Saturday, February 21, 2015

PBS: Carving Petra?


  1. NOVA | Building Wonders - PBS

    www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/building-wonders.html

    PBS
    ... investigates the "Petra: Lost City of Stone," once a thriving metropolis of temples, markets, and spectacular tombs carved into cliffs. How did Petra's architects ...
  2. Video: Petra: Lost City of Stone | Watch NOVA Online | PBS ...

    video.pbs.org/video/2365427585/

    PBS
    2 days ago - How did early engineers carve tombs into rock cliffs and funnel water to this desert city? Watch online: Petra: Lost City of Stone from NOVA.

  3. I turned the TV on because my wife and her friend were out shopping and I'm not a shopper by choice unless it is online. This likely is because my mother lost me downtown Los Angeles in Bullock's Department store for quite a while when I was 6. I wasn't really happy about this and have avoided shopping whenever I could get away with it ever since.
But, as I watched this program on how they carved Petra out of sandstone they looked around the world for a similar rock to carve to see what instruments they used to make Petra. So, a similar kind of sandstone exists on the border of the Los Angeles area as you move out towards the desert in one location. So, men tried different rock carving tools until they found the right way to carve to simulate how Petra was carved. They wound up with similar tools but because of not having infinite manpower like they had they eventually started carving with pneumatic tools. So, they finally found ways to simulate how Petra was carved by using experience carvers and sculptors associated with Brown University.

They were trying to understand how water was found for Petra is linked by legend to Moses in how he struck a rock and water came out. But, this Moses spring is 5 miles away from Petra. They found evidence of ceramic pipes from this Moses spring to Petra. So, this is what they found actually fed Petra with water from this spring through ceramic pipes.


They found through research that the ideal flow of water so as not to explode ceramic pipes would be a slope of 4 degrees. When researchers went to petra the signs of where the pipes were laid way back was exactly 4 degrees.

They found that carving had to be done in the sandstone from the top down. They also found they didn't need to be in harnesses and instead used pipes with holes drilled into the sandstone rock they then placed planks on the pipes. As they carved more and more the holes for the planks to stand on were carved away as they moved down. Since this is the only culture we know about much that did this it is an interesting study. 

Also, this might be more and more useful to humans over time because since we likely are in either a Geomagnetic Excursion or Polar Shift, living in homes carved into sandstone could also help protect humans from cosmic rays and Solar Flares because we won't have the protection of the magnetosphere as long as there is a Geomagnetic excursion or polar shift going on. 

And a Geomagnetic excursion takes at least 1000 years before it subsides. A polar shift can take 10,000 years to complete. And during this time human dna will be vulnerable along with all surface dwellers not protected by at least 10 feet of earth or sandstone or rock or cement. So, literally all dna life on earth including all plants and animals are sure to mutate in as of yet unknown ways over the next 1000 to 10,000 years of genetic mutation that will be caused by a 0 to 5% of normal magnetosphere worldwide during this time. We still had a 90% to 100% of normal magnetosphere until the early 2000s. However, that is mostly gone now from above earth.

The biggest problem with a city like Petra declining likely happened around 363 AD when an earthquake occurred there and big columns collapsed. So, living in a sandstone home or palace wouldn't be that useful during a California earthquake where you could be crushed. So, back to the drawing board at least for California.

However, building a Cement house with a dirt burm where you grow lawn grass over the top of your house as a way to protect yourself from earthquakes, solar flares and cosmic rays. 

Even though you might want about 10 feet of dirt or cement between you and the air and sky vertically, you could likely have sliding glass doors vertically in the front back or sides of your well designed earthquake proof house. This way you might reduce (while in your home) your exposure to Cosmic Rays and Solar flares by about 75% to 80% to prevent your dna from mutating beyond a certain point.

However, the other thing is DNA mutation isn't always bad. It can be good too. So, you always have a 50/50 chance of a mutation being positive. So, is the glass half empty or half full?

It's hard to say whether Cosmic rays and solar flares are going to make you die from cancers or to see through walls and levitate? It's really hard to say what will happen. This is just another one of the unknowns that has to be researched more starting now and on into the future.

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