When bong water becomes a
controlled substance, it can be quite imaginable to think that water may contain secrets beyond its basic chemical composition, like
homeopathic memory. However, the explanations about the importance of water while perhaps not quite as visibly concrete, may come from an abstract faith in theories of physical and natural science. The difference between
totalizing discourse that comes from a few hits and from entire
scientific paradigms may lie in the science rather than the pseudo-science of water. Then again, the next time I'm in Denver I might try the Mile High Dispensary anyway.
Geologists may finally be able to explain why Denver, the Mile High City, is a mile high: water. A new theory suggests that chemical reactions, triggered by water far below the Earth's surface, could have made part of the North American plate less dense many millions of years ago, when the continents we know today were still forming.
Because plates float on the Earth's mantle, parts of the Western United States might have risen, like an empty boat next to one with a heavy cargo, pushing the vast High Plains far above sea level, according to the theory formulated by geologists Craig Jones and Kevin Mahan at the University of Colorado-Boulder.
Their work appeared last week on the website of the journal Geology, and is a big deal for Denver, where the 5,280-foot elevation is a point of pride and a big part of the city's identity. At Coors Field, where the Colorado Rockies play baseball, a single row of purple seats interrupts about 50,000 green ones, marking the mile-high line in the grandstand.
Geologists have long been puzzled by how the High Plains could be so big, so high and so smooth. The plains descend gently from roughly 6,000 feet to 2,000 feet above sea level as they stretch for thousands of square miles, from the Texas Panhandle to southern Montana, and from western Kansas to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado.
It's well established that much of the West was still at sea level 70 million years ago, and that tectonic shifts don't fully explain the High Plains' altitude. The lifting began long after the ancient Farallon oceanic plate was shoved deep under a vast part of western North America and then settled into the planet's molten center over millions of years.
Why? "Crustal hydration," Jones and Mahan theorize.
There’s a whole lot of hogwash in “Secret of Water,” a cheesy documentary stuffed full of pseudoscience masquerading as profound truth.
After beginning with a slow-motion video of a falling water drop — an image repeated throughout, as if such stock footage were on clearance sale — a narrator says that “any substance coming into contact with water leaves a trace in the water,” declaring as fact a theory that’s been widely debunked. Water, he states, “records the whole history of its relationship with the world — as if on magnetic tape.”
Soon, slippery-worded generalizations, unattributed studies and vague claims are trotted out and seconded by talking heads who are often labeled little more than “researcher” or “professor.” Hard evidence and competing viewpoints are nonexistent.