Sea floor records ancient Earth

BBC ^ | Friday, 23 March 2007, 09:09 GMT | Jonathan Fildes Science and technology reporter, BBC News

[bpjam]

I lost a pair of RayBans quite a long time ago. I wonder if they found them in that 4 billion year old rock?

[Fred Nerks]

http://saturniancosmology.org/siz.php

In the 1960s oceanography came up with some surprises. First of all, it was recognized that the ocean beds were not filled with miles and miles of sediment, as would be the case if the world's rivers had been carrying silt to the oceans for four billion years. Instead it was found that the ocean floors were geologically new.

Expansion

Image: Atlantic Floor Spreading

The second surprise was the discovery of the Atlantic ridges, a series of parallel ridges which run mostly north and south throughout the Atlantic. The ridges show a series of parallel magnetic reversals of the top layers of rock, matching east and west from approximately the center of the Atlantic. Further research has found the same in the Pacific and Indian ocean, although of a more complex pattern. Geological dates of the ridges also match from the center out. The oldest ocean beds are just east of China, with smaller stretches just off the North American east coast and in the south Caribbean. These regions all date from the Jurassic era, 200 to 150 million years ago.

It looked like the Earth had indeed been expanding, and in fact it looked like there were no oceans before the Jurassic. That means the original land mass (Pangea, the single land mass which had already been suggested as the parent to all of today's continents) must have covered all of the Earth at one time. The start of ocean floor spreading (as it is called) dates from after the first appearance of the giant dinosaurs during the Jurassic.

You can look at a globe and make some simple calculations. Subtracting the estimated spread of the Atlantic and Pacific from the current circumference of the Earth (25,000 miles) gives an earlier circumference of about 12,500 miles. The Earth had roughly doubled in diameter.

Gravity is a function of the mass divided by the square of the radius of the Earth. The mass of the Earth, assuming no change in density for the new material, is a cubic function of the radius. Thus gravity is linearly proportional to the radius of the Earth. As Earth expanded, gravity increased in proportion.

[thackney]

bookmark, thanks for posting

[Suzy Quzy]

Other than LAVA BASED rocks, ALL rocks are the same age!! ALL of the earth except for living things are the SAME AGE except for lava and meteors....am I wrong? Did God make newer rocks?

[AFPhys]

This is a TREMENDOUS discovery, and thanks for adding some links to "snowball Earth"/ Continental Drift stories.

Greenland being "old" does not surprise me. That Greenland has been able to preserve 3.8Byo material is astonishing!

The "Professor Moores" mentioned in this article is a pioneer in this field and is well respected. Congratulations to him and his team!

[thackney]

ALL rocks are the same age!! ....am I wrong?

As an example from the article

Today, oceanic crust is created at plate boundaries known as mid-ocean ridges, where magma rises from the asthenospehere through cracks in the ocean floor, cools and spreads away.

As it moves away from the spreading centre towards the edges of the oceans it becomes cooler, denser and eventually starts to sink back into the mantle to be recycled.

"Sea floor is not normally preserved for more than 200 million years," said Professor Rosing.

[SunkenCiv]

:') You're most welcome.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

ALL of the earth except for living things are the SAME AGE

I don't think so....

[Bernard Marx]

Did God make newer rocks?

Only if you see God in processes like erosion and volcanism. I do.

For a great read and pleasant introduction to historical geology I recommend "Rising from the Plains" by geology-oriented author John McPhee. While he may come a little close to environmental 'preachiness' in a few places (he's dealing with the geologist-grandson of John Muir!) he keeps it pretty balanced. The educational aspect of the book far outweighs any negatives IMO.

I think you may be astounded at how much "new rock" has been created over the past 4+ billion years!

[FreeReign]

Other than LAVA BASED rocks, ALL rocks are the same age!!

New sedimentary rock formation is an ongoing process.

[TigersEye]

The oldest ocean beds are just east of China, ... These regions all date from the Jurassic era, 200 to 150 million years ago.

You can look at a globe and make some simple calculations. ...(snip)... the Earth (25,000 miles) gives an earlier circumference of about 12,500 miles. The Earth had roughly doubled in diameter.

In terms of geologic time; wouldn't that be a phenomenal rate of expansion? Doubling the circumference of the earth in less than 200 million years? It is almost like a slow motion explosion.

[Fred Nerks]

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Launchpad/8098/3.htm

Earth Expansion Sites. (It's a theory.)

[NormsRevenge]

Crusty Old Discovery Reveals Early Earth's History (3.8 billion years old outer crust)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1806290/posts

[Suzy Quzy]

I said volcanic rock was being formed every day.

[Suzy Quzy]

Didn't you read what I said...I excluded volcanic rock formation and meteors....otherwise all rocks are the same age.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Borrowing from your thread....

***************************************************

The Earth’s radius is about 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers). The main layers of its interior are in descending order: crust, mantle and core.

The crust thickness averages about 18 miles (30 kilometers) under the continents, but is only about 3 miles (5 kilometers) under the oceans. It is light and brittle and can break. In fact it's fractured into more than a dozen major plates and several minor ones. It is where most earthquakes originate.

The mantle is more flexible – it flows instead of fractures. It extends down to about 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometers) below the surface.

The core consists of a solid inner core and a fluid outer core. The fluid contains iron, which, as it moves, generates the Earth’s magnetic field. The crust and upper mantle form the lithosphere, which is broken up into several plates that float on top of the hot molten mantle below.

SOURCE: LiveScience reporting

2 posted on 03/24/2007 7:44:21 PM PDT by NormsRevenge (Semper Fi ...... BumP'n'Run 'Right-Wing Extremist' since 2001)

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Regarding Granite:

http://msnucleus.org/membership/html/jh/earth/igneous/lesson5/igneous5a.html

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IGNEOUS ROCKS Lesson 5 - Page 1

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FORMATION OF GRANITE  If you were to go hiking in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, California or the Adirondack Mountains, New York, you would spend a lot of time walking on rounded hills. You would notice that the rocks are composed of minerals that you can see. It has a phaneritic texture associated with plutonic (intrusive) igneous rocks. If you examined the rock, you would see it is a mixture of light and dark minerals. The rock might also be colored reddish brown where it has been weathered. The phaneritic texture reveals that the rock was cooled slowly, within the crust of the Earth. This texture and the light color of the rock tell you that these rocks are probably granite.

Yosemite

 

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[Back to Igneous Rocks]  [Earth Science Grid]

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[thackney]

Only if you mean to exclude the entire sea bed (most of the earth)

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Oh Boy....

Fusion At The Cores Of Planets And The Origin Of Earth's Oceans

Abstract:

The text proposes that neutrino oscillations inside planetary matter are responsible for the fabrication of new protons, neutrons and electrons. From this, hydrogen nuclei are likely to form at the core of dense rocky planets. Slow neutrons produced from the oscillation of neutrinos inside dense matter, may be fused into atoms near a planet's core. This will result in new elements production within a planet. Calculation of how many neutrino oscillations are required for new matter fabrication inside a planet is discussed. A plausible fusion process with growth of heavier elements is described via slow neutron amalgamation with atoms and standard beta decay processes which are commonly utilized in production of heavier elements in a laboratory context. Newly fabricated hydrogen is slowly brought to the surface, transiting crustal rocks and into the hydrosphere and atmosphere. A new proposal for the origin of Earth's oceans is discussed. Seven predictions are proposed which are a direct consequence of this physical geochemical model. This model illustrates that a Big Bang creation event is not required to account for observed Geo and Cosmo-chemical abundance i.e., the fabrication of hydrogen. See also my related planetary expansion paper under "Planetary Sciences" on the index page or by clicking here: http://www.johnkharms.com/planetary.htm . Also see "Solar System and Galaxy Evolution" at: http://www.johnkharms.com/solarsystem.htm .

 

 

Key Words: Neutrinos, Neutrino Oscillations, Chemistry, Big Bang, Protons, Neutrons, Electrons, Matter Fabrication, Slow Neutrons, Fusion, Ocean Water, Metallic Hydrogen

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

See #39.