(Previous)….(Content)…..(Next)

… …

A brief “review” of Earth’s (Terra) next “steps”

The period “after” the “arrival” of the water until Your times

(Romanian)

My original intention was to go straight through the descriptions of water, the primary medium of development, support, blah, blah, of life. But I thought it would be a lack of knowledge to “support” you in these descriptions.

Therefore, the time has come to present to you a kind of “logical structure” of the “steps” of the Earth… You can consider Your years but, for me, the basic intention is to describe the “periods”, the “steps”. And, from here, I will no longer intervene and leave the freedom of the author to express himself strictly from “your point of view”! For me, there are enough interventions when the author discusses water! Love and understanding!

When the Earth was an ocean of lava, it was “marked”/”delineated” by researchers as “Red Earth”, then, after cooling (the second, after the formation of the Moon), it was called “Black Earth”, because the rocks that formed after cooling were predominantly black…

Returning to the presentation of the process, what must be remembered is that, from the moment of this last cooling, evidence of the age of the Earth began to be found on the Earth as well (the age of the previously presented events was “detected” and confirmed with the “help” of asteroids and meteorites that have “preserved” real age due to lack of melts born from catastrophic collision events).

The beginning of these discoveries is “due” to James Hutton, considered to be the father of geology. He was also the first to dispute the “certain” age of only a few thousand years (only the 7,000 “biblical” years) of the Earth, an opinion “supplied” by one of the religions (it is about the Christian religion — being a Christian myself and constantly emphasizing the existence and Power of God, the “Uniqueness”, “Presence”, of a Divine Power — I emphasize this because I do not want to enter into polemics with anyone, but, simply, I present the opinion that seems good, opportune, of any credible researchers). Hutton estimated that many millions of years are needed to realize the processes he discovered (especially sedimentation processes).

So, continuing the descriptions of the “last” liquid state, it was first “described” by Lord Kelvin, an expert in thermodynamics, by direct deduction from volcanic phenomena. Thus, Kelvin assumed that Earth was a liquid planet that cooled constantly, and, using thermodynamics, he calculated that the age of the planet is at least 20 million years (I insert these calculations to notice the evolution towards current data).

But he did not know one of the basic thermal “springs” of our planet, the radioactivity given by uranium, thorium, cesium, cobalt, and potassium, which, by its activity, has kept the Earth hot to this day and will continue long after them (“ causing” Kelvin’s serious calculation errors).

At the same time, these radioactive elements, which were abundant in the structure of the proto-Earth, gave us precise details related to the age of some rocks, with the help of the characteristic “half-life” of radioactive elements (radioactive decay is a natural transformation of certain substances that consists in the transformation of atoms and their unstable nuclei into atoms with physical and chemical properties different from the original ones, most of the radioactive elements being transformed into lead.

The period called “half-life” is a notion from the exact and applied sciences that refers to the time required for a certain value of some quantity, considered as a reference, to be reduced by half. Depending on “that something observed”, the half-life often has a constant value and can be calculated and measured experimentally.

This “half-life” is used in pharmacology (pharmacokinetic parameter), biology, physics, chemistry, forensics, etc., but we are interested from the point of view of geological radioactivity (as in the case of radioactive isotopes), this being the time necessary so that half of the initial number of radioactive nuclei existing in a material, disintegrates turning into “residual compounds” of the process.

The corresponding “half-life” values are identified, confirmed, and found in specific literature tables.

This procedure was initially used by Arthur Holmes, who, through his determinations regarding the age of the earth, arrived at 4.5 billion years old of the Earth, an age undisputed even today (by collecting data obtained from various rocks from all over the Earth, during his entire life) … From this moment on, we talk about the “ancient times” of Earth.

And, following the “line” of geologists’ discoveries and our history, the first 100 million years (at least) after these events was the period of the “Water World” when the entire surface of the Earth was covered by water (at least 90%). Thus, the Earth was a vast ocean, and this state attracted the name of the period “Blue Earth”.

The proof in this sense are rocks discovered in southern Africa that have the characteristics that concluded the existence of the “World of Waters”, those of the lava that formed in the depths of the water, approximately 3.5 billion years ago (moreover, all the rocks older than 3.5 billion years discovered along the Earth are volcanic rocks formed under deep water).

In those “times,” the atmosphere was far from favorable to life… Between “the appearance of water” and “at least” 3.5 billion years ago, Earth’s atmosphere was nothing but an inferno of CO2, toxic gases of all kinds, and water vapor and other elements listed above that supported a devastating greenhouse effect, its temperature estimated to be “very high” (see, for comparison, the current planet Venus).

It should be “remembered that” with the “arrival of water”, we are “discussing” the ocean and storms of huge intensity, omnipresent on Earth, estimated to have “rained stormily” for many millions of years. The energy of these storms was given both by the elevated temperatures that fueled transit processes, by the immense gravity of the Moon (which, as I mentioned, was remarkably close to the Earth), and by the high rotation speed of the Earth around its axis.

In this ocean, volcanoes began to emerge, little by little, which began to subtly increase land surfaces through volcanic islands.

Over time, necessary for the action of water, the oceans of that period that were full of iron attracted an olive-green color to the entire surface of the planet (then Earth would not have been called the “blue planet” but the “green planet”).

Then, as time passed, the huge blanket of CO2 maintained huge pressures and, of course, extremely high temperatures (over 200 degrees Celsius, due to the greenhouse effect) and, together with the green of the water, the color of the Earth changes to red, our planet becoming the “Red planet”. This hot world with toxic oceans has “existed” for half a billion years.

But this ocean favored the early evolution of life, very possibly the appearance of structured extremophiles, which allowed the further evolution of life for a period of at least 500 million years, during the so-called “chemical soup” period in which they were formed, the first unicellular organisms…

Evidence for this is the formations called “stromatolites”, formed by unicellular organisms (colonies of these organisms), which are dated as having the “oldest” age of 3.5 billion years (without understanding from this that stromatolites did not evolve/exist later).

A “functioning” detail of these stromatolites is represented by the fact that they used photosynthesis for the decomposition of carbon dioxide, with the release of water and oxygen, and the production of saccharides (glucose).

But dramatic changes are about to happen. Volcanic activity, under existing conditions, created a new form of rock, granite. And it began to increase until it was possible to talk about a world of granite (3.4 billion years ago). This is why geologists refer to this period as “Grey Terra”.

Also, South Africa survived the first continental forms of existence of the Earth, those made of granite (granite, being a lighter material than volcanic basalt, the structure of the Earth’s crust became stratified, with the basalt below and the granite above).

So, after one billion years of existence, the Earth began to function geologically according to the current mechanisms. The Earth’s crust began to have its first cracks, like the great tectonic plates of today, but much reduced in size and, of course, much more numerous. In these tectonic rift zones, water invaded the magma beneath the Earth’s crust, inducing the production of this new rock, granite.

Thus began the process of forming the continents with the geological structure it is today, which lasted another billion years (2.5 billion years so far). Now the dominance of the oceans is said to have ended (although even today, only one-third of the planet’s surface is dry, and two-thirds is water).

The constitution of the first granite protocontinents led not only to a change in the appearance of the Earth. During this period, the first significant actions of life were “recorded” (but not life as we know it now or from textbooks about trilobites, dinosaurs, or others).

Now, life manifests itself only through the extremophiles (which had appeared a long time before but, in these times, benefited from the “support” of the continents for a massive “covering” with the help of the almost omnipresent water) which were acidophiles, basophiles, endolites, thermophiles, etc. (bacteria and archaea).

They are the first forms of life on Earth, and they began to “produce” the environment we know now, especially oxygen (which is said to come solely from the action of stromatolites). There is a clear similarity to what terraforming would be.

Then appeared the algae with their photosynthesis… The stromatolites found in Western Australia, in Shark Bay, are proof of their action (of extremophiles and algae) over the millennia. But, to remember, in these stromatolites, the action of the microscopic algae that “bloomed” thanks to the oceanic coasts of that time, and that benefited from the effects of the tides of that time, is “encountered”.

These stromatolites are small elevations that are formed layer by layer by the action of the colonies of these “living things” (in a process like the formation of corals today). These stromatolites are also found in the geological layers formed during those times.

These are the life forms declared to be the ancestors of any life form on this Earth, and they are the ones that, through the processes of photosynthesis, created the atmosphere conducive to all subsequent life forms, an action that they “sustained” during the next 2 billion years.

Together with the ubiquitous bacterial “soup” at the level of the planetary ocean, the microbiome that will be found in any life that will follow evolution was formed.

And not only that… The oxygen produced first dissolved in the existing oceans, almost completely oxidizing the iron deposits that existed there. Thus, the waters “lost” their green color and became the blue waters of today. Moreover, the atmosphere was slowly cleaned of CO2 and saturated with oxygen (because of the metabolism determined by the “use” of photosynthesis), and the Earth became the “Blue Planet”. The relics of those times are the huge sedimentary deposits of iron oxide that are mined today from all over the Earth under the name of iron ore.

The time came 1.5 billion years ago. The atmosphere was “full” of oxygen, the Earth rotated more slowly, the days were longer (16 hours), and the moon moved away from the Earth, at about a third of its current distance, decreasing the gravitational effect. It is the moment when the tectonic repositioning of the small and multiple continents since then “have a miss”.

It seems that, thanks to diffuse tectonics, major pressures of the mantle have been reached, and a kind of concentrated action of magmatic convection currents has been determined from it. And, where these convection currents meet a fissure, a new tectonic rift and new volcanoes appear.

Then what is nowadays called a “fissure eruption” is produced, which is characterized by an eruption in length, as a wall of lava stretched over immense distances (and not from a volcanic cone, as we are used to). And, thus, the plates are pushed in the movement so well known today, of the continents (from those times).

Why did the continents “break up”?!? Because, over time (approximately 400 million years), they formed a single continent, called by us “Rodinia” (where, as an indicative placement, in the center of this continent, is Canada and America today), 1.1 billion years ago. At the end of this period, the day lasted 18 hours and the “normal” temperatures of the atmosphere were around 80 degrees Celsius.

This continent was a desolate place, a desert in the true sense of the word, with no form of life (as we know it today). And now comes the major effect of this unique continent. In its tectonic movement, 750–700 million years ago, Rodinia “triggered” an increase in the activity of ocean currents that transport heat from the Equator to the poles, in addition to a huge increase in volcanic activity (which split the great continent in two) and thus the “Great Freeze” was triggered.

But there was another process that favored this process… Climate change caused by the new ocean currents has led to an increase in the volume of precipitation. The atmosphere still “held” a significant percentage of CO2 and, together with the massive presence of volcanic gases, massive acid rain resulted…

Their effect on the Earth was represented by a massive “storage” of CO2 in rocks and the decrease of the percentage of this gas below the optimal level of the “greenhouse effect”, attracting the decrease of the “thermal capture” and, consequently, the cooling of the atmosphere and the earth’s crust, to the “normal” level of minus 60 degrees Celsius.

This period is referred to as the “White Earth” or the period of the white Earth ball (Snowball Earth). It should be noted that the ice sheet acted favorably the cooling because even more solar radiation was reflected, finally reaching that, virtually, almost all solar radiation was reflected…

However, the latest geological evidence discovered has revealed that the “White Earth” stage existed at least twice in Earth’s “history”, 2.4 billion years ago and between 720 and 635 million years ago, in the so-called Cryogenian period or Marinoan glaciation.

So, little by little, over 50 (70) million years, Earth became an ice planet, a “white” planet completely covered in ice and snow. It is estimated that the entire surface of the Earth was covered by an ice crust of about 2 to 3 km, with the ice “sheets” at land level being much larger (thicker).

One might think that most life forms since then have disappeared, but it is not so. Given the long period of “lack of light,” it is evident that photosynthesis seems to have been almost canceled, life continuing its evolution at the expense of extremophiles (and other unicellular forms) and some forms of algae.

The “practitioners” of photosynthesis just adapted, diversified, and flourished even in the quite present “melting” zones due to the rather massive volcanic activity of those times.

Then, after a while, the weight of the snow “mantle” attracted a kind of uneven burial of the earth’s crust, which attracted the appearance of pressure points and the rupture of the earth’s crust with the appearance of super-volcanoes, which supplemented the “activity” of the “zones of fissure”. They caused a kind of acceleration in the movement of the tectonic plates, and the supercontinent of Rodinia began to break up into several separate, distinct tectonic plates.

In addition, the CO2 emitted by the super-eruptions that took place (billions of tons of gas), increased the greenhouse effect and the Earth began to thaw slowly, 630 million years ago. The phenomenon was also amplified by the fact that the ice sheet did not allow the “absorption” of CO2 and, thus, the entire amount resulting from the eruptions contributed to the greenhouse effect.

Then, the retreat of the immense ice sheet attracted the appearance of new rupture points of the earth’s crust (by releasing it from its weight) and the appearance of even more volcanoes… This, through the processes of “extreme thermal contact”, led to the further decomposition of water, releasing even more oxygen (including the processes of hydrogen peroxide formation — oxygenated water, under the massive action of ultraviolet rays which, with the melting of the ice mantle, attracted the release of vast amounts of oxygen) …

The process “lasted” until 550 (600) million years, and Rodinia separated into continents that allowed the Earth to escape the “embrace” of the ice. Now the day had 22 hours, the ocean currents reappeared, the temperatures were like today, everything stabilized, and the history of life as we know it began, with the start of the explosion of life in the so-called “Cambrian Explosion”.

Now the oceans have truly become the “cradle of life” … Algae quickly “switched” to the processes of photosynthesis and the multicellular life forms represented by worms (some of them also showing armor), sponges, and corals multiplied “intensified presence”. Thus, what appeared to be a ruin for life turned out to be an environment in which life continued its evolution without any problem.

In these moments, it seems that life has encompassed everything in an amazing diversity of forms, but almost exclusively at the aquatic level (the dry being, of course, almost unpopulated). It is stated that there were then as many species as there are species that followed in all “following” times.

The evolutionary “experiments” of life then created the universal support for all life forms that would originate here in the Cambrian.

The high level of oxygen in the oceans that attracted this explosion of life will also bring about a change in the atmosphere.

For the next 100 million years, the oxygen level will reach that of our days and allow the formation of the ozone layer, which will be an additional barrier for solar radiation. The decrease in radiation aggression (which effectively sterilizes the surface unprotected by water, therefore, the land) will attract the “climbing” of life on land (400 million years ago).

This was mostly done by the plant forms, fungi, and molds, the animal forms being represented by the “adaptations” of marine life, such as the cases represented by the mollusk, crustacean, and armadillo-type life forms that developed a kind of early vertebral column (the precursor worms of Pikaia gracilens) and the first skulls (the skulls, of which the Haikouichthys group stands out) … But all in their time…

It should also be mentioned that 460 million years ago, the Earth “moved” significantly, giving birth to a new continent, Gondwana. Now temperatures on the continent register maximums of only 90 degrees Celsius, oxygen is present in current proportions, and the earth is still almost “barren”.

This is because the ozone layer did not have the minimum thickness necessary for solar radiation not to harm life on land. But, until 370 million years ago, this blanket reached the optimal dimensions of protection, and the explosion of life on land could no longer be stopped.

From this moment, algae slowly, easily begin to “really” populate the shores of the oceans and the “depression” areas of the land, areas fed by rather “massive” rains, and evolve into the future plants of the Carboniferous. As a result of this evolution, they emit more and more oxygen into the atmosphere, allowing other evolutions of life…

Even now, Pikaia and its “relatives” are among the first fish of the ocean… From here, fish begin to be omnipresent in seas, oceans, lakes, etc., slowly constituting, together with other living things, the current oil reserves.

Then, just 10 million years ago (360 million years ago), the first “coastal” fishes, such as Tiktaalik and other relatives, became the first therapsids (amphibians), causing a veritable land population explosion.

Another important appearance is represented by the presence of insects, arthropods, etc., which seem to have evolved through a gradual transition (adaptation) from the aquatic environment to the terrestrial one. It should be remembered that, due to the much higher content of oxygen in the atmosphere, it is a period of gigantic insects, a dragonfly the size of an eagle, a scorpion the size of a wolf, and so on…

There would be another significant detail related to the evolution of plants represented by the evolution/adaptation of their form of reproduction through spores, which becomes reproduction through seeds.

So that, in only 50–60 million years (up to 300 million years ago), plants completely populated the Earth’s surface, and it became a world of tropical swamps. It is the period called “Carboniferous”. It is the rainforest world that will last for the next 60 million years.

Evidence of their presence can be found anywhere on Earth in the form of coal deposits. Even now, most of the oil and gas deposits found on Earth have been clearly defined. It was a period of cleaning carbon and storing it in the depths of the earth. Now, the first complete form of the biosphere has formed.

Right now, is the time when the first ancestors of reptiles (Hylonomus Iyelli) appear on the Earth’s surface, no longer lay eggs in water, like fish and amphibians, and start to “practice” laying eggs on land.

A huge volcanic eruption followed, in the current area of Siberia, which lasted continuously for one million years and produced a real mass extinction (the Permian extinction), 250 million years ago.

Clouds of toxic gases spread over the entire earth, taking away sunlight with clouds of volcanic ash but also increasing the level of CO2 and CH4 (methane gas — which has a much more dramatic effect than CO2), which causes overheating the atmosphere (it is estimated that it had a temperature of 100 degrees Celsius), causing the disappearance of over 95% of existing life forms, acid rain destroyed almost everything on land, and ocean waters became pink due to the proliferation of pink algae.

But “Pink Earth” did not last long and did not have a global manifestation, as is the case with the other “colors”, but only at the level of the seas and oceans of those times.

But then, a new supercontinent called “Pangaea” was formed. The climate changed slowly until 240 million years ago, becoming conducive to “global” life again. The temperature normalized, vegetation reconquered Earth, and terrestrial life resumed its “global” evolution.

Now came the time of the reptiles, of the dinosaurs, the most significant living things that existed (apparently, they had these sizes due to the very high content of oxygen in the atmosphere, allowing slight oxygenation of the large organisms, combined with an abundance of food sources).

And 180–190 million years ago, the great supercontinent was “broken” by volcanic activity, forming the Tethys Sea, starting the delimitation of continents that “moved” towards the ones we know today. The volcanoes continued their activity, and it seems that there was an increased phenomenon of global warming, with CO2 levels increasing to over 40% of the composition of the atmosphere, “maintaining” the development of tropical forests. Evidence of massive volcanic activity, especially 100 million years ago, is the diamond deposits on Earth.

A new explosion of all the splendor of life in all its forms, all forms of life developing “indifferent” to the dominance of the saurian…

Here comes the moment from 65 million years ago, that of the famous impact with the asteroid that completely unbalanced the ecosystem of that time and that extinguished the “kingdom” of the dinosaurs (as well as 75% of all forms of life since then).

The proof of these events lies in the geological layers (so-called “tombstones”, the “K layer of death”), which are “full” of a rare element on Earth, iridium, which is quite common in asteroids/meteorites (rocks coming from space).

This geological layer is “joined” by a crater of almost 200 km in diameter near Mexico, dating from that period, which attests to the impact of a meteorite of almost 10 kilometers in diameter (the size of Mount Everest). To this impact was added an immense increase in volcanic activity, and thus this extinction manifested its “full power”.

But, since 50 million years ago, life has gradually recovered. Thus came the time of mammals… and the world of humans. The continents moved to their current “shape” …

And 2–4 million years ago, the “official” ancestors of humans made their appearance. And, even now, the “manifestation” of the glaciations made its appearance. They are an result of the union of the North American and South American continents using the Isthmus of Panama. This union disrupted the ocean currents in that transit zone and thus caused the climatic phenomena of glaciation.

And the last 70–80,000 years belong to the “development” of humans, with all that they attracted…

Conclusions?!?

Earth, as we know it now, can offer us new disasters, new extinctions… It is a planet like any other, subject to “external” disasters as well (as you will see in the following materials) … But, every time, life went on further, even with significant changes… Yes, Terra goes about her business regardless of the life forms on her, taking her repeatedly from the beginning…

That’s why I created this Universe… For a time, for evolution through “life” …

This is also a conclusion, isn’t it?!?

Merticaru Dorin Nicolae

(Previous)….(Content)…..(Next)

… …