"Chris Dixon, the project manager at Seattle Tunnel Partners [...] said he felt pretty confident that the blockage will turn out to be nothing more or less romantic than a giant boulder, perhaps left over from the Ice Age glaciers that scoured and crushed this corner of the continent 17,000 years ago. " ~ The article.
"Mystery Object Found to be Benign, Everyday Rock" does not make for a great headline.
Edit: I may be underestimating NYT's ingenuity a bit. I suppose "Big Bertha Resumes Drilling After Penetrating Ancient Glacial Super Rock" would serve the purpose.
Print news is now web-based which is all about ad impressions via alarmist or overly dramatized articles. Journalism somehow keeps finding a way to get worse.
This isn't new -- journalism has always been about selling a headline. But even then, it's just about them meeting a demand we have for the curious/ridiculous/obscene.
The area that Bertha is digging in right now is glacial till, so it wouldn't be even a little surprising if it ran into a big glacial erratic. It should be able to chew through those even so, but if it ends up loose and just bounces around in front of the cutting head then it would be a problem, which is probably what's happening.
"Chris Dixon, the project manager at Seattle Tunnel Partners [...] said he felt pretty confident that the blockage will turn out to be nothing more or less romantic than a giant boulder, perhaps left over from the Ice Age glaciers that scoured and crushed this corner of the continent 17,000 years ago. " ~ The article.