before they melted? You should see our potholes!

The best (as in most interesting, not most factual) science lesson I ever received was a PBS special on how some strange valley was formed in the northwestern United States. The consensus geology for decades was that erosion must have caused the peculiar formations, but there were just too many inconsistencies. Near the beginning of the investigation into the cause of the valley a man proposed a catastrophe and was laughed out of the scientific community. Literally decades later computer models showed that a large river moving very fast could have caused these puzzling structures. On a smaller scale we see streams cause them all the time, but the scientists had been unable to imagine something so massive.

Whence did this mass of fast-moving water come? It had, they posit, been dammed by a wall of ice. Water does all sorts of interesting thing when compressed, still liquid, in a glacier. The force is astounding. Glaciers. They're cool. Check out the PBS website, including the transcript, here. Disclaimer: if you ignore all dates prior to AD 1, you'll be fine. I don't think there's other evolutionary stuff.

I can tell you that the miniature destruction wreaked by piles of ice, melting down and carving rivers beneath the dwarf-mountains is beautiful. The sound and sight of running water, too, reminds me of Narnia, when the winter begins finally to thaw.

Job 38:29,

"Out of whose womb came the ice?

and the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it?"

My calendar currently has a quote from Albert Einstein, who was a genius though he was not a great moral example nor always correct scientifically (according to me) and who could probably have gotten farther if he'd started with the revealed word of the Creator. He said, "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." Life is much more exciting if you choose the latter.

To God be all glory.