The first life on Earth could have created most of the land area we live on today. This is according to a new geophysical model of the evolution of the Earth's crust and mantle
On the face of it, the claim that in that period all life was microscopic - seems exaggerated. But researchers from Germany claim that the process was carried out in the following way: early life led to erosion of the soil, which brought a large amount of wet sediments into fractures in the subduction zones - those places where one tectonic plate was crushed under another plate. When all the mud mixed with the earth's mantle, the water trapped there revived the geochemistry in the depths and caused volcanic eruptions and magma to rise to the crust and build more and more thick land mass.
The researchers from the German Space Agency in Berlin built models of the early Earth including crust and mantle with or without the erosion caused by plant roots, bacteria, lichens and the other causes of soil erosion, which show that without life, the Earth would have contained less land and would have left more marine life as it existed before the development of life. It was not easy to reach this conclusion, however, since there is still not enough data on how many living creatures add to the sediments that fall into the reduction areas today. "It is very difficult to quantify the biological addition to erosion," explains Dennis Honing from the Institute for Planetary Studies in Berlin, Germany. Also, the estimates found in the literature range from the absence of any effect to a widespread effect. In our model we decided to try several rates of erosion to get an overall trend.
According to the model of Honning and his colleagues, when the Earth was several million years old, a situation arose where a piece of land emerged from the mantle. Life then played with the planet's geochemistry, adding water to the mantle and causing the system to stabilize again with a much larger land mass.
The work is part of a study that tries to better understand how life and water fundamentally changed the evolution of the Earth.
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What soil erosion did ancient life cause? What is the source of the news?
You are talking about some of the organic compounds and it is not related.
for miracles
Jesus
As you know, it is not true what you say. Some liquids shrink when heated.
to the skeptic
What would happen if the average temperature of the liquid were to change?
As you know, liquids expand when heated and shrink when cooled... food for thought aha.
safkan
What you say is true. But, this does not contradict the idea in the article. The article does not just invent a hypothesis. It describes the results of simulating the development of the world under different assumptions.
The idea is not stupid. 20% of our atmosphere is the result of living things. Humans cause warming. Vegetation stabilizes soil in many places in the world.
The article does not talk about a theory, but about an explanation of the phenomenon. We can talk about the probability of the correctness of the explanation, and compare this probability to other explanations.
How nice to come up with hypotheses that cannot be proven and cannot be disproved. It gives a living to the researchers to hide the speculations under the guise of scientific research, it gives the journalists to tell science fiction stories.
If you don't know, it's better to simply say that you don't know. Do not imagine and tell grandmother's stories.
Regardless of this, in connection with the reactions related to the movements of the continents. Most of the Earth is liquid, this is because deep within the Earth there is a very high temperature (on the order of 1000 degrees Celsius, probably much more). Because of the heat, the materials there melt (whereas when they reach the surface of the cool earth they solidify). This is why volcanoes spew lava, lava is molten material that originates under the earth's crust. On top of the aforementioned liquid heat was the Earth's crust, which is essentially solid because it is cooler than the layers below it. The earth's crust is not hermetically connected to one precise unit but consists of a considerable number of plates that are adjacent to each other and rub against each other. When the friction does not inhibit the movement of the plates relative to each other, the short event called an earthquake is created. The aforementioned erosion movements are also the cause of the formation of folds on the earth's surface, i.e. the creation of mountains and valleys. Except for earthquakes and land folds - the floating movements of the plates (of which the earth's crust is composed) causes the displacement of continents, the displacement of continents is very slow. The mechanism of the movement of the continents is not known (for example, it is not known why one continent moves in a certain direction and why another continent moves in another direction).
Doesn't matter - can you point out the mistakes?
You have to close your eyes, count to three and believe very strongly to see that Japan fits China.
for miracles
That's exactly what I'm saying. Very ancient marine fossils are found on the continental plates because they were once underwater.
And India does not come close to the continent.
Friends, look at the globe, America complements Africa. Japan complements China. Madagascar Africa. New Zealand and Australia. The Arabian Peninsula straddles Africa and Asia. Canada Russia. How can you not see the swelling?
By the way, some of you did not understand, the oceans are indeed on a shelf of solid rock, but this shelf is very thin in relation to the radius of the earth. Almost all the rest of the radius is a liquid and hot environment
Father, it's time you hire an editor with knowledge in the field of geology. There is so much nonsense written in the article that I don't know where to start. And the illustration is far from reality.
Well, you ignore everything I write to you, and insist on things that contradict all observations. There is no point in continuing the argument.
Jesus
Don't want to offend... but in Australia there are fossils of marine animals from more than 3.5 billion years ago.
And don't want to offend - but India is moving north into the continent...
Japan is moving away from the continent, and as evidence its coastline fits exactly to the continent. I'm not wrong the oceans are on a thin shelf of rock that covers a ball of hot liquid. From a radius of 6500 km the rock layer of the earth ranges from zero to seventy km. which is about a percent…
And how do you explain it, that, for example, on the eastern coasts of North America, or the coasts of Japan, the ocean floor actually advances towards the continent? This is opposite behavior to what you would expect if your theory were correct.
You are wrong, the ocean floor moves on solid. This solid behaves like a liquid except that the time and distance scales are very large. There is a trend only in very specific areas, and usually there is volcanic activity above them.
Secondly, the continents rise above the ocean floor, which is really new, not above other continents.
That's exactly the point. The continents are billions of years old and the oceans are no more than three hundred million years old. What you didn't understand about the fossils: when the surface of the globe grew, the continents were pushed out of the water and thus areas that were previously under water emerged (Australia among them).
Jesus
The theory of an expanding planet is well known, old, and clearly disproved. The idea was brought up towards the end of the 19th century, and several times after that. The idea was given something like proximity to a scientific idea by Dirac (nobel prize winner) but then it is about spreading at the rate of parts per trillion, not something that will cause the creation of continents...
You are not right that all the continents are so young. For example in Australia there are mountains that are close to 4 billion years old.
I don't see the connection between life in water and this theory. And the existence of shells on mountains only proves that you do not know what you are talking about.... 🙂
Because most of the Earth is liquid. In fact, what separates the liquid from the space is a layer of gas beneath which is a very thin layer of coagulated magma. In the map I added you can see the age of the ocean floor and as you can see all the beaches of all the continents are much younger than the age of the earth. In addition, the ground next to the fragments themselves is really new, and this is true for all the fragments, which rejects a situation where one slab is placed on top of another. Therefore, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Earth began to increase its volume at a certain stage and continues to do so even today. If you think about it, it can explain a lot of amazing things, like the fact that most of Earth's existence all life was aquatic or the very existence of shell fossils on mountain ranges. Happy holiday
What problems are there in the model? This is something that has been proven in countless cases. You can even see the traffic with the help of GPS.
And what is meant by changing the trend temperature? A trend exists only in very specific areas under the continents and at the bottom of the sea, not under the entire surface of the earth.
Immediately there are problems with the continental migration model. I believe that the continents were created by a change in the temperature of the trend and as a result the surface area of the planet increased and segments of land were exposed to the air. For an overwhelming view, look at the following map
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/image/crustalimages.html