Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Après la déluge, nous

Here’s something (perhaps coincidentally) topical from Imperial College:

A catastrophic megaflood separated Britain from France hundreds of thousands of years ago, changing the course of British history, according to research published in the journal Nature…
At its peak, it is believed that the megaflood could have lasted several months, discharging an estimated one million cubic metres of water per second.

That’s a lot of water: about four times the average discharge of the Amazon, and almost equal to the rate at which sweat came off Nixon’s forehead during the debate with JFK.

But “catastrophic”, though? Something that separated us from France?