Let's Do A Time Warp!

(Picture from here)

Followup: This Accretionary Wedge is now up.

This is a call for submissions for a June edition of the Geoblogosphere's favorite Carnival: the Accretionary Wedge! Rumors of its demise were greatly exaggerated.

As a geology person, one of my favorite ways of wasting time is daydreaming and trying to imagine what various events in the history of this magnificent planet (and its surrounding environment) would have looked like if I could have been there when they happened. For me, some of my favorite contemplations are eruptions at Mazama and Yellowstone, the Cretaceous-Tertiary impact event, the great waterfalls, rapids and river created when the Strait of Gibraltar opened up and the Mediterranean Sea refilled. I would love to actually watch dinosaurs go about their lives, and the Burgess fauna as well. I, and I imagine most geologists, could fill a book with historical (or future) places, things and events for which we'd consider sacrificing body parts to witness first-hand.

So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is this: “Where and when would you most like to visit to witness and analyze an event in Earth’s history?” Suppose you have a space-time machine to (safely and comfortably) watch an event unfold; which event would you most like to see? Why? What do we already know or hypothesize about that event that appeals to you, or that you would like to test? What would be the result, the upshot, of knowing more about this event? You do not necessarily need to limit yourself to Earth, nor to the past. You do not need to limit yourself to a particular instant if peeking several times over a period of minutes or ages helps you envision the evolution of something. You do not need to limit yourself to environments that could support life as we know it... imagine being able to take a time-sampling of magmatic composition from 10 miles below the surface as a nascent mid-ocean ridge opens up, or examining the circumference of the vent during one of Yellowstone's mega-eruptions! I'll tell you, this technology is basically magic. (See the third law here.) Feel free to toss in a few "also-rans" of your favorite day-dreams, but please develop one. This isn't intended to be just a set of lists.

Kim has suggested June 15th as the date, and after looking at a calender, that's about perfect. It's a Monday, so I can use Sunday to assemble it. Early submissions would be wonderful, late submissions will be added post-hoc, but I'd like to set a dealine for Saturday, June 13. (Oh noes! Friday the 13th falls on a Saturday next month!)

Kim, Chris and I are helping BrianR get the Wedge back on its feet; it's been pining for the fjords the last few months. Please help by mentioning this to all your geobloggy buddies. I'm looking forward to sharing your time-space daydreams.

P.S. Leave a comment to let me know when you have posted your submission.