Word: turbidity
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...their public sessions, the diplomats talked of Europe. But their secret talks were of Asia. And Western diplomats carried away a strong suspicion that the Russians had decided on a holding action in Europe to leave themselves free to paddle in Asia's turbid political waters...
...more recent theory has it that the gorges were cut by "turbidity currents," i.e., rivers of mud on the bottom. When a slope of loose material is disturbed-by an earthquake, for example-mud and sand get mixed with the water. Since the turbid mixture is heavier than clear water, it flows down the slope, eroding a valley just as a river does on land. This was known to happen in lakes, and many oceanographers believed that the same thing happened deep under the ocean...
Racing Mud. The trouble did not stop there. The stirred-up mud and sand got mixed with water, and the heavy turbid fluid raced down the continental slope like an enormous river more than 100 miles wide, cutting cable after cable. By plotting the time and place of each cable break, the oceanographers could estimate closely how fast the turbidity current flowed. On the sloping continental rise (at the foot of the continental slope), it raced at 50 knots (57.6 m.p.h.). More than 13 hours later, when it cut the last cable 300 miles to the southeast...