Tuesday, September 23, 2008

The glacier at Ground Zero

A fantastic landscape in Lower Manhattan — plummeting holes, steep cliffsides and soft billows of steel-gray bedrock, punctuated by thousands of beach-smooth cobblestones in a muted rainbow of reds and purples and greens — has basked in sunlight this summer for the first time in millennia.

At Ground Zero, Scenes From the Ice Age

This monumental carving was the work of glaciers, which made their last retreat from these parts about 20,000 years ago, leaving profound gouges in the earth and rocks from the Palisades, the Ramapo Mountains and an area of northern New Jersey known as the Newark Basin.

Plumbing these glacial features and souvenirs has been critical in preparing the foundation for Tower 4 of the new World Trade Center, being built by Silverstein Properties. The concrete footings from which its columns rise must rest on firm bedrock. Engineers need a clear understanding of the rock’s contours.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

And soon the earth will push more poeple around the foundation.Dinosaurs are a trick from god to see if we have expelled the witch doctors in Africa with the nut job preachers from the third wave church in Alaska....

Anonymous said...

It is a shame that they could not preserve a portion of this - what an incredible picture - one of the largest and most modern buildings in the world standing on a pool made by a waterfall from a glacier.

Anonymous said...

in other words... it will take even longer to build. If you want to see glacial landscapes, go to Central Park or uptown Manhattan.

Anonymous said...

What an appropriate metaphor - a bunch of stone age lunatics from the middle east, who follow a millenium old "religion", hijack 21st Century airplanes and fly them into skyscrapers, murdering thousands of people. The reconstruction efforts began, albeit at a glacial pace, assuring us all that the new buildings should be completed by the time of the next ice age, which may not happen anyways, due to global warming (one of the tenets of the new religion of the left - worship of the mother goddess of the earth).

Anonymous said...

I'm suprised that there hasn't been a discover of an ancient "Fedders" society.

Anonymous said...

"plummeting holes, steep cliffsides and soft billows of steel-gray bedrock, punctuated by thousands of beach-smooth cobblestones in a muted rainbow of reds and purples and greens —"

I thought they were referring to Bloomberg's heart.

Anonymous said...

"plummeting holes, steep cliffsides and soft billows of steel-gray bedrock, punctuated by thousands of beach-smooth cobblestones in a muted rainbow of reds and purples and greens —"

I thought this was a tour of the Kueens Kounty Klubhouse.