Re: The age of that limestone. As mentioned, you can see the individual shells of the ex marine life all mashed together. The soil level seems to be quite thin. In 12 thousand years one would expect about six inches like where I live. But what really makes the case for a young strata is the hydrogen sulfide In the well water. My daughter's family has to pump the water into a tank and allow the hydrogen sulfide to escape into the air. In a million years or so one would expect natural water infiltration through the limestone to have removed the hydrogen sulfide.
Dear friends,
I really appreciate these multidisciplinary exchanges between physicists, geologists like our friend Gennadiy, and also biologists.
It is by comparing our various experiences that we will move forward in solving the problems we face.
To respond to GRMattson and Red Richards, the presence of hydrogen sulphide in near-surface water layers is often a recent occrence. For example, I had a controversy with the official geologists who took care of the waters of Enghien, a pretty thermal bath town north of Paris:
Their hypothesis was that these waters had a relatively deep origin (about 200 meters) and that the hydrogen sulphide came from the hydrolysis of marcasite nodules present in the geological layer of the Sparnacian. (To find out what marcasite nodules are, see the photographs of the rust-colored concretions posted by gennadiy.) It's marcasite. It is an unstable form of pyrite. (FeS2) If we saw them and polish these concretions, we obtain a beautiful golden mirror. (but less golden than pyrite)
The ancients made infrared lenses from them to light sacred fires, but find very few of them in archaeological deposits, because as soon as these lenses are exposed to humid air, bacteria oxidize them into sulphate and produce metastable sulfur, and then iron sulfate and iron oxide.
Look in the photos for the difference between freshly mined nodules and rusty nodules.
I had a beautiful marcasite mirror that weighed more than a kilogram, and when I opened the box where I kept it, there was only whitish powder.
My concretion collection is protected by dipping in wax.
The waters of Enghien are probably due to the reduction of selenitous waters (That is to say loaded with gypsum, or calcium sulphate) These waters come down from the hills of Sannois and Montmorency, next to my house, and the sulfates are reduced to sulfide by the action of underground bacteria.
Obviously, a reducing body is needed. I postulated the presence of an old peat bog or an old reed bed buried in the ground, which would have provided a source of carbon essential for the reduction of sulphate:
SO4-- + 2C -------> S-- + CO2
I think the huge sulfur deposits in Louisiana are caused by this reaction. (The carbon comes from methane, and the sulfur comes from the gypsum of the "diapirs")
Around the spring, in an oxygenated environment, the opposite reaction is carried out by other bacteria which oxidize the sulphides, first to sulphur, then to sulfuric acid.
SH2+ O2 ---------> S + H2O---------> S04--
These bacteria form filaments and biofilms called “baregines”. They secrete healing compounds and antibiotics, as well as sulfate-reducing bacteria. Needless to say that these compounds, poorly known, are the subject of only a few studies. We even try to sterilize the thermal waters by all means, which is heresy.
20 years ago, I warned the authorities, through the press, against the project of a semi-buried highway at this place which would have largely blocked the road to the thermal waters. During the digging of this highway, we were able to observe the presence of black soil, loaded with organic matter over several meters. The expected fossil bog was there.
As soon as the oxygen has penetrated the layer containing the anaerobic bacteria, these precious microscopic auxiliaries of medicine were extinguished forever. To make matters worse, the highway was built under the water table and a pumping station was installed in an underground raft. The pumps locally dried up the water table.
A recent deep drilling down to -110 meters did not find any sulphide water at depth. The old thermal center which treated asthmatic children of Paris with sulphurous waters has been transformed into a luxury “Spa” for casino customers.
In the lake sediments, we will undoubtedly discover one day, thanks to a real estate operation, the remains of the thermal baths that the Gallo-Romans did not fail to build in this place. We will not have had their wisdom.
I made this drawing of the geological structure of this place for my students:
and this is the underground way of the sulfhydric waters:
