How deep is the Sahara?

Originally posted by Netchicken
I have read that underneath the Sahara are massive lakes of water. - no kidding...

Yeah your right they can dig wells in the Sarhara but they are very deep some more than 1,000 m (more than 3,280 ft) deep.

encarta.msn.com...

Originally posted by whita
Also along the same lines, ancient Vedic (hope I have that right) writing suggests a desciption of a nuclear attack in ancient India. About the same time that the ancient Indian rulers were flying around in their vimanas.

But that was near Rajastan, thousands of miles from Sahara. I don't see a connection between those two.

Maybe i am confusing them...

Surf

would a ground penetrating radar be able to pass through the sand and detect more solid objects below?

Originally posted by spangbr
would a ground penetrating radar be able to pass through the sand and detect more solid objects below?

GPR is perfect for that type of stuff since rock and stone are more dense then sand im sure it would show up. I am not sure how deep GPR works though there has to be limits to how far they can look.

Its actualy already detected, becouse you can see the sat. ptotos of 8000 years old river beds under the sand, I just forgot the exact depth, but it wasn't much. Sahara isn't very old.

[edit on 6-11-2004 by Pavel]

From Spaceguard UK: Largest ever field of impact craters uncovered

The discovery of the largest field of impact craters ever uncovered on Earth is the first evidence that the planet suffered simultaneous meteor impacts in the recent past. The field has gone unnoticed until now because it is partially buried beneath the sands of the Sahara desert in south-west Egypt.

The structures turned out to be part of a huge field of 100 craters spread over 5000 square kilometres near the Gilf Kebir plateau. The craters vary in diameter from 20 metres to 2 kilometres across. The previous largest known crater field covers a mere 60 square kilometres in Argentina.

In February, Paillou led a joint Egyptian and French mission to find the site and examined 13 of the craters, confirming that they were the result of simultaneous impacts. But accurately dating the field has been tricky. Paillou estimates that it is roughly 50 million years old, relatively young in geological terms.

Russian satellites have discovered a river flowing 700 feet under
the Sahara.
It carries enough water to supply 50,000 people and is said to
surge with "colossal power".

River under the Sahara

This site shows some green glass found in the desert in Libya, and mentions 'metoric elements', so I believe they are attributing it to metorite impacts.

www.saharamet.com...

And another site with links to other research and expeditions. Some refer to the idea of an atomic explosion as the cause, as well as metorites.

www.image-contrails.de...

very very interesting topic! could it be that a huge cataclysmic event like the flood created the Sahara desert?? It's close proximity with the holy land of biblical times could assert this theory!

ATTA has now been used to count krypton-81 atoms in groundwater samples in the ancient waters of the Sahara. Kr-81 (half life=229,000 years) is a rare isotope produced by the cosmic rays in the atmosphere, and accompanies more common forms of atmospheric krypton.

Trapped in water underneath the Sahara, the abundance of Kr-81 relative to other Kr isotopes provides information on how long the water has been there. Extracting krypton from the Nubian aquifer in the western Sahara, and using the ATTA technique, the researchers found that the water's age ranges from 200,000 to a million years old, depending upon the sample location.

www.aip.org...

Couple facts:
Only small part of the Sahara is sand and dunes, most of it is just rocky terrain.

Actually there's signs of old rivers in the bedrock under the sand.


Radar used to it is called "SIR-C/X-SAR"
Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C/X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar


ourworld.compuserve.com...
www.photovault.com...
www.geog.ucsb.edu...

www.qadas.com...
www.jpl.nasa.gov...

I�m not sure about the Sahara as a whole, however is it not thought that desertification due to natural global warming and erosion from overpopulation in certain areas of central Africa�s savannah is expanding the area of desert. (I use the term desert loosely, not as a reference to the areas rainfall).
Could it not be that the climate in the area dried up over thousands of years? With no moisture the plants etc holding the topsoil together die, loose sandy earth drying up, add a bit of wind for good measure etc etc. Just a thought.

I can't speak as to the depth of the sahara, but I have some thought regarding the alleged "glass floor". In fact it may be a good topic for another post altogether. In West Africa, in Gaboon, there have been discovered a series of "natural nuclear reactors" beneath the Oklo Uranium mines. Discovered in 1972, scientists estimate that the reactions started about 1.7 Billion years ago!!!! Facinating stuff. Could this type of phenomena be responsible for melting the sand into glass???

Originally posted by Sport Kensington
I am not a scientist, but I did sleep at a Holiday Inn last night.

perfect, absolutly perfect!