The Teardrop Theory Earth and its Interiors Continents on the move 9789391029081

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The A question many of us have always been asking is ‘where did we come from?’ The question is answered in this book. In this book — the first in trilogy — we try to understand tectonics; of why lands move over the Earth's surface and the consequences of these movements — be they volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, or mountain building. It is explained now for the first time. However, this subject, still in its infancy, had to bridged by three hypotheses; how did the solar system form, how did the Earth happen and, how and when did the Moon come about; all three critical in understanding ‘tectonics’. ? · It begins with a parody on our journey through science and our knowledge about the Earth and our universe. ? It puts a closure to the question that Alfred Wegener, the father of tectonics, failed to answer in 1915, and others could do no better for over a hundred years now; as to what is the ‘motive force’ that moves huge continents and little islands over the Earth's surface. ? It addresses how and why the continents and lands move over the Earth's surface. When their movements create earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, or simply involve themselves in mountain building or such, we understand how the ‘earth system’ works. ? Having figured out the workings of ‘plate tectonics’, we begin to learn why our earth is unique – neither gas nor rock like the other eight 'lifeless' planets. ? Tectonics brought a part of Africa to Eurasia to create the Indian peninsula and the Tibetan Plateau, which then gave birth to the six major rivers of Asia that then threw the humanity of the highlands into the lowlands. Having created and spread humanity on to the rice fields of the lowlands, it now helps and maintains the fields along with over half of the world’s population. Raymond Dias was born in Goa, moved to Uganda as a 2-year old, then returned to complete his secondary education here. He studied biology and zoology at university for 4 years., and then switched to mechanical engineering, and graduated with a Bachelor's degree. He worked in India, N. Yemen, and the Sultanate of Oman for over 37 years. He is also conversant in Swahili, Arabic, and Hindi. This is his first book.

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The Teardrop Theory Earth and its Interiors… continents on the move

Raymond Dias

B.E. (Mech.), MIE (India)

The Teardrop Theory Earth and its Interiors…continents on the move Authors: Raymond Dias Published by I.K. International Pvt. Ltd. 4435, 36/7, Ansari Rd, Daryaganj, New Delhi, Delhi 110002 ISBN: 978-93-91029-08-1 EISBN: 978-93-91029-09-8 ©Copyright 2021 I.K. International Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi-110002. This book may not be duplicated in any way without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the form of brief excerpts or quotations for the purposes of review. The information contained herein is for the personal use of the reader and may not be incorporated in any commercial programs, other books, databases, or any kind of software without written consent of the publisher. Making copies of this book or any portion for any purpose other than your own is a violation of copyright laws. Limits of Liability/disclaimer of Warranty: The author and publisher have used their best efforts in preparing this book. The author make no representation or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book, and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness of any particular purpose. There are no warranties which extend beyond the descriptions contained in this paragraph. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The accuracy and completeness of the information provided herein and the opinions stated herein are not guaranteed or warranted to produce any particulars results, and the advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for every individual. Neither Dreamtech Press nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. Trademarks: All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Dreamtech Press is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

To Gina... ...and her little one

Preface

There were so many things that did not sit right with ‘tectonics’ that this writer set about working on his own thoughts about how it should be; so this work is about ‘the how and why of tectonics and how it works’. It was written not from the eyes of a geologist, but someone with an understanding of how science and physics relate to one another and with an interest in how the world around us works. However, there was a difficulty in presenting the work in a continuous manner, to enable the reader comprehend the nuances of the subject at hand. After much deliberation, the author decided it was best to draft in four quasi-related chapters — and all hypotheses — only to make the transition into the main work easier to perceive. The actual work on ‘tectonics’ begins with Chapter 5. The hypotheses are an afterthought. The author professes no expertise in astronomy and its related sciences. The four chapters are at best, an amateur’s attempt to reconstruct plausible explanations on the formation of our solar system and our Earth-Moon system. They are, however, constructed around empirical data. In writing this book, the author has trolled the web extensively for free-to-use material out there in the Public Domain and a huge thanks to those who have shared their work on line. A big thanks to the ‘open source’ people out there; the Stallmans and the Torvalds’, and countless more… and this book could not have been better illustrated, if not for the huge volume of material so generously put out there by the USGS, for the benefit of the world at large. Thank you all. Raymond Dias

Author’s note: Credit for the illustrations and the pictures are attributed to their rightful authors. Where no accreditations are mentioned, those are to be associated with the author.

Abbreviations and Acronyms

Description °C μs AAS ACC ALMA AMH atm AU CC C-C cm cm/yr CM DST EARS ESA ESE FAMOUS G g/cm3 Gkm GPS GTt h

Degrees Celsius Microsecond American Astronomical Society Antarctic Circumpolar Current Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array Anatomically Modern Human Atmospheres Astronomical Unit Creative Commons Continental-continental convergence Centimetre Centimetres per year Centre of mass Dead Sea Transform East African Rift System European Space Agency East-south-east French-America Mid-Ocean Undersea Study Billion Grams per cubic centimetre Billion kilometres Global Positioning System Billion Trillion Tonnes Hour

x Abbreviations and Acronyms Description H IAU IAVCEI IHB IVC JPL K Ka KBO/s kg/cm2 kg/m3 kg/s km km/h km2/y km2/yr km3 K-Pg LAB LGM LHB LIGO LORRI LSC ly M m m/s m2/s m3 m3/s Ma MAD MAR

Homo International Astronomical Union International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth’s Interior International Hydrographic Bureau Indus Valley Civilization Jet Propulsion Laboratory Thousand Thousand years Kuiper Belt Object/s Kilograms per square centimetre Kilograms per cubic meter Kilograms per second Kilometre Kilometres per hour Square kilometres per year square kilometres per year Cubic kilometres Cretaceous–Palaeogene boundary Lithosphere-Asthenosphere Boundary Last Glacial Maximum Late Heavy Bombardment Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager LIGO Scientific Collaboration Light years Million Metre / metres Metres per second Square metres per second Cubic metres Cubic metres per second A million years in the past — also Ma [Mega-annum or Mega-annums] Magnetic Airborne Detector Mid-Atlantic Ridge

Abbreviations and Acronyms xi

MIDAS min Mkm

Description Moon Impacts Detection and Analysis System Minutes Million kilometres

Mkm/h Mkm2 Mkm3 Mly MOR MSL Mt Mw NASA NE NEA NEO NNE NNW NOAA NW O-C PAR PD PETM PLSI s SE SLR SOI SSE Sv SW t USGov USGS

Million kilometres per hour Million square kilometers Million cubic kilometres Million light years Mid-ocean ridge Mean Sea Level Mount (mountain), also million tonnes Moment magnitude National Aeronautical and Space Administration North-east Near-Earth Asteroid Near Earth Object North-north-east North-north-west National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration North-west Oceanic-continental convergence Pacific-Antarctic Ridge Public domain Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum People’s Linguistic Survey of India Seconds South-east Satellite Laser Ranging Sphere of influence South-south-east Sverdrups South-west tonne United States Government United States Geological Survey

xii Abbreviations and Acronyms Description UV VEI VLBI VLT WSW WHOI WMAP WNW ya yo

Ultraviolet Volcanic Explosivity Index Very Long Baseline Interferometry Very Large Telescope West-south-west Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe West-north-west Years ago Years old

Contents

Preface

vii

Abbreviations and Acronyms

xi

PART – I: ‘... and let there be earthquakes...’ 1. An Unknown Journey

3

1.1 Of Tales and Legends

4

1.2 From the Geocentric to the Heliocentric Eras

6

1.3 An Era of Enquiry, Search, Observation…

8

1.4 … And Speculation

10

1.5 Edwin Hubble and the Catholic Priest

12

1.6 Questions Beget Questions

14

1.7 We are in Trouble

15

1.8 Back Down to Earthly Matters

18

2. ... but then, there was light!

21

2.1 Formation of an Indistinct Nebulous Cloud

21

2.2 A Star is Born!

22

2.3 The Evolving and Composite Solar Family

26

2.4 Of Fluffs and Flakes...

34

2.5 ...And a Solar System

35

3. A Teardrop Arrives

39

3.1 Unpacking the Embryonic Blob’s Beginnings

40

3.2 What Makes Earth Different from the Other Solar System Planets?

46

3.3 The Extrasolar or Exoplanet Earth

55

xiv Contents 3.4 This Chair is Just Right! 3.5 The Proof of the Pudding… 3.6 ‘Goldilocks’ is Home

55 55 56

4. The ‘fifth’ Rock 4.1 Rocks of the Ages 4.2 Nature Abhors a Vacuum 4.3 Hades 4.4 The Benevolence of the Little New Neighbour 4.5 Some Needed Parameters for Scattered Rocks 4.6 The Last Great Impactors 4.7 ... And Cosmic Electrons

59 59 60 62 64 65 65 68

5. The Soup Cauldron 5.1 Weighty Questions at the time 5.2 Scepticism to a ‘Groundbreaking’ Idea 5.3 Following up on Wegener’s Seminal Work 5.4 A New Awakening for ‘Moving Continents’ 5.5 Enter a New World of Science 5.6 The Future... 5.7 Tales of Yore

71 74 74 75 76 77 78 78

6. What Changed our Minds? 6.1 The New Science of Geology 6.2 Our Sudden Curiosity in the Watery Underworld 6.3 ‘Oceanography’ to the Fore 6.4 Team Tharp and Heezen 6.5 More Mysteries… with Ridges 6.6 The Unveiling of the First Plate 6.7 Stitching Up an Old Jigsaw Puzzle 6.8 Measuring Movement 6.9 Defining Boundaries with the Gradual Unearthing of ‘Plate’ Movement 6.10 Recycling Earth’s Waste 6.11 We Learnt the Hard Way 6.12 A Hand Painted Map! 6.13 An Exciting New Science 6.14 Wegener Vindicated!

81 81 83 84 85 88 90 90 93 93 95 96 97 98 99

Contents

6.15 Questions Wegener would have liked to Answer... 6.16 Are we on the Right Track?

xv 100 101

7. How Does it Happen? 7.1 The Mammalian Body of an Onion Leafed Earth 7.2 The Troubled Child 7.3 The Moving ‘Jigsaw Puzzle’ 7.4 Types of Plate Movements 7.5 Isotasy 7.6 Hotspots 7.7 Conclusion

103 103 107 109 110 120 121 122

8. It is happening... 8.1 Our Lively and Moving Planet 8.2 The Unknowns of Plate Movements 8.3 Measuring Tectonic Plate Movements 8.4 Little Journeys to Nowhere 8.5 Lava and Mantle Movement under the South-East Pacific Ocean Seabed 8.6 The Alpide Belt or the Alpine-Himalayan Orogenic Belt 8.7 Quirky Quakes 8.8 The Past and Future of the Plates 8.9 The Ultimate Recycler

125 125 127 129 130 163 163 164 168 169

9. Why does it happen? 9.1 The Fixed Entity 9.2 A Part Timer’s Contribution 9.3 The Unbalanced Geoid 9.4 Is Earth Addressing this Imbalance? 9.5 Earth is Rotating ever Faster about her Axis 9.6 ... But this is Half the Story

173 173 175 178 186 205 206

PART – II: Continents Drift While Islands Scatter 10. Early Earth’s Life 10.1 The Big Question? 10.2 The Unravelling of the First Plate 10.3 In the Beginning...

211 211 213 216

xvi Contents 11. When the Equator Went South 11.1 The Alvarez Sleuths 11.2 The ‘Crater’ Hunters 11.3 Was Chicxulub the only one Responsible? 11.4 ‘Flipping’ Earth! 11.5 The Fallout

231 231 233 236 237 239

12. Asteroids drift in... 12.1 A Visit by a Family of Asteroids 12.2 Shaping Up to New Realities 12.3 The Squashed Pear 12.4 Attributes, Facts and Figures 12.5 Of Chalk and Cheese and Different Lineages 12.6 Amazing, Beautiful Moon... White, Silvery, Sweet and Blue!

243 243 244 246 248 248 254

13. Then Shiva Struck!... 13.1 Strike! 13.2 A Palaeogene History 13.3 Footnote

257 257 260 280

PART – III: Tectonic Output 14. The Cradle of Civilization 14.1 The Mighty Power of Tectonics 14.2 The Ever-Rising Himalayas 14.3 A Marriage of Two Realms 14.4 The Alpine-Himalayan Orogenic Belt

283 283 295 302 303

15. A Plateau’s Legacy to Humanity... 15.1 The Tibetan Plateau 15.2 Rivers of Civilization 15.3 ‘Out of Tibet’

307 307 317 323

Index

327

PART – I ‘... and let there be earthquakes...’

‘If you don’t like something, change it; if you cannot change it, change the way you think about it.’ — Mary Engelbreit

1

An Unknown Journey

We are here! Yes! Nevertheless, where have we come from? Where are we headed? At this stage, what we understand makes little sense against what we know, and vice versa; let us though, start again, make another beginning with a different approach… and look at the outcome. The ‘beginning’ is, at this moment, ‘contentious’ in the least, as for thousands of years man has wrestled with the mystery, of why the universe exists. Every ancient culture came up with its own story and from lack of logical answers, ended up with leaving the matter in the hands of the ‘Gods’. In our current history, we have had philosophers writing reams on the subject, and current science is at a loss for conclusive answers even at this moment. Great minds keep searching, though. In 1915, the German-born physicist, Albert Einstein, proposed his ‘General Theory of Relativity’, where he also said that there were gravitational waves, or ripples around in the universe. Over 100 years later — including the last 25 years of dedicated searching with the LSC1 project, using advanced technological instrumentation — we have only just confirmed the existence of these ripples.2 The great man was right... but not totally. ‘Gravity’ is still not understood in its totality.3 We have come a long way in the last 100 years. We have made much about it but in that same year of 1915, another German scientist had also started to make waves... and it is time we laid that unsung and heroic pioneer’s noble soul to rest. 1

2

3

The LIGO [Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory] Scientific Collaboration (LSC) is a group of around a 1000 scientists worldwide, seeking to make the first direct detection of gravitational waves, to use them to explore the fundamental physics of gravity, and develop the emerging field of gravitational wave science, as a tool of astronomical discovery. The discovery is comparable to Galileo Galilei’s telescope of 374 years ago (ya) that literally opened up the skies to a new vista of our universe. In 2010, renowned string theory expert Erik Verlinde from the University of Amsterdam and the Delta Institute for Theoretical Physics proposed that gravity is not a fundamental of nature, but rather an ’emergent phenomenon’.

4 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors…

1.1 OF TALES AND LEGENDS However, to begin our journey and to understand who we are and where we came from, we first need to understand the ground we walk on and that we live off; the terra firma that separates us from the waters we crawled out from. We must understand the ‘parting of the Red Sea’, the fiery destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, of the Great Flood, the fable of Noah’s Ark, Pralaya in Hinduism and Gun-Yu in Chinese mythology and fables that arose around seismically4 active regions of the earth; whose bronze-age inhabitants of those times, attributed the non-understandable, to divine intercession. On another continent in a faraway place, Ananta, or Adi Sesha — the snake or serpent on which the Hindu God Vishnu reclines — has a thousand heads. He holds Earth on one head and when that head gets tired, he shifts it to another, and earthquakes are said to happen, when Ananta shifts Earth from one head to another. Later, in a time when men could set down the fables on record, through the first written languages of those seismically volatile areas, the ‘word’ was not questioned; fable would become “God’s word”. Much earlier, when our ancestors where physically taking shape on the grasslands of Africa, where volcanoes thundered where the lands were splitting up, Ol Doinyo Lengai 5 was ‘the mountain God’ in East Africa and Aganju in Western Africa; the God of life and death — of rivers and volcanoes. On another continent that was being forced to raise her western shores into mountains on the eastern shores of the Southern Pacific — the loci for frequent earthquakes and evererupting volcanoes — the God of death, Supay, would be angry and ask the Huaynaputina to spit venom on the people below. Here too, we find the likes of Ampato, Coropuna and Sara-Sara; ‘Gods’ of the Incas. On the opposite side of the planet, in the ancient and seismically active regions of the Himalayas and the Tibetan highlands, where lands were merging, earth’s rumbling, crashing, and grinding of its surfaces, is a common affair. However, in this region, there are no volcanoes and there are just not too many casualties. Here we see earthquakes that take lives, and that fashioned man’s mind with answers that were in tune with nature, and both Hindu and Buddhist texts make it clear that there are all kinds of causal contingencies that just happen on the Earth’s surface. It was for them to uncomplainingly accept the unpredictable outcome; a result of humanity’s reluctance, or its inability to live in harmony with nature, and refer to it as Dharma — a punishment for wrongdoing. On still another edge of the earth, where eastern lands meet the western Pacific, yet another race held other beliefs. In Japan, where no mountain ranges existed, or grounds parted, the shaking of the earth was sometimes followed with the sudden surge of the 4

5

The Greek word for earthquake is ‘seismos’, meaning ’to quake or tremor’ and hence the study of earthquakes is known as seismology. In the Masai language of East Africa.

An Unknown Journey 5

ocean after it. The destruction and the events that followed, were attributed to a restless giant catfish called Namazu that lived under the ocean and carried the land on its back.6 Yes, volcanoes do happen, the earth does rumble and it does part, and yes, recorded history tells us that Pompeii and Herculaneum did happen, and today we know that tsunamis7 are just an unpleasant fact but also part of a breathing and living Earth.

1.1.1 ... and Battles Individually, life was a daily battle for physical survival with an uncertain future. We longed for our childhood of plenty, assisted our families in the daily grind, and defended our progeny while ensuring their future in the hope of better days to come. The Garden of Eden was ‘created’, stories of epic battles of survival told around campfires became history, and the glory of triumph and domination became our goal. When we learnt to keep a record of our harvests, history would be distorted forever. The art of survival would merge with unseen gods, to become a religion, and every little tribe would carry its message of survival to the ends of the earth. All along this epic journey that fanned us across the globe, we saw above us the sky and the stars and on occasions, the stars seeming to fall and disintegrate before they landed. We wondered... we had left behind us in Africa, the thundering mountains that we had feared, and worshipped the spirits that dwelt within them. Those grateful souls then thanked the spirits at the bottom of the trees and of rivers and lakes that fed us with fish and fruit. They drew images on the rocks of the spirits of the beasts they killed, to help keep them alive and in bounty, and all these, we carried along with us in our little wanderings; from feeding ground to better feeding ground. We had walked the sparse lands of the earth to believe that and survived after swift flowing rivers rafted us down rivers, to then thank the river spirits for sparing our lives. We had seen the forests, velds and savannahs of Africa and for the first time, the sparsely life-sustaining granitic plateau of a subcontinent, the altitudes of Tibet, the snows of Europe, the desert sands of the Levant... and all to rude awakenings. We endured; we learned; we adapted; we lived. 6

7

We are learning about how earthquakes happen today, but thousands of years earlier, understandably, people did not know any better. According to Japanese myth and folklore, the cause of earthquakes is the giant catfish Namazu. If he moves, he can shake the entire earth and unfortunately, he loves to cause trouble and havoc. He can only be kept quiet by the God Kashima, who physically restrains him with a heavy stone placed on its head, but unfortunately, the God gets tired sometimes, and the giant fish moves and causes an earthquake. Undersea earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that generate ocean waves called tsunamis (meaning ‘harbour wave’ in Japanese and dates to the late 19th century; tsu for ‘harbour’ and nami for ‘wave’). It happens when a quake moves the ocean floor several meters — especially vertically — setting into motion a huge amount of water. The resulting waves may race across the ocean, reaching speeds of up to 800 km/h. The largest tsunami recorded measured 63 m above sea level when it slammed into Siberia’s Kamchatka Peninsula in 1737. They can be catastrophic; the Boxing Day tragedy in our recent memory testifies to that fact.

6 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… ... but to tell us the story of our survival in its completeness, we find, at this stage, a few ‘gaps’ in our understanding of the complexity of the picture. So, while we delve into an attempt to understand our origins, the author is compelled — through limited historical data — to put forth hypotheses, in the three chapters that follow; bones needed to hold the matter of soil and water together, with hypotheses deduced from empirical data and longestablished theories in physics and the natural sciences. Hypotheses needed to put in place known facts, so as to enable us to proceed with a logical understanding of the ‘earthforming’ process; a process that starts from our known beginnings and through its conclusions to date. It was also to primarily understand how and why ‘Earth’ happened, how life probably evolved on it, then destroyed the very life it created — that for 3.8 billion years (Ga) it helped develop and foster; the way it did.

1.2 FROM THE GEOCENTRIC TO THE HELIOCENTRIC ERAS From a reluctance coming out of fear of the unknown to venture further from their own surroundings and encampments, men would go on to believe that the ground they walked on was flat, and they would fall off the cliff into oblivion if they ventured too far. On the eastern shores of Africa, they had seen rift valleys; their thinking not unfounded. Early man was not adventurous... rather more cautious — stone tools were made the same way for almost a million and a half years. Those that lived in damp and dense forests, did not look to move into the desert heat. Man was self-contained. The Sentineli (or the people of the North Sentinel Island of the Andaman and Nicobar group of islands of India) have been hunter-gatherers for a few million years now and from the time they left the shores of Africa some 74,000 ya, sailing past India on their virgin islands and still show no interest to move into somebody else’s space. In fact, they do not even let outsiders come too close to their habitat, shooting arrows at ships and helicopters that come close, or attempt landings there. This fear of the unknown has left them with no knowledge of the cultivation of plants, nor do they know how to make a fire. Like their ancestors before them, early man by nature and habit, was not adventurous. He managed with what he had around him. Life moved on, and beliefs accumulated and strengthened, and in time, became ’the gospel truth’. In the meantime and alongside it, having accepted and recorded the season’s recurring pattern — and that of the movements of the stars in the skies too — here came a time for our ancestors to conclude that Earth was the centre of the universe. We know it today as old Ptolemy’s ‘geocentric system’,8 when it was common belief then that Sun, 8

An improvement on the Greek’s ‘Flat Earth’ belief that even Christopher Columbus had difficulty convincing his sailors many centuries later, that the world was indeed round. Claudius Ptolemy, who lived around 100 AD, explained the motions of heavenly bodies, by proclaiming that Earth was the centre of not only the solar system, but also the entire universe, and that everything in the heavens revolved around it. It developed from the writings in the Book of Genesis, and the Catholic Church unequivocally supported his ‘geocentric’ belief. For more than 13 centuries, the Greek astronomer’s model of an Earth centred cosmos, composed of concentric crystalline spheres, dominated western intellectual tradition.

An Unknown Journey 7

Moon and all the stars in the heavens, revolved around Earth. Its origins can be traced to the reign of a chieftain of a little desert tribe in the barren and tiring land of the biblical David; a time when the spoken word had already begun to be recorded on river clay tablets, having earlier arrived from the Indus Valley civilizations (IVC) on their east. The ‘word’ would become ‘law’, and religion a form of governance, and in time, man would fancy himself to be the ‘crown’ of creation — created especially for the benefit of mankind... by ‘God’. It was the beginning of the ‘Geocentric’ era.

1.2.1 A Watershed Moment in History Earlier... 2.6 million years (Ma) ago, the ‘stone-breakers’ would lead us on, changing the physical structure of hominid hands, helping develop our powerful, broad, vice-like thumbs, adding to the grip needed by the Oldupai 9 factory workers, to produce those first handcrafted stone tools on the East African landscape. They were on to something... a hand-mind thing. Two hundred thousand years ago, a better-skilled and well-equipped toolmaker — the bipedal Homo sapiens — would emerge on the savannahs and velds of that leftover part of that ancient land — working hands and minds fashioning ideas and thoughts sent down to descendants through verbal sounds, laying on thin layers of fundamental foundations all the while moulding us into Anatomically Modern Humans (AMH)10 or H. sapiens. However, it took just 200 years — the 14th through the 16th century — for these ‘working’ hands with delicate fingers, opposable thumbs and a growing brain, to lead to a Zacharias Janssen — the eyeglass maker with the compound microscope — to start us looking down and inside apple seeds and fleas. His discovery would send an Italian looking up in the opposite direction! Galileo Galilei would make famous his design of a contraption that could see the surface of the Moon! Along with the efforts of Jacob Metius and Hans Lippershey’s initial designs, he would inform us that not only were there craters on the Moon but that Sun had spots on it! A vista of the vast expanse of the universe lay there in front of us for coming generations to witness its wonder... and despair at not understanding it. It was only in 1543 — and only just before his death — that the polymath, Nicholas Copernicus, would initiate that change (of wonder and despair) in our perception of our world. In his posthumously published (only fear of reprisal kept him from airing his thoughts during his lifetime) book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), Copernicus proposed a model of the cosmos, which placed Sun at the centre of the universe. Unforgivable it was at the time, but it was a turn for reformation in our history of enlightenment. 9

10

Originally, misnamed Olduvai, it is a misspelling of Oldupai, which took on the official name in 2005. It is the Masai word for the wild sisal plant Sansevieria ehrenbergii, which grows in the gorge. Sometimes referred to as, Anatomically Modern H. sapiens.

8 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… It was the beginning of the ‘Heliocentric’ era. Down on terra firma, we learnt that all of us—and all that is around us animals, trees, and millions of other things, are made of matter. It is outside and inside us; the heart and lungs that power us, and inside apple seeds... until we came to the atom; the base of all matter, i.e., everything you see around you, from your own body to the surface of the planet you are standing on, and the stars in the sky... is built up from these little atoms.11 Yes, we can see these little powerhouses now. Copernicus, the eyeglass makers, and Galileo, had set us up to explore our surroundings — from the atomic to the atmospheric… and beyond. The new thinking sprouted ‘cosmology’, which would in time, lead us to learn that our planet was part of a family we called the ‘solar system’. By 1930 we would know that our solar system was composed of nine planets that revolved around Sun — that bright object and giver of light, warmth to life too, to the inhabitants of our planet... and possibly others beyond.

1.3 AN ERA OF ENQUIRY, SEARCH, OBSERVATION… We were contained within our space in our little solar family, and the apple remained an apple until one day somebody actually observed it fall… and courageously sought an answer! We would then hear a lot about gravity; yet till this day, its understanding is still beyond us; yet we talk like we know about it. Atoms are sub-atomic we got to know — as microscope technology limits our visual abilities to proceed further — and working within the limits of the mathematical boundaries that we can comprehend today, we began to theorize of that we could not see. Our atoms, we concluded, are made up of smaller particles like protons, electrons and neutrons, and for many years, we accepted that. We believed that like our solar system, the electrons whizzed around a central nucleus of protons and neutrons. We now think that that is not so and that there is much more. In the meantime, we searched our realm and dominion at both its extremes. Space gave us more opportunities, and we understood more. At that end of the spectrum, of the stars we saw, we wondered... then, learned that they were, in fact, suns... other suns out there! They must be like ours too... with their little worlds of planets and moons, and whatever... and imagined aliens! We could see the large objects, but the canvas just kept getting bigger and bigger... and the bigger picture still keeps eluding us. On clear moonless nights, the faint glow of a hazy streak in the dark sky held our puzzlement for a long time, until we learned that those are of countless other suns out there and farther away. Each behind the other to produce that band in our vision as they appear to our naked eyes... faint, tiny, indistinguishable pinpoints of billions upon billions 11

Far down the road and very different from the days we thought that everything was built up on grains of sand.

An Unknown Journey 9

of faraway stars in the distance of unfathomable space. That faint milky lot is our Sun’s family out there... small ones, big ones, tiny ones, little ones, big grandfather ones and whomever else you have; all in one huge cluster of close and distant relatives huddled up together for comfort. We named it as we saw how it appears to the naked eye; as a dim, unresolved, ‘milky’ and faintly glowing band of light, arching across a moonless night sky. This ‘galaxy’ of a huge family of suns, we named the ‘Milky Way’.

Fig. 1.1: An artist’s rendition of the Milky Way as it would look like in space. As the ‘arms’ indicate, it is a ‘Spiral galaxy’12. We are here! Credit: Wikipedia / PD-USGov

It is our bigger home; we live in it. This band of faint hazy glow is, in fact, just an average mid-size galaxy, and astronomers have now found more than 500 ‘solar systems’ moving around within it and keep on discovering new ones every year.13 It is here that Sun hangs about, in a housing complex that is 100,000 to 120,000 light years (ly)14 across and 12,000 ly thick. By cosmological standards, it is an ordinary yellow star — one of some 700 G stars contained within the galaxy that is turning in a slow spiral around a galactic centre; like a very slow-moving, multi-bladed spiral fan out there. On the edge of one of the ‘fan blades’, 2/3rds away from the centre, or 27,000 ly away, or better still, in the suburbs of the Milky Way, is our Sun, which is accompanied by Earth and the other planets, in a 235 to 245 Ma single orbit cycle about the galactic centre and in an anticlockwise spin, pivoting and waltzing away around it. It journeys in a spiral turn or ‘wheeling’, in a slow mesmerising dance, along in a swarm with its billion other brothers, sisters, and other suns, of varying sizes and brightness, and in varying stages of life and death — like some multi-armed, vague giant of a starry Cambrian ammonite... free in space. 12

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Its shape is in the form of a flattened disk containing spiral (pinwheel-shaped) arms, with a bulge at its centre, and a halo like appearance around its edges. The eminent American astronomer Edwin Hubble, classified galaxies as: spiral, barred spiral, elliptical, and irregular. Some scientists estimate that we could even land up with discovering over 100 G solar systems in our galaxy alone! Travelling at a speed of 299,792 kilometres per second (km/s) for a whole year, is the distance light takes to reach its destination.

10 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… We are, according to the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA), 266 quadrillion kilometres from the galaxy’s centre, or the black hole.15. Moving farther still, in the immeasurable universe, we find other galaxies similar to ours. In fact, there are billions of them out there! 100 G out there we say confidently, at this moment, and as telescope technology keeps improving, 200 G is the figure we can expect to hear in the near future.16 They could be more17…

1.4 … AND SPECULATION All the countless suns, wheel around something that we cannot see — a galactic centre. It is there and we named it the black hole;18 a huge magnet that keeps all the suns, or stars around it in check, in the form of a tiny point in the centre, probably of an immense concentration of matter and energy... a point of unimaginable density, around which all the stars are made to circle and obey its universal ‘galatic’ laws. We are warned: “... get too close to the black hole and you’ll be compressed beyond comprehension” and one more thing: its ‘event horizon’19 is capable of gobbling and hiding within it, all of the 100 to 700 G suns circling it! Scientists have not yet seen a black hole because nothing, not even light can escape them they claim, yet the only way to escape from it, they say, is to travel faster than the speed of light, and as we know... there is no escape. We are (or maybe) doomed. 15

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Since the 18th century, astronomers have discussed the possibility of exotic objects in space so massive that their gravitational grip swallows everything that dares to get too close, including light. However, it was the astronomer John Wheeler, who first coined the term ‘black hole’ nearly 50 ya — ironically, or sarcastically (since we have never seen one nor understood it?), we do not know. ‘... it is tiny to the eyes of astronomers. Smaller than Mercury’s orbit around Sun, yet almost 26,000 ly away, it appears about the same size as a grapefruit on the moon’, says astronomer Dimitrios Psaltis of the University of Arizona. We are not sure of the figure yet. However, from what we know, is derived from what we can see. Even what we see with our ‘Eyes in the skies’, Hubble, Chandra, Spitzer, or NASA’s Kepler space telescope, is very little, as our galaxy is part of a family of billions of other galaxies out there, and only our cluster the Virgo Supercluster is said to contain some 100 galaxy groups! We have not been able to even count the number of stars in our own galaxy (and can only see the visible part of its northern regions, and that includes no fewer than 219 M stars, said the University of Hertfordshire in 2014). A down-to-earth sobering thought is that we now agree that there are more stars out there in the universe than there are grains of sand on our planet. There may be as many as a trillion or more out there. An international team of astronomers — led by University of Nottingham scientist Christopher Conselice — has performed an accurate census of the number of galaxies in the observable Universe. They concluded that the Universe contains at least two trillion galaxies, nearly ten times as much as previously thought. Christopher J. Conselice et al., 2016. The Evolution of Galaxy Number Density at z < 8 and its Implications. ‘We have abundant evidence that black holes — or something very much like them — exist’, astronomy professor at Ohio State University, Todd Thompson told Business Insider in 1914. An area at the edge of the black hole; the invisible ‘point of no return’, first described mathematically in 1916, by the German physicist Karl Schwarzschild.

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Compounding our already stretched and stunned imagination, is the fact that this unseen entity, our black hole and called Sagittarius A*20, is said to be a supermassive thing21 and weighs in at about the same mass as 700 G suns22! Periodically, it is said to go into feeding frenzies, where material fall towards it, heats up and irradiates its surroundings. On second thoughts... how do they calculate something that is so far away, then weigh it when it cannot even be seen? Then there are the theorists who believe that the black hole is the entry to other universes. There arises another question. Are we in a universe? On the other hand, are we part of a multiverse23? A megaverse24 possibly? Still, some say that the ‘hole’ can eventually evaporate and that it can shrink to zero volume. To sort out this obvious but unobservable object, we recently formed the ‘Event Horizon Telescope’ (EHT) to give us 2000 times more clarity to study the ‘event horizon’ — the rim of that yet unseen black hole, and are even getting ready to click a photograph of it! However, on the heels of that bit of activity, a damp cloth has been thrown over the project by the great man, the late Stephen Hawking, who recently said that “there is no ‘event horizon’, but an ‘apparent horizon’”! ‘The absence of event horizons means that there are no black holes — in the sense of regimes from which light cannot escape to infinity’, Hawking was also quoted as saying. He could be right and he could be wrong. … Hold your horses! Somebody has witnessed something! Just out, is news that scientist working at the University of Leicester, witnessed matter falling into a black hole at 30% the speed of light!25 All said and done, it appears that we are now tired of the frustrations dodging us that we are beginning to clutch at other options... because we are now also beginning to hear about ‘White Holes’26? 20

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Pronounced as ‘Sagittarius A-star’ (Sgr A*), it is an astronomical radio source that we rely on to identify our galaxy’s centre. Our galaxy’s very centre is in the core of the bulge that is located in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius, observed from Sun’s position in the galaxy. Stardust gets thicker and thicker as we look into the centre of the Milky Way, and so the best options for observing the galactic centre, are in such radio waves that arrive from there. Courtesy, the Chandra X-ray Observatory. According to new work, presented on 31 May 2016 at a Canadian Astronomical Society conference in Winnipeg, by Gwendolyn Eadie, a doctoral candidate at McMaster University. Quoted by Michelle Z. Donahue’s article of the same date. Worlds, supposedly that coexist alongside us that we cannot yet see, however, representing versions of reality that are near-identical to our own universe — science-fiction in reality but one that has intrigued generations of physicists as well as sci-fi creators and fans. As Leonard Susskind — American physicist, professor at Stanford University and director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics — likes to call it. ‘Astronomers detect matter falling into a black hole’, K.A. Pounds et al 2018. An ultrafast inflow in the luminous Seyfert PG1211+143. MNRAS 481 (2): 1832-1838; doi: 10.1093/mnras/sty2359. ‘A black hole is a place where you can go in but you can never escape; a white hole is a place where you can leave but you can never go back’, says Caltech physicist Sean Carroll. ‘Otherwise, [both share] exactly the same mathematics, exactly the same geometry’.

12 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… Moving on… the galaxies, in turn, move around with the other galaxies in a stellar superhighway we know almost nothing about yet. The little that we know is that it is a part of a gigantic galactic network than previously thought; the galaxy is drifting along in a stream of galaxies on the outskirts of a newly identified collection of galaxy clusters — a supercluster named Laniakea.27 Still, in the observable universe that we can see from Earth,28 we now estimate about 30 sextillions to a septillion stars are out there. And they are all moving... we do not know the answer to ’where’ yet, but from data available today, we are told that all the galaxies are moving apart from one another, at great speeds29! Where are they headed? To an endless end? From a beginning-less beginning? We do not know. In locating these galaxies in the outer reaches of space, we begin to ask questions about our ‘universe’, its birth, origins, and whatever else we can find out and the best current estimate we have is that our universe is approximately 13.77 ± 0.57 Ga old.30 The galaxies, in turn, had all formed soon after our universe’s birth, as objects with lots of gas; clouds of which eventually collapsed to form stars, and based on the emerging science of nucleocosmochronology,31 our Milky Way was estimated to have been formed some 13.6 ± 0.8 Ga ago.

1.5 EDWIN HUBBLE AND THE CATHOLIC PRIEST On the origins of this universe, we currently embrace the undemanding ‘Big Bang’ cosmological theory32 for sheer want of understanding of the cosmos and its origins, which 27

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In Sept. 2014, we were to learn that our galaxy belongs to the Laniakea Supercluster, and that we are one of 100,000 nearby galaxies. The mother galaxy holds the mass of 100 million billion suns within a region that spans about 520 MAUs across! Recently, another supercluster was found and named Sarasvati (named after the Hindu goddess of knowledge, music, art, wisdom and learning), which extends over a scale of 600 Mly and may contain the mass equivalent of over 20 MG suns. A cluster could roughly have galaxies ranging from 1000 to 10,000 of them. Credit: Pune-based Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA). A very small part of it, and science cannot still put a number to it. The expert in cosmic inflation, Alan Guth, tells us that what we see in our ‘pocket’ of the universe is so minuscule, that out there, it is bigger by1023 that we do not see! That is a hundred billion trillion times bigger than what we see. He is being conservative, he says. Now consider that what we see, is incredibly big, and every galaxy we see has on an average a hundred billion stars, and then there are a hundred billion galaxies in the visible part of the universe! Einstein may have been right when he said that: ‘If the mass of the universe is less than a critical value then the universe will expand forever’. Not to worry much, as the rate of expansion and the gravitational pull are finely balanced, meaning that we have achieved a state of ‘Critical density’. We are in a critical state, but not in trouble. According to the ESAs Planck mission, and announced on the 21 Mar. 2013. It is an improvement on the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) spacecraft’s earlier calculations. The word used to infer the age of the universe, from the ages of the chemical elements. A revolutionary idea at the time, but now scientific orthodoxy. Too many things do not fall in place, and there are other theories floating around: the ‘Bouncing’ and the ‘Bang and bounce’ theories, for example.

An Unknown Journey 13

assumes that the galaxies were formed, or exploded, after the ‘singularity’. It informs us that the universe was once in an infinitesimal and extremely dense and hot state, which expanded suddenly and rapidly. The thinking was cemented further when Edwin Hubble made the alarming discovery in 1929 that the universe was in fact, expanding! If it was — which everybody then confirmed — it must have started at some point. It was at this juncture that a Catholic priest came up with the theory of the primeval atom at the base of the expansion.33 He had first proposed the idea in 1927, and once again in 1931, in scientific form, after Edwin Hubble’s confirmation of the expansion event, and at this moment in time, Fig. 1.2: Timeline of the Universe Credit: PD is generally regarded as the best explanation for the origin, expansion, and ultimate fate of the universe.34 Anyway, for us, little-minded mortals, the theory goes like this: our universe started 13.77 Ga ago... in an instant! This was the first period of the birth of the universe. It is known as the ‘Bing Bang’. Then it underwent a dramatic expansion! This was the second period of the birth of the universe and it is called ‘inflation’. Atomic matter within this new 33

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The Belgian, Fr. Georges Lemaître physicist, astronomer and cosmologist, called it ‘my hypothesis of the primeval atom’. The present name came about when in a 1949 BBC program, where the British astronomer, Sir Fred Hoyle — a proponent of stellar nucleosynthesis — referred to it as “this ‘Big Bang’ idea”. The expression, however, stuck to the hypothesis that postulates that the universe started with a single cosmic explosion, and in the words of the priest: ‘...on a day without yesterday’. However, it makes little sense when everything else in our universe is being pulled inwards by gravity rather than pushed outwards, or kept in place, as the planets are. What Mr. Hubble is telling us is that the ‘expanding space’ he measured, is akin to us throwing a ball above us and that it will not only keeping going away from us, but keep accelerating in that direction as well! Something doesn’t gel... Inquisitive minds still prevail though and in 1989, an alternative concept, ‘plasma cosmology’, was put forth, and is now generally regarded as the best explanation, with observations that appear to contradict fundamental tenets of the Big Bang theory.

14 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… entity then forms stars35 and assets — that peaked some 10 Ga ago — to make the universe. This was the third period of the birth of the universe. This now is the ‘standard model’ of cosmology.36 This is the belief we are now told to hold37... that the entire universe, from the fireball of the Big Bang to the star-studded cosmos we now inhabit, popped into existence from nothing. It had to happen... because ‘nothing’ the current great minds say, is inherently unstable.

1.6 QUESTIONS BEGET QUESTIONS So, was the Big Bang an explosion of a primeval atom? Where then did this single atom, this ‘singularity’, come from? Our ignorance on these questions brings us down to the level of the old childhood prank; the ‘chicken-and-the-egg’ question. It staggers the imagination to even ponder the questions: who, or what ignited the Big Bang? Was there some space outside the ‘singularity’ — this dimensionless point — for someone to stand up, or bend down, and give the fuse of that singularity the ‘kiss of life’? Was it ‘God’, in the guise of the bearded man, ‘old father time’, torching the fuse of a little universal bomb? OK! So there was a Big Bang. Will there be a ‘Little Implosion’? ‘Every action has an equal and opposite reaction’, said Sir Isaac Newton. So, is it possible that our universe could collapse into nothingness in fractions of a second? Can you imagine that...? We were just here... Did it have to happen? Why did it not happen? Were there other Big Bangs too, or are we the only banged universe? Could there have been a ‘Cosmic Crunch’ before the Big Bang? On the other hand, was it a ‘Cosmic Egg’? Why is there a Universe? Why is there Earth? Why do we exist? A failure to conclude the questions of our origins from present knowledge — and for want of a better answer — this is what we are now asked to subscribe to: that our universe which is unimaginably large and unfathomable, started from ‘nothing’. We are to believe that from a single point of ‘nothingness’, from a ‘singularity’, from an insignificant, dimensionless ‘black dot’, into which probably all matter of the previous universe may have also collapsed into, we are here; insignificant, in this large expanse that just came about. 35

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Astronomers have used observations from the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) and ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) to determine that star formation in the very distant galaxy MACS1149-JD1 started at an unexpectedly early stage, only 250 million years after the Big Bang. Everything we know in the universe — planets, people, stars, galaxies, gravity, matter and antimatter, energy and dark energy — all date from the cataclysmic Big Bang. While the event was over in fractions of a second, a region of space the size of a single proton, expanded to form the beginnings of our ‘endless’ universe. Not unlike to a time some 3450 ya, when ‘Genesis’ was written, when ‘learned men’ then, were in a similar predicament.

An Unknown Journey 15

OK! Let us admit that there was this Big Bang, and our universe is expanding in ‘space’. So where did space come from? Was it there before the Big Bang, or did it happen to come along with the Big Bang’? Is it not logical to suppose that if we want to paint a picture, we need a canvass for the purpose, suggesting that matter must be superimposed over a pre-existing medium, or on to something? …and why do we refer to it as ‘space’? Questions numb the imagination, and our large but feeble minds are left down here, to accept the present thinking of the greatest minds amongst us — that of ‘nothing’, our universe began.38 Did we get it right? Some researchers do think we may have got the science wrong. Maybe GOD is a little girl blowing soap bubbles and our universe is on the outside of an expanding bubble. Are we dancing in the dark?

1.7 WE ARE IN TROUBLE From the nothingness that started it all, astronomers now tell us, that there is an amazing halo of mysterious invisible material that engulfs galaxies and clusters of galaxies. Astronomers have no idea what it is but recently concluded that it makes up about 95% of the mass of the universe! Not encouraging, when we hear the words of the astronomer on the subject: ‘We have no idea of what 95% of the universe is... it hardly seems we understand everything’. Here we are, living in a galaxy, called the Milky Way, where almost all its material is said to be of some unknown substance, and now that we have found it, it is invisible!39 Illogical!40 But then again, it is logical to believe it, as we see fish swim in an apparently invisible medium to us, and that birds fly similarly in their own sightless-to-us medium. So, scientists say that this entity lurking around in the universe enhances the gravity of galaxies, and since we cannot see it, gave it a logical name: ‘dark matter’. What we are certain is that dark energy and dark matter have competed to govern the rate of expansion of the universe, although we do not know what it is. Then let us listen to 38

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Interestingly, in 1900, Lord Kelvin the British physicist declared: ‘There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement’. Within three decades, we had quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity. Yet, today, no physicist would dare assert that our knowledge of the universe is near completion, as each new discovery seems to unlock a Pandora’s Box of even bigger, even deeper questions. Very interestingly, we know that the Milky Way weighs 0.96 trillion solar masses! Ref.: Ekta Patel, et al. Estimating the Mass of the Milky Way Using the Ensemble of Classical Satellite Galaxies. The Astrophysical Journal, 2018; 857 (2): 78 DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/aab78f. In 2011, the Nobel Prize in Physics was jointly awarded to the three scientists (Saul Perlmutter of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Adam Riess of Harvard University, and Brian Schmidt of the Australian National University), who discovered that the expansion of the universe is accelerating in its expansion; a phenomenon they attributed to a mysterious force called ‘dark energy’.

16 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… what the astronomer Christian Moni-Bidin from the University of Concepción in Chile, has to say, ‘Our calculations show that [dark matter] should have shown up clearly in our measurements. But it was just not there!’ ‘They are of a different matter... do not give off, nor absorb light... no one knows what dark matter/flow/energy/fluid is, or how we might find it’. ‘... dark flow is merely movement...’ said somebody.41 Then we hear of ‘Dark Flow’, ‘Dark Energy’, ‘Dark Fluid’, and those are, at this moment, some of the puzzles of modern astronomy. At this moment, there are more theories out there than there are theoreticians around.42 In another study, researchers apparently came up short, when studying stellar motion that implied that the stars, all within 13,000 ly of Earth, are gravitationally attracted to the visible material in our solar system; the Sun, planets and surrounding gas and dust, and not by any unseen matter! Eventually, to quote the beleaguered astronomer again: ‘To date, a comprehensive relativistic theory, alternative to the dark matter paradigm, able to explain the observations on all scales, from the galactic rotation to the clusters of galaxies, is not known’. Spooky.43 Welcome to the dark side of ‘matter’! But NASA comes to our aid and says: ‘it turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27% of it and the rest everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter — adds up to less than 5% of the universe’.44 On the subject of the attraction of matter... again, we are still out on that fundamental of forces called ‘gravity’. Thousands of theories have been put forth, to explain the phenomena that sadly, only wind up explaining its result. However, could not the explanation be that ‘gravity’ is the counter-balancing force created due to the expansion of the universe? Would this not equate to Newton’s Third Law of Motion and doing nothing 41

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The more we try to understand the universe, the more confusing it gets. There are so many wacky cosmological ideas out there, that it is unbelievable that many of these thoughts are from learned and renowned men of our times! While we mortals question these edicts, we must bear in mind that scientists stretch their exceptional minds to amazing lengths, for the benefit of understanding our surroundings. At the 219th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), Prof. Jeffrey A. Newman stated that the colour of our Milky Way, is an appropriate to a very specific white; as ‘... if you looked at new spring snow, which has a fine grain size, about an hour after dawn, or an hour before sunset, you'd see the same spectrum of light that an alien astronomer in another galaxy would see looking at the Milky Way’, he told BBC News. We are beginning to realize that we know little — if not nothing — about our universe. In a recent study published on 20 Sept. 2018 in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, we learned of 13 new hypervelocity stars that cannot be traced back to any part of our galaxy. ‘These could be stars from another galaxy, zooming right through the Milky Way’, they say. We are still learning new facts about our galaxy every other day. We are making progress… To make things simple to understand, think of dark matter as a medium akin to water, as it also bends light that passes through it, and it is what keeps the galaxies in shape (like the skeleton of the universe) and in place floating around the universe. Dark energy is what makes the expansion possible.

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more than correcting a disparity, or equating balance? Does not our vibrating universe counterbalance every entity that has energy within it? Is not our universe alive and pulsating? Did not Einstein’s theory of 1915, when applied, predicts that the whole universe is, either expanding, or contracting? Did he not conclude, ‘gravitational forces are equivalent to forces caused by acceleration’? When we have tides when Moon and Sun are on one side of Earth, we have higher tides. Then why do we then have tides opposing that on the other side of the equation? A counterbalancing act of earth? Inertia… possibly? At least, we are back to something…; to square one, or rather... square zero. Back to just before the singularity; on ‘a day before yesterday’. From nothing... back to nothing. Back before the Big Bang. The ‘Mighty Void’.45 That is the least of what we know — and more of what we do not understand — today:46 is that more is unknown than is known. One thing we do know though is that of man’s indomitable spirit — from the old-world grasslands of Africa to Patagonia — the southernmost end of the new world — he has journeyed in a mere 74,000 years. The pentadactyl-to-bipedalism primate, rising, amazingly, to become human, carrying along with him in his growing brain... was his never-say-die attitude. The survival of the fittest... that Darwin talked about. We will prevail. It is this inquisitiveness to understand our origins that makes us go on, to keep on searching for that elusive piece of the puzzle that will help us understand, what it is that occupies 95% of our space that we cannot see. From giant telescopes atop the clean air of desert mountains,47 to the 2 km deep nickel mine in the Sudbury Basin of Canada and on to the 27 km long tunnel under the Alps in Europe, our search continues… for that elusive particle that makes up dark matter that will, we hope, eventually tell us ‘our’ story. While the telescopes look for new frontiers for understanding the cosmos, in the deep mines of the earth, engineers keep their ears open for the slightest sound of a murmur from a ‘wimp’;48 listening for the source, or the ‘building block’ of dark matter that they have not even seen! In that underground tunnel in Europe, engineers send atoms crashing into 45

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On such shaky grounds are we when it comes to understanding the cosmos that yet another study — conducted by the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 2017 — comes, up with statements that the common man might consider hilarious: ‘It looks sort of like a block of Swiss cheese, made up of dense filaments containing huge collections of galaxies surrounding relatively empty regions’ and goes on to say we live in a ‘cosmic void’ (in the holes in the block of cheese). The speculations go on… ‘Physics is sometimes closer to philosophy when it comes to understanding the Universe’, said Dr Donald Chang, a physicist at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, as he attempts to elucidate whether the Universe has a resting frame, or not. At the vanguard of this search, is the revolutionary designed ALMA in Chile — the world's largest astronomical project; a telescope with 66 radio antennas and situated some 5 km above sea level, in the clear cool mountain air of the Atacama Desert. Supposed to be a particle that makes up dark matter.

18 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… one another at the speed of light while attempting to capture in that minimalist of time, the ‘moment’, with shutter speeds of 40 million times per second. That elusive mischief-maker, still eludes hundreds of detectors, all attempting to produce digital photographs of the moment it shows up on their radars. We wait in anticipation...

1.8 BACK DOWN TO EARTHLY MATTERS So, while the practical star gazers and the theoretical astrophysicists go about their work on to a more logical explanations as to what makes our world operate the way it does, let us ‘limited’ souls, move our tortured minds down to more mundane matters — to our ordinary star, the sun, and to simplify our work, let us just assume for the time being, that our universe was born in splits of a second, just like that, when nothing and nowhere were connected. It was there... in the beginning... Down here, we lead our lives and realise that our universe is actually simple. It is just our cosmological theories that are getting needlessly complex, so... We will leave it there.49

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Let us not forget though, that only a century ago, we knew virtually nothing about the large-scale structure of the universe, not even the fact that there exist galaxies beyond our Milky Way. Today, cosmologists have the tools to image the universe as it is today, and as it was in the past, stretching all the way back to its infancy when the first atoms were forming, and further out, to look at the far reaches of our universe — some 40 billion light years away.

‘An indispensable hypothesis, even though still far from being a guarantee of success, is KRZHYHUWKHSXUVXLWRIDVSHFLÀFDLPZKRVHOLJKWHGEHDFRQHYHQE\LQLWLDOIDLOXUHVLVQRW betrayed’. — Max Planck

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2.1 FORMATION OF AN INDISTINCT NEBULOUS CLOUD Following the Big Bang explosion from the singularity, culminating in a supernova explosion50 nearby in the Milky Way some 5.1 Ga ago, a lot of its heavy-element wreckage settled and clustered around the vicinity of the explosion, forming a cloud of hydrogen gas, heavy metals and interstellar dust. It was a normal stellar event, in just about an ordinary place in our galaxy.51 By 4.5682 Ga ago, rocks began to solidify from the remnants and Fig. 2.1: Panoramic image of the centre of the Orion began the formation of an Nebula52, wherein resides a protoplanetary system, similar accretionary ball of cloudy dust and to our solar system during its initial formative stage. meteorites. Gravity began drawing Picture by the Hubble Space Telescope Credit: Wikipedia/NASA/ESA 50

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A star that exceeds its mass by 1.4 times (the Chandrasekhar Limit), is a dying entity, and is destined to end its life in that most violent of explosions. In doing so, the star collapses on itself, but furthers the growth process of the universe; in both generating and distributing the elements around like copper, silver, gold, etc., along with the ‘trace elements’ that are important for initiating the processes of creating matter. Simply put, it is a large explosion that takes place at the end of a star’s life cycle; a dying star’s “last ‘hurrah!’.” Some scientists think that it was a stellar explosion called a ‘classical nova’, that occurred some 5 Ga ago. Published online, 8 Mar. 2016 — Physical Review Letters. Another one, Prof. Yong-Zhong Qian of the University of Minnesota School of Physics and Astronomy, uses new models and evidence from meteorites, to show that a low-mass supernova triggered the formation of our solar system. His findings are published in the 2016 issue of Nature Communications. A massive star formation could be a work in progress here. Estimated to be 24 ly across, the nebula has a mass of about 2000 times the mass of Sun. It is one of the brightest nebulae around, and visible to the naked eye in the night sky.

22 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… the heavier elements towards its centre and the dust and gas took on momentum and began to pivot around a nucleus.53 This spinning action began to see centripetal forces fanning out the debris perpendicular to the ball’s axis of rotation, forming a manic chaos of the swirling mass of a cloudy mix of rock, dust and gas — a protoplanetary disc in the making. Gravity would act on the heavier elements comprising the larger mass, leaving behind the lighter elements and gas scattered in the outer reaches of the new forming disc. The explosive collection of a mass of gas and material coalescing in the centre, formed a little nebula that probably looked like a giant ‘frisbee’ in space. As the fuzzy frisbee-like collection of assorted matter spun and dragged the chaotic dust along in its wake, the clouds collected more around its equatorial plane, while in that time its centre grew in size and accumulated ‘potential’ energy. This process ignited the nascent nucleus of the nebula, lighting its nuclear fires while at the same time, the hot disc surrounding it cooled quickly; looking evermore like a celestial nebula.

Fig. 2.2: The primordial solar nebula Credit: NASA

2.2 A STAR IS BORN! Heavy elements such as gold, silver, platinum, lead and rare-earth elements would begin to concentrate in the disc’s centre. The mixture goes hot under compression and its own gravity and 4.568 Ga ago, Sun blazed forth into that life-giving fiery ball of ethereal heat and energy. 53

A rotating circumstellar disk of dense gas and dust surrounding a young newly formed star.

... but then, there was light!

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Sun’s formation used up 99.86% of the interstellar clouds, to now confidently say that it formed through either the ‘Accretion Theory’, or the ‘Nebular Hypothesis’54 principle; formed so, along with some 400 G stars in our galaxy, together with some trillions of other stars in our universe. As it formed from the murky cloud, it composed itself into 90% hydrogen and 9% helium, shrinking on itself, into a hot plasma ball, its hydrogen and helium atoms undergoing nuclear fusion,55 releasing a Fig. 2.3: Sun! great amount of heat 56 in ... and there was light! Credit: Wikipedia/NASA/SDO (AIA) the process. Sun, by cosmological standards, is a ‘yellow dwarf’ — a comparatively stable entity, still in a long-lived stage of evolution. Like all stars, it has a lifespan, characterized by a formation, main sequence of longevity and eventual death. 54

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We are still at sea on these theories. However, astronomers almost universally assert that the best descriptive model for the formation of the solar system, is the ‘Solar Nebular Hypothesis’, a theory now thought to hold true, throughout the universe. The key postulate in this hypothesis is that once a rotating interstellar gas cloud has commenced gravitational collapse, the conservation of angular momentum will force the cloud to develop a central mass, surrounded by a ring, or disk of unwanted or slow-to-coalesce material, dependent on the condensed mass’ gravitational power. The most convincing line of evidence supporting this line of thinking is observations of similar processes currently happening elsewhere in our galaxy. The birth of stars, though, remains one of the most vibrant topics in astrophysics until this day. Interestingly, the basic idea of how stars form, goes back to the Swedish nobleman and a devout Christian, Emanuel Swedenborg, who first proposed the theory in 1734. A process during which lighter atoms, with low atomic numbers (hydrogen H2 and helium He), ‘fuse’ to form heavier ones, releasing substantial amounts of energy as a result. Sun is in fact technically a ‘fusion reactor’. The temperature on the visible surface, or the photosphere of Sun is 5505 °C. At its centre, it is HVWLPDWHGWREHDQ\ZKHUHIURPWR0ƒ&ZKHUHSUHVVXUHVFRXOGEHLQWKHH[WUHPHVRI§ G atmospheres (atm), where standard atmosphere is pressure at the mean sea level (MSL) and is GHILQHGDVN3D EDU§EDU 

24 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… It soon began to acquire a stable rotation rate around an axis,57 rotating anticlockwise (when viewed from the top)58 and taking up a sidereal59 rotational period of 24.47 days. It acquired gravity while the remaining clouds of interstellar material around her slowly gathered around its equatorial plane; the lighter elements and gasses fanning and thinning farther out from her. 4.568 Ga down the road, she is about 300 °C hotter and about 6% greater in radius than when born. She will continue to increase in temperature, luminosity and radius, at about the same rate, for about another 5 Ga, by which time, it will have grown into a red giant star; more than a hundred times larger than its current size. 7 Ga from now, its useful life will end, with it being a tiny white dwarf star — the end product of its evolution.

2.2.1 Sun’s Attractive Magnetism Electrons spin around an axis while simultaneously revolving around the nucleus of the atom. The rotary spin and simultaneous orbital motion, jointly impart a magnetic moment on each atom, causing each of them to behave as a tiny magnet individually. Collectively, the zillion upon zillions of hydrogen and helium atoms that mainly make up Sun, form one big magnet, whose unit strength, then, is its rotational force, resulting in magnetism acting perpendicular to its rotational plane — in effect, its Fig. 2.4: Right-hand rule magnetic axis. A magnetic field would develop around it, be emanating from its north and culminate in its south. It other words… it is dipolar. Sun’s anticlockwise rotation sets up a ‘thumb-rule’ that has gone into the making of a law on its subjects, including Earth. The rule states that electric and magnetic forces emanating from Sun’s north, continues the life-giving cycle through its south, with magnetism in due course is imparted to its subjects, likewise.60 Sun generates a complex magnetic field that extends out into the interplanetary space to form the interplanetary magnetic field and the charged particles are carried through the solar system by the solar wind. Though the phenomenon of magnetism is not clearly understood, it is of utmost importance to the existence of the earth as a biological entity. No magnetism on earth = No life on earth. 57 58

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Sun’s axis of rotation, from the mean of the Milky Way’s plane of the equator, is 7.25°. Scientists believe that on large scales, the Universe is also isotropic, i.e., all are moving in similar arrangements. A time-keeping system astronomers use to keep track of the direction to point their telescopes to view a given star in the night sky. Here, Sun’s rotational period is measured with reference to any other star in our field of vision. It even governs our opening of wine bottles and driving screws into wood. Athletes too, run the course on a field in the direction of the magnetic field; an inherent natural movement — like couples waltzing more effortlessly and intuitively, anticlockwise.

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2.2.2 Gathering up the Bits and Pieces It took a few million years for the components in its disc to freeze into small dust-sized grains. Iron and the other common elements like silicon, magnesium, calcium, sodium, potassium, aluminium and oxygen, along with the compounds that came out first in that fiery beginning, started to assemble its millimetre-sized round grains — known as chondrules or chondrites — into clumps, then chunks, then boulders, and all of these brought about by electrostatic charges.61 The boulders would go on to form kilometre-sized bodies, large enough to, in turn, exert their own force of gravity on their subjects. ‘Planetesimals’62 that formed through a process of gravitational compilation, would ensure that the dense and heavier rocky material would be closer to Sun, with the lighter material and gases on the outer edges, with a corresponding related regularity and spacing. This is in accordance with the ‘solar nebular disk model’ theory, where the rocky planets form in the inner part of the protoplanetary disk, well within the ‘snow line’,63 where temperatures are high enough to prevent condensation of water and other substances, into icy granules. This results in the coagulation of purely rocky grains that later assist in the formation of rocky planetesimals. Such conditions apparently exist in the inner radii of about 3 to 4 Astronomical Units (AU),64 in direct relationship to our Sun’s influence of warmth. As time went by, the planetesimals would grow through accretion and collision with other bodies, and as their mass would progressively increase, they would acquire the status of ‘proto-planets’. By the time they reached a hundred kilometres or so in size, the planetesimal collisions would produce a lot of outright melting and vaporization while the materials, that we can confidently call rocky metals, began to sort themselves out; dense iron and heavy elements settling in the centre, with the lighter ones separating into a mantle around the heavy metal core. Planetologists call this ‘differentiation’;65 documented not only for the planets but also for a majority of the large moons and the largest of asteroids. 61

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Donald Roy Pettit, a mission specialist on the International Space Station Expedition 6 in 2002 and 2003, conducted experiments with salt crystals in the vacuum of space, showing how in the microgravity of that medium, electrostatic forces helped clump little solid particles together while also showing how it took more energy to separate them after their agglomeration. Down on Earth, we can relate this to the same force that gives ‘life’ to ‘dust bunnies’ under our beds. Large clumps of rocks of all sizes, referred to as minor planets, or planetoids. They could also be called minute planets — bodies that could come together with many others, under gravitation, to form a planet. This derives from a widely accepted theory of planet formation — the so-called planetesimal hypotheses, the Chamberlin–Moulton planetesimal hypothesis, and that of Viktor Safronov — that generally explain that planets form out of cosmic dust grains that collide and stick to form larger and larger bodies. Also known as, ‘frost line’, or ‘ice line’. In planetary science, it represents the distance in the solar nebula away from the proto-star, where it is cold enough for volatile compounds to condense into solid ice grains. The AU was defined at the International Astronomical Union’s (IAU) meeting in Beijing in Aug.  DV WKH PHDQ GLVWDQFH RI (DUWK IURP 6XQ  NP QR PRUH QR OHVV RU § OLJKW minutes (lmin); i.e., it takes 8.317 min for light from Sun, to reach Earth. A separating process, where round bodies end up producing concentric layers of different compositions, structured like the layers of an onion.

26 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… Sun, having started its rotation on its axis, debris from its poles would also slowly fan out to circle around its equator, obliging both gravity and centripetal forces imposed on them by the cosmos; the nascent solar system, looking like a giant dusty and fuzzy disc of a flying saucer in space.66

2.3 THE EVOLVING AND COMPOSITE SOLAR FAMILY From the dust and gas of the solar nebula, Venus agglomerated and coalesced through differentiation,67 quickly settling herself into becoming a neat little orb. So quickly, did she come together in the thick protoplanetary cloud, that some of Sun’s interstellar dust had still not settled in the plane around its equator and were still largely directionless in the clouds that surrounded sun. As Sun’s gravity tugged at Venus, she went into an orbital revolution around Sun, maintaining her equilibrium in relation to its mass, velocity and the relative gravities of Fig. 2.5: Venus Image taken from the spacecraft, Magellan both Sun and herself while also conforming to the 68 Credit: Wikipedia/NASA laws of conservation of angular momentum. Perched on top of Sun and looking north, we notice that Venus — in the confusing clouds whirling around her and with no precedence before her to emulate — settles into an anticlockwise orbital revolution around Sun, in line with Sun’s rotation and the direction of most of the nascent inner clouds. However, in that confusion of the clouds gyrating around her, she takes on a clockwise rotation on her axis.69 Unlike the rest of its family, Venus would be unique among them, in that the sun would always rise on her, in the west. 66

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For the first time ever, a team of astronomers from Rice University have mapped gases in three dark rings surrounding a young star almost 400 ly away, known as HD 163296. The rings are spaces in the star’s protoplanetary disk that are devoid of dust particles. This implies that planets in the process of accretion are forming in that disc. Reported in mid-Dec. 2016 in the Physical Review Letters. There is a lot of evidence to support this agglomeration theory, but getting a good look at the early stages of planetary formation has been difficult. However, an international team of astronomers using the Karl G. Jansky ‘Very Large Array’ (VLA) telescope has recently captured the earliest image of the process of planetary formation. ‘We believe this clump of dust represents the earliest stage in the formation of proto-planets, and this is the first time we’ve seen that stage’, said Thomas Henning, of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA). (Cited in Universe Today, 18 Mar. 2016, by Evan Gough.) The star being observed is HL Tau, is only about a Ma old, and so the planet formation there is still in its early days. Angular momentum is the rotational equivalent of linear momentum. It is an important quantity in physics because it is a conserved quantity — the total angular momentum of a system remains constant unless acted on by an external force. In space, there is nothing to stop momentum, and so celestial bodies just keep moving at the same speeds constantly. This is what is postulated here. It could be that she took the normal anticlockwise rotational route but was hit by an asteroid later that tilted her axis. In good time, we will get to that.

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In a similar accretion process, Neptune then formed on the outer reaches of the protoplanetary disc — from the cold gases whirling around — and with a little of the leftover dust. Being mostly of gas, it formed quickly into an almost perfect sphere, as all things in our universe want to do and joined Venus, as the second member of Sun’s new family of planets. She duly got into an orbital revolution around Sun, in accordance with the law of celestial mechanics, the laws of gravity, the laws of moving bodies and all within the law of conservation of angular momentum for an isolated system; and from what we Fig. 2.6: Neptune understand from what Johannes Kepler and Sir Isaac Newton Credit: Wikipedia / NASA postulated. Looking down at the plane of the solar system from our favourite and lofty vantage position high above Sun and facing north, Neptune and Venus orbit Sun in an anticlockwise direction, as by now, almost all of Sun’s interstellar gas, dust and planetesimals had settled into a similar orbital revolution around Sun. This happens so, as most of the dust and gas from the poles and around it have now moved into the area of the protoplanetary plane. Sun, a separate entity now, establishes its presence and place within the galaxy while simultaneously revolving around a point in the Milky Way (we now know the distance as something like 2/3rds away from the centre of the galaxy). Earth then enters the embrace of the solar system. It slips between Venus and Neptune and starts orbiting Sun, in the same manner as Neptune does — anticlockwise in both its revolution and rotation. At various distances and speeds, the three are now circling Sun around its equator, revolving along with the rotating Sun; all in an anticlockwise mode while all four of them start waltzing around the Milky Way. Earth is not part of Sun’s original family that coalesced from the part of the remaining 0.14% of interstellar clouds of dust and gas that the proto-nebula disc had left behind. It came from a different lineage... Soon after Earth’s entry into the solar system, the disc around Sun’s equator still contained large amounts of the remnants of the debris of rocks, dust, gas and unknown leftovers from the chaotic clouds that formed Venus and Neptune while little rocks and planetesimals still kept forming, along with light remnants and flotsam coming down from the poles of the protoplanetary disc. In good time, the disc comprising mostly of gas clouds in its outer reaches, helped bring alive Uranus, Jupiter 70 and Saturn (its iconic rings, already in place by 4.4 Ga ago) in quick succession.71 In these extreme outer reaches where the gas giants developed, they helped sweep away much of the protoplanetary disc clean of gas and light debris and 4.28 Ga ago, they were all circling Sun along with Venus, Earth and Neptune. 70

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The largest of the planets in the solar system now; 318 times more massive than Earth, accounting for 75% of the mass of all the planets combined. Recently, helped by ALMA, astronomers have come to some conclusion that this is the standard formation process for Gas planets of the size of Saturn.

28 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors…

Fig. 2.7: Uranus

Fig. 2.8: Jupiter

Fig. 2.9: Saturn

Credits: Wikipedia/NASA

Our solar system would eventually copy the Milky Way’s cosmic caper; larger elements rotating anticlockwise, with little elements dancing around the larger ones… also anticlockwise. The quick formation and movements of the ‘gas giants’, Uranus, Jupiter and Saturn, was the ‘spike’ that created instability among the debris that mainly affected asteroid movements and planetary positions within the solar system. During their formation and jostling for appropriate positions in the scheme of things in the growing family and when their orbits reached certain ‘overstepping’ relationships with one another, serious gravitational prodding, pushing and pulling ensued that violently destabilized the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. In a succession of ‘gravitational kicks’, millions of leftovers from the planetary formation material (asteroid-to-moon-sized planetesimals), spread outwards through the solar system, spanning its outer gravitational reaches. Planets moved, possibly in a dramatic, chaotic and in a messy moment of geologic history; the gas giants sweeping the lighter planetary debris farther out as could be possible. These then began revolving in the outermost fringes of Sun’s gravitational field beyond Neptune’s orbit, where they circled relatively loosely, circling Sun some 6.7 billion kilometres (Gkm) away, in the cold isolation and eerie darkness of the area we know as the Kuiper belt.72 To these icy rocks, comets and asteroids known as Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs), Sun is a distant pinpoint of fuzzy light; however, a reminder to these million little far away inhabitants, that they are still within Sun’s expansive gravitational outreach. The belt circles Sun in the plane of its equator and in a path with a width of about 15 AUs; in the region of about 30 to 55 AUs away from it.73 About 4.1 Ga ago, addressing this imbalance in the orbital resonance of the solar system due to the gas giants spanning out further from Sun, a vacuum would be created between the inner rocky and outer gas planets. Into this sort of vacuum, a definite number of KBOs would move out of that increasingly destabilizing zone of the Kuiper belt, to safer pastures 72

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Named after the Dutch astronomer, Gerard Kuiper, whose theory led us to the discovery of the icy rock strewn belt just beyond Pluto’s orbit. Though most KBOs lie between 42 and 48 AUs distance from Sun, the farthest object, designated V774104, sits more than a hundred times farther from it than Earth does; some 103 AUs away.

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closer to the sun. Pebbles, stones, little rocks, numerous irregular shaped bodies and minor planets, would all be accommodated in the space between Earth and Jupiter — the ‘empty’ corridor between the ‘rocks’ and the ‘gas’ bodies. We call this piece of the newly arrived little assortment of rocks, the ‘Asteroid belt’; a little clone of the Kuiper belt (which is still 20 times wider and 200 times more massive). From almost the last remnants of interstellar dust and debris, Mars came in some 3.8 Ga ago, having coalesced quickly and over a period of only 1 to 3 Ma, taking her place in an orbit between Earth and the Asteroid belt. She remained small, as, by the time she formed, there was little interstellar dust out there around her. Some scientists today, do believe that she accreted, finally, when two large rocks within the belt may have collided and fused to form her present looking body, as her northern and southern halves look different and are physically so.

Fig. 2.10: Mars Credit: Wikipedia/NASA

However, having long formed and been a stable member of the solar family, Mars remained a conundrum to our scientists for a long time — a neighbour who shares almost the same length of day as Earth, size-wise, she is physically out of place in that position in the family. Sitting between the largest ‘rock’, Earth (and the 5th largest of the planets), and the bulkiest and largest of ‘gas’ planets Jupiter, understanding why Mars is smaller than expected, has frustrated scientists’ understanding of the solar system’s formation for several decades now. Models of our solar system’s formation suggest that Mars should be between 1.5 and 2 times of Earth’s mass. Instead, it weighs in at a mere one-tenth the mass of our world. Mars’ entry into the fray further nudged the outer planets and along with the Asteroid belt, out a little away from her and Sun, thereby affecting the orbits of the other planets too. Major reconstruction of the orbits of all the planets was probably finalized during this period. However, we must remember that all the planets and asteroids are constrained, controlled and dependent on the gravitational influences and resonance of all the others in relation and relative to the gravitational hold and influence of Sun and its governing capacity that is evenly spread around its emerging family of little planets. The last remnants of the small leftovers of asteroid fragments from the birth of the solar system, unchecked by Mars and orbiting closer to Sun, finally coalesced to form little Mercury,74 which leisurely joined the older planets sometime just after Mars had settled in. 74

‘Millimetre-sized stones formed our planet’. ScienceDaily, 22 Apr. 2015, referring to ‘Growth of asteroids, planetary embryos, and KBOs by chondrule accretion’, through Lund University, and credited to A. Johansen, M. Low, P. Lacerda, and M. Bizzarro.

30 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… Mercury occupies a special place in the solar system. It is the closest planet to the sun, at a distance of only 57.92 million kilometres (Mkm) away from it. This proximity to sun, has melted its heavier elements which then sank to its centre, thereby creating a giant iron core — 91.7% of the planet’s diameter — and that then produced magnetism (a puny strength though, of 1.1% when compared to that of Earth’s), through the ‘geomagnetic dynamo’75 operating process, also suggesting the presence of metallic fluids in the core. The large core leaves a single crust on its surface that is only 7 km thick.76

Fig. 2.11: Mercury

Image Credit: NASA JHUSAP Due to its close proximity to Sun, the Photographed by: NASA’S MESSENGER looking intense heat has evaporated whatever north, on 14 Jan. 2008 little liquid and gaseous elements it might have initially come in with, which then left the planet with a dried and ‘shrunken’ looking surface. Mercury’s rolling dust-covered hills, have been eroded by the constant bombardment of meteorites on its surface. Fault cliffs rise for several kilometres in height, and extend for hundreds of kilometres while craters dot the surface, making it superficially resemble the surface of our Moon. Its surface, however, is static. Early in its formation, volcanism was widespread, and the baked magma over its surface visible across nearly the entire planet, tells us the story of its oozing out from just above the core, after more metal had settled deeper into its body.

With more pushing and plodding to accommodate Mercury, all the planets fanned out a little over the years after. We must remember here that the ‘gravity’ asserted by Sun around the solar system is a constant. A change in the gravity of an object in its sphere of influence (SOI) affects and alters the position and dynamics (revolution, rotation or speeds), 75

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An electric current, when passed through a metal wire, throws up a magnetic field around the wire and the converse can be achieved likewise; a principle that allows electric motors and generators to operate on Earth. In planets that have iron and nickel cores, the liquid metal that makes up the core, passes through the magnetic field that Sun throws off, which then causes an electric current to flow within the liquid metal core. The electric current, in turn, creates its own magnetic field, and stronger than the one that created it in the first place. As liquid metal passes through the stronger field, more current flows, which further increases magnetism. This self-sustaining loop is known as the geomagnetic dynamo effect. Using data from MESSENGER, scientists estimated that the solid, iron core is about 2000 km wide and makes up about half of Mercury’s entire core of about 4000 km. ‘Geodetic Evidence That Mercury Has A Solid Inner Core’. Geophysical Research Letters, 2019; DOI: 10.1029/2018GL081135

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of every other larger or a little particle in the solar system. Today, Uranus and Neptune find themselves far out from the sun; far away from where they were originally conceived. As Mercury made its debut in the solar system, asteroids in the outer reaches of the vast Kuiper belt, were let loose by Sun, and left our solar system permanently, to maybe become ‘moons’ in other solar systems one day, or probably merge with other rocks to become planets, or simply sink into a collapsing star. We will never know which, and for that matter, we would not even know it left our space at all. 100-103 AUs, for us evolutionary latecomers, is a very long distance away to watch and monitor little icy rocks that saunter loosely around the sun in the cold periphery of the outer solar system. Moreover, they probably do a complete circuit around Sun in their vast orbits, in the order of a couple of centuries. Our limits at observing the outer fringes of Sun’s gravitational influence are so finite, that even with giant digital telescopes on mountaintops, in rarefied air and with no cloud cover, we have trouble even trying to spot our little Pluto out there.77 From the millions of asteroids roaming the Milky Way, Sun’s gravity entices a large errant rock straying in its vicinity, and nudged it into a closer and independent orbital revolu- tion around its nascent family of planets. We named this large cosmic wanderer, Pluto.78 Pluto’s entry is so recent that with reference to the orbital planes of the other planets revolving around the sun, its inclination is a steep 17.14°, suggesting the possibility of a higher angle at which it arrived into our solar system. This also hints at the probability of its origins, not in the Kuiper belt but elsewhere. Its revolution around the sun is so unlike the older settled and stable Neptune, that the speed of its recent entry, stills holds it in a highly elliptical orbital revolution around Sun79 that it even encroaches Neptune’s orbital space, and is sometimes closer to the sun than Neptune! In fact, Pluto is actually closer to the sun than Neptune for 20 years of its 248-year orbit around the sun. Not to worry... its steep orbital inclination and eccentricity, makes it extremely unlikely that it will collide with Neptune. 77

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14 July 2015 would change that in a way, with the New Horizon spacecraft sending back the first close-up photographs of Pluto. It still does not mean that we can see Pluto clearly from down here. Though Pluto is only 2370 km in diameter, it is larger than all other known objects beyond the orbit of Neptune. It has a large moon (Charon — 1208 km in diameter) attached to it, as well as four smaller ones (the fifth one found, and the first one reported on 11 July 2012), it is not considered a planet anymore. On 24 Aug. 2006, it was classified a ‘dwarf-planet’ by the IAU, following the discovery of an object of comparable size in the Kuiper belt. This has not gone down well with Clyde W. Tombaugh supporters, and 13 Mar. is celebrated as ‘Pluto Planet Day’ till date, and especially in the US — the country that in 1930 so heartily celebrated its only celestial ‘discovery’. The flyby in 2018 to the little rock by New Horizons has thrilled us to the core, sending back tonnes of information that will need years of processing, and hopefully, we will change our minds about our family associations with her. The orbital eccentricity of an astronomical object is a parameter that determines the amount by which its orbit around another body deviates from a circular orbit e = 0 and the elliptic orbit is 0 < e < 1 (1 being the hypothetical straight line in this case).

32 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors…

Fig. 2.12: Pluto Image Credit: NASA This image was taken by NASA’s New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), and received by them on 8 July 2015, as the spacecraft was approaching the little planet

2.3.1 Clannish Connections All the planets are now in orbits around the sun, with little variations in their orbital eccentricities80 and the angles, or their orbits, WRT to the Sun’s equatorial plane. Every planet is in equilibrium with Sun’s gravity, against its mass and velocity, thus enabling it to maintain its perpetual momentum in the frictionless emptiness of space. Except for Pluto, the orbits of all the planets lie within a few degrees of a perfect imaginary plane on Sun’s equator; at just 7.005°, an indication that they — seven of them — formed from within the protoplanetary disc that embraced Sun’s equatorial plane. Johannes Kepler’s ‘third law’81 captures for us, with clarity, this relationship between the distance of planets from Sun and their orbital periods, and to the satisfaction of many of our present-day astronomers. We now understand the motion of the innermost planets, which are much faster than those of the outermost ones. 80 81

Think of roulette. Kepler’s efforts to explain the underlying reasons for planetary movements are no longer accepted by present-day astronomers; nonetheless, they are still considered an accurate description of the motion of any planet, or satellite.

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Fig. 2.13

However, all the planets are still elliptical in their orbits, and still in the long process of settling down into stable circular orbits (like our Global Positioning Systems [GPS]82), in their perennial sojourn around the sun. The greater obliquities of the orbits uphold their more recent origins in the solar system, as can be seen in the graph displayed in Fig 2.14.

Fig. 2.14: Orbital eccentricity of the planets 82

Studying plate tectonics at the time, Kenneth Hudnut — a Columbia University graduate student — began experimenting with the new GPS technology, as a way of measuring these movements, and that is now the industry standard.

34 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… As time moves on, the planets will all have settled into stable equatorial orbits, as we notice that Earth’s obliquity of the elliptical orbit is not a fixed quantity, and at present, it is decreasing at a rate of about 1.19 metres (m) per century. This is known as ‘tidal circularisation’, an effect in which the gravitational interaction between two bodies gradually reduces their orbital eccentricity. The orbital inclinations of the planets away from the sun’s equatorial plane (Earth’s plane considered, and used as the reference here) do also hint that Mercury and Pluto arrived last, unable still, to slow down, and group around Sun’s plane of the equator, where all the others have currently stabilized nicely, and are still in the process of slowing down. Such can be visualized from observing the graph displayed in Fig. 2.15.

Fig. 2.15: Orbital inclinations of the planets

Sun, having started the process some 4.568 Ga ago, has an almost stable family now, and that is mothered and governed by the ‘Laws of the Universe’, to follow and obey, while an unseen baton wielder helps it along, calmly, patiently and serenely, conducting the orchestra of celestial harmony. This is the family of the solar system — Sun and its nine planets83 — that we constantly hear and talk about.

2.4 OF FLUFFS AND FLAKES... There is, however, a little more — the ‘dust bunnies’, and the fluffs and flakes of the normal household lying around. The Kuiper belt we know about but more lies beyond Sun’s outermost gravitational SOI, where we think there is another layer around us... the 83

In this work, we have considered Pluto as the ninth planet, though it has been relegated to a dwarfplanet. Perturbations around the outer objects in the solar system, still tell astronomers that there still is something out there, and the search continues for that still elusive 9th planet (Renu Malhotra, Kathryn Volk, Xianyu Wang. CORRALLING A DISTANT PLANET WITH EXTREME RESONANT KUIPER BELT OBJECTS. Astrophysical Journal Letters, 824(2), [L22]. DOI: 10.3847/2041-8205/824/2/ L22).

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Oort cloud;84 a large perforated shell of objects that now occupies the outermost region of the solar system. Our belief hints to that possibility, as it comes from observing gravitational anomalies in the Kuiper belt — the appearances of comets and the occasional observation of planetoids (the discovery of Sedna in 2003) which suggest that they did not originate in the Kuiper belt. We do also suspect that the steep orbital incline of Pluto, makes it a candidate to have originated in this region. Long-period comets, or those that exceed the 200-year revolutionary period around the sun, we believe, also originate from this vicinity. Our guarded calculations, therefore, tell us that an immense spherical cloud — like a thin perforated glass globe — surrounds the planetary system, with a radius extending approximately to a distance of 17.7 Gkm from Sun, and at what is considered the edge of Sun’s physical, gravitational, or dynamical influence. This hypothetical spherical cloud of predominantly icy planetesimals, we believe, surrounds the solar system, and barely in Sun’s gravitational grip. We also think that in this spherical cloud, where the centripetal forces are weak and do not influence the matter contained there substantially, it is that restrains these objects to stick around Sun’s spherical boundary of gravitational influence.

2.5 ...AND A SOLAR SYSTEM Sun, the ethereal heat-giver, and physical controller of the solar system through its gravity and magnetic influence — as far as some 5000 to 100,000 AUs away, or the edge of Sun’s orbit of physical, gravitational, or dynamical influence, is obviously large. It is 1,200,000 times the size of Earth, and 333,000 times heavier. It has a diameter that is 1,391,000 km. The outer limits of its gravitational field that holds its family together, are so far away that the Voyager I spacecraft only reached its Fig. 2.16: Approximation of the sizes of the planets and their outer boundary in Aug. 2012, comparison with Sun Credit: Lsmpascal/Creative Commons (CC) BY-SA 3.0/Wikipedia having been launched in 1977 and travelling at speeds in excess of 63,000 km/h. 84

Ernst Öpik proposed the hypothesis back in 1932, as the possible source of long-period comets. It was revised by Jan Hendrik Oort in 1950 and hence named after the Dutch astronomer.

36 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors…

Fig. 2.17: Planets in their orbits around Sun (not drawn to scale) Credit: NASA

Our solar system is complete85.

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In actuality, our solar system is comprised of Sun, nine major planets, some 100,000 asteroids larger than 1 km in diameter, and perhaps 1 trillion complementary nuclei. Its gravitational reach, is stretched to its outermost boundary, 100,000 AUs away, and is 1/3rd the way to the nearest star. We are not alone though, and in 1999, an entire solar system around the star Upsilon Andromedae, was first noticed by us, approximately 44 ly away, with three large planets circling the star. As technology improves, we will keep finding more solar systems and at increasingly frequent intervals. In 2008, a team from the Porto and Geneva universities did a joint analysis of data from the HARPS spectrograph and the Kepler satellite, while concluding that the orbits of other planetary systems are aligned, like in a disk, just like in our own solar system. In 2016, observations from the joint German-U.S. ‘Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy’, the largest airborne observatory in the world, indicate that the nearby planetary system of Epsilon Eridani has architecture very similar to that of the solar system.

‘The hypothesis may be put forward, to be tested by the subsequent investigation that this development has been in large part a matter of the reciprocal interaction of new factual insights and knowledge on the one hand with changes in the theoretical system on the other’. — Talcott Parsons

3

A Teardrop Arrives

In time unknown, an intense explosion — a collision of stars or a galactic outburst, or an exploding star nearby, a supernova, or a hypernova86 — within our galaxy, splattered stardust into space. One such drop, or dribble of ‘space dust’, or a free-floating mass of cosmic residue, or possibly even an ‘orphan planet’87 — wandering aimlessly in the cosmos — travelling at speeds of some 2.5 Mkm/h, headed in the direction of our young and expanding solar system. Nearing it, Sun’s solar wind made it appear like a comet — its tail trailing vapours; a sublimation of water and icy gas in the cold of space. Leading the streaming trail of vapour was a blob of celestial material with a potential fiery molten core hidden within it. Sun attracted, engaged, and negotiated the wandering unknown, into a suitable orbit around it. It had all happened sometime around 4.543 Ga ago, a little after our solar system was beginning to take shape. At the time the alien ‘teardrop’ was approaching the sun (we were seated in our favourite vantage point, above the sun and facing north), we see it coming in and entering Sun’s warm and dusty expanse of its protoplanetary disc. It comes in rather loosely but tangentially and almost in the plane of Sun’s equator. It was captured, and having come in, enabled Sun’s gravity to sling it into a suitable and sustainable orbit around it. Thawing to Sun’s warm embrace, the icy newcomer would soon stabilise its revolution around the sun, and thus would begin the start of its long perennial revolution around it while settling 86

87

It is a supernova, but one that explodes and produces far greater amounts of energy and light than a supernova explosion. In 2012, using the Canada France Hawaii Telescope on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea, and the ‘Very Large Telescope’ in Chile, astronomers spotted a ‘rogue planet’ wandering in the cosmos without a star to orbit around. The planet, dubbed CFBDSIR2149-0403, is some 100 ly away from us. New research suggests that billions of stars in our galaxy have captured rogue planets that once roamed interstellar space which were probably ‘kicked out’ of the star systems in which they formed; finding new homes in other parts of their parent galaxy or maybe, even in other parts of the vast universe, in different cosmic configurations. ‘Stars trade planets just like baseball teams trade players’, said Hagai Perets of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics. One recent study even stated that up to half of the stars in the universe are adrift without a galaxy to call home and which were most likely orphaned because of past galactic collisions wherein some of the stars escaped the new galaxy formations or because of perturbations within their own solar systems or such. As of Oct. 2018, 3700 planets have been discovered outside our solar system.

40 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… into an orbit between the two residents, Venus and Neptune and almost in the same plane of the equator that the two older planets had agglomerated in. The speed of its entry into the nascent solar system and the initial gravitational pull of the sun, put the teardrop into an acute elliptical orbit. As the teardrop-looking newcomer began its new journey, the ‘laws of conservation’ governing its mass, momentum and energy, compelled it to revolve around the sun, at an appropriate distance and to rotate accordingly, along its perennial journey — leading to another ‘celestial spinner’ in the making. In time, Sun would dampen the newcomer’s enthusiastic eccentric revolution, slow it down, to settle it into a more stable and fuller path, as it continued on an increasingly regular and repetitive cyclic journey around it. The teardrop rotated in an anticlockwise direction, on an axis somewhat parallel to the sun’s north-south axis (along the teardrop’s shorter girth) while also revolving anticlockwise in the equatorial-plane of the protoplanetary disc, following Neptune’s footsteps; by then in the same direction as the other two resident planets, planetesimals, dust and gas, would move.

3.1 UNPACKING THE EMBRYONIC BLOB’S BEGINNINGS Energised by the sun’s heat and magnetism, the blob starts its life in our solar system as a viscous ball of rock, molten and fiery. Meanwhile, the teardrop’s inherent cohesive properties, coupled to Sun’s hold on the revolving body in its embrace, initiated reactionary forces between the two and in accordance with the laws of motion and the new gravitational conditions imposed on the new arrival, it, in turn, began to assert itself on the elements around and within her. Through differentiation, it began to condense the gases, lower down to the teardrop’s surface, to surround the hardening shell of core. A thin crust began to form on the surface — which stood out visibly — and began to take some indistinct shape and form at its thicker and larger end, forming the blob’s initial large unbroken landmass. The ‘teardrop’ was now more of an ‘egg-shaped geoid’, where the greater part of the condensate would form the single deep body of water at the thinner end and that would surround the huge single landmass. It was early days, some 400 Ma since its entry into the solar system. In time, with its proximity to the sun, and its ability to absorb solar energy, conditions were conducive for cratonization88 to commence. As the molten blob kept changing while the differentiation of matter went on, its outer layers cooled sufficiently, as its troubled surface offered conditions to initiate cratonization at a faster and more effective rate, in the airless, weatherless and near-vacuum conditions of space. This was also helped by the newcomer’s interior not yet fired up, with the core of heavy metals still not in place by the time cratonization was about to happen. The interior, though, remained hot and molten, with a small radioactive core generating the heat. 88

A formation process of a craton — a large stable block of the crust, forming the nucleus of a continent.

A Teardrop Arrives 41

Some 4 Ga ago, the heat of her interior, coupled with the movement of the molten magma in tune with the rotation and revolution of her body and agitated by Sun’s now formidable magnetic field, a small local magnetic pitch was initiated within the blob. It would slowly form around the mass of water, land, a not so fiery magma and within which some semblance of an iron-nickel-silicone core kept developing. This helped further build-up of heat within the core, due to more metal sinking to the centre, pressure build-up at greater depth, and the release of ‘gravitational potential energy’.89 This energy release is an interesting development even because as the molten blob orbits Sun, its gravitational pull and new magnetic forces help to separate the elements within it; the heavier ones sinking into the bottom accordingly — a chain reaction of sorts. At this point in time, we can visualize a thick, dry, barren landmass at the larger end, and a lifeless body of water in the thinner and opposite end; a single raised landmass and a single deep ocean appearing. As it cooled further, this egg-shaped geoid of fresh molten rock, thick crust, and a large water body — formed from sublimated gases — appeared with a dark grey, pig-iron slag like crust covering 1/3rd of the new arrival’s surface… and all at its thicker end. At its thinner end, the waters covered 2/3rds of the area — a lighter shade of dirty grey, reflecting the crust beneath it. There was no atmosphere laden blue sky to reflect the water’s colour.

Fig. 3.1: The ‘teardrop’, soon after its arrival into the solar system

This egg-like entity of the hot molten interior with the single placid ocean surrounding a crusty and single landmass, would later come to be known as Earth.90 89

90

An object possesses energy, due to its position in a gravitational field. In other words, ‘potential energy’ is ‘heat-in-waiting’. ‘Earth’ is the only one in the solar system with a name that does not relate itself to Greco-Roman mythology. Its etymology lies in antiquity, before man knew anything about planets... let alone naming them. We probably referred to this hunting and gathering patch of ground, from the AngloSaxon ‘erda’, which in Old English became ‘ertha’. However, the origins of ‘er’ are not discounted as coming from the Germanic branch of the proto-Indo-European Group language group, as ‘er’ and ‘pr’ could be from Sanskrit’s ‘Prthvi’ — for Mother Earth.

42 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors…

3.1.1 Early Earth Earth’s crust continues to be shaped by the planet’s movement and energy, and its crust today is composed of igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks, with the most abundant being igneous rocks; formed from the cooling magma and where today, granite and basalt are abundant. Metamorphic rocks have undergone drastic changes due to heat and pressure. At this early stage in Earth’s life, there are no sedimentary rocks yet. In the early part of the last century, scientists began to study Earth’s past in earnest and one of those attempts led to naming the single giant landmass as Pangaea91 while the single large continent’s surrounding ocean was named Panthalassa.92 Panthalassa covered 80% of the new arrival’s surface. Pangaea’s land was generally a thick plateau, at a high altitude and in places, as much as 7000 m above the shoreline and its mostly steep shores were surrounded by the all-encompassing Panthalassa; a single ocean that was comparatively shallow where it met Pangaea’s shores, but very deep at its centre. We can visualise this by taking an egg and holding it horizontally in front of us, imagining the larger end as Pangaea, and thinner and longer end, as Panthalassa. The egg yolk we may imagine it as Earth’s core (in waiting). The poles we imagine being in the normal north-south position and both are running through the shallow fringes of Panthalassa. Pangaea’s centre was at its equator, and in the early days, the weather comprised the unfiltered hot rays of the sun, and nothing else. The proto-earth entering to be a part of the solar system but bringing in with it neither winds nor atmosphere needed to deflect, radiate, or dissipate Sun’s scorching rays. There was very little circulation in the waters of Panthalassa and with Earth’s every single wobbly rotation, only two solar tides — the ebb and the neap tides — saw the fringes of Pangaea and Panthalassa enjoy some watery tidal action, though the currents were weak and gradual, and 12 hours (h) apart. It was a time when Southern Morocco and Mauritania were under the sea, as we have marine fossils — notably trilobites — today that bear witness to that era. Sea levels were high at the time, around Pangaea, and would only drop later. For over 4 Ga, Earth’s waters would continue to behave so. Except at its shallow fringes, shores and coastlines, Panthalassa was largely anoxic in its first billion years or two and starkly acidic initially. This was because Earth was a dimmer place then and Sun’s heat was not enough to change things in an almost lifeless atmosphere. This is because the early atmosphere had more of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide than at present, and that as the sun got brighter, carbon dioxide levels decreased.93 91 92 93

Named so, by the German scientist, Alfred Lothar Wegener, which in Greek means ‘all the lands’. Also named by Wegener, which in Greek means, ‘all the waters’. Carbon dioxide and water produce carbonic acid, so it makes sense that the early ocean would have been more acidic.

A Teardrop Arrives 43

In another activity, the natural decay of heavy elements like uranium, thorium and potassium — combined with the pressurized fusing of potassium and iron — built-up within Earth’s core and that helped transform the core and mantle into a red-hot molten ball of magma. Heat from the new radioactive decay joined the primordial heat left over from the Earth’s formative years, where extremely high pressures assisted in pushing temperatures further up, as the core further condensed into a semisolid nickel-iron ball within a fluid mantle.

3.1.1.1 Gassing the Planet In time, in a more stable orbit and with the dissipation of heat into space, Earth’s crust consolidated and solidified with the repositioning of many elements, with their mixing also, with one another to form new compounds. The heavier new elements and compounds would sink towards Earth’s centre and this activity would further initiate more secondary chemical reactions within the Earth’s deeper recesses, facilitating the production of new elements and compounds, along with the resulting gases that were emitted from the slowly growing dynamism of the interior. While the mantle cooled over the millions of years it would take it to, water trapped inside minerals erupted along with close-to-the-surface lava, only to be released into a less pressurised surface — in a process called ‘outgassing’. As more water was outgassed, the mantle solidified. From mud and clay to diamonds and coal, Earth’s crust formed; created along the way, by dynamic geologic forces. The lighter gases would begin to hover and assemble themselves over Earth’s surface in a layered pattern, in relation to their compositional mass. It would create the semblance of an ‘early atmosphere’, which would then play a pivotal role in the emergence of life on Earth, by assisting in the absorbing of Sun’s ultraviolet (UV) radiation, warming Earth’s surface evenly through heat retention, radiation and convention and reducing temperature extremes — especially between day and night. Below UV filters and the stratosphere, lay liquid water. The ever-thickening atmosphere combined with the ever-evolving magnetosphere’s protection, increased the shelter it offered to everything on the surface of the land and waters. In time, the waters on her surface would slowly circulate through convectional currents — the result of the everincreasing hot core and a stable cold outer surface in touch with space—helping to balance the temperatures around the globe while acting as an ideal heat-transfer and dissipation medium, as well as a heat sink. These early movements of the waters of Panthalassa, would eventually help maintain a geological process that would eventually nurture life. Importantly, Earth’s early magnetism helped it develop the ozonosphere, creating the initial magnetic shield that deflected the harmful-to-life sunrays. Then, some billion years ago, when oxygen began to be produced on her surface, Sun’s UV light began interacting with the O2 to produce O3 (ozone) and it is the stratosphere that has the highest concentration of ozone molecules and once again, absorbing high-energy solar UV radiation. Having first sheltered Earth’s surface from the harmful rays of the Sun, the stratosphere would indirectly begin to protect emerging living organisms on Earth’s surface.

44 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… Besides the life-giving oxygen (mostly in the form of water vapour), Earth’s atmosphere also contained some volatile and inert gases; all necessary to the sustenance of life on the planet — life that also evolved, or adapted to live in the conditions it found itself in. This complex and sustaining ecosystem that life lives through — by compulsion, or choice — embraces an atmosphere that divides itself into the thermosphere, mesosphere, stratosphere and troposphere. Though we tend to take our atmosphere for granted, it has a lovely mix of nitrogen and oxygen, with trace amounts of water vapour, carbon dioxide and other gaseous molecules. In short, our atmosphere is now plentiful and above all... life-sustaining.

3.1.1.2 The Beginnings of Magnetism Early magnetism on earth came in bits and pieces, and was the result of Sun’s magnetism, galvanising a few hotspots on the land; hotspots that had more localised iron, nickel and silicone. These developing multipolar magnetic fields around the earth were initially weak but would play their part in partially preventing the harsh solar emissions from striking Earth directly, deflecting some cosmic rays into space, where early on, the outgassing of Earth was stripped away by solar winds. However, in time, a steady state between the adversaries would be established. This shield would also help dissipate Sun’s heat. Slowly and gradually, things would change even more.94 In the meantime, as the earth began to enhance its nascent magnetic field around it, the core further settled into a denser solid ball, now comprising 85% iron, 10% nickel and 5% silicon.95 The ‘dynamo’ within it would begin to stir slowly, then rotate; excited by the sun’s magnetic field. Earth would acquire a single magnetic circuit from the earlier localized ones; just like Sun’s. The new bipolar dynamo would then begin to help independently sustain the nascent Earth’s rotation.96 The ever-growing heat in the core would keep the mantle actively churning, and the core beginning to generate a stronger magnetic field offering Earth even more protection. Palaeomagnetic scientists have recorded these early formative years of Earth’s magnetism on rocks that are some 4 Ga old.97 94

95

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Today, we know that these rays are trapped into two concentric doughnut-like bands around Earth, called the Van Allen Belts (discovered in 1958 by the American satellite, Explorer 1 — America’s first earth orbiting satellite). Some particles deflected by the magnetic field by the North and South Poles when they hit the atmosphere, interact within the upper strata, exciting the atoms. When the atoms relax, they give out light based on a similar principle as those of our ground-based ‘artificial’ neon lights. These are then seen by us at the poles as Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights), and the Aurora Australis (Southern Lights). Presenting his research to the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco in late 2016, Prof. Eiji Ohtani, from Tohoku University in Japan, told the BBC News: ‘We believe that silicon is a major element — about 5% (of the Earth’s inner core) by weight — and it could be that silicon is dissolved in the iron-nickel alloys’. `The metal core that generates the magnetic field produces an electromagnetic torque from the geodynamic effect which, in turn, pulls along with it, the outer shells of the planet. A palaeomagnetic study of zircon found in red dacite (an igneous, volcanic rock with a high iron content), from the Jack Hills of Western Australia, had earlier estimated Earth’s magnetic field to have been present since at least 3.45 Ga ago. Ever evolving and more efficient testing methods help keeping us abreast with advancing science.

A Teardrop Arrives 45

As time moved along, more magnetism was added to Earth’s inventory while additional heavy metals kept sinking into its insides. As the magnetic field started to shield Earth from the solar wind that could have stripped our planet of its nascent atmosphere of water vapour and other gases, life would begin its humble beginnings, now traced to have originated in the depths of Earth’s early ocean — Panthalassa. Earth’s magnetic effect, would eventually extend into space, to where it would meet the solar wind some 65,000 km from the planet’s surface, creating the magnetosphere, deflecting the wind to enhance its protective action of life on the planet. This is important for the preservation of habitable conditions on Earth, as, without this magnetic field, solar winds burst, in streams of electrically charged solar particles that flow from Sun would fry lifeforms on Earth’s surface, gradually stripping away its atmosphere. (DUWK·VPDJQHWLFÀHOGLVJHQHUDWHGLQLWVLURQQLFNHOVLOLFRQHFRUHDQGWKLV¶JHRG\QDPR·UHTXLUHVDUHJXODUUHOHDVHRIKHDWIURPWKHSODQHWWRRSHUDWHHIÀFLHQWO\7RGD\WKLV KHDW UHOHDVH LV KHOSHG E\ SODWH WHFWRQLFV ZKLFK HIÀFLHQWO\ WUDQVIHUV KHDW IURP WKH GHHS interior of the planet to its surface.

3.1.2 Earth Today Through the years, earth would undergo a modification in shape and life would emerge, evolve, and crawl on and within her, in all its manifestations of lifeforms. Her shape would increasingly emerge as a more spherical and energy efficient state. Today, she rotates on a tilted and imaginary axis, once every 23 h, 56 minutes (min) and 4.09053 seconds (s), creating for us, our waking and sleeping cycles. To make matters even more exciting, her axis of spin is tilted at a nicety, at an angle of 23.44° (at this point in time), to give us four distinct and equal seasons a year that, in turn, helps and governs life cycles for living creatures. These cyclic seasonal conditions are essential to everything that lives: from the migration of life to the timely growing and harvesting of crops. Had there been no axial tilt, we would not have known when our grapes would be ripe for the picking, and if the earth stopped rotating today, we humans at least, would start freezing to death on one-half of the planet, while on the other half, we would be roasting like skewered piglets — half cooked, or burnt, on a non-turning spit. On only a year of living on such a static globe, life would have been erased from the surface of an inhospitable planet.

3.1.2.1 The Turn of Life Earth has now formed sufficiently for us to recognize it, as we know it. Today it is still an oblate spheroid,98 though, with a diameter of 12,756.32 km at the equator and a height of 12,715.43 km between its poles. The degree of eccentricity depends on the angular velocity of the geo-layer, the density of its material, including its radius when measured from the centre of Earth. It does not make it a true orb and deviates from being a perfect sphere by §NPVXIILFLHQWO\FORVHHQRXJKWRWUHDWLWDVDVSKHUH 98

Sir Isaac Newton first proposed that earth was not perfectly round. Instead, he suggested it was an oblate spheroid; a sphere squashed at its poles and swollen at the equator.

46 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… Earth’s rotation around its axis, is important too, as it is this rotisserie-style spinning that keeps earth warm and sunny all year around. It engages the geomagnetic field, maintains the daily weather patterns while also aiding the circulation of the oceans in its distribution of heat through convection. Today, as our planet dances around the Sun, life sleeps, wakes and rests, all in accordance with the planet’s continuous daily pirouette. Rotating at the speed of 1674.4 km/h99 at the equator on a somewhat ‘offset from an ideally centred axis’, it revolves around the sun at a distance of 1 AU away from it, in a slightly elliptical orbit, circling the sun at a speed of 108,000 km/h. Temperatures over her surface, then vary from a high of 56.7 °C100 to a low of –93.2 °C in the eastern highlands of Antarctica,101 with an overall global average at the surface hoovering between 14°C to 15°C. It is warm, wet and volcanic, and has had lifeforms on it for some 3.8 Ga now; H. sapiens being one of the about 8.7 M (give or take 1.3 M)102 lifeforms that she hosts, with 6.5 M on land and 2.2 M in the oceans, and that have evolved along with her, from humble singlecelled beginnings. From humble terrestrial beginnings in space, Earth would end up being much different in composition from the others in its family of planets in the solar system. She is today a masterpiece of a symphony to life; a concerto to creation.

3.2 WHAT MAKES EARTH DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHER SOLAR SYSTEM PLANETS? While we humans are an anthropocentric race, believing ourselves to be the most significant and knowledgeable entity in the universe, let us for the time being, separate ourselves 99

100

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It is the reason that NASA launches its rockets in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The ESA does it in French Guiana, whereas India does it at its southern shores — as close to the equator as she can. When hurtling rockets into space from these parts near about the equator, they achieve a boosted escape velocity, aided with a headstart of 1674.4 km/h provided by the rotating Earth and the bonus of the extra centripetal slingshot force coupled to the 21 km less it has to travel than if it was at the poles. It is defined as ‘the change in perceived gravitational force, caused by the change in centrifugal acceleration, resulting from the eastbound velocity’. In other words, if you were standing at the equator, you would be moving through space at that jet-speed. On 13 Sept. 2012, the World Meteorological Organisation disqualified the record for the highest recorded temperature, exactly 90 years after it had been established at El Azizia, Libya, with a measurement of 58 °C. The official highest recorded temperature is now 56.7 °C which was measured on 10 July 1913 at Greenland Ranch, Death Valley, California, USA. Announced by NASA on 10 Dec. 2013. The temperature breaks the 30 year old (yo) record of –89.2 °C, measured by Russia’s Vostok weather station in a nearby location. While scientists give out these figures confidently, they also say that most have not been identified and it will take some 1000 years or more to do so. This, they estimate, is only 85% of the total of the terrestrial species, with 91% of aquatic species remaining undiscovered, while 93% of fungi are still unknown. ‘A reasonable guess is that 10 M additional plant and animal species await discovery by scientists and amateur species explorers’, says Quentin Wheeler, an Arizona State University entomologist.

A Teardrop Arrives 47

from this terrestrial planet that we live on and adopt the position of an external observer from ‘out there’... another cosmic entity altogether — an alien.103 This alien passing in our vicinity and stopping by to observe us, would have found our solar system interesting! He would soon notice that we are the only planet in the solar system that has living things on it and in abundance, in a myriad of forms and in all its complexity and is neither without any immediate neighbours nor in the family of planets of a similar design the same. It harbours an entire ecosystem, each dependent on the other; the flea to the elephant — the entire complex, ungraspable, fantastic, incomprehensible, marvellous… and with an accumulation of interconnected organisms — plants, fungi, animals, insects, mammals, birds... the lot! The observant alien also notices that ‘life’ is always present when water is around. Ice has been found elsewhere in our solar system… and we think that there could be some form of life out there, though we have not found that yet. Until then, Earth stands out in this respect and this makes it unique in our solar system. He would be at a loss to explain why and even worse, he sees not just life but intelligent life as well; a life that can understand, analyse, discuss and write about it too! The space travelling alien is left to observe that the planet’s intelligent life has even developed rockets that enable travel beyond the solar system’s planets, and with the potential to trouble his kind on another world! He sets out to understand this planet that could be a threat to his civilization. A strange planet... different! It took a journey to the Moon, and looking back, they see how beautiful our planet is!

Fig. 3.2: Earth! The Blue Marble The one on the left was taken with ‘atmosphere filtering’ lenses, and on the right, as seen by the Apollo 17 crew on 7 Dec. 1972 Credit: NASA/either Harrison Schmitt or Ron Evans 103

‘Most astrophysicists accept a high probability of there being life elsewhere in the universe, if not on other planets or on moons within our own solar system’, says Neil deGrasse Tyson (Essay in Astrobiology 30 June 2003 — The Search for Life in the Universe).

48 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors…

3.2.1 She Looks Different When the visiting alien begins to physically compare the ‘rocky planets’ Venus, Mars, Mercury and Pluto (Figs. 2.5, 2.10, 2.11, and 2.12 respectively), with the ‘gas giants’ Neptune, Uranus, Jupiter, and Saturn (Figs. 2.6, 2.7, 2.8 and 2.9 respectively), he is made obvious by the fact that there are two groups here. There are the small little inner ‘rocky’ planets of greater densities closer to Sun, and the gigantic outer ‘gas’ giants of lesser densities farther away from Sun. Earth aligns herself with the smaller, inner rocky planet group. Then again, she looks different… and he clearly distinguishes her so, by equating her separately; she does not belong to either of the two groups. There is no commonality between the three. Earth’s surface pictures, as seen in Fig. 3.2, tell him of our planet’s story. There is a separation between her lands, waters and sky and these are highlighted in her most obvious features: her beautiful colours and her atmosphere. We see the browns of the arid desert lands, the greens of the wetlands and the forests, and the scattered mountains topped with white ice-capped peaks. Through the ever-present and seasonal shifting clouds, we see the blues... oceans of it! We even see her dynamic vapour laden clouds moving around, while like a shy eastern bride, coyly shielding ‘space aliens’ from observing her earthly beauty. She looks singular and distinctive, with none of her sister or brother planets in close comparison. The visual differences are stark and obvious, sparkling along as she moves around in her universe; her canvas composed of the entire spectrum of colours... our Blue Marble beauty! Through the ages, her colours have changed though. It tells us something else... a life of growing-up.

3.2.2 Her Material Composition is Different Though often called the ‘Third Rock from the sun’, this label does not sit well with her; it is a lexical ambiguity at best. Yes, she hangs out in the midst of little rocky planets in the inner solar system, and hence lumped in that grouping, but she is ‘in another world’; in a family that is so unlike her, where the others have almost no atmosphere, little weather patterns, and no water whatsoever. The other three in the family group are barren rock— agglomerated from the protoplanetary clouds of dust, rock asteroids, and planetesimals... leftovers from the sun’s formation. As the planets formed individually and developed separately and in different parts of the protoplanetary disc — and so acquired their unique identities — they slotted themselves in their orbits around the sun at different times and with different material resources available close by (and it is for this precise reason that their composition and hence colours are all different). However, with the relative attraction of Sun’s gravitational pull, the closer ones were to acquire higher compactness than the ones farther out. We, therefore, see Mercury with the acquired density of 5.43 grams per cubic centimetre (g/cm3), Venus as 5.24 g/cm3, and Mars at 3.93 g/cm3. Earth, between them, is the ‘oddball’ and does not

A Teardrop Arrives 49

conform to the formula vis-à-vis, relating Sun’s gravitational attraction to planetary density. Plotted on a graph, Earth’s density sticks out from the curve like a sore thumb; it is the highest among the planets at 5.51 g/cm3. Figure 3.3 graphically explains it visually, where the only reasonable explanation for this fact, is because of the heavier elements contained within the earth; once again, hinting at its foreign origins.

Density of the planets Planet (g/cm3) Mercury 5.43 Venus 5.24 Earth 5.51 Mars 3.93 Jupiter 1.33 Saturn 0.69 Uranus 1.27 Neptune 1.64 Pluto 2.03

Fig. 3.3

Had Earth’s material composition agglomerated from Sun’s protoplanetary disc, her density would have been in tune with the others in the family on the graph. Taking the route of a natural and softer curve — especially the inner rocky ones — we see a more congenial graph as depicted in Fig. 3.4, where Earth would then have also assumed the density of 4.83 g/cm3. Planet Mercury

Density of the planets (g/cm3) 5.427

Venus

5.243

Earth + Moon

4.753

Mars

3.943

Jupiter

1.326

Saturn

0.687

Uranus

1.27

Neptune

1.638

Pluto

2.02

Fig. 3.4

How will Sun sort out this inconsistency? We shall only know millions of years on. Until then, Earth shall continue to be...

50 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… However, rest assured that Sun does, is and will be at the task of ‘balancing’ the equation, as universal laws compel it to — to achieve a state of equilibrium with its surroundings. As an example, consider the graph in Fig. 3.5. While the densities of the Gas Giants keep tumbling as they fan out into Sun’s equatorial plane of rotation, they try to maintain their densities by accruing more rocky material (of higher density). Many of these bits and pieces that would be left at odds in the protoplanetary disc, would team up with the solar systems less dense planets, by settling around it as moons. In the graph, we see the numbers of moons in inverse proportion to the densities of their parent planet. Planet Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto

No. of Moons 0 0 1 2 67 62 27 14 5

Fig. 3.5

3.2.3 Earth’s Mineralogy is Unique in the Solar System Referred to as the Blue Marble because of what we see on its cloudy and bluish surface, water is the commodity that makes it appear so — the combination of moisture and clouds. A fact again is that Earth’s waters are, in quantity, far more than any total combined amount of it in the entire solar system… many times over. Water covers 70.8% of Earth’s surface at this point in time,104 although in her initial years, the blob lost a lot of it through evaporation, as we know that atmospheric protection was not in place in those early days, to shield and prevent its dissipation. Moreover, at that time, gravity too was in its infancy, letting vapour move higher up its scorched and barren surface, involuntarily helping dissipate some water vapour into the voids of space.105 Then again, the elements that make her are as varied as the hues on and around her. The major ones that compose her are iron 34.6%, silicon 28%, magnesium 12.7%, calcium 4%, nickel 2.4%, sulphur 1.9%, and 0.05% titanium, among little traces of a host of others — all-important to life on earth. 104

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While the ocean waters make up this percentage, we must bear in mind that it only accounts for 0.02% of our planet’s total mass. We see this happening on the dwarf planet Ceres. Plumes of water vapour shooting up from Ceres’ surface were observed by the Herschel Space Telescope, with estimates that it loses about 6 kilograms per second (kg/s) of its mass through steam dissipation in the relative emptiness and vacuum of interplanetary emptiness.

A Teardrop Arrives 51

In the Murchison meteorite — a piece of our solar system that fell in Australia on 28 Sept. 1969 — and dated with a radioisotope age of 4.56 Ga, it was found to contain 92 amino acids, of which only 19 are found on Earth; five are found in living things while the balance are a rarity here. So, if Earth agglomerated off and in the same protoplanetary disc as the others, why is she still — billions of years later — so short of the solar system’s very ingredients and the most common elements… is the question begging for an answer.106 Today, we can confidently confirm that her composites are unique within the solar system and that she shares less in common with the other inhabitants within it.

3.2.4 The Delicate Lady While astronauts in the outer space have called her a Blue Marble, she is for all practical purposes, not of calcite nor glass but a watery, malleable and a fragile globule. To enable us to understand this fact, let us play God, temporarily. In an airless vacuum chamber, take a blob from a ladle of some molten iron-like substance, surround it with clay while trying to roughly shape and highlight its earthly contours. Finally, pour some water over your not-so-perfect model and view it objectively. Work it with your hands and see how it feels. If not careful, with the slightest of misdirected pressure on it, you could create a Lake Victoria with the tip of your pinkie or worse, even puncture a volcano into it with a caldera as large as Yellowstone, or create lakes as large as the Black Sea, or the Caspian Sea. Earth is a soft-ball; waters separating lands that break up, bleed red lava, move, cave in, grow, weather… and the lands scatter in time. The land is, in most areas, made up of a brown to reddish topsoil, generally over porous black igneous lava-formed rocks, metamorphic ones, or the late-forming sedimentary ones.

Fig. 3.6: The ‘oddball’ among the inner ‘rocky’ planets Left to right: Earth and Venus (back row), Mars and Mercury (front row), and all to scale Credit: Lsmpascal Wikipedia/CC BY-SA 3.00 106

To quote Robert Hazen of the Carnegie Institution: “This means that despite the physical, chemical and biological factors that control most of our planet’s mineral diversity, Earth’s mineralogy is unique in the cosmos”.

52 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… Its thin surface is brittle in places and it cracks under pressure. If you squeeze it like an orange, it would bleed red molten lava. It is a softie in comparison to its hard marble-like ‘billiard ball’ neighbours. We know that the earth is fragile but inside her, she is physically active while on her surface, earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis create upheavals over her landmass. Unlike the others and with a long-lasting source of energy within her, heat bubbles in her guts; its consistency is maintained by its movement via ‘conduction’ through Earth’s outer layers and in an intricate and complicated activity. Countless interacting feedback loops are involved — huge oceans, active global wind movement patterns, water cycles, etc. — in moderating the newcomer’s relative temperatures; cold on the outside and progressively hotter inside.

3.2.5 Her Weather is Dynamic and Cyclic Earth has a vibrant and an ever-changing weather system. NASA’s breathtaking and out-of-this-world pictures of her daily transitional surface cover, keeps reminding us of that fact. White clouds are there at dawn and gone by the hour; wispy whites giving way to blue oceans and the greens and browns of the land. If our alien had hung around for a week, he would have observed the dark eye of a hurricane (or typhoon or cyclone) moving over the globe and then disappear. Seasonally, her atmosphere keeps adjusting to the necessities of her physical surroundings, and if our alien hung around for a few years, he would see monsoon clouds appear and disappear with the changing seasons; with precision and annually. These movements tell the alien visitor that there is something definitely going on down there; life, living in isolation from the others, regulating her waking and sleeping seasons, in perfect timing and with precision. Annually, her polar ice caps grow and recede like clockwork; changing roles while playing host to Sun for half the year. In the stretches of lands that start on the western edges of Western Sahara on the western extreme of the Sahara Desert, across Africa to Egypt, through the Middle East, Iran, Mongolia, and into eastern China, we see duststorms move around in those barren and unforgiving lands. In Namibia, in a part of the Kalahari Basin, annual seasonal rains help change the landscape’s colours in the Etosha Pan; a phenomenon that astronauts in space have observed visually. The largest river delta that empties out on land, changes the landscape from brown to green, when the annual rains flood the Okavango marshes. Our passing alien observes these changes; there is something definitely happening down there... movement and change. That surface is alive! If our alien observer had a lifespan covering aeons, other changes could have been recorded; her continents moving around while filling up empty oceans and generally fanning out from lands that were once all bunched up as one huge continent in the southern hemisphere and where earlier it was in the tropics. With the lands spreading out, the wind, weather and ocean current patterns changed in the course of time; her colours changed in places and in response to climatic impositions at the time. The deep green of dense African

A Teardrop Arrives 53

forests would change to the light green of the velds and the savannahs. At other times, green forests turned to barren brown deserts, while barren lands green over with the new and emerging rain patterns brought about by tectonics. Rivers would appear and disappear, as the moving lands would dictate them to comply. Some would change course and some would silt up to form large lakes. Huge ice slabs would have covered half the globe during the Ice Ages and then withdraw a few times. In another corner of that globe, a huge sea would empty as its underbelly rose to become a high altitude plateau. In a fast-forward mode, he would have seen lands sliding under one another and into oblivion.

3.2.6 Her Atmosphere Lives Through Recycling Itself On looking closer and unlike the other planets, this one has an atmosphere that is not visible from a distance but is unique in the solar system when looked at and experienced from close quarters. Earth is made up of 20.95% oxygen; the result of the waste of basic lifeforms. It would also be the trigger for other lifeforms to evolve, grow and live down here; oxygen-inhaling lifeforms that move around over its surface, even if dependent on living on the refuse of other inhabitants — carbon inhaling trees in this case. But, then again, if our alien played the tape of life of our planet in the ‘fast-forward’ mode, he would have noticed huge slabs of calcified rock of Earth’s seabed, plunge into trenches and into the belly of the planet, only to emerge through her pores and cracks as gas and molten liquid, which contribute to enhancing and recycling her atmosphere. The process that he observes is not visible on the other planets in our solar system. It was tectonics and part of its process that also recycles Earth’s wastes that he observes is unique here. Earth, in fact, has an abundance of an atmosphere that does at times irritate her and in particular, some gases that absorb Sun’s heat — radiating some of it onto its surface, causing surface temperatures to be higher than they would otherwise be. These extra gases in the atmosphere, unfortunately, also act like the glass covering of a greenhouse, preventing accumulated heat from escaping, causing what we now know appropriately as ‘the greenhouse effect’. All said and done, our little orb moves, lives and breathes... happily... an island in itself.

3.2.7 A Powerful Magnetic Field Envelops, Protects and Guides her ‘Life’ Of the inner, rocky, or terrestrial planets, only Earth generates its own magnetic field. If we designate Earth’s magnetic field as 1 gauss107 or 1 B, then Mercury, Venus and Mars are 0.006 B, 0.0 B, and 0.0 B respectively; i.e., two do not possess it, while Mercury displays a little of it. It tells us that unlike Earth, they do not have internal metal cores and magma that generates magnetism. These are agglomerated asteroids, composed of hard rock and dust. Earth is not of the same material. 107

Unit of measurement of magnetic flux density, or magnetic induction, and named after the German mathematician and physicist, Carl Friedrich Gauss.

54 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… Mercury has a very weak and negligible magnetic field and this is only because of its close proximity to the sun, where with her surface temperatures at some 430 °C, she has a small core and possibly composed largely of iron; heavy metals having sunk to its centre through the melting of the elements by the sun’s constant and intense heat imposed on it from its close proximity to the unfortunate planet. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune have magnetic fields of intensities of 19,519 B, 578 B, 57.9 B, and 27 B respectively. These ‘Jovian’ planets, or ‘Gas Giants,’ or ‘Big Balls of Gas’, tell us that their progressively declining magnetic force of their magnetic fields, are in a direct relationship to their distance away from the sun, from whom they inherit their magnetic fields. Moreover, they probably have no molten core to generate it on their own, as it is in Earth’s magnetic field that is generated in its liquid iron core, and this ‘geodynamo’ requires a regular release of heat from the planet to operate. It is this magnetic defence, a field that envelops Earth in a cosy blanket of protection that helped make life on our planet possible. The other rocky worlds are not so lucky. The gradual build-up of the magnetosphere — Earth’s bulletproof vest — would ensure the protection of lifeforms on the evolving planet. A strong magnetic field provides a shield for the atmosphere, and this is important for the preservation of habitable conditions on Earth. 4 Ga ago, earth began to build up its magnetic field. It was that prerequisite that was needed to give life a chance to form on earth. Earth is, therefore, unique among the lot that has a molten core, where the ‘dynamo’ rotates to cut across Sun’s magnetic lines, to then generate its own magnetic field.

3.2.8 She is the Only One Who Works With ‘Plate Tectonics’ Tectonics happens on our planet because earth has ’plates’ that are moved over her surface and that alters and changes her surface continuously. These plates may be compared to the ice floes in the Arctic Sea, whose configurations change in the course of time, all year round. A layer below the crust, on her surface that is soft, elastic and fluid enough, moves her lands in the direction they are pushed while oceans of water circulate and move around the lands, permitting the physical changes in the positions of the lands. Tectonics, and the movement of the plates, are the bedrock on which earth lives and breathes.

3.2.9 The Self-Sustaining Thermodynamic Engine What kind of object is ’large enough’ to become molten and that permit differentiation, simply from gravitational pressure? Not Mercury, Venus, or Mars for that matter and not the stony meteorites scattered around the protoplanetary disc and definitely not the Gas Giants. What does this mean? It tells us of another or additional mechanism available that heats up the earth and maintains its temperature. The mechanism must also be capable of replenishing the heat loss from the cooling of our planet’s crust to the cold of space.

A Teardrop Arrives 55

It must be radioactivity and it is the heavier elements that are in behind the process. They, having been brought along into our solar system with the nascent teardrop blob, are the only probability available to us, to examine and probe.

3.3 THE EXTRASOLAR OR EXOPLANET EARTH Is Earth really an exoplanet? Thousands of them are out there we know; all are beyond our solar system with most discovered in the past two decades — and mostly with NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope. There is a huge variety of them, in an assortment of shapes, sizes and in a diversity of compositions and the youngest one we have discovered yet, is less than 1 Ma old; it orbits CoKu Tau/4 — a star 420 ly away. However, what we earthlings are interested in, is something similar to Earth; both in size, composition and in distance from their sunlike heat source. We need this to understand the beginnings of our earth better. The search continues.108

3.4 THIS CHAIR IS JUST RIGHT! However, what is most remarkable about Earth, is its precisely-tuned amount of water it harbours; not too much to cover the mountains, not so little that it is a dry desert like the rocky family of Mars, Venus and Mercury. Certainly, that optimum ‘just right’ distance to the sun has made it possible for our very equitable climate to prevail; much closer in and it would receive too much energy; much farther out and it would quickly freeze and snuff life before it even thought of germinating. In between… it is nicely balanced with the right mix of ice and sandy deserts, with wet green tropical forests and deep blue oceans. How did Earth manage to find this ‘space in the sun’; this balmy tropical island of our solar system? Is this orbital distance around the sun it found itself in, a piece of good fortune that happened to come along on its aimless wanderings? Could it be a coincidence we find ourselves on planet ‘Goldilocks’?109 A comfort zone? Scientists call it the circumstellar habitable zone (CHZ), or simply the ‘habitable zone’; a region around a star within which planets can support life on their surfaces: the ‘Goldilocks zone’.

3.5 THE PROOF OF THE PUDDING… However, what now supports the hypothesis that Earth did not ‘come into being’ from the original solar nebula, is a new work conducted by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), where a study pushes the date of the origins of Earth’s waters, further back to 4.6 Ga ago.110 108

109 110

As of mid-March 2018, Kepler has discovered 2342 confirmed exoplanets and revealed the existence of perhaps 2245 others. The total number of planets discovered by all observatories is 3706. A metaphor from the fairy tale, ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’. WHOI News Release: ‘New Study Finds Oceans Arrived Early to Earth’ — dated 30 Oct. 2014.

56 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… If Earth’s waters are that old, Earth must at least be that old if not older. How could she have been formed within the solar system, when Sun was not even around? Sun appeared on the celestial scene only some 4.568 Ga old.111 Consider this more visible, observable and provable fact. The oldest object in our solar system known to us is the 2 tonnes (t) ‘Allende Meteor’ that broke up in the atmosphere above the Mexican village of Allende in 1969.112 It is a remnant of the first solid grains that formed in the solar system and dated 4.566 Ga old. That is understandable, as it is in the line of the flow time-chart on the beginnings of the solar system and logically follows that Sun formed before its protoplanetary system and in this particular case, 34 Ma earlier. Earth could not have been born of the younger solar system’s protoplanetary disc. Born earlier and in another part of the Milky Way, Earth appears to have been hanging, or wandering ‘out there’, along with her cargo of 4.6 Ma old water, entering the solar system 4.543 Ga ago — only to be pelted and painted in her preliminary years, with the solar system’s dust and rocks from the accretionary disc and the debris of the Asteroid belt— making a lot of her composition an amalgamation of our solar system’s residue.

3.6 ‘GOLDILOCKS’ IS HOME Earth is a dynamic and evolving system, with a complex and ever-changing interaction between it and the sun, with both combining to monitor and regulate every aspect of life on it; the atmosphere, oceans, land and everything else that composes her. Its surface today exhibits most changes as compared to any of the other planets and Earth’s initial teardrop shape has changed in time. Over aeons, from the airless, weatherless, desolate, black lava-strewn landscape she came in with, she slowly developed an atmosphere and a landscape of every possible shade and hue of vibrant colours. Her oceans move around and regulate her climate, creating hot and cold spots in moderation, permitting the land and sea to blossom with life — of an immense variety and complexity. Living creatures on her have sought and found their niches in their ‘Goldilocks’ corners around the globe; whether by adaption and less by choice, it is home, though. Earth gets involved in the intricacies of life while moving through space and time in the solar system, along with the other objects in the universe. As she weathers and changes, she moves internally and externally as well. Volcanic processes deform and create new lands on her surface; landslides morph and scar her physical features with the aid of powerful forces of the wind, water, ice, heat and cold… constantly redrawing her surface features while in the process, gravity helps her resettle the run-off around. 111 112

Various studies have led us to this age of sun. A sample is housed in the America Museum of Natural History. The meteorite is peppered with white particles of aluminium and calcium oxide. Except for hydrogen and helium, they are about the same composition as that of Sun.

A Teardrop Arrives 57

It was the slow weathering of the lands that would shape our planet’s surface, with the occasional thump of an asteroid to crack its shell and ready a plate or two for individual action... then things would change for a faster-resettling process. Still a little elliptical in her orbit at this time, with a mean orbital distance of 149,597,870 km or simply 149.6 Mkm from Sun, the old teardrop lives its life in earnest; its birth, starting an eventful and fascinating journey. 4.543 Ga ago, Earth had arrived here... alone.113 Earth was without Moon.

113

Earth is not unique and according to findings released at the 219th AAS Meeting, there may be billions of earth-sized planets out there. Every star twinkling in the night sky they say, plays host to an average of 1.6 planets, implying that there are some 17 G earth-sized planets in our galaxy alone! It is even possible that Ganymede, one of Jupiter’s moons, is of similar stock to Earth: first, it is somewhat geologically active with an iron-rich, liquid core similar to Earth’s and second, due to that liquid iron core, it is the only moon in our solar system known to have a magnetic field.

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. — Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

4

The ‘fifth’ Rock

Life adjusts to various changes within its physical sphere of activity and in accordance with external constraints imposed upon it, simply to live with as little stress as possible. Likewise, do our heavenly companions; pushing and prodding one another with the outer reaches of their gravitational fields and SOIs; each making room for the other and all accommodating one another, within Sun’s gravitational SOI and its capacity to do so.

4.1 ROCKS OF THE AGES In the early period of the formation of the solar system — particularly in the period around 4.1 Ga ago, or a little earlier — the gas giants were slowly growing in mass, continuing their accretion of stray dust and gas in the protoplanetary disc. With their ever-growing mass, and changing angular momentum, they would find themselves moving out into wider but relatively and correspondingly slower orbits around the sun. As they fanned out, scattered debris — mainly rocky asteroids and planetesimals that were far apart and did not yet have a chance to form into larger units — began moving about erratically in the vast and ever-growing emptiness of the protoplanetary disc. With more jostling between the planets, the gas giants would gobble up the lighter material around, while the larger debris would be pushed into the outer reaches of Sun’s gravitational boundaries; literally ‘shoved away’ by the big boys. Here, they would reside, in the chilly expanse of space, in an area believed to contain trillions of objects; live comets, ‘dwarf’ planets, asteroids, irregularly shaped bodies and others made largely of icy rock, dust and gas that we know of as the Kuiper belt. In this far outreach, Sun’s gravity was not sufficiently strong enough to keep the KBOs in place; resulting in some of them straying around the solar system when sufficiently disturbed by the gas giants, or by large objects passing on the outskirts of our solar system. Moreover, when in their elliptical orbits and when close to the Kuiper belt, asteroids and such bodies — in these forlorn parts — were more prone to the gravitational shoving of the big boys and in many instances, forcing them off the beaten path.114 Some would leave on erratic journeys around Sun and those on the periphery of Sun’s gravitational 114

University of Toronto news: ‘Astrophysicists find Jupiter likely bumped giant planet from solar system’. ScienceDaily, 29 Oct. 2015.

60 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… limit, would have probably disappeared into the unknown voids of space and in all probability, never to be heard of again. At such times, there was also the possibility that Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune would have swallowed up the asteroids that left the Kuiper belt and moved in the direction of the sun. These would probably pop-up the much-needed core of the gas giants. In fact, being of a lower specific gravity, the gas giants would have actively hunted down to gobble up these icy rocks. Those that did not comply and were too large and fighting to be independent entities, were channelled to revolve around the planet, only to bolster the gas giant’s much needed specific gravity. They would circle the larger objects as their moons and it is for this precise reason that the Jovian planets are loaded with a proportionately larger number of moons circling them.115 As we know them today, all the moons in our planetary system are of asteroid rock and they all may have once been old KBOs (except Ganymede, a moon of Jupiter, which has some earth-like qualities).

4.2 NATURE ABHORS A VACUUM These outward movements of the ‘easily inflatable’ outlying gas giants, began to leave behind an increasingly greater void between them and the inner ‘slow-to-accrete’ rocky planets. Consternation was inevitable, as the gap between Earth and Jupiter kept increasing, with Jupiter continuously accreting more matter and moving away from the sun. These movements would pave the way for matter to fill the Earth-Jupiter gap. 4.1 Ma ago, and with no ‘planet-like’ objects around, asteroids from the Kuiper belt would begin to relocate themselves between Earth and Jupiter. Billions upon billions of individual rocks of all sizes slipped in to form an inner solar system belt of a family of loose rocks. We would name this new area where some of the KBOs regrouped, as the ‘asteroid belt’. They would come in all sizes, from the big boys, like the 952 km diameter Ceres, Vesta (at 580 km it is too small, to be a full-fledged planet, so it is classified as a ‘dwarf planet’. There are more than 16 of these solid bodies in the belt with a diameter greater than 240 km), Pallas (544 km Ø) and Hygiea (431 km Ø) that make up half of the mass of the belt and then down to trillions upon trillions of little pebbles like stones and dust. In this belt, over 200 asteroids are known to be larger than 100 km and a survey in the infrared wavelengths has shown that the Asteroid belt has 0.7–1.7 M asteroids with a diameter of 1 km or more. Of the 50,000 meteorites found on earth to date, 99.8% are believed to have originated in the Asteroid belt. Some of the debris from collisions of large bodies in the belt, can form meteoroids that enter Earth’s atmosphere. This new band of rocks of all sizes — a circumstellar disc — is not of even distribution and approximates to be roughly spaced in a region from 2.2 to 3.2 AUs (or approximately 115

The ‘Nice model’ is popular among planetary scientists; postulating that the giant gas planets underwent orbital migration, forcing objects in the Kuiper belt into eccentric orbits, and thereby into the path of the terrestrial planets.

The ‘fifth’ Rock 61

329,115,316 to 478,713,186 km) from the sun. Its width and thickness could also be around 1 AU, or some 150,000,000 km and revolving in the plane of Sun’s equator, like a woman’s bracelet, or thick bangle; herded along by the moment of conservation of energy that the solar system provides around the sun; moving much like sheep in an obedient flock. Though each of the objects follows his own individual path around the sun, they seldom clash, and it is only because they are at some fair distance apart from one another — the average distance between objects within the belt, is a massive 965,600 km.116 Most asteroids within the Asteroid belt have orbital eccentricities of less than 0.4, and an inclination of less than 30°. The orbital distribution of the asteroids reaches a maximum at an eccentricity around 0.07 and an inclination below 4°. Although a typical asteroid has a relatively circular orbit and it lies near the plane of the ecliptic, some asteroid orbits can be highly eccentric, or travel well outside the ecliptic plane. It is here, in these individual actions that account for the collisions within the belt and the occasional random rejections of asteroids from the area. Although asteroids swing around the sun in elliptical orbits, they would all settle down to revolve around Sun collectively and in a perfect circle — all mitigating one another’s eccentricity. To understand the Asteroid belt’s location in the solar system, compare Figs. 3.4 and 4.1, and notice the clean curve of the graph between the points of Mars and Jupiter in Fig. 4.1, against the sharp drop as witnessed in Fig. 3.4. If we add the Asteroid belt to the natural progression of the graph, its density, then reads as 2.685 g/cm3, as allocated in Fig. 4.1. Planet

Density of the planets (g/cm3)

Mercury

5.427

Venus

5.243

Earth

4.783

Mars

3.943

Asteroid belt

2.685

Jupiter

1.326

Saturn

0.687

Uranus

1.27

Neptune

1.638

Fig. 4.1

It would not matter whether it would be smaller, or larger than Earth’s moon in size, but had all the little bits and pieces and dust in the belt agglomerated to form a unit orb, it 116

It is the reason that our numerous space probes have sailed through untouched and have had no close encounters with anything in the area whatsoever.

62 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… would rightly have taken its place to be our solar system’s, ‘fifth’ rocky planet. This does not discount the fact that among these irregular pieces is Ceres, technically classified as a ‘dwarf’ planet.

4.3 HADES During the KBOs migration to the new and evolving asteroid belt, those passing close to Earth, affected by its gravity, were drawn and pulled in, and veering in direction and accelerating further due to Earth’s increasing gravitational pull, they crashed into her at even greater speeds! They came in all shapes and sizes, with great speed and force, and attacked Earth with a violence of cataclysmic proportions; not experienced by her before, or ever since. This is supported by the ‘Nice model’ which is popular among planetary scientists; postulating that the giant gas planets underwent orbital migration, forcing objects in the Kuiper belt into eccentric orbits, and thereby into the path of the terrestrial planets. With almost no ‘real’ atmosphere on earth at that time, the asteroids were offered no resistance. They did not slow down, burn up, or disintegrate in mid-air as they do now, but arrived at speeds above their normal 46,000 km/hr; intact and furious while hammering and pounding Earth’s molten lava strewn surface, like in a violent fit of a furious uncontrollable rage. As the asteroid bombardment continued to add to the accretion, Earth began inching outwards, increasing its path of revolution around Sun. The intensity of the bombardment would continue progressively as Earth narrowed its distance to the asteroid belt. Earth and the asteroid belt were, in fact, literally, exchanging a proportion of their mass, for changes in the angular momentum of the two bodies. For the nearly 200 Ma that this relentless pounding of Earth went on, it was a hellish scenario down here, and scientists appropriately named it as the ‘Hadean’117 period. It was a blitzkrieg with no let-up, with the height of its wickedness peaking at 3.9 Ga ago, and the period is also known as the ‘Late Heavy Bombardment’ (LHB), as well as the ‘lunar cataclysm’.118 As the journeys of the gas giants especially Jupiter — its closest neighbour — were still highly elliptical at that time, asteroids from the outer fringes of the Asteroid belt were disturbed by their movements, especially when they turned up too close to the more stable and rounder orbit of the Asteroid belt. At such times, rocks on the belt’s outer fringes would be destabilized to a point that they would be ejected and most would move in the direction inwards, towards the sun, and the centre of the solar system. We can confirm this by observing the outer fringe of the Asteroid belt, where there are distinct and noticeable empty regions, where asteroids were forced to move away from, due to the orbital 117 118

Named after Hades, the Greek God of the underworld (or hell). The first evidence of the LHB was found on the moon, when in 1969, the Apollo 11 astronauts brought back lunar rock samples; hence the name.

The ‘fifth’ Rock 63

resonance of Jupiter. The gaps, explain why these regions called the ‘Kirkwood Gaps’,119 are devoid of asteroids.

Fig. 4.2: Artist’s impression of the LHB Picture Credit: NASA

In its two half-yearly encounters with the elliptically revolving neighbour next door, the rocks would be nudged away by Jupiter’s gravitational influence and would move inwards. Some would move too far inwards, and enough for their momentum to permit them to leave the belt and travel towards the sun. On their journey, some would have been attracted to Earth when it stood in their path and many would thus come crashing into it. It was a terrible time for the infant Earth — a fiery childhood. Help, however, would arrive from an unexpected quarter. 3.8 Ga ago, the madness would abruptly stop.

Fig. 4.3: The Lunar cataclysm 119

The abnormalities were first observed by the American astronomer Daniel Kirkwood in 1886, and were named appropriately. The most prominent of these gaps correspond to 2:1, 3:1, 5:3 and 7:2 resonances (i.e., orbital radii at which asteroids orbit twice for each Jupiter orbit, three times for each Jupiter orbit, five times for each three Jupiter orbits, etc., respectively).

64 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors…

4.4 THE BENEVOLENCE OF THE LITTLE NEW NEIGHBOUR Mars, we know, accumulated and agglomerated, or came together when two large asteroids within the belt, ran into one another and binding themselves to form a small planet. Now gravitationally stronger than the scattered pieces of little rocks around her, little Mars would attract Sun’s attention and abiding by the laws governing the universe and in particular, the laws of angular momentum — she would move in towards the sun. Mars would wedge herself closer to Earth while fanning out the Asteroid belt out towards Jupiter and thereby forming a buffer zone between Earth and the now marginally displaced Asteroid belt. The bombardment of Earth by the now distant asteroids would end, with the little orb of Mars now getting in the way of the disturbed rocks. Asteroids would now largely roam the space between Mars and Jupiter. Strays elbowed out now and again, would occasionally find their way to Earth; as was in the case of the family that crashed into her 66 Ma ago and once again, 33.5 Ma ago. Those were the larger ones that made an impact. Little ones were raining down in the millions and scientists still keep finding earthly geological evidence of these strays that ventured from the belt and landed on Earth and geologists do look at them carefully, to understand the Asteroid belt, its behaviour, formation, age, and the types of rocks that were, and are within it. One recent find made the news in that it was very different from the rest. Called Österplana 065, it was found in a limestone quarry in Thorsberg, Sweden. Dating suggests that the meteorite’s parent body was involved in a huge collision in the belt some 470 Ma ago.120 As Mars plays the ‘peacekeeper’ and the LHB subsidies, earth sighs in relief... and as time passes by on her now largely untroubled surface, microscopic ‘life’ would begin to Planet

Period of orbital revolution in years

Mercury

0.240846

Venus

0.615

Mars

1.881

Asteroid belt

4.5

Jupiter

11.86

Saturn

29.46

Uranus

84.01

Neptune

164.8

Pluto

248.1

Fig. 4.4 120

‘This would have been the same smash-up that produced a large class of other rocks known as L chondrites’, Swedish scientist Birger Schmitz and colleagues told the journal Nature Communications.

The ‘fifth’ Rock 65

stir within her; probably and ironically, brought in by those very asteroids that created the hot and hellish Hadean for her. Fossils tell us that the first signs of ‘active life’ are only slightly younger than the time the asteroid bombardment ceased some 3.8 Ga ago. 3.5 Ga ago, the terrestrial bombardment rate was not much greater than the impact rates that prevail today.121

4.5 SOME NEEDED PARAMETERS FOR SCATTERED ROCKS Mars slotted herself into position without much fuss and is in tune and in a relationship with the inner planets. We note this as we follow the natural curve of plotted densities of the solar system’s original planets comprising of Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter, as depicted in Fig. 4.4 To what we already know, we will draw first a smooth graph. The curve would smoothen and get natural and better if we slot in the Asteroid belt while comfortably assuming it to revolve around the sun in a 1850-day single revolution, measured collectively for all the matter within it (asteroids, dwarf planets, dust and pebble included), as seen in Fig. 4.4. It can be seen that it sits within the two planets on her sides, acting appropriately as a neither-rock-nor-gas divider, between the two dissimilar groups. These scattered rocks are an integral part of our planetary system and are here to stay in our little universe of a solar system. For the time being, it dispels the discrepancies.

4.6 THE LAST GREAT IMPACTORS While Earth breathes a lot easier now as Mars stands between her and the Asteroid belt, the possibility of a strike that could extinguish life on our planet in our lifetime, cannot be ruled out. Asteroids on the fringes of society in the asteroid-world, continue their erratic orbital behaviour and do at irregular intervals and unannounced, come close to Earth.122 Scientists have labelled these unwanted inconveniences to Earth, Near-Earth Asteroids (NEA,) or Potentially Hazardous Asteroids.123 These are asteroids, or comets, with sizes ranging from a few metres to tens of kilometres, and whose orbits come close to that of Earth’s if they are 121

122

123

Even until this day, earth increases its weight by about 30,000 t/yr from extra-terrestrial matter. Though the LHB effectively stopped 3.8 Ga ago, 300 m sized blasts still occur on Earth, though sporadically. We have had at least seven such blasts between 3.47 to 3.23 Ga ago, four between 2.63 to 2.49 Ga ago, and one between 2.1 to 1.7 Ga ago. They do! Till date! Some dangerously close to Earth too! Flying past, one recent tearaway came as close as 14,404 km away from us! A distance say, from Cape Town to Cairo. Most times, we only learn about such incidents after the asteroids have whizzed past us. The Associated Press reported one such incident: ‘on the 29 May 2012, a small asteroid zipped close to Earth. It was the second asteroid encounter in that week, an asteroid measuring 21 m across, and flying by at a distance of 51,499.008 km’. According to NASA: Florence — among the largest NEAs that are several kilometres in size, flew safely by our planet on 1 Sept. 2017. A NEA is defined as one whose orbit periodically brings it within approximately 1.3 times Earth’s average distance to the sun — that is within roughly 50 Mkm of Earth’s orbit.

66 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… the regular ones. Of the more than 600,000 known asteroids in our solar system, almost 15,000 are NEAs; a milestone in reaching that number in late 2016, with the discovery of 2016 TB57, and with lots more to come while we keep searching for them.124 However, it is the ‘one-off’, or the rogue asteroid that ‘we’ on earth should be wary of; the asteroid turned away from its regular home in the belts, the one with the ‘chip on his shoulder’; aimlessly wandering the solar system, looking for a planet to latch on, or crash into. We must be prudent and brace ourselves for a certain eventuality in time to come. Given the right conditions, an NEA will crash into us. Depending on the size of the impactor, the damage could range from very little, to catastrophic. A small incoming object would likely break up in our atmosphere; a larger one could rain very large pieces down on the surface, or into the oceans.125 Larger ones have the potential to not only cause destruction, mayhem and the loss of life but could even abruptly change the climate down here, by striking the earth at an angle enough to flip it to turn to rotate it to operate at another axial angle. We think this is what also happened to Uranus,126 where today, only one hemisphere of its surface is exposed to uninterrupted sunlight, or darkness. Historically, earth suffers an impact from an object of the size of a football field, about once every 2000 years and we must accept the inadvertent impact anytime. Let us understand this likely happening in the future, by looking at only the 10 largest impacts of the last 2 Ga, as listed in Fig. 4.5. These are the ones that have left their imprints on land, on our planet, many years ago... and that are still visible. Many more would have hit the oceans, leaving no physical trace of their visit, or would have been consumed by plate subduction, their telltale signs erased for eternity. While tectonics would have sent their earthly marks and physical evidence into the depths of the earth, on her land, forests long-gone, would have broken down their impressions, and new ones would have hidden them from our view under their thick foliage, or treetop canopies. More would have disappeared along with the mountain building processes, or where lava flows would have buried their thumping impressions. 124

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‘The rate of discovery has been high in the past few years, and teams worldwide have been discovering on average 30 new ones per week’, said Dr Ettore Perozzi, manager of the NEO (Near-Earth Object) Coordination Centre at ESA’s Centre, Italy. We are fortunate in that, observing this potentially hazardous threat, are groups of astronomers searching out and mapping the positions of NEAs, in order to predict possible impacts weeks, months, or even years in advance. Several organizations are making plans in case something should hit and cause damage. The chances of something big hitting earth are very small, but we still cannot be sure and hence the recent actions to monitor these potentially dangerous rogue members within our celestial family. Unique among the planets of the solar system, Uranus essentially orbits on its side, with its axis tilted nearly perpendicular to Sun. Scientists agree that it was a collision with another space object that did it. This is something not uncommon in the solar system. The planet Venus may have also been tipped similarly, especially since it has no moon to stabilize its body. On 31st May 2017, NASA reported that while combing through data gathered by their Cassini spacecraft during flybys of Enceladus — the sixth largest of Saturn’s moons — researchers have found the first evidence that the frozen moon’s axis have reoriented; possibly due to a collision with a smaller body.

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Moving sands of the desert-belts are neither helpful — giving us no hint of their lurking presence below. Geologists think they would find countless more clues if these natural movements did not hide, or partially erase the evidence of most ancient impacts. Scientists, though, continue to discover them now and then, and as it stands, the number of known craters is currently around only 180 or so. Crater Name Vredefort crater Sudbury basin Beaverhead crater Acraman crater Manicouagan crater Morokweng crater Kara crater Chicxulub crater Popigai crater Chesapeake Bay crater

Location South Africa Ontario, Canada Idaho, USA South Australia Québec, Canada The Kalahari Desert, South Africa Yugorsky Peninsula, Nenetsia, Russia Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico Siberia, Russia Virginia, USA

Year of Size Impact Ma (dia. in m) ago 2,020 300 1,850 260 600 60 580 90 214 100 145 70 70.3 75 65.76 240 35.7 100 35.5 85

Fig. 4.5

Leaving quantity aside, let us be warned that even the smallest of these impactors down here, under conditions favourable to her, has the potential to wipe out life of half of our fragile and delicate planet. However, of more interest to students of geology and to the understanding our earth as it behaves today, are the last three impacts.

4.6.1 Planet Killers, Life Builders An intriguing possibility is that rather than being vehicles of death and destruction, the asteroids and meteorites that landed during the LHB may have carried ‘life’ along with them, to deposit it down here. We find a rich mixture of new elements in the meteorites. Some of these have the nascent structures for ‘life’ to grow on Earth’s equitable environment. The seeds could have been sown at that time, as we know today that the earliest ‘isotopic’ evidence we have of life on earth, is from rocks approximately 3.8 Ga old – that formed immediately after the lunar cataclysm. And then again, we know that while Chicxulub is the most famous of the asteroids and made its fearful presence felt on earth, playing its part to wipe out the large dinosaurs; it also paved the way for the emergence of mammals. It would be ‘the’ forerunner and a major contributor to the evolution of birds, and the migration of fish. Ducks and whales would adapt to the ruthlessness and apparent aimlessness of Earth’s ‘demolition derby’. Bipedalism would not be far away either.

68 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors…

4.6.2 The straw that Straightened the Backs... of Two Continents However, others made it possible to see a change in the world we live in, but without the palaeontological evidence for us to show... Popigai, the Chesapeake Bay, and Tom Canyon asteroid impacts 35.5 Ma ago, would be the last straw; assisting the continent of South America to finally tear away from her hold on the southern tip of Africa. Among other things they did, was to alter the picture of the surface of earth. The fallout of the impacts, would incur a weather change; forests turn to grasslands in Africa in particular, savannahs and velds would emerge with the dwindling forests, and tree-dwelling pentadactyl would begin to scour and rake the ground of the new grasslands for scarce food, now not available on their once thick forests and their treetop ecosystem. More importantly, the impactors reprocessed earth’s surface and while they were at it, they would fracture the planet’s crust, getting it ready for a terrestrial confrontation of the future.

4.7 ... AND COSMIC ELECTRONS Banished like contagious sick unfortunates, to live on the edge of villages in the developing world, the little asteroids would then be turned away again. Moving away from the Kuiper belt and in search of permanence, many would find new homes along the way; rather captured by planets with the greater gravitational force exerted on them, to find them now revolving around strange large bodies of either gas, or gas and a little rock; however, now in isolated comfort. They would now be many revolving around the planets — over 170 of them in the solar system, at the last count. On their journey back to the Kuiper belt, Neptune would entice some 14 of them. These rocks now orbit her blissfully in the outer quietness of the solar system. Having passed by Neptune, there was a Uranus to cope with. She requisitioned some; 27 moons that now revolve around her. Saturn would capture even more moons — over 60 of them! With its wider area of mass in the way and with a greater gravity, Jupiter would do justice to its size and position in the solar Fig. 4.6: A detailed image of Phobos, taken by Mars system, having 67 moons that now Global Surveyor on 1 Jun. 2003 happily orbit him. Photo Credit: NASA

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The progressive increase in the moons from Neptune to Jupiter would simply be the law of probability in action — the closer the planet to the sun, the greater its revolution speed and the greater its chances of avoiding a passing body temporarily homeless within the solar system. Little big rocks like Pluto and Mars, would join the party too; Pluto takes in five (Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra) of the chaotic ones in the Kuiper belt. Living in the immediate vicinity of the Asteroid belt, Mars got his moons too, possibly grabbing Phobos and Deimos when close by. With all the hectic activity going on in possessing of bodily adornments, poor Mercury and Venus were left to lament their fate. Being too close to the sun, any rock passing in their direction would be easily enticed by Sun’s all-powerful gravity and size, and the straying object would head into its all-encompassing body to engulf itself in its inferno. Of the inner rocky planets, Earth would once again prove to be of another composition, another kettle of fish... it would capture a single asteroid, who would turn out to be a blessing, a life partner, and a regulator of all life on her surface. These stray pieces of misshapen scattered rocks with no individual identities of note, and grouped to be generalised to belong to a ‘belt’, would, however, play a crucial role in the evolution of life on another planet. Thanks to these rocks-with-no-names, the ‘flap runners’ would take to the skies, dinosaurs would waddle in the snow of Antarctica, and ‘bipedalism’ would evolve, and move on to colonise every habitable nook and corner of the planet Earth. Without these lifeless Fig. 4.7: Viking 2 Orbiter image of the Martian satellite Deimos. rocks, life would never have The ‘lumpy’ moon appears smooth, but higher resolution images happened on Earth, nor taken during closer approaches show the surface is covered with would we have made it till craters. Deimos is about 14 km from top to bottom in this image Photo Credit: NASA here.

‘All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them’. — Galileo Galilei

5

The Soup Cauldron

‘Eppur si muove!’ ‘And yet, it moves!’ murmured Galileo Galilei, in the Convent of Minerva, as the 70-year-old rose from his knees, having barely — and in all probability — grudgingly offered his ‘mea culpas’, to the most Eminent and Reverend Lord Cardinals and Inquisitor Generals, in Italy, on 22 Jun. 1633. He had only just humiliatingly — after being threatened with torture and interrogated for 18 days — been forced to apologise to the Church, for removing Earth from the centre of the universe. His sin was that in Feb. 1632, he published Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World: Ptolemaic and Copernican, saying that Earth revolved around Sun, in effect, approving the ‘Heliocentric principle’, supporting Copernicus’127 theory, and not going by the Church sanctioned ‘Ptolemaic’ model of a geocentric universe. His penance? A promise to never again mention his heretic, unorthodox speculations, and to spend the rest of his life under house arrest, in his small farmhouse outside of Florence, where he continued to work and write, passing away on 8 Jun. 1642, at the age of 77. Blasphemy! That was in those days, of supposedly medieval enlightenment, in a different era and time. In our present day... it is no different. Just a little over a century ago — 6 Jan. 1912, to be precise — at a talk presented in Frankfurt, a young German meteorologist expounded his hypothesis of ‘Continental Displacement’, for the first time and to a select audience. Three years later, in 1915, Alfred Lothar Wegener followed up on his thoughts of that day, by appropriating a hypothesis on ‘Continental Drift’,128 and published it under the title: ‘Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane’, or ‘The Origin of Continents and Oceans’. In this book, he hypothesized that Earth’s 127

128

So radical was the concept at the time, that the thought of going against the Church was not an option, and so Nicholas Copernicus’ ‘On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres’, was published only after his death, in 1543. The first English translation correctly referred to Wegener’s hypothesis as ‘Continental Displacement’, as he had termed it then. The name ‘Continental Drift’ crept in later, after geologists regarded this new mobilism as chaos, and the popular name ‘Continental Drift’, was their way of making light of ‘drifting’ ‘Wegenerian’ tectonics.

72 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… landmass had once been a single supercontinent he called Pangaea, and the seas surrounding it, he called Panthalassa and that 200 Ma ago (in the Mesozoic era), it first began to split, and then later drifted apart to eventually form today’s many continents, landmasses, islands, oceans, seas and lakes. Contained in this belief, the young scientist had many lines of evidence open to him but he pointed out (1) the physical ‘dovetailing’ and geographic fit of the continents of South America and Africa129 and (2) the similarity of the flora and fauna from their disparate geographical locations, at exactly the same time, some 300 to 251 Ma ago in the Permian period. This, he argued, suggested that these plants grew where animals roamed, in one continuous forest that stretched across several connected continents, with the likeness of rock structures on the two opposing sides of the waters, along with ancient climate similarities. By then, it was known that the Glossopteris fossils of the 270 Ma old tall conifers, were a common species found in the highlands of South America, southern Africa, India, and Australia,130 and this became a vital piece of evidence for him. He also cited the freshwater reptile Mesosaurus (middle lizard)131 whose fossils are found in Early Permian-aged rocks in Uruguay and South Africa, and nowhere else in the world. It was a creature that lived in inland freshwater lakes (with no chance to swim across the Atlantic); in what are now adjacent areas of the continents of South America and Africa. It is all but obvious that the two were in the Early Permian period, united in a single land mass. He argued that the continents of South America and Africa began separating 200 Ma ago, and likewise, other continents moved in the same way. The Pangaea breakup and the subsequent movement of the individual continents to their present positions formed the basis of Wegener’s ‘Continental Displacement’ hypothesis. In conclusion, Wegener proved that: (1) the shapes of the separated continents matched; Brazil fitted snugly, along the coast of western Africa, beneath the bulge — a visual geographic proof; (2) the flora and fauna matched; identical species of fossil are found on the two Atlantic Ocean-separated continents — a botanical, zoological, and biological proof; (3) the rocks matched; the distinctive rock strata of the Karroo system of South Africa, are identical to those of the Santa Catarina system in Brazil, while the chain of the Appalachian mountains of eastern North America continued into northern Europe, and matched with the Scottish Highlands — a geological proof, and (4) striations on 290 Ma old tillites132 matched; glacial striations on rocks were similar, in both West Africa, and eastern South America133 — climatic proof. This was also supported by coalfield belts of 129

130

131

132 133

The matching shapes of the coastlines of western Africa and the eastern shores of South America were first noted by Francis Bacon in 1620, as maps of Africa and the World first became available. These fossils have since been found in Anatolia, Oman, Madagascar, Antarctica, Thailand, Laos, and Western New Guinea, to name a few, strengthening even further, the tectonic theory. A reptile that dates back 299 to 270 Ma ago, was one of the first to return to water after the tetrapods came on to the land in the Late Devonian period. Sedimentary rocks composed of compacted glacial till. Discovered later in Antarctica, India and in Australia.

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the eastern U.S., Europe, and Siberia, suggesting that the continents were at one time, located in tropical climates with a swampy environment. To add to what evidence Wegener could lay his hands on at that time, we have added to that list Cynognathus and Lystrosaurus that also lived in the Triassic era. When assembling the locations of fossil evidence by connecting the continents, we see a single landmass, with the distribution of these four fossil types forming linear and continuous patterns of distribution across continental boundaries. Moreover, to give credence to Wegener’s hypothesis, is that today we know that fossils of the coelacanth are found on every continent, except Antarctica. Present-day Antarctica was surrounded by all the present continents at the time, and their shores away from Antarctica, in turn, were the waters of Panthalassa. Figure 5.1 describes the fossil locations graphically.

Fig. 5.1: Credit: From the US Geological Survey (USGS) publication, ‘The Dynamic Earth’: Lutgens and Tarbuck, who give credit for the detailed mapping to A. G. Smith

In recent years, among others, we have found Nothofagus, a plant genus descended from the supercontinent, and existing in current-day Australia, New Zealand, New Caledonia and Chile. Fossils have also recently been found in Antarctica. In many ways, the evolution of Antarctica appears to be similar to that of Australia. The fossil record of the two continents is similar, Antarctica has yielded dinosaurs, amphibians,

74 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… and even marsupials from the ages when the continents were part of the same landmass of a supercontinent. The current physical positions of these continents, however, did not go with the thinking of the day, and the only explanation was a resignation to the fact that the lands had somehow moved apart. It was the first coherent and logical argument for continental drift, supported by concrete physical evidence. Unfortunately, only a handful of men of science, at the time, believed in the idea and the recurring argument.

5.1 WEIGHTY QUESTIONS AT THE TIME Why then did these immense masses of rock and earth move apart? How? What was the force within the earth that could piggyback such uncountable quantity of dense rock and earth? What was it that moved continents? How much force was needed to move a continent? If such a force existed, where did it come from? How did this happen? What made it happen? Why did it happen? Those were questions that Alfred Wegener did not answer satisfactorily — to the many sceptics at least. Though he eventually proposed a mechanism for continental drift that focused on his assertion that the rotation of earth created a centripetal force towards the equator and that he believed that Pangaea originated near the equator and that this force caused the proto-continents to break and drift apart. This he called the ‘pole-fleeing’ force. The meteorological pioneer, polar explorer and progressive thinker, was a hundred years ahead of his time.

5.2 SCEPTICISM TO A ‘GROUNDBREAKING’ IDEA The idea, however, was quickly rejected by the scientific community. Little attention was paid to the fact that the young man was a thinker, an established scientist, and at the time, the world’s leading expert on polar meteorology and glaciology. Among many of the insults that came in the way of this leading light, one was, ‘Utter, damned rot!’ ridiculed by none other than the president of the so-called, prestigious American Philosophical Society! He was a ‘weatherman’, they said; and that too, a ‘German’134 weatherman! ‘He is not even a geologist!’ was the type of ammunition his critics used, and that went against him — thinker or not. Many an unkind contemporary callously referred to his observation and scientific study as ‘drift theory’... as in, ‘drifting aimlessly’.135 Many were simply afraid of upsetting the apple cart.136 That Wegener’s premature death happened without him 134 135

136

The two wars did little to help the young German’s cause. They would be known as the ‘drifters’, while the types like the president of the American Philosophical Society, would be known as the ‘fixists’. ‘If we are to believe in Wegener’s hypothesis we must forget everything which has been learned in the past 70 years and start all over again’, said another of his fiercest critics — the geologist R. Thomas Chamberlain.

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answering his critics, fuelled more ammunition they needed and used against him. That it set science back was not the point then. That was in those days; in a different time and era; in a war against Germany, or the Communists. No! Even as late as 1964, the supposed impartial delineator of facts, the now recently defunct Encyclopaedia Britannica, claimed that “Wegener’s theory” ‘was full of numerous grave theoretical difficulties’. Seemingly, it did not appear to matter much to the active young German, who was by then, an author of the 1911 classic: ‘The Thermodynamics of the Atmosphere’. However, it did matter to him that these slurs were a hindrance to his finding work in his own country, Germany, and that too, in his chosen field. So, at that time, Wegener’s ground-breaking idea was put to rest,137 with no acceptable and convincing geological mechanism, or the ‘motive force’ needed to explain, as to how and why the continents moved, and what drove them to move to where they moved. At the time he postulated his hypothesis — to be fair to him — Wegener may not have had adequate resources available at his disposal, or maybe the multi-faceted interdisciplinary visionary, would not have found the time — being actively involved in many other scientific searches — to answer them, and the world would never know the answers at those times. In 1926, Wegener travelled to the US to attend a conference brought on by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG), to debate plate tectonics and except for its founding member W. A. J. M. van Waterschoot van der Gracht, he was not taken seriously. In 1930, on the way back home and returning along with a Greenland guide — after an unselfish, daring and physically demanding rescue operation that took provisions to a group of his marooned colleagues on a scientific expedition, camped in the middle of the freezing Greenland ice cap — the body of this brave and selfless pioneering spirit was found, frozen in death... a year later.

5.3 FOLLOWING UP ON WEGENER’S SEMINAL WORK The idea was largely and hotly debated off and on, and for decades following his death, before it was largely dismissed as being ‘eccentric’, ‘preposterous’ and ‘improbable’! As so often happens in the scientific community, another scientific discovery was scoffed at,138 in its infancy. The idea did not die though, and Arthur Holmes, an English geologist, seized on Wegener’s work, and in 1920, proposed that the land under the sea might be broken up into ‘plate junctions’. In 1928, he suggested that these plates might move because of convection currents within the mantle. He too was ignored and not because Wegener’s rejected 137

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Not unlike the disillusioned Eugène Dubois’ (and many more pioneers and thinkers ahead of their time) ‘Java Man’, whose skull lay in a box for years underneath the floorboards of his home, after his unusual discovery was largely rejected by the scientific community of the time. The Dutch Museum treated the find a little better, shelving it in their archives for the next 25 years. Unfortunately, he still has his detractors; forget Encyclopaedia Britannica, the communists and whoever... we are not even counting the ‘creationists’ and the ‘Flat Earth’ believers!

76 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… hypothesis was still fresh in their minds, but because the new ideas threaten the establishment, which included disciplines such as geology, geophysics, zoogeography, and palaeontology. This new idea challenged scientists in many fields. The old-boat could not be rocked. Fortunately, while most ridiculed Wegener, a handful of unbiased thinking people listened. Among the learned insiders who saw merit in the facts that came from serious and deep thinking, was the South African, Alexander Logie du Toit.139 Working on both sides of the Atlantic while carefully documenting numerous geologic and palaeontological lines of evidence that linked the continents of South America and Africa, du Toit expanded upon Wegener’s belief of the splitting up of Pangaea, and wrote to confirm the premise in his groundbreaking review of 1927, A Geological Comparison of South America with South Africa. He followed that with Our Wandering Continents in his book of 1937. Among other things, Du Toit also coined the terms Laurasia and the acronym SAMFRAU geosyncline,140 to describe a continuous fold line through South America, South Africa and Australia. Though he did much work on proving the arguments substantiating the idea correctly, and despite the overwhelming evidence, the work of this meticulous geologist was not fully accepted. Du Toit too was not taken seriously. Being a ‘southerner’ (South Africa then, not a country considered to be in the ‘scientific’ league of the northern ‘big boys’), he was subjected to ‘northern prejudice’. Unfortunately, like Wegener before him, he too did not offer a mechanism to explain ‘who, how, or what’ made the continents wander, and from then on, the subject was put on the back burner of scientific debate and study.

5.4 A NEW AWAKENING FOR ‘MOVING CONTINENTS’ In the 1950s, a wealth of new evidence accidentally emerged, to revive the debate, and by the 1960s, geologists began to propose mechanisms, quite brazenly and freely, for sea-floor spreading; an ‘expanding earth’, and ‘sun and moon tides’, and even a ‘gravity hypothesis’ was suggested. However, ‘Convection currents within the mantle’ was a suitable explanation, was more agreeable to many, and the acceptance of ‘Continental Drift’ by the majority of geologists, resulted in a major paradigm shift in geological thinking. ‘Pole-fleeing force’, was never considered. However, in time, evidence pointing to the physical movements of continents kept accumulating steadily, albeit grudgingly but finally promoting its acceptance. It was to be, with immense consequences for not only geology but also everything else — from anthropology to zoology and everything else in between. Today, ever-growing research and findings have seen it encompassing a plethora of other earth sciences while incorporating the participation of a wide range of disciplines, from the application of simple ordinary logic to ‘rocket’ science. 139

140

Not surprisingly, it was the peoples in the southern hemisphere that backed his hypothesis, and it was probably because they could see the evidence around them. A trough or fold of stratified rock in which the strata slope upward from the axis.

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A century later, it is thanks to the ‘earth breaking’ foresight and pioneering work of Wegener141 that we have today a new and exciting science now commonly called ‘Tectonics’, and regarded now as the most important and far-ranging geological theory of all time; a major milestone in the geological sciences, the most significant advance in 20th century geology, comparable only to Darwin’s theory in biology. An idea with a rocky history was finally here to stay.142

5.5 ENTER A NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE What Wegener introduced into our thinking, was one of the most thought-provoking theories in the field of ‘earth system sciences’. It would redefine our basic thinking about how our planet works; from the Earth’s present formation aided by continental movement, to the evolution of birds, and on to Africa’s desertification and the resulting evolution of man, then on to his dispersing and colonizing of the expanded and outstretched lands he sailed on, when “Out ‘went’ Africa”. Earth science, under a fusion of disciplines under its very large umbrella, has today come to encompass the fundamental interactions between land, water and life, air, gravity and magnetism, in making up the total ‘Earth System’. A vision of ‘Continental Displacement’ by a revolutionary scientist, revolutionized our thinking, and led the way to the understanding of the workings of the earth; from its birth, and to understanding its present-day rumblings that create earthquakes, evoke tsunamis,143 and spew out lava from volcanoes that snuff out life around it. Earth scientists now not only seek to explain Earth’s past through a detailed examination of the geological record but also help predict and manage its future, through factual and meaningful predictions; earthquakes and tsunamis, though, still are a very long way off.

141

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How much disdain we have shown to this giant of our times, is reflected in lesser mortals being eulogised, institutions named after them, and prizes offered in their names. Not surprisingly, no Nobel Prize is considered for the earth sciences. We do not debate tectonics anymore but work to refine our understanding of the process. A study conducted by scientists in 2017 at The Australian National University, have found that independent estimates from geology and biology agree on the timing of the breakup of the Pangaea supercontinent into today's continents. Journal Ref.: Sarah R. N. McIntyre, Charles H. Lineweaver, Colin P. Groves, Aditya Chopra. Global biogeography since Pangaea. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2017; 284 (1856): 20170716 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2017.0716. When the ocean rose up and sent in a tidal wave that saved a Greek town from a marauding Persian army in BC 479, the renowned Greek historian chalked it up to be an act of God; the hand of Poseidon, ‘God’ of the Sea, had saved the town. Camped on high ground on the other side of the town overlooking a beach, the army of King Cyrus the Great, saw the sea suddenly roll back before their astonished eyes and they opportunistically surged forward to capture a town; modern-day Kassandra, a peninsula in northern Greece. However, before the invaders could reach dry land, a tidal wave washed them away.

78 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors…

5.6 THE FUTURE... Finally, having realized its importance, activities that interfere with Earth’s delicately balanced system, are today a matter of global concern. Earth science is only now beginning to understand how the ‘Earth System’ works, and the stewardship long sought on this issue is today, at the forefront of world policy. This is exemplified by the Johannesburg Summit of 2002, the work of the International Council for Science and its World Summit on the Information Society in 2003. Not all this cooperation, though, is plain sailing, as we keep learning that ‘Tectonics’ is unpredictable. As we today use state-of-the-art satellite technology to measure the drifting speeds of continental plates extremely accurately while measuring the age of the sea-floor using electron microscopes, we must admit that the brilliant German scientist’s basic insights of a century ago, remain sound and intact, and the very lines of evidence that he used to support his hypothesis then, are today, actively being researched and expanded. We now have this great unifying theory, ‘plate tectonics’; a new game, a magnificent tale.

5.7 TALES OF YORE Tales told in earlier times of Earth’s restlessness, may now explain Noah’s flood, the legend of Atlantis, and so too, poor Herodotus must not be faulted for not hearing of the Japanese word that we now hear so much of; tsunami or the ‘harbour wave’, as translated into English. In the course of this book, the understanding of ‘Continental Drift’, ‘Sea-floor Spreading’, ‘Terranes’,144 ‘Trench Rollback’,145 or just plain simple ‘Tectonics’, will unfold, only to be understood more clearly while in the process of elaborating its effects on other happenings in Earth’s interior, on its surface, extra-terrestrial effects on it, and in the evolution of all life on it, since Earth came into being, 4.543 Ga ago. Tectonics would influence the evolution of life on earth, while unwittingly sending little fleet-footed dinosaur into the skies, force desperate fish to jump rapids, birds to crisscross the planet in their yearly migration to “Mama’s”, terrestrial mammals to transform themselves into behemoths of the oceans, primates with tails to turn to bipedalism that would allow them to drift beyond Earth’s horizons, more to raft down rivers and colonize new lands, sail lands into the Pacific both involuntary and knowingly, and ancient 144

145

An area, region, a block of crust, or a fragment of earth that is usually bounded by faults, and that preserves a distinctive stratigraphy, structure, and geologic history that is different from the area surrounding it. In many a case, it would have migrated to the area from elsewhere — broken-off piece of another landmass. They are categorized under various names: native terranes, displaced terranes, tectonic terranes, composite terranes, contiguous terranes, exotic terranes, etc. There are even super terranes — amalgamations of many smaller terranes into one large new entity. Plates, like the ones along the western Pacific and the South China Sea, scurrying back into trenches.

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man who died in Africa, to be exhumed, a million years later, fossilized — in Georgia, Java and China. More recent AMH finds in Mungo, Australia, tell us that man from Africa was in Australia some 50,000 ya. As we shall see, this new science will show us that to reach where we are, 4.543 Ga later, the continents went into a tizzy — more so, since the last 66 Ma, and some scientist’s with culinary predilections at the back of their minds — have aptly compared continental movements to ‘scum’ moving around in a ‘Soup Caldron’.

‘The Wegener hypothesis has been so stimulating and has such fundamental implications in geology as to merit respectful and sympathetic interest from every geologist. Some striking arguments in his favour have been advanced, and it would be foolhardy indeed to reject any concept that offers a possible key to the solution of profound problems in the Earth’s history’ — Chester R. Longwell

6

What Changed our Minds?

Mountain ranges — like the Alps and the Himalayas — contain ocean floor material and we know this as a fact today. However, in 1450, Felix Hemerli, the Swiss naturalist was mystified, having found creatures that had apparently lived in an ocean, fossilized and embedded in rocks near his home; high up in the Alps! How they got to be on the top of a mountain, far from the sea, and thousands of metres above sea level, puzzled him and everyone else at the time,146 and for a good many years after. Studying the seabed then, was unthinkable, as man had neither the tools nor the technology, to look at the ocean floor for clues to such mysteries. He had to wait a few centuries, to get some idea about Earth’s past, mysterious and mystifying geological behaviour. The idea that Earth’s geography was different in the past, was not new to thinkers of that time. Among others, who applied their minds to this mystery, was the ever-reliable 17th century genius Leonardo da Vinci, who left the subject to rest with the words: ‘above the plains of Italy, where flocks of birds are flying today, fishes were once moving in large schools’.

6.1 THE NEW SCIENCE OF GEOLOGY However, in understanding our physical world, as we know it today, accumulated knowledge was heading to a collision and a conclusion on many fronts. In the mid-1700s, James Hutton147 observed that over time, the erosion of soil on his farm, did not affect the height of the mountains there, and that set his inquisitive mind thinking. In 1785, he presented a paper to the Royal Society of Edinburgh titled Theory of the Earth. More study and 10 years later, Hutton published a two-volume version of his refreshing observation and ideas. It is for this early pioneering work in mind that established geology148 146

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Not known to the West then, it was the Chinese polymath Shen Kuo (1031-1095), who first formulated a hypothesis about the process of land formation (geomorphology) in the 11th century, based upon several observational evidence, including those of the fossil shells found in a geological stratum in the Taihang and Yandang mountains near Wenzhou. He originated the theory of uniformitarianism, a fundamental principle of geology, which explains the features of Earth’s crust by means of natural processes over geologic time. The word geology was first used by Ulisse Aldrovandi in 1603, and then by Jean-André Deluc in 1778. In 1779, the Swiss geologist Horace-Bénédict de Saussure introduced it as a fixed term; just in time, it appears, for Hutton to benefit from it.

82 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… as a proper science, and is the reason that earth scientists today regard the Scotsman, as the ‘First modern geologist’, or ‘The Father of Modern Geology’. Studying ‘Mother Earth’ was suddenly getting interesting, and on 13th Oct. 1807, likeminded souls met and formed a ‘dining’ club, naming it the ‘Geological Society of London’.149 Seeds of the newly emerging interest in ‘geology’ were sown on the streets of London then, and by 1830, it had over 700 members. In those early years, this new science was embraced as never before, sending even learned man of the time, out into the countryside, to ‘break a few stones’ while also becoming the hobby of the elite of that period. It was an exciting time for science, and it was in that same year that Charles Lyell, a professor of geology at Kings College, produced the first of his three volumes, on The Principles of Geology.150 This new science and its study never looked back.

6.1.1 Early Tectonic Days... However, from the time until Wegener’s hypothesis was postulated, little was added to the emerging science and the pace of new discoveries was slow and far between, and not for another half a century would things seriously quicken up. Even after Wegener made his thoughts known — except for new evidence found of common species in new areas, or to learn that glacial ice sheets were common in eastern Australia, South America, Africa, the Whiteout Conglomerate and the Polarstar Formation in the Ellsworth Mountains of Antarctica — little was done to the sciences, besides what du Toit quietly achieved. Moreover, Wegener’s observations were all based on visual data available on land, and not from the seabed that covers 71% of Earth’s surface, which at that time, was hidden from scientists, hundreds and thousands of metres under water. For a vital support much needed at the time to assist an emerging earth science, there was no contribution from this underwater realm, and not surprisingly, until this date, not much has been achieved in that deep world with plenty to yield, with less than 5% of our oceans been subjected to exploration and observation and less than 10% have been mapped using modern sonar technology. Not for long, though.151

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Now commonly referred to as the Geological Society, it is the oldest national society in the world, with a membership today exceeding 12,000 fellows. Charles Darwin’s mind began to relate to natural changes, when he read the book on the Beagle. Lyell would later also become a friend, and an influence in Darwin publishing his work before Alfred Russel Wallace did. Lyell’s book would also influence many others, among them, Thomas Henry Huxley. Steller work is being done though, and especially by funding from the US and China, with little countries like Japan, Korea, Taiwan and India throwing their weight in, into this vast unknown that holds much potential.

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6.2 OUR SUDDEN CURIOSITY IN THE WATERY UNDERWORLD Surprisingly, interest in Earth’s mysterious behaviour was galvanized unexpectedly — not from terra firma but from the data that kept coming in from below the waterline. Whether they were looking for gold or defiantly flying a defeated nation’s flag over the seas of the world, it would be the ‘bankrupt’ Germans who would first draw our attention to an unheard but exciting world below the waterline while trolling the oceans in the time soon after World War I. On one such of their new enterprises, was the expedition on the ship the Meteor that explored the South Atlantic Ocean from the equatorial region to Antarctica, crisscrossing it between the years 1925–1927, all the way down until the Strait of Magellan had been breached. They noticed the abnormalities of a scar on the southern Atlantic Ocean floor but unfortunately at that time, did not realize its importance to geology, nor did they relate it to its possible connection with their country. The finding may have lent some support at that hour, to the beleaguered Wegener’s recent paper on ‘Continental Drift’. While the Germans left it there, the Americans, would in time, pick up the study of the region below the waves. Technological advances of those times made it possible, along with the Cold War politics that encouraged the observance of that region below the waves for strategic political purposes. The activities would bring up new, intriguing and mysterious evidence from below the deep, dark unknown which would begin to captivate and motivate ‘men of science’ to scientific adventure, if only to probe those obscurities. Developments then would allow and lead scientists to map the ocean floor, providing geologists with the added bonus and benefit of evidence, to understand Earth’s floor in concert with the known behaviour of the land above.

6.2.1 ...and Fate Would Play its Hand It may all have begun in 1944 with the USS Cape Johnson — an attack-cargo transport ship while in action in the Pacific — that may have got the ball rolling. A ‘depth sounder’ (‘echo sounder’ or a ‘sonar’ reader—the new technology of the time) was installed aboard the vessel and was there to help the ship’s manoeuvring during beach or shore landings and berthing. Harry Hammond Hess, a Princeton University mineralogist, happened to be on ‘war duty’ at the time and was the ship’s commander. Realizing that the new ‘machine’ could be used for scientific purposes as well, never switched it off, letting it run at all times, even when out at sea. For the first time, ships could ‘sound out’ the precise depths of the ocean below, allowing men on board to trace the ocean contour on paper. While continuously using his ship’s echo sounder, Hess carefully tracked his travel routes to the Pacific Ocean landings on the Marianas, the Philippines and the Japanese island of Iwo Jima. This unplanned wartime scientific surveying enabled him to collect ocean floor profiles across the Pacific Ocean routes that the Cape Johnson travelled. This information would later lead to many discoveries in the oceanographic field and would have much to do with a new science unheard of at that time.

84 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… The advent of ‘sonar’ would forever change the way we looked at the ocean floor. Not expecting to find anything different, they were in for a surprise! What surprised Hess most, though, was that his depth sounder told him that the topography of the Pacific Ocean floor was not what he thought it would be. The general wisdom of the day seemed to be that ocean floors were at the receiving end of silt and run-offs from the continents, and should have looked like a huge squishy pond, or a vast compost-filled lake bottom, with Earth’s topsoil and its entire residue flushed down there — a sort of marine landfill. On the contrary, the ocean floor was littered with features of deep canyons, crevasses, gullies, splits, trenches, valleys, clean and sharp craggy peaks and mountains, with most rising abruptly from the ocean floor! There was none of Earth’s topsoil down there! It was all new, with no traces of ancient smooth undulating hills or mountains. It hinted at freshness! Earth’s bathymetry of the oceans imagined seabed, was as wrong as any conclusion could be — to our scientists and budding oceanographers of that time. The floor was rugged, young; not squishy and old as long thought off. Questions needed answers and among them were: where did the sediment that washed into the oceans from all the rivers and all the continents go? Where had all of Earth’s detritus gone? Also, among the many surprises that came Hess’ way, one was the discovery of flattopped underwater volcanoes, also known as seamounts, which he termed as guyots.152

6.3 ‘OCEANOGRAPHY’ TO THE FORE Few answers at the time, but once more during the war, and fortunately for science, countries whose fleets plied the oceans, began pointing their attention to ‘activity’ going on down below the waterline; not scientific study really, only keeping an eye open for the enemy’s ship-sinking submarines. It was on such a mission — when using a converted Magnetic Airborne Detector (MAD) as used in aerial surveillance — when the Americans noticed that the converted MAD machine churned out paper with ‘zebra crossing’ like patterns on its printouts but only for certain stretches of the Atlantic Ocean floor. Strange sets of lines or patterns began to emerge; more noticeably, on both sides of what appeared to be on paper (Fig. 6.1), a narrow dense strip-like geological impression. All along the narrow strip, the ‘zebra’ patterns were orientated parallel to it and on either side and found to be mirror images of the other side of the dense strip. The MAD readings got them to conclude that it was some magnetic anomaly, and the few scientists in uniform at the time were not surprised to learn that the ocean floor contained magnetic minerals. It was by then common knowledge in scientific circles that on land, when volcanic magma cooled, it crystallized and locked crystals of the mineral magnetite, in the direction of Earth’s magnetic polarity of that instant in time. Misaligned 152

Named in honour of his mentor, the Swiss-born American geographer, glacier expert, professor of geology at Princetown University and prolific contributor to the scientific community of the time; Arnold Henry Guyot (1807–84).

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magnetic direction on rocks had earlier confirmed that Earth’s magnetic poles deviated from time to time and even reversed occasionally.153 The printouts and the readings were recorded but at the time, made little impact to interest submarine hunters busy at war.

6.4 TEAM THARP AND HEEZEN Fortunately, land-based oceanographers saw these unexpected and unexplained war discoveries, with the Americans scurrying about and around, to survey the ocean floor with a new found zest. On one such venture in the late 1950s, they brought along with them a certain William Maurice ‘Doc’ Ewing; a geophysicist and a leading light in the new field of oceanography. On a survey-ship called the Vema — and working as a team under ‘Doc’ Ewing — the geologist Bruce C. Heezen brought back sonar readings that his Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory based colleague, Marie Tharp, plotted on paper; with a pen, ink and a ruler! With data also used from the WHOI research ship the Atlantis and others, the LamontDoherty team’s work represented the first systematic and comprehensive attempt to map the ocean floor — at the time, just a normal surveying exercise of uncharted territory; a ‘Lewis and Clark’ type of adventure of the unknown. It was not long before Marie Tharp would notice a ‘V’-like channel, or tear, or a ‘rift’ in the middle of the Atlantic that equally bisected the shorelines of Africa and the Americas. What was it about this little abnormality that was clear and consistent in its ever-lengthening profile, on an otherwise colourless and plain Atlantic seabed? Questions arose; one of them was to remember the old gossip about continents drifting over Earth’s surface that was said to have been attributed to a German weatherman. Could this channel be the junction where the continents of South America and Africa started drifting away? It did make sense to her; she was, after all, a qualified geologist from Ohio (with years of field trips with her father, who sampled soil all over the US for the Ministry of Agriculture). At that time, however, it was hard to even broach the subject; let alone convince both ‘Doc’ and Heezen of the possibilities in the idea, as back then, in the 1940s, believing in the theory of ‘Continental Drift’ was almost a form of scientific heresy! You could even lose your job for entertaining thoughts of such ‘nonsense’. Still fresh in their memory, was the fact that in 1926, at a gathering of geologists at the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, the attending scientists there, rejected Wegener’s hypothesis and mocked its proponent. Making matters worse for Tharp, was also the fact that Heezen, then, was a believer in the ‘Expanding Earth’154 hypothesis. 153

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Though Earth’s magnetic field is today aligned in the north-south direction, it was not always so, with scientists claiming that there have been about 170 magnetic pole reversals during the last 100 Ma. The last major reversal was 781,000 ya. A hypothesis popular at the time that postulated earth growing from the expansion of heat being built inside its core and mantle — a hypothesis first propounded by the Italian geologist Roberto Mantovani in 1889 and once again in 1909. In the years that followed, both theories would be put to the test, and the solidity of tectonics would see the ‘expansion theory’ slowly shrink and wither away.

86 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… It was at this time, in the same offices, under Heezen’s watch that earthquake locations in the oceans were being recorded and plotted for a separate study that was searching for safe places across the Atlantic to plant transatlantic telegraph cables. It was being plotted on a similar scale as Marie Tharp’s bathymetric plotting. Bruce Heezen was in for a shock when he noticed that the earthquake epicentres and Marie Tharp’s ‘V’ channel matched to the ‘T’. It could not have been a coincidence. It was in the middle of 1953 that Bruce Heezen would finally come around to Marie Tharp’s point of view. Soon, ‘Doc’ Ewing too, would begin to take an interest in the Atlantic abnormality he called the ‘gully’. It was a giant of a conclusion — from a chance discovery — the paradigm shift that was needed for the fundamental change required in a direction that would enable scientists to understand the physical workings of our planet!

6.4.1 The Long and Narrow Ridge The little ‘V’ in the mid-Atlantic and at the centre of the MAD readings, was the first recorded fact that tentatively gave rise to the thought that the Atlantic seabed could have split and separated into two halves at that point. A long-forgotten “German weatherman’s” work was being looked at now, with a little more interest; this time with respectful curiosity. It could be the proof needed to nail down a possible sea-floor spreading hypothesis; to substantiate what old Wegener had postulated. It was being tossed around in earnest now and for the first time, was being seriously discussed among earth scientists. It was a paradigm shift; another line of thinking was beginning to germinate in fertile minds; it would need more work though, to connect the dots conclusively.

Fig. 6.1: The ‘piano-keys’ zebra patterns of a MAD reading

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At that time, palaeomagnetic studies from the drilling samples of the Atlantic seabed, also told them that fresh magma or basalt, when solidifying on either side of the zebra pattern ‘anomaly’, recorded and confirmed the changes or reversals in Earth’s magnetic field. It established once and for all, what the scientists suspected was on the modified MAD readings. In 1957 along with a portable model globe made to show how the rift system extended and displayed itself on the planet, Heezen gave a talk on their findings at Princeton — where a certain geologist named Harry Hammond Hess was present. Later, he would confirm to Heezen his appreciation — of the work unearthed thus far. At around this time in the 1960s, an energy issue would add to some timely data needed by our earth scientists; the depletion of continental oil resources was a worry of oil companies. Deciding to explore the sea for oil, the oil companies built ships capable of drilling in the oceans. A research vessel was first built specifically for marine geology based on the marine drill rigs and named the Glomar Challenger. In 1968 — with improved dating techniques — the vessel set out to sea and the core samples they recovered from drilling on either side of the Atlantic Ocean showed that the seabed got progressively older as it went away from the ridge. Moreover, no seabed was found to be older than 200 Ma on both its eastern and western boundaries — found off the eastern margin of North America and the western margin of Africa. This information was music to the ears of a few men trying to understand how earth works. With more plotting of readings on their ever-evolving map drafts, the ‘zipper’ like oddity would emerge to be seen bisecting the Atlantic Ocean floor equally and away from the continental shelves and shores on either sides of it. Running north to south — down the middle and in a curving path — from the Arctic Ocean, about 333 km south of the North Pole at 87° N, to somewhere just above the coast of Antarctica to the subantarctic Bouvet Island at 54° 25.8´ S and 3° 22.8´ E — a distance of some 16,000 km. It is, from all visual records, an underwater mountain range in the Atlantic Ocean that is about 3 km in height above the ocean floor, and 1000 to 1500 km wide; has numerous transform faults and an axial rift valley along its length. It would be named the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR). Most of the ridge system is under water but forms land as a set of volcanic islands of varying size that run the length of the Atlantic Ocean. These islands are the Jan Mayen (Norway), Iceland, Azores (Portugal), St Paul’s rock (Brazil), Ascension Island (UK), St Helena (UK), Tristan da Cunha (UK), Gough Island (UK), and Bouvet Island (Norway). The rest of this volcanic belt is completely hidden from view beneath two to four kilometres of ocean. Nevertheless, it is along these rises and erupts on the ocean floor that is slowly resurfacing vast areas of our planet as seabed spread away from these ridges. Nascent thoughts began to sprout... a possibility... Earth’s surface could be on the move...

88 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… The backers of the hypothesis were growing... while also getting the old sceptics back to listen to what Wegener had said to corroborate his hypothesis. In good time, it would help us realise that our continents actually did ‘drift’ over the surface of our earth. We were on the move again...

6.5 MORE MYSTERIES… WITH RIDGES In addition to being an intense researcher, ‘Doc’ Erwin had already collected years’ worth of core data from the world’s ocean floors. As research expanded, new maps created from cores, sonar and seismic data, revealed that the MAR was only a part of a larger system of similar formations globally. With more scanning came more discoveries, with a pattern gradually emerging that appeared to contain some continuity in the ridges; appearing to be a worldwide phenomenon. While winding its way around the planet, the ridges proceeded in the form of an underwater mountain range — like the seam on a tennis ball rippling along the ocean floor — like jagged scars but along a connected and continuous path around the globe. Zigzagging its way between continents and through a part of every ocean, the chain split out through the longitudinal length of the Atlantic Ocean, around Africa and through the Indian Ocean, then between Australia and Antarctica, then north through the Pacific.

Fig. 6.2: World Distribution of the ‘mid-ocean ridge’ (MOR) Credit: USGS/Public Domain

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The ‘gullies’ would continue, in a relay of defining ‘boundary like’ trough in the middle of the magma-fed growing ocean floor, forming a chain of mountain ranges that are visible over the waters in some parts around the globe, and most of the time — very interestingly — equidistant from the continental shores on either side of it (inviting us to believe that the ridge was the tear that sent the ocean floor apart, equally). Collectively, they would be christened the ‘Mid-Oceanic Ridge’ (MOR). For all practical purposes, it was found to be a single ridge, covering a continuous and combined distance of about 65,000 km (if a few dead-end sections were added to it, the ridge would add to it being around 80,000 km long). Although hidden underwater, this difficult-to-witness wonder — where 90% of it lies in the deep ocean — is our dynamic young planet’s largest and ‘most important’, geologically and topographic feature and which, only some 60 plus years ago, was unknown to man; its discovery considered the most important in the earth sciences in the 20th century. As of date, less than 0.1% of the MOR has been studied or explored making much of this ‘difficult-to-access-wonder’ still a mystery. Credit, however, must go to our oceanographers, as it is being examined and studied vigorously, as work continues down below the waves as we speak, exploring Earth’s vast reservoir of hidden and mysterious unknowns.155 In the last few years, we learnt that there are many more volcanoes on Earth’s surface — more underwater than there are on land, and oceanographers have only recently been able to detect them. The most productive of them are hidden at an average depth of some 2600 m under the waves, and many aligning themselves along the spreading ridges.156 Here lie thousands of uncountable submarine volcanoes and seamounts that discharge 75% of the Earth’s volcanic magma onto the seabed.157 Most of these eruptions occur on the MOR, and they form extensive volcanic mountain ranges, averaging 1000 km in width and 1000 to 2100 m in height, and extend along the MOR.

6.5.1 With Ridges, Came Earthquakes, then Plates Interestingly, earlier, an irritant when mapping over the MAR, was that sonar beams would bounce back unexpectedly and without warning. Little explanation was at hand at the time. Later, with careful observation of the oddity, along with repeated and additional sonar readings, scientists correctly deduced that there were earthquakes going on down in the ridge. These were frequent, happening all along its length, and at different times. This was an unexpected and an exciting discovery, paving the way to the first thoughts — which were to later expand — linking earthquakes to the underwater ridges and rifts. 155

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The NOAA Ship, the Okenos Explorer, surpassed having mapped 1,000,000 km2 of the sea-floor using high-resolution multibeam sonar. However, considering that the ocean covers 335,258,000 km2, it makes you realize just how much further we have to go to understand this dynamic planet. Courtesy of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, Apr. 2016. Source: NOAA — US Dept. of Commerce. Source: Oregon State University > Submarine volcanoes.

90 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… In the meantime, a detailed look revealed that the distribution of earthquake foci (or epicentres) was by no means random in their locations. A jagged pattern of their activity was beginning to evolve over the globe’s surface when a tortoise shell-like picture began to emerge on the map of the globe. Scientists would identify these individual shell pieces as separate entities on Earth’s crust, and on whose borders the earthquakes happened. More important, though, was that we learnt that to an extent, ridges, earthquakes, volcanic activity and the ‘tortoise shell’-like pieces covering our planet were all interconnected in some way. On land, we were familiar with the movements at the San Andreas Fault, though the picture there was an incomplete one, until then. We were about to step on to something new... and a hunt was on to find the relationship that connected all these new discoveries.

6.6 THE UNVEILING OF THE FIRST PLATE In the late 1940s through to the early 1960s, new evidence was added from another quarter to support these initial findings, when a worldwide array of seismometers were installed to monitor nuclear testing in the Pacific atolls. These new instruments always began working no sooner they were installed and ahead of the scheduled nuclear experimental testing, revealing another happening — a natural geological phenomenon instead. When scientists (from the US, China, France, the UK, and the former USSR) began to connect them, they noted that the readings began to identify themselves with earthquakes for the most part, volcanoes and tsunamis, and at various corners in the Pacific Ocean (and beyond too). It was in this region that scientists began to realize that the unsolicited seismic signals from earthquakes ran along a familiar course too. When all was plotted and done, they noted a distinct ‘band’ on which the earthquakes and volcanoes took place. These findings would lead to the early detection of the rim of the Pacific ‘Plate’. Along the way, we would learn that earthquakes occur at any time, on all continents and beneath the deep oceans too.158 Unconditionally, they shake the world’s highest mountains, its deepest valleys, the floor of the Dead Sea and even deep down from under the polar ice caps. By the end of the 1950s, the picture was as similar as we see in Fig. 6.3 (but less dense than is shown here). Monitoring and recording of earthquakes and volcanoes was now routine, and this is how we see it by 1998.

6.7 STITCHING UP AN OLD JIGSAW PUZZLE After the war and once back in Princeton, Harry Hess considered all this new information after the MOR had been defined and verified and with his old data in the background, he explained the MAD readings and the ‘dated’ seabed drilled core. He postulated that fresh strips of ocean floor were created at the ’ridge’ in the mid-ocean, which spewed out fresh 158

Some 50 earthquakes strong enough to be felt locally, are recorded every day. Every few days, there is an earthquake strong enough to damage modern structures. Every year, there are an average of 1,477,436 earthquakes of >2.0 Moment magnitude (Mw) that are recorded around the globe.

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lava, and which spread out from within them, solidifying and creating new seabed on either side of it (like paper coming from two fax machines, with backs to each other), thereby pushing the ocean floor apart. As the ocean floor moved laterally away from the ridge equally on both sides, more lava was allowed to resurface, to fill the widening cracks while creating new seabed. Preliminary Determination of Epicenters 358,214 Events, 1963-1998

Fig. 6.3: Earthquake locations map Credit: NASA/DTAM Project Team/Public Domain

In a 1962 publication titled, History of Ocean Basins, Hess claimed that the driving force behind plate movements was ‘mantle convection currents’,159 and hypothesized that the seabed was ‘spreading’ and moving away from the vents in the ridges, through the friction caused by conventional currents working within Earth’s molten mantle. As the magma emerged in the vents and cooled, it forced the existing ocean floor away from the rift on either side. Along with Robert S. Dietz, a U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey member, they coined the term ‘sea-floor spreading’. Things moved quickly, and subsequent to Hess’s publication, it was evident that the ocean floor had a story to tell. That story would once more unfold from the work of three scientists; two British, Frederick Vine and Drummond Mathews and a Canadian geologist, Lawrence Morley. Working independently, the three concluded that this pattern was no 159

First proposed by Arthur Holmes in 1929 some 33 years earlier, which at that time too, received little, or no attention. He had been championing Wegener’s hypothesis at a time when it was deeply unfashionable with his more conservative peers, and it could have been the reason behind the apathy to his suggestion.

92 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… accident. Hypothesizing that the magnetic striping were produced from the generation of magma at MORs during alternating periods of normal and reversed magnetism by the magnetic reversals of Earth’s magnetic field and realizing what it all meant, came up with the ‘Vine-Matthews-Morley hypothesis’ that confirmed that Earth’s floor was in motion; that continents were moving; that new crust was forming at ocean ridges; that old seabed crusts vanished under continental shelves and trenches, and that the activity was continuous, moving in a slow and steady ‘conveyor belt’ like process, helped along by three-fifths of Earth’s crust that lies underwater; spread out along the planet’s ocean floor. Today, knowing that more than 5 km3 of ocean crust form each year, constantly regenerating the globe like new skin across its surface… does not surprise us. They were the few who now understood that as the new crust was spreading out from plate boundaries, they must be sinking up elsewhere, thereby maintaining Earth’s constant in lithospheric balance. We would later understand that the Pacific trenches were also ‘recycling’ the earth, by creating new crust from the old crust. This was explained neatly, in why earth does not get bigger with sea-floor spreading, why there is so little sediment accumulation on the ocean floor, and why oceanic rocks are much younger than continental rocks. Hess also decided that ‘plate’ movement, was due to the combined action of ‘ridgepush’ forces at certain obvious ‘boundaries’, with the ‘slab-pull’ forces at other similar ‘boundaries’. The explanation did justice to the understanding of the creation of new oceanic crust, as against the equivalent subduction of ‘older’ oceanic crust. At the time, the theory accounted for, united, and helped rest several separate puzzles in marine geology — the progressively older age of the ocean floor going away from the ridges, and the geomagnetic patterns of the MAD readings of the normal and reversed polarized rock — and which would later be known as ‘magnetic striping’ — being one of them. It was the breakthrough needed; this ‘temporary’ or ‘short time’ understanding of the workings of the MORs that helped support the nascent sea-floor spreading hypothesis,160 to move on with the science. In 1966, the Canadian professor and scientist, J. Tuzo Wilson, confirmed once more that both Wegener’s and Hess’ thinking were on the right track. He too suggested that the lithosphere was broken up into plates, and theorized that these plates moved slowly, powered by currents within the mantle. Research, though, would go on unabated, on many fronts and simultaneously. In the deep oceans, new technology with the use of manned underwater submersibles began to make a difference to the enquiry, with unsolved riddles still popping up at almost every other turn. We would ask a submersible for help. 160

In time, the term ‘Continental Drift’ would slowly be done away with, as we came to understand Earth’s outer crust and surface a little better, to now embrace ‘sea-floor spreading’ instead.

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6.8 MEASURING MOVEMENT That the ridges were spreading apart and plates sliding past one another, were confirmed on many fronts and Wegener’s theory was for all practical purposes, put to rest. With the surface of crustal boundaries of the plates having roughly taken shape on the global map, physically recording their movements posed another challenge altogether and actual physical measurements at the ridges, was technically still a few years away. The first observable recordings of actual spreading between two plates would come only in 1974, through work carried out through the French-American Mid-Ocean Undersea Study (Project FAMOUS). Using the French submersibles, Archiméde and Cyana, along with the US Navy-owned Alvin,161 the French, and their Americans colleagues would confirm the theory of sea-floor spreading along the MAR with actual physical measurements of the spreading in real time, down in the rift below! An amazing achievement for the times! The Cyana hovered over the depths of the rift (that are far greater than the highest mountains on Earth’s surface) and at times, nearly touched both sides of the narrow ridge. An analysis from the project proved beyond doubt that the central fissure of the rift valley was (and is...) widening by about 2.5 cm/yr and this single initial measurement added substantially to both proving and helping scientists understand plate tectonics and sea-floor spreading. It was our first physical reading of the movement of crusts of Earth’s land, relative to one another! It would be the cornerstone of the ever-moving theory of tectonics. In time, we would measure the movement at various locations and learn more while categorizing their movements as ‘fast’, ‘slow’ and ‘ultraslow’. We would then classify them and say that fast-spreading ridges like the East Pacific Rise separate between 10 to 25 centimetres per year (cm/yr), slow spreading ridges like the MAR, by between 2 to 4 cm/ yr and that the ultra-slow-spreading ridges like the Southwest Indian Ridge, by less than 2 cm/yr. Today we have the technology to prove that the continents are still in motion, having had recourse to Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI),162 Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR), and the GPS technology. Wegener’s hypothesis was here to stay.

6.9 DEFINING BOUNDARIES WITH THE GRADUAL UNEARTHING OF ‘PLATE’ MOVEMENT However, with everything else in place, the initial thought that gave rise to ‘Continental Drift’, had to now be investigated seriously, with all doubts put to rest conclusively. In the process of the study, a number of more ‘plates’ would identify themselves across the globe, and it was the MOR that would germinate the nascent and imaginative idea that it was at 161

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Put into operation in 1964, it is the first deep-sea submersible capable of carrying passengers, usually a pilot, and two observers. After numerous upgrades and reconstructions, it can now plunge to a maximum depth of 4500 m. Owned by the US Navy, research conducted by Alvin, features in some 2000 scientific papers. This method of measurement of plate movement is now almost obsolete in its use.

94 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… these plate borders that the plates also moved and that too, relative to one another. The revelation was a collective effort by a host of scientists in the field. From all the data now available, things garnered pace, and scientist in time would divide Earth’s surface into separate different ‘plates’. Official acceptance of plate tectonics by the scientific community accrued at the symposium at the Royal Society of London in 1965, having first gone through with experimenting with terms like ‘paving stones’, then ‘crustal blocks’, eventually leading to ‘plates’, popularly referred to the process as ‘plate tectonics’, or ‘The theory of plate tectonics’. Saner minds prevailed, however, and in 1968, these plate movement activities over Earth’s crust was officially named ‘Tectonics’.163 This was followed up by a complete model based on seven major (or eight major plates, if you consider the Indian and Australian plates separately)164 and eight minor plates, and with the acceptance of their relative motions165 too. Eight major or primary plates — the Antarctic Plate, the South American Plate, the African Plate, the Indian Plate, the Australian Plate, the Eurasian Plate, the North American Plate, and the Pacific Plate — are today classified as those that comprise the bulk of the continents and the oceans. Then there are the seven smaller or secondary ones (the Philippine Sea Plate, the Juan de Fuca Plate, the Cocos Plate, the Nazca Plate, the Scotia Plate, the Arabian Plate and the Caribbean Plate), the many tertiary ones, then the microplates. Science, though, still has difficulties classifying the major plates, with the debate on classifying the African Plate into two — rearranging it by calling the western half as the Nubian Plate and the eastern side as the Somalia Plate — still raging on. On the other side is the Indo-Australian Plate; considered as two separate plates in some quarters (as pleases this writer) or as one, by others.166 The same debates go on with the Burma Plate. However, we must understand that the science is new and that work on identifying them correctly continues around the globe even as we speak. All in all, the three classifications add up to some 54 plates,167 a mosaic of them, moving with respect to each other, jostling like floating ice slabs on an Arctic Sea, making way for one another or simply 163

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The fact that the plates and the ridges fit to a ‘T’, like in a carpenter’s joint, the German word tectonos (derived from Late Latin tectonicus, earlier from Greek tektonikos, and from their root language; the Sanskrit word taksan, referring to the craft of carpentry) which stands for a builder/carpenter was considered. It eventually led to it being popularly referred to as ’Tectonics’ — anglicized to the greater number of English-speaking world of science. Major plates are those with areas above 40,000,000 km2, minor plates, below that mark. It was W. Jason Morgan, who in 1967, first proposed that the Earth’s surface consists of 12 rigid plates that move relative to each other. In 1968, Xavier Le Pichon would prove it. ‘The breakup of the Indo-Australian Plate into two pieces, is an epic process that began roughly 50 Ma ago and will continue for tens of millions more’, said Thorne Lay, a professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at UC Santa Cruz. Lay and other scientists reported their findings online in Sept. 2012 in the journal Nature. Science has yet to attempt to divide the Peruvian Andes, the Sierras Pampeanas and the Alps-PersiaTibet mountain belt into plates; instead, they are designated as ‘orogens’. The South China Sea and the Philippine islands are also a challenging task; an oceanographer’s nightmare!

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pushing or bullying a smaller one or even a larger one away; all dancing to Earth’s ‘sounds of silence’. While most plates are comprised of both continental and oceanic crust, the large Pacific Plate is oceanic and is submerged below the ocean; a few like the tiny Turkish-Aegean Plate, are entirely on land. Of the major plates, six are named for the continents they ride on, or that are embedded in them: the African, Antarctic, Eurasian, Indian, Australian, North American and the South American plates.

Fig. 6.4: The 15 major tectonic plates, along with their general movement vectors Credit: USGS

6.10 RECYCLING EARTH’S WASTE From an unexpected corner, another interesting find was added to the rift data, with Russian scientists’ findings that heat emanated from giant cracks and faults in the MORs. Besides earthquakes and underwater volcanoes, we would discover hydrothermal vents — blue, white and black smokers, belching localized magma of different shades and colours.168 168

In 1977, in the ridge around the Galápagos Islands and working inside Alvin, scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography were amazed to discover these undersea chimneys, or hydrothermal vents, spewing hot water measured at 464 °C, along with minerals into the cold waters thousands of metres below the ocean surface. That helped in understanding a little more of volcanic eruptions beneath the ocean waters.

96 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… If the ridges were producing an upwelling of magma, gas, and volcanoes, where was all this being produced or where were the material and excess energy coming from? There seemed to be no contributing source or factor that produced these earth-building materials at the ridges. The hunt was on for the source of the energy expended at the ridges. From the 1895 British expedition on the HMS Penguin that recorded the 9144 m depth of the Kermadec Trench in the south-west (SW) Pacific, to the discovery of the 10,500 m Philippine trench in Jan. 1950 by the USS Cape Johnson, man was curious and interested in finding a solution to the few unanswered scientific questions of the times. However, sometime later, Dutch scientists would observe ‘the disappearance of oceanic crust beneath another’, and in 1951, André Amstutz would coin the word ‘subduction’, for the process where one lithospheric plate descended beneath another. It was now also beginning to be easily understood vis-à-vis sea-floor spreading, after the Japanese-American duo of Kiyoo Wadati and Hugo Benioff studied them in proper context with plate ’subduction’. We could understand sea-floor spreading, but where did the old and seabed go. We could understand the language Wadati and Benioff used, in that the friction between the plates prevents the subducting oceanic plate from sliding smoothly. As it descends, it drags against the overlying plate, causing it to both fracture and deform. This results in frequent shallow focus earthquakes that get deeper as the ocean plate descends further, defining a zone of earthquake foci. In 1963, Hess continued with his understanding of the process by postulating that existing and older seabed are, in turn, subducted in ocean ‘trenches’, to be recycled, and once again circulated through Earth’s interior and into the fresh and active spreading rifts. He was now also using the Wadati-Benioff hypothesis and the ‘swallow up’ activities in the zones of the sea trenches and island arcs169 that are more common in the western Pacific Ocean. What we see now, is that the sea-floor is geologically distinct from the continents. It is locked in a perpetual cycle of birth and destruction that shapes the ocean and controls Earth’s geology.170 We can now read Earth’s geological history, and we understand now that geological processes that occur beneath the water line, affect not only marine life but life on dry land as well. Life on the planet now depends on the subduction processes that rejuvenate our land and atmosphere that makes it possible for life to live and propagate down here on planet Earth.

6.11 WE LEARNT THE HARD WAY So, it was only in the 1950s through the 1960s that science learnt a lot about geology and especially of Earth’s seabed. It also led us to agree that continents are characterized by 169 170

These zones would later be known in their honour, as the ‘Wadati-Benioff Zones’. The idea of subduction had earlier roots in Otto Ampherer’s concept of a crustal ‘swallowing zone’.

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folded mountains, by great masses of fairly light granite and rocks of all ages — some as old as 4.4 Ga — and by numerous combinations of very complicated geological and physical structures. On land, are continental crusts accompanied by volcanic mountains, and at the bottom of the oceans, on its seabed, are thin slabs of rocks of relatively simple basaltic structure and quite young. These two, form Earth’s rigid outer layer. Today, we do not imagine the ocean floor to be a slushy pond or a bizarre landscape but an ocean floor marked by ridges, where molten rock generated at depths between 20 to 80 km within earth, emerges from its surface, where plates spread apart (typically in the East Pacific Rise and the MAR), or are weak enough to allow the venting of Earth’s hot and bubbling interior through them. We neither wonder at hot gas venting out of deep ocean fissures, nor on the top of mountain volcanoes, and neither wonder of the orogeny171 that built up the Alps or the Himalayas. We study the processes that help us understand our earth a lot better, for the betterment of humanity. By clarifying crustal behaviour, plate tectonics made the Earth’s crust clear in almost a literal sense of the word while letting us focus on the strange things that went on beneath our feet, and when it all finally came together, it did what all scientific theories do; explained a great many mysteries — from the movements of continents to the form and behaviour of the ocean floor, the birth and death of mountain chains, the locations of volcanoes and earthquakes, the distribution of ancient life, and even the rise and fall of sea level over geologic time. At the same instant, it also highlighted many new and strange happenings that sought answers.

6.12 A HAND PAINTED MAP! While all this was going on, the two Lamont-Doherty teammates went about their task systematically, and work on the mapping of the seabed would pick up with even more vigour. With the aid of the Austrian artist Heinrich C. Berann — who painted in a style where ‘colours led the eye’— the team began to painstakingly plot the ocean bathymetric data in colour, giving depth to the ocean floor. In 1977, Tharp and Heezen would finally unleash on the world Berann’s hand-painted masterpiece; the first complete physiographic map of the ocean floor as it was measured then. A particular tribute to Marie Tharp, who, for over 25 years, with or without support,172 carried on her single-minded labour of dedication, helped along by her equally devoted Bruce Heezen, with a lot of foresight. Marie Tharp gave the world the first visual vista of our world in its completeness and another seminal moment in our beginnings to understanding the workings of our planet. 171

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Orogeny is a process, in which a section of the Earth’s lithosphere folds and deforms by the lateral compression of plates, thereby forced into the formation of mountain ranges and highlands; the Alps, the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau are classic examples here. The dedicated lady worked selflessly for science and humanity, and even after she was relieved of her position by Ewing, she worked from home.

98 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors…

Fig. 6.5: The 1977 World Ocean Floor ‘Hand-drawn map’, first published by the US Navy Credit: Heinrich Berann/Bruce Heezen/Marie Tharp/Library of Congress, USA

Tharp and Heezen bequeathed us an even better and bigger picture of Earth’s composite surface. It was the catalyst that helped pave the way for the slow but general acceptance of Wegener’s hypothesis of ‘Continental drift’, exciting scientists around the world while also kick-starting the study of the nascent science of oceanography. The once ‘squishy’ ocean floor now looked fresh and interesting.

6.13 AN EXCITING NEW SCIENCE Tharp and Heezen rewrote the physical map of the world and changed the way we now look at the map. Hess, Vine, Matthews, Morley and others resurrected Wegener’s idea that now made the study of earth and its seabed, even more fulfilling. Their work also brought out another important fact: not only do the seabed spread and disappear, but that continents, lands, and islands drift in and out too; laying to rest our understanding of why Earth’s crust moves through cycles of formation and destruction in the manner it does. The work from the various pioneers would get the theory heading in a direction, ready to be accepted by a majority in the scientific world. The related concepts of ‘sea-floor spreading’ and ‘tectonics’ emerged to be seen as a powerful new theory, used to interpret the movements of Earth’s surface layer, and it is only in the last few decades, that the earth sciences have evolved rapidly. We are now able to produce scientific models that can help to reconstruct and forecast the past and future processes of earth.

What Changed our Minds? 99

6.14 WEGENER VINDICATED! The discovery of the MORs, and the subsequent confirmation and acceptance of the process of sea-floor spreading, are major events of relevance in geology that revolutionized out thinking about Earth’s physical behaviour and helps explain continental drift in the theory of tectonics. Wegener’s thoughts are no longer a hypothesis, but a process that now helps us in our understanding of Earth’s unpredictable rumblings of earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, weather changes, and to its subsequent effect on life on our planet. In recent years, we have come to realise that our earth is quantitatively measurable. Better seismic techniques and study have brought a better understanding of the 3D structure of its external and internal composition — its lithosphere and its asthenosphere. Better ways of seeing through solid rock, have allowed us to appreciate in three-dimension, the fine structure of Earth’s crust, and how it behaves and deforms and reforms under pressure from the movement of its crustal plates. Advances in dating technique now permit geologists to give accurate ages in years, making it possible to find out how fast tectonic and surface processes take place, with the precision necessary to distinguish between the different forces that shape the landscape. Added to this, is a step towards a 4D approach, understanding earth while involving both space and time — spatial and temporal. Today, earth science studies are underway covering Europe (GEOMOTION, TOPO EUROPE, and EURO ARRAYS) and the USA (EarthScope). In the international arena, research initiatives, such as the Integrated Ocean Drilling Programme (IODP), the International Continental Drilling Programme (ICDP), and the International Lithosphere Programme (ILP), interact while working in our ‘natural laboratory’, with a multifaceted approach; unparalleled so far by any other research programme worldwide. Affiliated institutions too, are pulling in their resources, and among the notable ones are: the U.S. National Science Foundation, Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, the European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling, India’s Ministry of Earth Sciences, the Ministry of Science and Technology in the People’s Republic of China, and the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources. Today, we understand that earth is an incredibly dynamic planet, where mountain chains build and erode away, volcanoes erupt and vanish, seas advance and recede, islands and land appear and disappear — all the result of the processes of tectonics. Before Wegener brought about the debate, few had conceived of such a world. His ‘Continental Drift’ theory led the way and laid the foundation upon which modern geology is built, and has led to a sweeping revolution in our understanding of the physically active earth, and a new basic grasp of the forces that shape it. It is a fascinating story; continents drifting majestically from place to place, breaking apart, colliding and grinding against each other, and of terrestrial mountain ranges rising... like earth piled upfront by the blade of an earth mover. Of oceans opening and closing and

100 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… of subterranean mountain chains girdling the planet, and releasing its pent-up energy. In essence, collisions creating orogenesis of mountains of unperceived land mergers, due to their separating apart and/or closing, with violent earthquakes and fiery volcanoes the result of the releasing of pent-up stress. Tectonics describes the intricate design of a complex, living planet in a constant state of dynamic flux. The new science has completely altered the way geologists and a plethora of other earth scientists now view earth and its evolution while broadening and enriching every field of science we know of. All this now goes on, though the tectonic theory has only been around for 50 years or so, and scientists are still at work ‘connecting the dots’ of the many details that constantly emerge from our relentless study. We are only now beginning to understand, verify, and support Wagener’s hypothesis — a belief now that has become the foundation of a revolution among geologists and a cornerstone for modern viewers of Earth’s history. The acceptance by the scientific community of the tectonic theory is today recognised as a major milestone in geological science, and compared only to Darwin’s revolutionary theory of evolution in biology, or as Einstein’s theory of relativity in physics. It has led us to the realization that continents and ocean floor are part of a lithosphere-atmospherehydrosphere system that is all part of one earth that moves internally and externally.

6.15 QUESTIONS WEGENER WOULD HAVE LIKED TO ANSWER... The answers we came to, with the evidence we had, changed the very way we now look at our world — a living and moving entity, with a life of its own, where its body is rejuvenated continuously, and where excessive and unwanted carbon and carbonates are cycled through its interiors — only to re-emerge on its surface, to begin its next ‘cycle of life’... a geologic ‘karma’ of sorts. The discovery of tectonics became the template for a successful voyage into the future for this young science. However, in the excitement and bustle of the pace of discoveries when the geophysical evidence supporting Wegener’s theory emerged, led to a rapid paradigm shift in the earth sciences. The question of ‘what is it that makes the plates move’, was once again sidelined, not addressed correctly, nor attempted to, in the simple fact that man’s understanding of the theory was in place to a nicety... for this moment in time. Over half a century later, we have made great strides with this new science in hand but are still not much farther from Wagener’s hypothesis, if we do not put the question that eluded him to rest — what is it that makes the continents move? How does it happen and why does it happen?

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6.16 ARE WE ON THE RIGHT TRACK? Questions, though, are still being asked and among them, of note are: 1) Why is the ocean floor no older than 200 Ma old,173 when we can date the continents age to over 4.54 Ga old? and 2) what is that force that has the ‘oomph’ to push thick dense plates of rock deep down into Earth’s belly? Does a fluid (interior magma) have enough in its composition to get a grip of the ground load above it and simply shift it effortlessly, and if that is true, why do riverbeds not move under deep fast flowing rivers? Why do riverbeds not travel along with the river-flows but continents are moved along by another viscous medium? 4) Does Earth’s deepest, heaviest, and densest parts offer a descending slab no resistance, or as Hess — literally and surprisingly very carelessly — suggests to ‘just pull the thing in’, in his ‘Pull-push’ argument? Earth’s upper crust is too brittle and flexible to generate enough friction on the magma below it, to pull the tectonic plate along. To answer all that, we have to first understand, as to what lies on and below our ‘moving’ continents and use that very basic knowledge that was not available to Wegener, only a mere hundred years ago to understand tectonics.

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Some small parts are older, and the oldest existing oceanic crust is in the Ionian Sea, part of the eastern Mediterranean basin and about 270 Ma old, but these are exceptions. The oldest parts of continental crust, on the other hand, are more than 4.375 Ga old, like the Jack Hills of Western Australia.

‘The great obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents and the oceans was not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge’. — Daniel J. Boorstin

7

How Does it Happen?

7.1 THE MAMMALIAN BODY OF AN ONION LEAFED EARTH Earth’s ‘crustal’ story begins at least 4.4 Ga ago or just 160 Ma after the formation of our solar system. Earth was hot and flustered, with a scarred landscape, with red-hot molten lava hissing and oozing almost everywhere around her dark barren and desolate surface, which was surrounded by a still, wave-less, lifeless and a dirty dark greyish single waterbody around the single mass of smouldering land and as we see it almost as in Fig. 7.1 (shown in both elevation and end view). At its SW, we can identify with the Great Lakes in the picture on the left, and little Tasmania can be seen south-south-east (SSE) in the end-view in the picture on the right).

Elevation

End view Fig. 7.1: Early earth soon after the LHB

Soon after, some 3.8 Ga ago, with the LHB no more, earth began sorting out things within her in earnest, with heavy metals sinking to the bottom and lighter material rising progressively upwards. Though there was a lot less gravity on the early earth, with the

104 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… heat of the time and Earth’s interior in agitated flux, nickel, iron, silicon,174 along with the other heavy elements, sank and concentrated in the centre of the earth, where they began assembling into a semblance of a core.175 This differentiation of the distribution of the elements was simply the result of normal natural gravity in action.176 However, from the extremely hot core at the earth’s centre to the outer surface-exposed land and water, Earth’s temperatures decrease progressively through layers surrounding the core going outwards. At its outer surface, above the land and waters, there was no atmosphere initially, where the harsh bare surface and ocean waters were exposed to the cold vacuum of space, at an average of –36 °C.177 Its outermost surface would be cold and brittle, while its underbelly was hot, malleable, or molten, depending on the comparative depth of its cold surface, in a direct relationship. Over time, Earth’s physique would then be layered between its lighter outer crust, and heavier inner core; lighter matter towards Earth’s surface, and heavier material aggregating progressively towards Earth’s metal-laden centre. This conclusion is the result of research carried out through various experiments and observations, in our attempt to understand our planet’s internal structure. These studies are based in part, on observations of rocks in outcrops, and from samples brought to the surface by volcanic activity, and further augmented by the analysis of seismic waves that pass through earth, and their diverse behaviour in liquids and solids, and along with other scientific estimates, have then led us to these conclusions and interpretations.178 174

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‘The core is mostly iron and some nickel, but also contains about 10% of light alloys such as silicon, oxygen, sulphur, carbon, hydrogen, and other compounds’, said Kei Hirose, Director of the EarthLife Science Institute (ELSI) at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and lead author of a study published in the journal Nature. “We think that many alloys are simultaneously present, but we don’t know the proportion of each candidate element”. It was the German seismologist, Beno Gutenberg, who studied S-wave behaviour that radiated down into the earth and in 1914, first defined a sharp boundary below the mantle, he called the ‘core’. The core-mantle boundary he defined, was 2900 km below Earth’s surface; better known as the Gutenberg discontinuity. An analogy here would be similar to what happens in a steel blast furnace. We see the heavier molten iron sink to the bottom of the furnace, while the lighter crusty and brittle slag floats over the heavier and hot fluid iron. Similar to temperatures experienced on moon today; a very hot 123 °C in the daytime, to a cold –153 °C at night. This large variation is because Moon has no atmosphere to absorb and dissipate Sun’s heat evenly around its body through the normal process of convention that happens down here on earth. We still do not know for sure. Earth’s centre is 6371 km below our feet. The Americans did try to get to the mantle in 1957, off the Pacific coast of Mexico, with their ‘Project Mohole’, but by 1966, it was left unfinished; now, referred to and more in jest, as ‘Project No-Hole’. After years of drilling in the Kola peninsula, the maximum the Russians managed to get down below Earth’s surface with the ‘Kola Superdeep Borehole’ project, was 12,262 m, and then gave up... having penetrated less than 0.2% of the distance to Earth’s centre. Scientists still try though, and in the south-western Indian Ocean, at a point known as Atlantis Bank, scientists have once more, in early Dec. 2015, started an attempt to drill through the crust, using the drill ship JOIDES Resolution.

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We now think that this core is made up of two parts: a solid ‘inner core’ and a liquid ‘outer core’. Our calculated conclusion however, is that earth is layered in spherical shells — like the leaves of an onion — with the inner core subjected to unthinkable and unimaginable extremes, where pressures are as high as over 3 M times than those at sea level, and where temperatures are judged to be a hellish 5700 °C and above, or about as the same as on Sun’s surface.179 The solid nickel-iron-silicone core is said to have a diameter of 2556 km, and with all the added weight and pressure of approximately 5100 km of the outer core, mantle,180 and all of the land all around the top weighing on it, anything would turn into a very dense, compact and a very hot ball.181 At this time of our understanding, we think the inner core (which could even have its own ‘inner core’)182 is not only a very dense, solid, nickel-ironsilicon sphere but also unbelievably heavy. We think it is a solid composite structure, as the pressure exerted by the weight of the rest of the earth’s material surrounding it, prevents it from becoming liquid. For general comprehension’s sake, the solid inner core is estimated to be roughly the size of Moon (a thousand kilometres less, actually), but with a temperature like that of the surface of Sun. Above and surrounding the solid inner core, is the outer core — another dense, very hot but this time, composed of a semi-fluid metal, a plasma of ‘light’ elements like sulphur, oxygen, silicon, carbon and hydrogen, and with a shell thickness of around 2200 km. The ‘core’ composed of both the inner and outer layer is therefore 3478 km thick or of a total diameter of 6956 km. The mantle then envelopes the outer core (and within it, the inner core) in its entirety. Largely made up of peridotite183 and eclogites,184 its layered width is around 2800 km, but composed of a viscous but mechanically weak medium, moving around at temperatures of 1000 °C or so; and so, is suspect to deformation. The mantle accounts for approximately 80% of Earth’s volume. For the convenience of our study of the interior of the earth, this domain is again divided into the lower and upper mantle. A quartered section of Earth’s interior as shown in Fig. 7.2, tells us this little story. 179

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At this point, these figures are a calculated guesswork, and in some quarters, it is thought that it could be more. Strange as it may sound, it is true: the centre of Earth is harder to study than the centre of Sun (with current technology and expertise available at our disposal). No clear indication why it was named the ‘mantle’. However, it is possible that early scientists could not figure out what type of material went in between a solid iron core and a brittle lithosphere, and came out with a number of ‘coverings’, or ‘clothing’ around the core; hence the word ‘mantle’ — a vestimentary of sorts. Temperature we know, is directly related to pressure. Tao Wang et al. ‘Equatorial anisotropy in the inner part of Earth’s inner core from autocorrelation of earthquake coda’. Nature Geoscience, published online 9 Feb. 2015; doi: 10.1038/ngeo2354. A dark coarse-grained ultra-basic plutonic igneous rock composed mainly of the minerals olivine and pyroxene. A coarse-grained basic rock consisting principally of garnet and pyroxene, and is thought to originate by metamorphism, or igneous crystallisation at extremely high pressure.

106 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… We think that the outer layer of Earth’s solid inner core is strewn with hard-serrated edges or a very heavy viscous medium, which is in contact with the inner layer of the semifluid outer core. This viscous medium acts like a ‘toothed’ gear, which helps — to an extent — lock the solid inner core with the semi-fluid viscous outer core. As Sun’s magnetic field excites and triggers the nickel-iron inner core to rotate, the outer core latches on to the hard serrated edges of the inner core which speeds up its rotation, tugging the rest of everything above its surface to move along with it. This even includes the outermost layer of the mantle — the light, hot, semi-hard silicates, referred to as the asthenosphere185 and the crust and uppermost solid mantle referred to as the lithosphere186 that occupies its place at depths between 65 km below Earth’s surface but perhaps extending up to 500 km.

Fig. 7.2: A ‘pie piece’, of the internal physical structure of the Earth Credit: Wikipedia

The lithosphere, the thin crust of Earth’s skin, rides the asthenosphere of light, hot, semi-hard silicates, or malleable magma. The lithosphere’s thickness may be compared to the thickness of biological ‘skin’, relatively speaking, its thickness fluctuating between the skin of an apple and that of an orange. In conclusion: earth is made up of three parts: the core at the centre, the mantle in the middle and the crust on the top. Earth can also be compared to our mammalian body structure; solid bones at the inner core to give it shape, muscle in the form of the plasma like outer core, blood in the form of the semi-liquid mantle or the asthenosphere to keep its internals elastic and moving, and skin in the form of the lithosphere, to hold everything inside. 185

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Coined in 1914 by the British geologist, Joseph Barrel, from the New Latin to Greek word for asthenia, meaning ‘weakness’. This topmost ‘rocky’ layer of Earth, derives its name from the Greek ‘lithos’, for ‘rock’.

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7.2 THE TROUBLED CHILD So, the part that holds everything inside is the ‘troubled child’ we are trying to understand. It is Earth’s lithosphere, the one that sits on top of the asthenosphere and it is here we think that the continents slip over — in between the two, or in some combination of the two. The slip if any, is at the lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary (LAB). We will figure that one out in good time, as there are no hard and fast rules in the lithosphere’s behaviour telling us so. The reason also, is that unlike us mammals, Earth’s skin is different in texture, relatively speaking. It is brittle and it is this brittleness, along with its varied thickness, different composition at different places that poses the problem. Along with the combination of the two, it challenges our trying to understand how she works. The lithosphere collapses at times by piling up earth at soft spots and prone to cracking at brittle places. It is of varying thickness and of unknown strength.187 Fig. 7.3 gives us some idea of the lithosphere’s thickness.

Fig. 7.3: Contour map of the thickness of Earth’s crust Credit: USGS 187

An advanced imaging technique, known as magnetotellurics imaging, used to map Earth’s outer shell can also provide a measure of strength of the lithosphere, finding weak spots and magma upwelling that could point to volcanic, or earthquake activity, according to a new study by geologists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Adelaide, in Australia. L. Liu, D. Hasterok. High-resolution lithosphere viscosity and dynamics revealed by magnetotelluric imaging. Science, 2016; 353 (6307): 1515 DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf6542.

108 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… However, today, we are able to measure its thickness with a lot of certainly, and can even estimate a plate’s weight, if need be. Fig. 7.3 shows are regions with crustal thicknesses of the lithosphere found on all well-surveyed continents, indicated progressively in thickness from blue, yellow, green and on through to brown. Those coloured brown are for all purposes, continental crusts in excess of 50 km in thickness, are relatively rare, accounting for less than 10% of the continental crust. We also know that earth is a semi-solid sphere and subjected to gravitational stress, strains, centripetal forces, Sun and Moon tides, glacial rebound, even including asteroid strikes. All these forces acted separately or collectively, to break up the shell of her lithosphere, into those 54-odd pieces or plates we talked about earlier. Like a cracked eggshell, the fractured pieces are distributed in all sizes around her surface, in varied combination and configurations — thin, thick, light, heavy, small and big and of differing shapes, with no two plates being seen or classified as similar. All the same, the lithosphere along with the slower moving asthenosphere, is able to move over the fluid mantle, along with its seabed, ocean floors, islands and continents. Here is this great challenge in us trying to figure out what is happening at any given time, as at the LAB, there is also an inconsistent and relative slip; the asthenosphere stationary at certain places, like below and around the hotspots that are said to have formed the Hawaiian and the Réunion Islands. Twenty-five of the largest tectonic plates collectively occupy 97% of Earth’s land surface. As more studies are conducted in this young science — particularly in the orogenic belts — smaller plates will be defined in due course, all helping to enlarge the composite picture of Earth’s crustal surface. These plates that cover Earth’s surface, including both land and sea-floor are in constant motion, imperceptibly ‘surfing’ the viscous mantle below or at the LAB. Over time, they interact with one another in a myriad of ways — a continent could simply move away from a parent body, as South America did, or another little piece of earth head-butt a huge neighbour, as India does with Eurasia. In between, they also help change the colour of our landscape with new meadows, valleys, grasslands, forests, hills, highlands and plateaus, along with picture-perfect-postcard-like snow-white topped mountain peaks, with depressing deserts too. They also cause mayhem, through earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis. They need not be big and menacing, and the relatively size of the numerous other smaller plates diminishes neither their significance nor their impact on the surface activity of the planet. The jostling of the now tiny Juan de Fuca Plate for example, sandwiched between the Pacific and the North American Plate near the state of Washington, is largely responsible for the frequent tremors and periodic volcanic eruptions in that region of the northern continent of the Americas. The ‘little troublemakers’ do not per se associate themselves with the big plates, but reside within adjacent boundaries and play their part, at times causing mayhem, not in proportion to their size; marching it appears, to the silent beat of a different drummer. These are the likes of the Rivera, Scotia and the Shetland

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plates. The ones within the confusing geological area of South East Asia are no better — especially those in the South China Sea.

7.3 THE MOVING ‘JIGSAW PUZZLE’ So how do these pieces of brittle lithosphere ‘rumble’ along? Why do they move? How do they move? Where are they going? What do they achieve? When will it all stop? For the moment, let us assume they act this way because they are engaged ‘against their will’, by some unseen hand, by either being pushed, pulled, compressed, dragged, or simply shunted out of the way by another plate; either a smaller or bigger one, but at that moment, the one with the greater force of purpose going about its business. In attempting to do what they are forced to do, the lithosphere’s various plates then slip, slide, ride, hide, collide, pile-up, crumble, merge, submerge, or are simply shunted around (like floating ice floes of the Arctic), where conditions overpower it, when acted upon by unseen forces, but mostly, when Earth’s physical state of affairs ‘demands’ of it to do so. So, while all the plates are on the move, they travel at comparatively different speeds, in varying directions but relatively and independently of one other, irrespective of their size or position, large or small and irrespective of whether they are underwater or on land. There is no hierarchy they follow; their movements governed by the laws of nature acting upon them at that precise moment in time, which again is unspecific. A small plate could inch along, while its giant neighbour could be in a great hurry, and vice versa; not to forget the inclusion of every permutation and combination of the just mentioned two scenarios. Some like little Robinson Crusoe in the Pacific, is known to simply sit around and turn like a potter’s wheel on its last slow turn of death, while others like the Nazca and the Pacific plates scurry away from one another at great speeds. These varied physical ‘movements’ of the giant jigsaw on Earth’s surface, are the ‘centrepieces’, or the ‘actors’, in the performance that spreads sea-floors, moves continents, shakes the ground unexpectedly and violently with earthquakes, brings in tsunamis, creates mountains, spews volcanoes, along with all the other physical activities associated with a living and sometimes an un-understandably volatile earth.

7.3.1 Fault Lines The whole puzzle of plates is interconnected over the entire globe, along the margins at their respective edges with one another. We know these junctions as their ‘fault lines’. No single plate moves without affecting the others around them, many a time, even influencing and extracting a reaction of another, on the opposite side of the globe, thousands of kilometres away, neither in any way physically connected, nor in close proximity to one another. Plates also tend to take the route of least resistance and move inconsistently and to their fancy. They ‘piggyback’ the mantle and do get around, though in an unruly and unpredictable manner. They all jostle with one another in a gigantic non-stop ‘penguin huddle’ like

110 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… event. This inconsistent behaviour of the plates must have exasperated one learned fellow and is recognisable in his elegant words — the eminent Canadian geophysicist, Dr J. Tuzo Wilson. ‘... drift theory is a complex history of movements in which one continent marries another, divorces it, and drifts off to wed some other piece of real estate’. So, let us look at these yet unexplainable movements... of these unruly pieces of real estate (Fig. 6.4) with a little more curiosity.

7.4 TYPES OF PLATE MOVEMENTS As the lithospheric plates move over the asthenosphere physically, there are only three ways that their outer margins could interact, or move relative to one another over that surface. In a 2D visualisation of the movements, the plates could: 1) move away or ‘diverge’ from one another, 2) move towards or ‘converge’ into one another, and 3) move laterally alongside one another while ‘transforming’ their relative physical positions in the process. Scientists then logically classified the three primary types of plate boundaries where the actions take place as: ‘divergent boundaries’, ‘convergent boundaries’, and ‘transform boundaries’. So, as the plates move, they are either ‘diverging’ (pulling apart from one another, with magma filling into the expanding joints, like in the MAR); ‘converging’ (coming together, crushing and destroying themselves stubbornly at their borders, by either creating an orogeny of mountains heaped up from the crushed earth, or sliding under or above one another, with the bottom plate disappearing into the depths of the earth); or changing Earth’s landscape while crashing or sliding abrasively against one another, ‘transforming’ their common boundaries or fault lines. Further, ‘transforming’ can happen in two ways: 1) moving in the same direction but at different speeds; or 2) sliding past or against one another in opposite directions, in their individual speeds. Let us examine the three actions individually.

7.4.1 Divergent Boundaries These are areas or ‘faults’ where the plates drift apart from one another, resulting in new crust forming from lava seeping through the asthenosphere from below, to fill the gap being created in between the opposing plates of the lithosphere. These are also known as ‘constructive margins’, as new land is created in the rift of the divergent zone. If the split had started on land, it would gradually turn into a gully, then through to become a ravine or a deep rift valley while deepening progressively with the widening, until the asthenosphere is breached. When the split goes below sea level as in places like in the north-east (NE) of Africa, close to the seas, it would become something along the lines of what we now call the Red Sea. If it went below sea level with no possibility of ocean water breaching its banks, it would develop into something like the Dead Sea — 417.27 m below sea level. These kinds of plate margins where new floor is created as the plates spread apart are also known as ‘spreading centres’.

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The process that created the Red Sea continues in the area, and now visibly demonstrating the process that is taking place in the Afar part of the region — the northern triangular scrap of the East African Rift System (EARS). Plate interactions in the EARS provide scientists with an opportunity to study first-hand, how the Atlantic may have begun to form about 200 Ma ago. Geologists believe that East Africa may be the site of Earth’s next major ocean if the spreading continues as it does today. It would, in geological time, separate the whole of east of Africa — from Djibouti in the north, right down through central Africa and on to half of Mozambique on Africa’s eastern shores, making it in the distant future, another new and possibly the largest island or subcontinent in the Indian Ocean. If the split happens in the sea, our old ‘MAR’ is an archetypal example here (it was not always so, as the split had started on land), and the spreading centres that extend the length of the ocean, diverge at the ridge, averaging about 2.5 cm/yr. This rate seems slow by our standards, but the process has been going on for 200 Ma now, and the Atlantic Ocean has grown from a tiny inlet of water between the continents of Europe, Africa, and the Americas, into the vast Atlantic Ocean that it is today. Besides the EARS, scientists have been offered another convenient natural laboratory on land, for studying the processes in a volcanic country, which straddles the MAR. This time too, the process is the same, but the conditions different; excess lava oozing out of the diverging plates in abundance and at a particular spot, throwing up an island while making little Iceland a geographic oddity of our time. Here it is still splitting along the spreading centre between the North American and Eurasian Plate and all along the MAR. The spot seems to be sitting atop a mantle plume of lava, or a hotspot, or maybe the lithosphere is too thin at that place on the ridge.

Fig. 7.4: Divergent boundary – bisecting Iceland Credit: USGS

112 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… Whatever it be, the consequences of these movements are easy to see around the Krafla volcano, in the NE part of that island country. Here, things are a little different, with the magma below under pressure, and as the existing ground-cracks widen, new ones appear every few months while magma spreads over the land. The country continues to expand and grow physically.

7.4.2 Convergent Boundaries It is on these fault lines that plates move towards one another and collide at their boundaries. These are also known as ‘destructive margins’, since crusts and plates in collision here, are destroyed in the process. Then again, we have three types of plate-collision possibilities here: 1) continental-continental (C-C), 2) oceanic-continental (O-C), and 3) oceanic-oceanic (O-O). While trying to understand convergent boundaries, we must also keep in mind the densities of the two protagonists here, particularly, the interaction between the oceanic crust and the continental crust. Oceanic crust is dense, and heavier, as it forms closely packed with all the weight of the oceans water above it. When forming, it is squeezed out of gas bubbles with the weight and water pressure above it and is hence relatively thin, and altogether a homogenous layer of dark basaltic rock of about 5 to 10 km thick, and with an average density of 3.0 g/cm3. Opposed to this, is the continental crust that forms over Earth’s surface and under airy skies, in a 1 atm pressure situation at sea level (and progressively lesser on mountaintop volcanoes) where it remains uncompressed and sparse, porous, light in weight, about 35 to 70 km thick, and with an average density of 2.7 g/cm3. It is so, as in an outburst through volcanoes and fissures on Earth’s surface in atmospheric conditions, the previously compressed lava that expands suddenly, sucks in the atmosphere while air mixes its way into the mixture and produces a frothy outburst. Pumice is a classic example of the result of such an activity. Therefore, it is this difference in their densities that causes the continents to have an average elevation of about 600 m above sea level, while the average depth of the ocean bottom is around 3000 m below sea level. The dense and heavier oceanic crust thus sits lower on Earth’s topography, creating the bathymetric depressions for the ocean basins, while the porous and lighter continental crust rests higher on Earth’s surface, forming the elevated and exposed continental landmasses and mountain orogenies. You would see such a scenario in your bathtub, where frothy soap floats, and dense soap sinks. With that in mind, the following are the types of plate convergences that take place on the ground and on the sea-floor.

7.4.2.1 Continental-continental (C-C) Convergence Two plates of land converge and move into the other’s path and both are thick and of lighter density and both will not and cannot budge out of one another’s way; with their opposing lands not slipping below one another, they being of the same buoyancy. More importantly, there is no weight of ocean water above them to weigh a weaker or relative

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thinner plate down, but the open and almost weightless atmosphere that is evenly distributed over the two. They grind out their differences out on land, with only the skies above them, the offending pieces of broken lands are given space to rise, and droppings off their crumbling frontiers keep piling up at their common borders. Here the mountain building process happens, and at these borders, we see the gradual inching upwards of a range of the mountains — prominent ones and easily spottable are the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Caucasus, and the Himalayas. Fig. 7.5 shows the Indian Plate slipping in part, between the lithosphere and the asthenosphere while also crushing and shovelling the uplifted earth and the loose layers of the ground between it and the Eurasian Plate. What is happening here is analogues to pushing a rug, say against a wall, where it then shortens in folds, and so the folds rise off the floor. The build-up of the orogeny here is slow, and in tectonics, a centimetre a year does not sound like much, but in a growth of earthover-earth collecting over millions of years, accounts for giant mountains! The Himalayan range and the Tibetan Plateau are the classic examples. What is noticeable in such orogenies is the relative absence of volcanoes, as the asthenosphere is not breached here.

Fig. 7.5: Schematics of the Himalayan formation Credit: Wikipedia/PD

7.4.2.2 Oceanic-continental (O-C) Convergence When an oceanic plate collides with a continental plate, the denser oceanic plate slips below the lighter continental crust. Understandably, where a plate ducks under another, the boundary where this happens is called a ‘subduction zone’.

114 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… In a zone like this, the underlying oceanic plate ‘wedges’ itself under the continental plate and by moving along, creates immense friction in the shallow portion of a sloping fault surface. The land above the subducting plate is then pushed backwards, deforming it in response to the stress imposed on it. At times, the plates lock together, until they overcome the frictional stress, with the outcome being an earthquake. Where there is a vertical displacement of the plates underwater in such situations, we have a tsunami. The Boxing Day earthquake and tsunami of the 26 Dec. 2004,188 is a classic example to study here, where an oceanic plate (the Indian Plate) slipped under a continental plate (the Sunda Plate) while on its journey NNE, while creating a vertical displacement of the sea-floor in the process. Tsunamis are the result of a vertical displacement of water, and its power is dependent on the vertical height displaced multiplied by the area of the displacement. Tsunamis are not related to the magnitude of an earthquake or the eruption of a volcano. Of interest to us, is that since 1900, the world’s largest recorded earthquakes have all occurred in subduction zones; the 9.5 Mw in 1960 in Chile. The second largest was a 9.2 Mw in Alaska in 1964, the third was the 9.1–9.3 Mw Boxing Day earthquake, and the IRXUWKZDVWKH7żKRNXHDUWKTXDNHWKDWKLW-DSDQRQ0DU 7.4.2.2.1 Coastal Mountain Ranges and their Volcanoes As the subduction process goes on, shavings from the abrasive action of the two plates collect at the boundaries due to the heat of friction and helps lift and build the continental crusts thickness at that point. Furthermore, heat builds up as the depth and pressure on the subducted crust increases, heating the rocks to viscous melts. As the magma melts rise in the pipe vents of mountain volcanoes, pressure keeps on decreasing on it with resulting melts and gasses expanding, moving even faster. On breaching the surface, these then flow or explode into the atmosphere. The Andes is a classic example of the outcome of oceaniccontinental plate convergence. Geologists also call this a ‘megathrust fault’, where one plate destroys itself under the other and into the Earth’s ‘upper mantle’ and into oblivion. These zones are found all over the world and especially around the rim of the Pacific Ocean by what is known as the ‘Ring of Fire’ or the ‘Circum-Pacific Belt’. We will never know the truth here, of how many plates have sunk likewise, and as subducted plates leave no telltale signs to tell no truth about their previous lives lived on the surface of our planet. All we can confidently say is that such a process has happened in the tectonic history of Earth. We do witness this now, with the little plates on North America’s west coast, hurrying to hide under that continent’s skirt. Had we arrived here sometime further in the future, we would have never been told or heard of them, nor been able to trace their DNA from the molten interior of Earth. Had we arrived on this planet 20 Ma later, we would never have known that on Earth, resided an active plate called the Rivera Plate. 188

It is also referred to as the ‘Great Indian Earthquake’, the ‘2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami’, the ‘Sumatra–Andaman earthquake’, the ‘Sumatra earthquake’ or the ‘Banda Aceh earthquake’.

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The schematic shown in Fig. 7.6 is of an O-C collision boundary illustrating an oceanic crust sliding under a continental crust. Many such zones straddle the ocean floors near land, and notable examples currently taking place are: 1) the Juan de Fuca Plate subducting beneath the American Plate along the north-west (NW) margin of the continental USA; 2) the Nazca Plate subducting beneath the South American Plate; and 3) the Pacific Plate subducting along the whole of the Eurasian Plate in eastern Asia.

Fig. 7.6: Convergent boundary (in a subduction process) Credit: PD

7.4.2.2.2 Island Arcs As oceanic plates converge on one another, reactionary forces are directed at the centre of the submerging plate, thus permitting the extreme ends lesser resistance, enabling the thrusting plate to slip and slide around the resisting plate in a ‘pincer-like’ action. This action causes a distinct ‘C’ shaped arc around the area; convex in shape at the resisting plate’s side and concave in shape on the subducting plate’s side. Looking at the picture in Fig. 7.7, we can visually tell which is the thrusting plate and in which direction it is moving. It is the Pacific Plate here, moving in the north-north-west (NNW) direction, and subducting under the Eurasian Plate between the islands of Taiwan and southern Japan, forming the 1398 km Ryukyu Trench; also called Nansei-ShotżTrench in the Philippine Sea. The South Sandwich Islands is another example. As the subducting plate slides further into the mantel, the collection of loose ocean floor that piles up at these fronts gives rise to islands along the long curve of the raised sea-floor. Here we begin to see the tops of the mountains that rise from the sea. These are also known as ‘accretionary margins’, where the front part of the overriding tectonic plate is built up by the dozer-like scraping of the sea-floor in the subduction process. In the Pacific Ocean, it is also the seamounts that find themselves ‘jammed-up’ against the leading edge of an overriding plate that helps in the build-up of energy that then accounts for sudden slip and the resulting earthquake. The island of Guam in the Mariana Islands arc is one example while other notable ones are the Aleutian Islands of Alaska (all

116 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… of which are in the Pacific). Outside the Pacific is the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean, and the Sunda Trench part of Indonesian islands. Accretionary margins are known for their large earthquakes, such as the 1964 Alaska and the 2004 Boxing Day quakes. Also, Japan’s Nankai Trough was the centre of two 8.0 Mw earthquakes in 1944 and 1946. Another feature that accompanies the island arcs are the distinctive trenches that are parallel to the island chain, and on the ocean side of the fault.

Fig. 7.7: Ryukyu Islands Credit: Wikipedia Copyrighted Free use

7.4.2.2.3 Trenches A distinctive attribute of the oceanic convergence process is the trench. As both oceanic plates have oceans of water weighing them down, instead of the riding plate rising freely like the Andes do, the friction between the plates imposed by the weight of water above them only helps them to sink further down into the softer mantel and this is especially true where the angle of thrust into the mantel is at a steep angle. The one that submerges under the other tends to dig into the mantle, taking the one above it, deeper into the ocean bottom. Here eventually develop the deep ocean trenches, like the Tonga Trench and the Kermadec Trench. However, the deepest known point in Earth’s seabed hydrosphere is the Challenger Deep in the 2500 kilometres long Mariana Trench, and in the region where the Pacific Plate

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subducts under the Philippine Plate, it goes down to a depth of 10,994 m.189 Here, the pressure is 1,107.41 kilograms per square centimetre (kg/cm2), and more than 1000 times the standard atmospheric pressure at sea level. It is the more distinctive morphological feature of such boundaries and marks the position at which the flexed subducting slab begins to descend into Earth’s mantle, and they distinctly define one of the most important boundaries on the Earth’s solid surface — the one between two lithospheric plates. Globally, there are over 50 major ocean trenches, with some 50,000 km of them running along Earth’s convergent plate margins, with 20 major trenches around the rim of the Pacific Ocean alone. This ocean is famous for such boundaries, which are found along the coasts of the East Pacific from Alaska to Patagonia, and on the West Pacific, from New Zealand to Tonga, and the Marianas and all the way to Japan and the Aleutians. Here they dip to an average of 3 to 4 km below the level of the surrounding oceanic floor, with eight of the deepest trenches all around the oceanic plate, in the Ring of Fire. Such zones collide head-on with continental plates offshore, and in all those places, the leading edge of the oceanic plate bends into a slab that dives or subducts under the continent, triggering earthquakes and volcanism, as the slab descends into the mantle. The most famous of them all must, of course, be the Peru-Chile trench. Here the Nazca Plate assisting in the process of lifting up the mountainous terrain, resulting in the creation of its volcanoes and related earthquakes. Lying 160 km off the coast of South America, the trench runs for a total length of 5900 km and sinks the Nazca Plate’s leading edge, to depths of 8065 m.

7.4.2.3 Oceanic-oceanic (O-O) Convergence When two oceanic crusts collide, they are evenly matched with their equal densities, and as such, do not yield easily. There are two possibilities here: 1) they either destroy themselves by breaking up at their offending margins and pile up the debris by creating smooth underwater mountain ranges; or 2) as discussed earlier, one of them gives way by allowing the other to slide under it, creating an underwater trench while the layer on top rises to eventually form mid-ocean island arcs. In the first instance, the broken crusts are weathered down by the daily tide and seasonal ocean currents, forming a line of soft mountain ranges. A typical example of such a range of submarine mountains, are the Macquarie Islands, where the Pacific Plate moving NW, crashes head-on into the side of the Australian Plate that is moving north-north-east (NNE), in the process grinding out the sides of the old sea-floor and piling it up over the fault line that runs in the NNE direction while making it a site of a major geo-conservation significance, being the only place on earth where residual rocks from its mantle sides are actively exposed above sea level. A similar situation occurs at the northern boundary of the Australian Plate, where it meets the Pacific Plate moving tangentially across it, throwing up the chain of islands all along that long horizontal fault. 189

Recorded in 2010, by scientists from the University of New Hampshire Centre for Coastal and Ocean Mapping/Joint Hydrographic Centre — Ref.: http://www.ccom.unh.edu. For comparison, Mt Everest, the world’s tallest mountain, is 8,850 m above sea level.

118 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors…

7.4.3 Transform Boundaries When plates slide past one another, without confronting themselves head-on, crusts are neither destroyed nor created at these ‘conservative margins’ boundaries.

Fig. 7.8: Aerial photo of the San Andreas Fault in the Carrizo Plain Credit: GFDL

As the plates move, frequent tremors occur, with some ground shaking of various intensities and the occasional big earthquake with disastrous consequences. The most famous of these big ones in such zones are the San Andreas Fault, which runs along the west coast of California,190ZKHUHWKH3DFLÀF3ODWHVOLGHVE\WKH1RUWK$PHULFDQ3ODWHDQGWKH$OSLQH )DXOWLQ1HZ=HDODQGZKHUHWKH$XVWUDOLDQ3ODWHVOLSVDJDLQVWWKH3DFLÀF3ODWH191 It is at these intersections that the unfortunate cities of Christchurch and San Francisco lie. At the San Andreas Fault alone, there have been 26 earthquakes of greater than 5.2 Mw since 2010. Along with these two in the news constantly, is the North Anatolian Fault System, where a few sub-faults are located in the melee, and which is more complex, and not easy to delinHDWHWKHHDUWKTXDNHVWRDVSHFLÀFIDXOW As the plates move in opposite direction, they scrape their offending sides against one another. On occasions, rather than sliding past smoothly, their unmatched and not-sosmooth profiles get ‘wedged up’, offering a resistance to free movement, until enough pressure is finally built to help them along, and that suddenly jars them through an ‘elastic rebound’ action, finding themselves suddenly thrown in opposite directions — often with loss of lives to flora and fauna. This is especially true with plates moving in opposite directions. 190

191

It is famous for generating many of the larger quakes, including the notorious San Francisco earthquake that struck on 18th Apr. 1906. Called in to access the event, the American geophysist Henry Feilding Reid, professor of Geology at Johns Hopkins University at the time, studied the fault thoroughly, and came up with the now widely accepted ‘Elastic Rebound Theory’. He concluded that the earthquake was the result of a ‘rebound’ of previously stored ‘elastic’ stress. He said this, considering the opposing movements of the Pacific and the North American plates in that particular area. In less than a minute, the Pacific Plate jumped 6 m northwards, along a 350 m stretch of the fault, causing mayhem — fires and destruction that claimed over 700 lives. Here, stress and friction built-up energy accumulation for say a 100 years, relieve themselves one unsuspecting day, in a cataclysmic tectonic event. In recent memories are the quakes of the 22 Feb. and 13 June 2011 that hit New Zealand.

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1287 km long and tens of kilometres wide, the San Andres fault slices through 2/3rds. the length of the state of California in the US, where the Pacific Plate moving NNW, grinds horizontally past the North American Plate moving in the opposite direction. The rate of the slide is about 5 cm/yr (compare that to the movement of the plates in New Zealand that has recently reported to be at an average of 30 cm/yr), and the process is said to be going on for some 10 Ma now. These are areas of recurring earthquake activity, as the plates keep constantly sliding past one another, and are usually shallow because they occur within and between plates that are not involved in subduction, and volcanic activity is normally not present at the fault. When a transform earthquake happens, it continues, stopping only when it reaches a point where the frictional resistance is once again greater than the force applied. That is where the slip event ends. After the quake has released these stresses, the continued movement of the plates builds up new stresses, which are then released by new earthquakes. In conclusion: the description and illustrations on Fig. 7.9 of the cross section of Earth’s floor and its insides, illustrates the types of tectonic movements described above, and are the actors that continually keep changing Earth’s external shape. So, we now know that earthquakes occur when energy stored in elastically strained rocks is suddenly released; the reaction conforming to Henry Reid’s now legendary theory. So we conclude… that a piece of crust that moved relative to another, has the potential to cause an earthquake. A piece of crust held back from moving to naturally balance Earth’s lopsided body, is forced to build up potential energy. When given the opportunity to finally move, the sudden release of energy, is made known to all life on Earth’s immediate surface.

Fig. 7.9: A detail of the three tectonic movements at their boundaries Image courtesy: USGS

120 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors…

7.5 ISOTASY Added to the above three movements, are the continents floating; like a ship floating on water, where the ship is buoyed with a force equal to the weight of the displaced water below it. So we have a similar situation over the semi-liquid underbelly of the earth, where on a geological scale, Earth’s solid crust or lithosphere, exerts a stress on the weaker malleable mantle, such that the land is accommodated by height adjustments if a load is put on it or removed; the polar ice comes to mind immediately. It is a process called ‘isostasy’.192 Wegener first proposed the idea, when he cited the subsidence of the northern hemisphere lands under the weight of continental ice sheets in the last ice age, and their rise since the ice began to melt some 12,900 to 11,700 ya, at the end of the Younger Dryas.193 The ice presses down on Earth’s crust, and as this weight reduces with time during the warming weather, the crust begins to bounce back equally, and studies have shown earth is ‘rebounding’ due to the overlying ice sheet shrinking in response to climate change. This movement of the land was understood to be due to an instantaneous, elastic response followed by a very slow uplift over thousands of years. Isostasy is not a tectonic force per se, but simply a natural adjustment or balance maintained by blocks of crusts of different mass or density, around the ball of an earth trying to maintain its spherical shape in the vacuum of space, as best it can. It contributes though, with its flexing of the lithosphere, whereby the crust cracks, further assisting in tectonic process around the area; a catalytic process of sorts, in the run-up to real tectonics.

Fig. 7.10: How the weight of the ice sheet disfigures and distorts Earth’s lithosphere Credit: Public Domain

The last of the cold icy spell was what is known ‘Last Glacial Maximum’ (LGM) and was at its peak around 26,500 ya, when vast tracts of Earth’s surface — including much of northern 192

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It was the name that the American geologist Clarence Dutton came up with in the year 1889, to represent the phenomena of glacial rebound that came from the Greek ísos for ‘equal’, and stásis for ‘standstill’. The first and third climatic stages of the late-glacial period in northern Europe, in which cold conditions prevailed and plants of the genus Dryas were abundant. The Older Dryas (~15,000 to 12,000 ya) followed the last ice retreat, and the Younger Dryas followed the stage between the two.

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Europe and North America — were covered in ice, at a time when the UK was joined to Europe by dry land, and you could walk from Alaska to Russia across the Bering Strait. It was a time when an enormous mass of ice was sitting on the continents, and over 3 km thick in some places. It squashed the land downwards so that the shape of the earth changed. In some places, the weight of ice pushed down the crust by up to half a kilometre,194 while the land outside the ice sheets bulged upwards by several hundred metres. Canada and the northern parts of the USA are the areas where isostasy is visibly ongoing at the present time; a rebound (like a waterbed after someone just vacates it) from the Laurentide Ice Sheet195 that covered the northern parts of North America during the last Ice Age, is still on. On the shores of the Hudson Bay, for example, it is not the sea level that is falling, but the land that is springing back. The highest rate of uplift is within a large area to the west of Hudson Bay, which is where the Laurentide Ice Sheet was the thickest. Strong isostatic rebound is also occurring in northern Europe where the FennoScandian Ice Sheet was thickest — the cold period began about 115,000 ya and ended 11,700 ya. Its end corresponds with the end of the Pleistocene epoch and start of the Holocene. As Earth’s northern hemisphere began to thaw, sea levels began to rise and 14,500 ya, the ice on Antarctica began to melt too; a period that largely lasted for 4500 years. All around the globe, the ice would drain into the seas. Our dynamic earth would begin to distribute its waters, balancing it with the water ballasts as judicially as it could. The viscoelastic mantle regains ground by helping the crust to flex its earlier depressed land under the ice sheets, and they would begin to rebound — earth, continuously attempting to retain its roundness of shape.

7.6 HOTSPOTS Concisely, this may be labelled asthenosphere volcanism. At the LAB, there are places where the lithosphere simply moves or slips and slides over a stationary asthenosphere. This time, not with a clean slate but one that has a hole in it that allows volatile magma from below it, to escape through to and on to the lithosphere’s surface. Scientists would name the hole and the magma going through it, a ‘plume’. This magma than burns a hole in any layer thin enough for it to penetrate, where it then empties out lava on the surface of earth; be it land or sea. A simple and practical way to understand this action is to draw a white sheet of paper (the lithosphere) across a candle or a gas burner (the stationary asthenosphere with a hole in it, or the asthenosphere with a volcano on it) at a speed and height that would burn a series of holes through the paper. 194

195

Some scientists have calculated this to be a depression of the crust by about a foot for every three feet of ice. A massive sheet of ice — in some places as thick as 7 km — that covered millions of kilometres of land in the time 2.58 Ma ago to some 20,000 ya. This was especially so for the countries of Canada and a large portion of the northern United States. It happened multiple times luring those glacial epochs.

122 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… Hotspots are literally volcanoes that occur in the middle of plates, or far away from the edges of plate boundaries. Two noteworthy examples would be the formation of the Hawaiian Islands, and the newly discovered string of volcanoes (now mostly dormant) known as the Cosgrove Volcanic Track, and that runs the 2000 km length across eastern Australia — from Hillsborough in the north, where rainforest meets the Great Barrier Reef, to the island of Tasmania in the south. The direction of the volcanoes matches that of the Australian Plate’s direction of movement. The lithosphere may play an erratic dance over Earth’s surface or simply change directions — as in the case of the Emperor Seamount and the Hawaiian Islands — but the hotspot does not budge if the asthenosphere decides to remain put. However, these hotspots and plume theories are still a long way to ending their story, and should at best be considered a hypothesis as of now. Studies going on at the moment make it an exciting area of participation, however, a drawback in nailing down the exact going-on down below, is our inability to see clearly beyond 400 m and into the deep mantel; a key in our struggle to understanding our Earth’s behaviour to a nicety.

7.7 CONCLUSION Looking at a relief map of the earth, we can now visually imagine where these tectonic activities are at work currently or had worked in the past. When we see the sunken relief of the Afar region, we realise that the land there is spreading away from the relevant plates, and understand it as a ‘constructive margin’. We look at the relief maps of the Pyrenees and the Alps in Europe, the Caucasus in the SE of Europe, the Aral Mountains in Eurasia, or the Himalayas in Asia, and we understand that two opposing tectonic plates are head-butting one another in those parts, to crumble the land up into mountains. We understand these orogenies to be the result of convergent boundaries, in a ‘destructive margin’ enjoinment; its rugby scrum like forces leaving it no other alternative, but to crush, grind, and to lift up the land there. Watching the landscape of New Zealand closely, we can even identify two separate plates on the islands that tells us that that part of the world is in a ‘transform margin’! Looking down at another type of map — those that represent earthquakes and as in Fig. 6.3 — we observe that divergent boundaries stand out as thin lines, whereas convergent and destructive boundaries are the broader areas in the picture of the earthquake epicentres. What we cannot properly identify on such a map, however, are transform boundaries. They are the most difficult to visually identify on land, let alone observing them undersea. However, the San Andreas Fault is visible at close quarters from an aerial viewpoint, and so too, we notice the Alpine fault in New Zealand at close quarters. We may not know which way the plates move looking down at a map, but today we know and can detect their movements in millimetres from instruments placed in orbits around the planet and on the ground, communicating with one another. In many a case, it is not so simple and straightforward, and the plates do not exactly interact as described,

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especially in the Mediterranean-Alpine region between the Eurasian and the African Plate, within which are several smaller fragments of plates and microplates. The situation in the South China Sea is almost similar, where the plates tend to have complicated geological structures and inconsistent movement patterns. Technology today, however, permits us to track plate movements through several methods, when measurements are not so straightforward. More than any other technology, the GPS has been the most useful at this moment, and space-geodetic data have already confirmed that the rates and direction of plate movement averaged over several years now compare well with rates and direction of plate movement we have computed from their distances moved in the past. The averaged movements calculated by our physical and geological computations over millions of years compare favourably. Today, ‘We can see exactly where the earth is being stretched apart or sheared, enabling us to map which parts of earth are under greatest strain’, says Richard Walters from Leeds University and a member of the ‘Earthquakes Without Frontiers’ team. Our new science has moved on considerably to assist in understanding old Mother Nature’s supposed whimsical ways, and today, thanks to Wegener’s pioneering thoughts, we understand why California and Christchurch are at the mercy of Mother Nature. In total, between 2 and 2.5 G people have died as a result of tectonic activity since 1900, and many hazards are yet to be identified, and much more still poorly understood, but let us see what we understand from information currently available to us.

‘It must have appeared almost as improbable to the earlier geologists, that the laws of HDUWKTXDNHVVKRXOGRQHGD\WKURZOLJKWRQWKHRULJLQRIPRXQWDLQVDVLWPXVWWRWKHÀUVW astronomers that the fall of an apple should assist in explaining the motions of the moon’. — Sir Charles Lyell

8

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8.1 OUR LIVELY AND MOVING PLANET While we see that earth is different in composition from the other members of the solar system family of planets, ‘tectonic’ activity marks it out as distinctly unusual and special. Our planet is alive... it lives! Volcanoes erupt and then go quite; tsunamis arrive without warning and wake us from our slumber; mountains form and disappear, while all the time, all around her, tremors rumble constantly — over a million of them a year. She wakes, she lives, she sleeps, she purrs and she roars... Since the MAD recordings that ignited our sudden interest in our planet, ongoing studies by geologists, mapping and recording Earth’s physical activities, have given us a worldwide map of tectonic plates and their relative movements, and we have learnt to understand the consequences of their ‘involuntary’ behaviour. All around it, Earth’s surface moves, in a slow simmering ‘Soup Cauldron’ — a ‘Wilsonian’ orgy in the making, with an average total global rate of movement of the plates computed at 0.108 square metres per second (m2/s). As we see the plates today, we count their numbers and classify them according to size and speed of movement. Geologists admit, however, that that is not the complete picture, as Earth’s entire surface has not been surveyed in detail (see the ‘grey’ areas in Fig. 8.2), and there is that possibility that the numbers may have been written on the higher side. Then there are plates that have fused or did fuse with another, or that broke apart in their past journeys or possibly separated forever. Some, like the Indo-Australian Plate, is even now — as we speak — in the process of breaking up. As the Indo-Australian Plate continues to slide NE, the western portion of the plate — where India is on —grinds itself against and the underneath of Eurasia, slowing it down, while the eastern portion of the plate that carries Australia, keeps moving on, without the same obstruction, it having to contend with the lighter Sunda Plate. The resulting stress on the Indo-Australian plate appears to come due to the slower speed of the restrained Indian plate. These differential forces subject the centre of the plate to great internal stress; the difference creating conflicting strain in the area between the two extremes. On this plate, the defining fault is yet to be identified, though scientists are now investigating the 8.6 Mw quake of 11 Apr. 2012 and its

126 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… 8.2 Mw aftershock196 that occurred off the SW coast of Banda Aceh, on the island of Sumatra, off NW Indonesia. It is hard to pinpoint the fault at this moment in time, as the earthquake was in an area where no plate activity is present; being hundreds of kilometres away from any geological faults or activities. Earlier, in 1986, a study said that ‘intense intraplate deformation’ on the Indo-Australian Plate was in progress, and that the lithosphere in this region was being ‘warped like modelling clay’. The area appears to be in a state of origin for a new fault line in the area, and this appears the case on paper, and it is for this reason that tectonic cartographers display that area in grey shades, as we see it in Fig. 8.2. In a few such cases, we are all at sea as to where their joints are, were, or will be — we humans, having just arrived on the scene of the crime. However uncommon, it is earthquakes like these that provide scientists with significant insights into how our planet is shifting and changing right under our feet, and according to seismologists today, the deformation mentioned by the 1986 paper’s authors, is an active process that is ‘gradually ripping the tectonic plate into two’. This area is bound to reveal the fault in good time, and possibly with catastrophic consequences, with its pent-up differential energy one day venting its ongoing stress build-up on the shores of that volatile region. Of little consolation it is to us, though the fault is fortunate out in the ocean. For the sake of simplicity and to move on, the author takes the liberty of treating and discussing the Indo-Australian Plate as two separate plates,197 for a more localised understanding of the tectonic process in that part of the globe.

8.1.1 A Corner of Consternation All over Earth’s surface, little concerts like these take place and nowhere so unpredictable, unreliable and un-understandable, like what is happening to the east of Banda Aceh and in the South China Sea; in the boundary between the Australian and Pacific plates, buffered in there by a number of smaller crustal slivers, or microplates. Here are the most complicated active tectonic margins in terms of geology, structure, movements and directions. The Pacific, the Australian, the Eurasian and the Philippine plates shuffle around a number of smaller plates, to their bidding, liking and preferences. What is happening here is unclear; it is a cacophony of tectonic babble. To complicate things further, on their outside and to the east, the giant Pacific Plate slips under them all. Several triple junctions198 play out their frustrations in the area where they converge, diverge, transform, slip, subduct, ride, slide, expand or crumble, due to a combination of interactive forces — seen and unseen — pushing them around in a rudderless and crushing stampede. These happenings are also due to a few of the big plates converging, while influencing the others into moving into the narrow straights of the South China Sea... all headed, it appears, for the wide open spaces 196 197

198

A smaller earthquake following the main shock of a large earthquake. Recent studies and data compiled at the University of California Santa Cruz, confirm that this diffused zone of deformation is in the process of localizing into a new plate boundary. A triple junction is the point where the boundaries of three tectonic plates meet.

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of the empty Pacific expanse and not even being restricted by the giant Pacific subducting all of them at the same time. In tectonic reality, this area — the gateway to the Pacific Ocean — gave rise to the development of all types of structures, in all scales, mostly including the subduction and collision zones, creating faults, thrusts, folds... and the process continues — too complicated and unpredictable to understand at this time in our on-going study of tectonics. Today, however we have identified a few of them as the likes of the Minahasa Trench, the PaluKoro Fault system, the Batui Thrust, the Balantak-Sula Fault, the Kolaka Fault, the Lawanopo Fault, the Matano Fault, the Kabaena Fault, the Poso Thrust, and the Waianae Fault among others, and all in this little island-filled space of the South China Sea. So complicated are things here that we are still unable to understand how a tsunami happened in Palu on Sulawesi on 28 Sept. 2018, that followed an earthquake from a slipstrike fault rupture. It destroyed more than 70,000 homes, with a death toll of more than 1550 people, on that fateful day. In the Palu neighbourhood of Balaroa, about 1,700 houses were buried when the earthquake caused the soil to liquefy.199 What we have learnt from the Palu earthquake, is that a rupture happened on the Palu– Koro Fault Zone — which is in the middle of a geologic tangle — where multiple tectonic plates come together. Unlike the 9.1 Mw temblor of 2004 in Sumatra on the west, in eastern Indonesia where Sulawesi is located, the Indo–Australian Plate is topped by continental crust that does not subduct in these parts south of Sulawesi — so it is simply ramming headlong into the crust of the Eurasian Plate, fracturing it while all the time creating a complex environment with lots of active and dangerous faults. We keep studying and we learn more, but till then, the peoples of the islands in the South China Sea will have to live in silent apprehension.

8.2 THE UNKNOWNS OF PLATE MOVEMENTS A lot happens when a plate moves, and the effects are felt across the globe. Some major ones have their own followers now, and play their parts as the lead actor, sidekick, or bit part players, and all are important in their contributions to shaping Earth’s future. The movement of a particular plate is not uniform, and could be the result of a combination of activities at different points on its sides, along with the weight and friction of the lithosphere’s belly on the asthenosphere, and relative to the forces of motion. A plate now known to be moving, could suddenly stop, change directions, spin around, or even go into reverse motion, dependent on external forces imposed on it, and not in its control. It could also have many velocities at different times, depending on the location, speed and behaviour of the ‘bullies’ around it; like a footloose ice floe in a sea of unruly footloose ice floes. 199

In geologic parlance, ‘liquefaction’ is a phenomenon where saturated sand and silt take on the characteristics of a liquid during the intense shaking of an earthquake.

128 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… There are, therefore, many unknowns involved with plate movement and not predictable yet by us. Plates do not just move on one path, but they are individually coerced to take their individual but unique paths. They interact with their neighbours and affect the motions by applying various types of stress and pressure on the lithosphere, at different points on the globe — on it, and within it. Moreover, earth is constantly changing its shape, and so there is no exact number to reflect the velocities of the plate movements. They all move to the sound of their individual drummers. An example here would be the splitting in the Afar region of Africa, where the East African Rift Valley is spreading apart. In Sept. 2005, soon after a 4.5 Mw earthquake in the area, satellite monitoring showed that the ground there moved apart by 8 m in just 10 days — a world record in our time. The European Space Agency’s (ESA) satellite Envisat captured the Afar region’s spreading fracture, for posterity. Then there is the unexplainable example of the tiny circular plate at the centre of a triple junction in the Pacific Ocean. While the other three giants move away from it as fast as they can, little Juan Fernández goes nowhere but merrily spins clockwise, enjoying the morning sunlight on a new part of its beach every sunrise. What is it? Is it a piece of crust sitting on the eye of a tornado of lava happening down in the mantel? Two more examples would be the change in direction of the Pacific Plate that we see in the crooked line of the Hawaiian volcanoes and seamounts along with the Indian Plate that was gingerly travelling SE, suddenly changed direction to hastily move NNE at great speed. In the northern part of the Pacific Plate, a different type of plate movement is causing ridges to open up off the coast of NW America’s ocean floor bed. As the Pacific Plate moves NW, the movement of the American Plate subducts it at the NE, with an almost tangential approach, restraining the Pacific Plate’s movement there. This tug of war then strains the plate obliquely, and we see tears in the sea-floor, where now are the little ridges — the Explorer Ridge, the Juan de Fuca Ridge and the Gorda Ridge. Many such ridges and tears dot the ocean floor, and we can observe this happening practically, if we tug obliquely on a piece of soft paper, and figure out how and why those tears happen. Plate speed, we will have by now noticed, is a constant variable in tectonics. Travelling at the average ‘as-the-crow-flies’ speed of 3.34 cm/yr for 66 Ma now, the Indian Plate has moved from East Africa off the coasts of Somalia and Kenya, to where it is now... 2168 km away. In this time, the island of Borneo has moved 6700 km east, from Madagascar to where it is now, in a mere 74,000 years! Their old neighbour and big mama Africa had also moved 5500 km north in 33.5 Ma. These speeds are derived from land positions as we see them today, and are different to those that would have moved those lands in a different era, and at different speeds. We are only just beginning to understand plate movements, and especially the migration that was thrust upon them, when hassled into the ‘fast-forward’ mode 66 Ma ago.

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8.3 MEASURING TECTONIC PLATE MOVEMENTS In the beginning of our understanding of tectonics, we calculated the distance moved by continents at divergent boundaries, by measuring the age of the rocks at their breakaway points, to the halfway point in the Atlantic Ocean, at the centre of the MAR, as in the case of South America or Africa. The difference in their readings told us the time it took to be where they are today. Our calculations then told us that North America moved at the average rate of 1.36 cm/yr (2727 km/200 Ma), whereas South America moved at the average rate of 1.52 cm/yr away from Africa (3052 km/200 Ma), to be where it is today. Or, at the average movement of both the continents away from Africa at 2.88 cm/yr. This compares favourably with today’s readings of 2.3–2.5 cm/yr, or about 24 km in a million years. With the FAMOUS project, we measured the movement of the plates physically for the first time at the MAR; that too, only in 1974. However, measuring the continent’s slow, relentless motion on Earth’s crustal surface proved to be a huge challenge, and a key in our understanding plate tectonics, and only in the ’80s did GPS technology come to our aid. We could now measure movement in real time! What is more, today we measure ‘slow-slip’200 movements too, since the events were first discovered through installations of continuous GPS at subduction zones around the planet that resulted in an explosion of observations of this form of slip. Such a movement occurs in the Hikurangi Subduction Zone offshore of the North Island of New Zealand, where the Pacific Plate dives beneath the Australian Plate. Today, GPS monitoring engages and involves some 30 or more satellites that revolve around Earth’s surface, completing two full and precise orbits every day (i.e., they are not stationary above a point on earth, [geostationary orbit], but circling it and as seen from the ground, rising and setting two times per day) while measuring ground movements. Circling earth at approximately 20,200 km, along with a network of ground-based receivers, they measure the amount of tectonic plate movement, even down to a millimetre, and in fractions of a second. Using accurately measured distances relayed by the satellites, the precise location of a GPS receiver on terra firma is computed, using the age-old ‘triangulation’201 method of surveying, and with measurements calculated from at least three GPS satellites. As we note the average movements of the plates in Fig. 8.1, the speeds are an average and vary from the mean at different times. A recent GPS measurement indicated a spurt in a speed of 24 cm/yr of the Pacific Plate across the northern Tonga Trench, and which is the fastest plate velocity recorded until date, in humanity’s short ‘tectonic’ history. Nothing of course to the 8 m reading we mentioned earlier on the Red Sea fault. At this moment in 200

201

Movement across a fault that releases energy on timescales of hours to weeks rather than seconds to minutes, as occurs in earthquakes. This method of measurement is credited to the Greek philosopher Thales, who in the 6th century BC, first measured the height of the pyramids.

130 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… Earth’s history, the relative velocities and apparent directions of the major plates are as follows, along with four minor plates, whose actions too, are clearly visible on the map in Fig. 8.2. Plate

Relative Velocity (cm/yr)

African

§

Antarctic

§DQG

General direction of plate movement NNE but assumed stationary in this study South and rotational East

Australian

§

NNE

North American

§

WSW (West-south-west)

South American

§WR

Westwards generally

Eurasian

§WR

East at its western frontier, and ESE at its eastern frontier

Indian

§

NNE

3DFLÀF

§

NW

Juan de Fuca

§

NE

Nazca

§WR

ENE

Philippine Sea

§WR

NW

Scotia

§

Westwards generally

Fig. 8.1: The approximate velocity and directions of plate movements, at this time

So, we have all kinds of speeds of movement: 8 m in 10 days in the Afar region, to 24 cm/yr in the Pacific, to micro-inching of the ridges near the poles. However, what is important is to understand why we move. Before we do that, let us see how our plates move over Earth’s surface.

8.4 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO NOWHERE This is the beginning of the story, and we will limit ourselves to elaborating on the movements of the major plates. Numerous smaller plates then dance to the tunes of the big boys; some 40 or so lesser ones that pitch in with their say in the matter, and all helping in resurfacing our planet’s ‘turtle shell’ surface. With reference to Fig. 8.1, and along with the combined ‘force and acceleration’ as shown in the GPS movement vectors in the image in Fig 8.2, we can visualise the relative thrust, speed, and movement of the plates. These are the current readings, and at any time in the future, those vectors will be subject to change. As we now understand the types of plate movements, and how they interact and move relative to one another, let us look at what the ground reality is. We can then grasp the relativity of their movements, the triggering of the physical effects that cascade in their vicinity, and the consequences of those movements in the destruction of life and to its rejuvenation too.

Fig. 8.2: Tectonic plate velocities and directions, mapped through GPS readings Credit: Eric Gaba/Wikipedia/CC BY-SA 2.5

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132 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… The GPS vectors depicted in Fig. 8.2, indicate both the direction of movements and the relative velocities of the major plates. The coloured boundaries inform us of the type of physical action the plate movements impress on Earth’s lithospheric floor, along with the combined actions of their neighbours; forcing them into a ‘convergent’ (purple), ‘divergent’ (red) or ‘transform’ (green) engagements, in combination of one with the other, or two, or more. The blue ‘teeth’ of the subduction zones clearly indicate a plate’s directional advance into the trenches. All the vectors shown reflect their moving velocities with respect to the African Plate, which is ‘assumed’ stationary. In actuality, the African Plate is moving NNE but described here as stationary, and only for us to establish a reference point, for our easier understanding of the description of the movements of the plates around the Earth’s surface. The large swaths of the grey areas shown in Fig. 8.2, indicate the parts of the globe that have not been surveyed as yet. It tells us that tectonics is still a new science but progressing... So, let us examine the relative movements of the other major plates and the resulting actions and reactions in their immediate neighbourhood. First, we describe the plate’s movements and then the effect these movements have on it and the surrounding plates.

8.4.1 The African Plate Descriptions of the movements: The plate is different from the others in terms of structure and relief features. On the continent’s surface, it consists of a geologically stable landmass made up of the pre-Cambrian basement rock, of very old crystalline, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks of great hardness (collectively known as ‘basement complex’). This we must remember, is the heart of the old thick continent of Pangaea. Africa’s landmass is made up of a simple tectonic plate. In this study, the African Plate is assumed to be visually going nowhere, with the vectors on the other plates interacting with it as follows: the Eurasian Plate is slowly moving east-south-east (ESE) and towards it, while the Arabian Plate moves NNE away IURPLWDWWKHUDWHRI§FP\UDQGZHQRWHWKLVLQWKHSXUSOHFRQYHUJHQWOLQHVEHWZHHQ WKHWZRSODWHV7KH,QGLDQ3ODWHRQLWVHDVWPRYHV11(WRREXWDWWKHUDWHRI§FP\U whereas the Australian Plate moves even faster and all three in the same direction (compare the vectors). On its southern border, the Antarctic Plate creeps slowly south-south-east 66( DQGDZD\IURPLWDWWKHUDWHRI§FP\U7KH$QWDUFWLF3ODWHLVHIIHFWLYHO\PRYLQJ into the empty Pacific, as we observe the vectors on it in the right half of the picture. At the MAR, the vector says that the South American Plate is moving west and away from Africa, indicated to us by the green transform lines interspaced with the red divergent boundary lines there. Results of the movements: Africa has been so devoid of external tectonic forces from other landmass acting on her that she rests in peace — flat and stable and unlike the Americas, where its west is rising and all the rivers flow east (they do also flow rapidly west in North America, but that is the exception); or with China where the rising Tibetan Plateau sends all its rivers E and SE.

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African rivers flow north, south, east and west equally, and are the world’s first and oldest unaltered rivers. They have been flowing for millennia, where the ever-flowing Congo has over aeons, cut the riverbed to an extent that it is today, Earth’s deepest river, with the world’s second-largest rate of water discharged into the Atlantic Ocean. So are most of the Africa’s ancient rivers, though they all flow slowly, the Nile being the slowest, and incidentally, the longest of rivers; and unlike the recent rivers like the Brahmaputra, the Yangtze, or the Columbia. Africa’s lands too, are at a high elevation naturally, and not created by external tectonic forces, like the Tibetan Plateau, the Andes or the Rockies and has therefore suffered little in terms of folding (the Atlas Mountains in the north and the Drakensburg Mountains in the south, are exceptions). On Africa’s NNW, another lesson in tectonics is waiting. On Spain’s south coast, a new convergent plate boundary is forming,202 giving researchers the opportunity to help decipher their mysterious birth. The beginnings are shallow, but we may learn what goes on behind these humble start-ups that eventually go all the way down into the depths of the oceans. At its NE border, the plate is in a divergent boundary with the Arabian Plate, as the smaller and speedier plate moves away from it along the centre of the sea, at the fault known as the ‘Red Sea Spreading Axis’. Starting at the beginning of the Eocene Epoch some 55 Ma ago, and at an average speed of < 0.25 cm/yr, the land here has been rifting and spreading apart and gradually widened to sink the land below sea-level, letting in the waters of the Tethys Ocean203 through, in what we now call the ‘Gate of Grief’, at the sea’s southern end. By 26 Ma ago, the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Aqaba on the Dead Sea Transform204 (DST), were in place and the Tethys Ocean withered away. The action is slow at this northern and north-eastern parts of Africa, as the huge Eurasia bears down on it. What happens though, is that the mountain ranges of southern Europe, the Caucasus and the Elburz, get squeezed to hasten build-up of the Alpide belt. As the rifting continued, in all probability, it helped in the creation of the Great Rift Valley that now runs approximately 6000 km in length — all the way from Lebanon’s 202

203

204

‘If you were looking for an embryonic subduction zone this is what you would expect to see’, said João Duarte, a research fellow at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia and reported by Becky Oskin for Our Amazing Planet on 13 June 2013. As Pangaea split in two, it formed the large subcontinents of Laurasia and Gondwanaland, opening up a sea between the two, which would be known as the Tethys Ocean. It was so during much of the Mesozoic era, before the opening of the Indian and Atlantic oceans during the Cretaceous period. It had begun to form 200 Ma ago. At its biggest, from the western Mediterranean, you would be able to travel across what is now the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea, or the Persian Gulf and into the Indian Ocean to the east. At its west, you could go through the two Americas and into Panthalassa. Like today’s Southern Ocean, it was an expanse of water that connected all the seas. The ocean is named after the daughter of Uranus and Gaia, and the sister and consort of Oceanus; the ancient Greek god of the ocean, and named so by the Austrian Eduard Suess in 1893. Running through the Gulf of Aqaba and down through the Dead Sea and beyond on into the Mediterranean, the fault system forms the transform boundary between the African Plate to the west and the Arabian Plate to the east.

134 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… Beqaa Valley in Asia, to Mozambique in south-eastern Africa. The rift still widens, and as proposed in John Tuzo Wilson’s model of the rifting, the Red Sea should become an ocean in tectonic time, after the land is finally breached at the DST. Noticeable on Africa’s west, is the MOR that equally bisects the Atlantic Ocean, suggesting that the two plates in common with the ridge here are moving away from one another at the same speed. To practically visualize the vector and the movement here, do this simple experiment: take two sheets of equal sized paper, and lightly oil one of their sides and stick the oily sides together. Between your thumbs and forefingers, hold the two separate dog-ears while imagining the left side sheet as the South American Plate, and the right as that of the African Plate. Keeping the African Plate stationary, pull your left hand slowly away from your right hand. Although only the left hand moves away from the stationary right hand, the unfolding will be equal, with the MAR going right down the centre of your two ‘paper plates’; equal and opposite reactionary forces created as a result of a single force westwards. This happening can be applied to all the MORs, where they equally bisect the ocean floor from continental land, where earlier, they were a single entity.

Fig. 8.3: East African Rift Valley System Credit: USGS/PD

What, however, is of great interest to students of tectonics, takes place inland, on the continent of Africa — our tectonics field-laboratory, where researchers have a front seat to an unparalleled physical spectacle. From the arid Afar lowlands of Ethiopia, Eritrea, and

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Djibouti, through the deep ‘lake-lands’ of central Africa, and then down to the southern shores of the forested country of Mozambique, the eastern quarter of the continent is being forced apart; tearing the ancient land at around 0.5 cm/yr at its north and some 0.4 cm/yr at its south. That eastern quarter of Africa could turn into a large island in the Indian Ocean. It will be the slowest of processes though, as we see, that even after it being in the tropics, it separates at the average rate of 0.45 cm/yr. Known by the acronym EARS, it is one of the geologic wonders of the world, a place where Earth’s tectonic forces are presently trying to create new plates by splitting apart old ones. It appears to be leading to a breakup of the African Plate into the future Nubian and the Somali plates. It is a work in progress, as the area just before the coast of Mozambique, still appears intact. At its north, is the Afar Triangle (coloured orange in Fig. 8.3) that is a depression in the earth that overlaps the borders of Eritrea, Djibouti and the entire Afar region of Ethiopia. For those who live there, it is ‘the place the devil ploughs’; one of the hottest, driest, and lowest — 155 m below MSL at Lake Asal in Djibouti — areas on that continent, while hosting a landscape of baking desert and barren lava flows. The thinking is that the Red Sea will eventually pour into the depression sometime soon — we do not know when (tectonics being so unpredictable... in a million years or so... maybe even tomorrow) — leaving Afar to lie at the bottom of Earth’s freshest little ocean. In the Afar region, during Sept. and Oct. 2005, some 163 earthquakes of greater than 3.9 Mw occurred there, accompanied by volcanic eruptions at both the Dabbahu and Erta Ale volcanoes, while they poured magma on to the land. In just a couple of days, some 2.5 km3 of molten rock squirted toward the surface for a stretch of a 60 km section and into the sweltering depression — while forcing open an 8 m wide gap on the surface — in a single week while dropping the area further by another 2 m in the area known as the Dabbahu fissure.205 On its opposite bank the thinning crust of the Red Sea keeps throwing up new islands every now and then; as it last did in 2011. The process continues and where one day we may see a new ocean over this future ocean ridge.206 With the spreading centres in East Africa progressing, the crust will thin there, and more volcanoes and ground fissures are possibilities; especially at its northern end. The immediate consequences are recurring sequences of earthquakes, with deep fissures in the terrain hundreds of metres long, and the valley floor sinking broadly across the depression. All along the EARS, volcanoes wake up at different times; the last being the volcanoes of Nyamuragira and Nyiragongo — both part of the Virunga volcanic chain, situated along DR Congo’s border with Rwanda. On the other side of Lake Victoria, is Ol Doinyo Lengai, where eruptions continue enriching this part of the Serengeti’s already rich volcanic 205

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Atalay Ayele et al., Sept. 2005. Mega-dike emplacement in the Manda-Harraro nascent oceanic rift (Afar depression). Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 36, 2009, L20306. doi:10.1029/2009GL039605. Today, scientists work in real time measuring these movements, and in the Afar, scientists from the surrounding countries of Ethiopia, Eritrea and Yemen, work closely with leading western universities, who do extraordinary pioneering work in the field of tectonics.

136 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… grasslands of the Massai herders, who we know, aptly named it the ‘Mountain of God’. The carbonatite ash-spread over the surrounding grasslands, leads to a uniquely succulent, enriched pasture, making the area a vital stage on the annual wildebeest migration route, where it also becomes the nursery for the birth of several thousands of their calves.207 From the academics and the physical anthropologists, this part of the world is of immense blessing to their study and research. As the rift keeps slowly widening, its slopes expose layers of the record of life’s recent past. From Laetoli through to the Oldupai Gorge in Tanzania, on to Olorgesailie to Lake Turkana in Kenya, and on to the Middle Awash in Ethiopia, the history of bipedalism is being exposed to humanity; helping us to piece together our family tree and the gaps through to our beginnings. Studies that began here almost a century ago still keep producing an unparalleled wealth of archaeological and palaeontological data for the study of some key phases of early human evolution. Our First-lady, ‘Lucy’ the H. afarensis, was unearthed here, and so too were the ‘Handy man’ H. habilis, and ‘Nariokotome Boy’ — the strapping H. erectus — who all exposed their ageless fossilised bones in these ancient tectonic rifts. More old bones are expected to emerge from the rifting process, but the not too frequent earthquakes on the EARS remind us that though the spreading is slow, it is on. The 5.7 Mw that shook the EARS on 11 Sept. 2016, had its epicentre in Bukoba — on the UgandaRwanda border — killing 13 people there. Tectonics not only rejuvenates life but kills it too. Scientists of the future, are in for a tectonic treat.

8.4.2 The Indian Plate Description of the movements: The Indian Plate’s current movements are straightforward and can be understood with the help of the vectors shown in Fig. 8.2, and by noting the colours of the boundary around the plate. It tells us that the plate is moving NNE and that it is in a convergent boundary confrontation with Eurasia, as it tells us that along its sides, the green lines inform us that it is in a transform boundary situation with the lands on its western and eastern borders. Its movement NNE is once again confirmed by the spreading centres on its entire SW border with the stationary African Plate, whereas at its southern border it is in a convergent boundary situation there with the Australian Plate. This is so, as it has been stalled by Eurasia at its north while being pushed from behind, by the faster moving Australian Plate while nudging it in the same NNE direction. At its south-eastern end, the plate subducts into the Burma microplate (a part of the Eurasian Plate). 207

Tectonics and the recycling of Earth’s elements, is an essential part of a process here, so that life on its surface thrives on the grasslands around. While it is the carbonite-ash that natures the Serengeti’s grasslands, in the deep ocean and on the East Pacific and the Chile Rise, it is the underwater hydrothermal vents and smokers that send forth into the waters, a different broth of nutrients for a different type of life. It brings forth another question: if the mantel is molten and in a constant state of convection, why is the magma not consistent in its composition? Are there baffles, or louvres, in our pot of boiling magma? Or does magma not move around in Earth’s boiling cauldron?

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At the plate’s SW border, the direction, and reactions with the African Plate are the same as that happening in the Red Sea with the Arabian Plate, only here, the Indian Plate LVEHLQJVHSDUDWHGIURPWKH$IULFDQ3ODWHDWWKHUHODWLYHO\IDVWHUUDWHRI§FP\U Results of the movements: Tectonic forces had the Indian subcontinent breakaway from Pangaea or Gondwana208 some 66 Ma ago, to push her away from the then coast of present-day East Africa and NE into Eurasia, where her movement had been stalled by the giant mass of land there. 7KHSODWHLVFXUUHQWO\PRYLQJ11(DW§FP\UZKLOHWKH(XUDVLDQ3ODWHLVFUXPEOLQJ DWWKDWERUGHUDWWKHUDWHRI§FP\UFDXVLQJWKH(XUDVLDQ3ODWHWRGHIRUP7KH,QGLDQ Plate compresses the area while bulldozing the landmass of the old soft Tethys seabed sediment and the light lithosphere of the two opposing landmasses, upwards; bunching them like earth before a mighty bulldozer’s blade while self-destructing their common boundary in the process. The buckling and wrinkling upwards of the pile-up of their low-lying lands are the mounds that now form the 3200 km long Karakoram-Himalaya orogeny, along with the raised Tethys Ocean we now call the Tibetan Plateau. The PRXQWDLQVHVSHFLDOO\RQLWVZHVWDUHVWLOOULVLQJDW§FP\U The area is a seismic hotbed, but unlike the Andes, there are no volcanoes here, as there are no trenches to feed volcanoes, nor are there thin lithospheric sections or hotspots around. Here is just compressed earth rising. The rise is not uniform, as the compression can be at any point all along the long belt, and the weight does shift along with the landmass, during the orogeny. The structure of the Indian Plate also changes, as it subducts below the crushing belt of mountains, like a sandwich filling. As the Indian Plate is still active and drifts NNE, earthquakes occur regularly in the northern part of the plate. However, they are of low to 5 Mw intensity, and the largest recorded earthquake occurred near New Delhi in 1950, checking in at very disturbing 8.5 Mw. Atop this mountain orogeny, sits a country like Nepal, on a continental collision zone, and its faults disguise the decollement underneath, where most of them are buried deep underground and where surface ruptures are quickly covered by mud washed down by monsoon rains, then hidden by dense jungle. Earthquakes here too are small and frequent, but big ones strike now and again! Now known as the ‘Gurkha earthquake’, the 7.8 Mw quake devastated the little landlocked country on 25 Apr. 2015, claiming nearly 9,000 fatalities, injuring 23,000 other unfortunates while destroying more than 500,000 houses, with about 270,000 left damaged. 208

It was the fossil of the Permian era plant Glossopteris — known to have existed only in Antarctica at the time — that was found in India by the British geologist Henry Benedict Medlicott, in the lands of the Gonds — an ancient nomadic tribe that inhabits parts of India — that these original African inhabitants of the now Indian peninsula, would lend their name to the southern continent of Gondwana; whose literally meaning translates to ‘Land of the Gonds’. However, once the name was established, it would be Eduard Suess, who would come to prefer using the name Gondwanaland.

138 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… In a matter of 30 s, the devastated city of Kathmandu also found itself relocated some 3 m south. Interestingly, the mountain that it raised there to be the highest in the world at 8848 m, was simultaneously downsized a tiny little bit after the earthquake209 — the Indian Plate wedging further into the underbelly of the Eurasian Plate. Before the quake, Mt Everest had moved 40 cm to the NE over the past decade at a speed of 4 cm/yr, and had risen 3 cm over the same period. All that was reversed in just half a minute; the gradual north-easterly course of the mountain going SW in that short moment of ground shaking. The diagram in Fig. 8.4 — a north-south cross section of the mountain range — explains the movement and mechanism of that fatal earthquake while describing the fault there candidly.

Fig. 8.4: Generalised cross section showing the approximate locations of slip during the main shock and largest aftershock ruptures on the Main Himalayan Thrust, and approximate aftershock locations of both events. (MFT = Main Frontal Thrust, MBT = Main Boundary Thrust, MCT = Main Central Thrust) Credit: USGS

All along that long range of the mountain belt, earthquakes strike and the earth rumbles frequently, and we are reminded of the big ones that happened here; the 7.5 Mw Kangra quake — on its western end — of 1905, the 7.6 Mw Kashmir earthquake in 2005, and the one that occurred on 15 Aug. 1950 in Assam — on the belt’s eastern border in India — that killed over 100,000 people and left millions homeless. The lands along the mountain belts have had a long history of devastating earthquakes. The famous 18th century Buddhist monk and temple builder, Tenzin Lekpai Dondup describes in his biography, a quake that hit the little kingdom of Bhutan in early May of 1714, destroying the Gangteng monastery that Dondup helped build. Recent studies put that quake at a magnitude of at least 8 ± 0.5.210 209 210

The information came from Europe’s Sentinel-1A radar satellite, just hours after it passed over Nepal. Journal Reference: György Hetényi, et al. Joint approach combining damage and palaeoseismology observations constrains the 1714 Bhutan earthquake at magnitude 8 ± 0.5. Geophysical Research Letters, 2016; DOI: 10.1002/2016GL071033.

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As the Indian Plate pushes forward relentlessly, the fold-mountains have developed faults parallel to the thrust, and notable among them are the Altyn Tagh,211 the Haiyuan, the Kunlun and the Xianshuihe faults; all four being lateral-strike-slip faults. In the foothills of the Tibetan Plateau is China’s Wenchuan County in western Sichuan that lies on the Longmen Shan thrust belt there, along the eastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau. On 12 May 2008, the thrust fault along the belt slipped, causing an earthquake of 7.9 Mw, killing over 87,000 people. Landslides dammed several rivers and disrupted life for many days after. The area north of the Tibetan Plateau fairs no better; the Tian Shan is a seismically active intra-continental mountain belt, defined by numerous east-west trending thrust faults, creating a compressional basin associated with the collision. In recent memory, the region has had three major earthquakes > 7.6 Mw, with the 1902 Atushi earthquake killing an estimated 5,000 people in this sparsely populated region. Palaeoseismic studies indicate that the region has the potential to produce earthquakes of significant danger to life and property. However, like all people living in seismic active areas, the plateau’s capricious behaviour is well understood by the hardy Tibetan descendants. Tectonics does not necessarily kill through earthquakes in this region, it brings sudden and abrupt changes in the topography of the land too, and that, in turn, affects the everyday lives of millions. On the NW flank of the Indian subcontinent, the land is soft and low-lying (deceptively covered with desert sand and silt of the old Sarasvati River). However, calcified sedimentary rocks there (the old seabed now in a transform boundary act, along with the Eurasian continent) are resistant to slow creep, and ‘elastic rebound’ earthquakes are always there for the happening. What must be remembered though, is that plates keep moving most of the time and if a plate is stopped from moving, then energy builds up to a potential greater than the resistance slowing it down or halting its progress, then an ‘elastic rebound’ is the only outcome. It is not a question of ‘if it happens’, but a matter of ‘when-will-it-happen’. One such quake struck the state of Gujarat on 26 Jan. 2001, flattening 400,000 dwellings while causing a loss of life of some 20,000 unfortunates, with over 178,000 left injured. It was a lateral-strike-slip212 quake, with the seismic reading of a 7.7 Mw. Further north, the plate rides the Eurasian Plate at the Hindu Kush, to imperceptibly tilt the whole of the subcontinent of India to sink it down at its SE end. The Sarasvati River went dry, and the Ganges and the Brahmaputra began to flow east. This tilt is interesting, as diametrically opposite the Hindu Kush, the sinking plate subducts the Burma microplate. This type of action is always on the cards as long as the Indian Plate rides the Hindu Kush, and that part of the world must brace itself for more disasters. 211

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The Altyn Tagh fault has the dubious distinction of being the second fastest moving fault, behind that of the Alpine Fault of New Zealand. A fault in which rock strata are displaced mainly in a horizontal direction, parallel to the line of the fault.

140 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… It was here, near the triple junction with the Indo-Australian Plate that a slip-slide happened off the west coast of Sumatra, and reportedly the third largest earthquake in the world since 1900. The earthquake had 1300 km length of the Indian Plate move at the speed of 2.5 km/s, suddenly thrusting a 15 m piece of itself underneath the Burma microplate. It created an earthquake of the magnitude of 9.1-9.3 Mw213 while registering 68 aftershocks in the following 3 days. Setting a record of sorts, the quake lasted at least 10 minutes, and its aftershocks included the most erratic earthquake swarm ever observed. Splay faults, or secondary ‘pop up faults’, caused long, narrow parts of the sea-floor to pop up in seconds. It raised the sea-floor level there by as much as 20 m, setting off a tsunami that was felt as far away as on the shores of South Africa — 10,000 km away! It was huge, inundating coastal communities with waves of up to 30 m high, and mostly on the western half of the epicentre. The quake and the ensuing tsunami resulted in the deaths of 227,898 people, the displacement of 1.7 million more while touching the daily lives of people in 14 countries in Asia and East Africa. More casualties resulted from this earthquake than any other did in recorded history, and sea level changes were observed worldwide. The earthquake, including volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, seiches214 and gas emissions while inducing numerous and unusual subsequent natural happenings. It was an event of stunning proportions; both in its human dimensions and as a geological phenomenon. The ground rose on its left banks, and we can expect Indonesia to sink a meter and a half on its right flanks in the coming years. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands we now know, moved 1.25 m SW, in a rebound reaction, after bending and absorbing the NE trust of the Indian Plate for some time, until it could hold the thrust no more, overriding it finally. For the first time, scientists measured the effects of a 9.2 Mw earthquake around the globe, while the planet vibrated like the oscillations of a medieval ringing church bell; as someone put it elegantly. Across the globe, the ground moved, and even Alaska responded with an earthquake in its wake. The earthquake changed the distribution of masses inside of the earth and even displaced the North Pole by 2.5 cm. It also changed the shape of earth, where more specifically, it decreased Earth’s oblateness by about 1 part in 10 billion, consequentially increasing Earth’s rotational speed a little and thus shortening the length of our day by 2.68 microseconds (μs).

8.4.3 The Australian Plate Description of the movements: Recent GPS measurements confirm the Australian Plate’s PRYHPHQWDVEHLQJƒHDVWRIQRUWKZLWKDYHORFLW\RI§FP\U7KHVDPHGLUHFWLRQV 213

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Hiroo Kanamori of the California Institute of Technology believes that 9.2 Mw is a good representative value for the size of this great earthquake. A temporary disturbance, or oscillation in the water level of a lake, or partially enclosed body of water, especially one caused by changes in atmospheric pressure.

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and velocities apply for Auckland and Christmas Island — some 7510 km apart but riding the same plate. At its north, its oceanic floor subducts into the thin, buoyant, and minor Sunda Plate and along its border with the Pacific Plate too, for the most part. However, there are some transform boundaries where the plate interacts with the area between Borneo and Papua New Guinea, telling us that that part of the China Sea is moving east into the Pacific while also subducting some little plates into the Pacific that rides over them. Unusual trench behaviour then enacts at its NE border, where it subducts under the Pacific Plate and into the New Hebrides Trench, where the Pacific Plate is permitted to move tangentially over it, in a very complex tectonic configuration. At its eastern border, the juxtapositioning behaviour of the Pacific and Australian plates involves changes in both the direction and nature of movement that extends for thousands of kilometres. In the north, the plate lifts its skirt to part of the Pacific Plate, allowing it to get under it all the way from Samoa, through Tonga and into the Hikurangi fault, where the Pacific Plate sinks beneath the Australian Plate, in a complex but generally, in a convergent boundary with it. Here the two abruptly change places at the Marlborough Fault System that cuts through the country’s larger South Island, where the interaction between the two slabs turns such that the plates grind edge-on in a transform boundary, and where the hapless cities of Christchurch and Wellington wert built. At its southern border, it is in a predominantly divergent boundary with the Antarctic Plate. With the African Plate on its west, it moves away and north from it most of the time, in a dominant combination of a divergent-transform boundary as indicated in the colouring in the plate fault there. Results of the movements: Appearing to lose its patience in its thrust NNE, the plate ploughs under the lighter ‘sandwiched’ Sunda Plate, creating the great arc of the SundaJava trench. The trenches here feed the thousands of earthquakes on the archipelago north of it, along with the hundreds of volcanoes in there. Krakatoa and Tambora happened in this area and the 19th century memories of Mount (Mt) Tambora linger on and are still remembered with a lot of awe and a little trepidation. At a time when communication across waters or land was almost non-existent, 70,000 people were recorded dead. Such was the power of the explosion that its aftermath left a chilling reminder to future generations as to the disruptive power of nature. In Europe, much cooling and the withering of crops spread famine through the lands. The year 1816 would be known as the ‘year without a summer’. In the Indonesian archipelago and the South China Sea, tangential forces in a convergent boundary create unnatural stress in the plates, and the possibility of localized and unpredictable plate movement is always a possibility here; a geological conflict always simmering... Krakatoa and Tambora happened; it will happen again. The eastern boundary that slips along with the Pacific Plate, unfortunately, divides the two major islands of New Zealand almost equally; the island now sitting independently on

142 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… two different plates; their action tangentially to one another and slip-sliding at the Alpine Fault — a strike-slip fault similar to what happens at the San Andreas Fault and the North Anatolian Fault System. Earthquakes here are common, and a major one is to be expected. 7KH0Z.DLNżXUDHDUWKTXDNHWKDWVWUXFNRQ Nov. 2016, had ruptures that occurred on multiple faults and has been described as the ‘most complex earthquake ever studied’. The earthquake was the most powerful seismic event in that area in more than 150 years. There were thousands of landslides across the area and at Waipapa Bay, the land rose out of the sea by an astonishing 5.5 m! Moreover, Cape Campbell on the northern side of the South Island moved 35 cm closer to the city of Wellington, which sits across the Cook Strait on the North Island.215 This also tells us that that the Australian Plate is moving slower NNE than the Pacific Plate is moving NNW, as the Cook Strait is getting narrower. On its east, the Alpine Fault forms a transform boundary between the Pacific Plate. The differential plate speed measured here is a slip of 4.7 cm/yr, making it the fastest of transform movement recorded yet. The slip is constant, and as long as the two plates are not held back by jagged edge profiles, they move along serenely and silently and generally do not disturb the equilibrium, unless a resistance is felt that slows them down, or stops movement totally. When that happens and the restraining forces can bear it no more, they eventually give way, and in a few seconds, in a sudden quick release of energy,216 all hell breaks loose. All along New Zealand’s east, the Pacific Plate subducting in the Kermadec Trench there creates magma that moves in through the North Island’s underbelly and gives vent to magma through the various soft spots, where some 27 notable volcanoes are evident. New Zealand contains the world’s highest concentration of youthful high silica lava emitting volcanoes and extensive sheets of pyroclastic flow deposits, and compared to its size with the others, it leads the world in the abundance of calderas. Mt Ruapehu is the most active of all the volcanoes, and geothermal features abound, including hot springs, geysers, and volcanic lakes. These areas attract scientific interest and tourism, while the power generating industry does some pioneering work here, supplying the country with 13% of its power needs from its natural geothermal sources. Tectonics of the South Island is different. The island is part of the Pacific Plate and is only in a transform boundary with the Australian Plate. There are thus no active volcanoes on land. From the North Island, the Kermadec trench and subduction zone continues east of north, and then on to Tonga and Samoa. It ends where the commotion is the most; an area we know as the most complicated of those happening on the Australian Plate. 215

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According to Sigrún Hreinsdóttir, a geodetic scientist at GNS Science, a research consultancy service in New Zealand. In a recent study by seismologist Aaron Wech (published in the US journal Geophysical Research Letters, May 2012) on the Alpine Fault, he discovered that the movement of plates in New Zealand did not remain static between major earthquakes, and that the plates were constantly creeping along, against the grain.

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On the NE of the plate is another area that tests the limits of people trying to study the fallout of plate movement. It is in the area where the New Hebrides, Fiji and Tonga all lie. Here, while subductions take place along deep trenches, divergent boundaries exist too. The tangential pressure on the island by the Pacific Plate and its subduction under the Australian Plate as the Australian Plate moves NNE, compresses the little plate, thereby weakening her lithosphere. Two little plates within the New Hebrides microplate move away west, with the western one digging under the huge Australian Plate in a subduction boundary. This tangential movement in a transform-subducting boundary sends up a chain of islands from the resulting shavings of the transform action, coupling it with the build-up of sea-floor material due to the subduction process going on there, and which the Pacific Plate keeps carrying along with it, ending up as rows of islands parallel to the fault. These are the likes of the Solomon Islands, the Bougainville Islands, and the Latangai Islands. What is it that makes the little New Hebrides Plate scoot away from the Pacific Plate moving tangentially at its rear and dive headlong down and under the Australian Plate moving towards it? Hard to say right now but we notice three different directions in that little spot around the Hebrides; NW, NE and SW. The Hebrides appears headed for oblivion under the Australian Plate. The newly discovered Cosgrove Volcanic Track on the eastern half of the land has added a confirmation to the speed of the Australian Plate on its journey NNE. From the dating of the volcanoes, we know today that the oldest one began erupting some 33 Ma ago at Cape Hillsborough in the north, and ended 9 Ma ago in Tasmania — moving over a mantel plume or hotspot, at an average speed of 8.33 cm/yr, over 2000 km in 24 Ma. The movement of the chain of fire has slowed down but at this time, approximates at around 6.8 cm/yr. Check this link out for a beautiful picture and better understanding of the volcano chain and the movement of the Australian Plate over a single hotspot. (https://www.livescience.com/52165-earths-largest-continental-volcanic-ring-discovered. html) What we know today, is that surface volcanism on that southern continent, appeared only when the lithosphere was less than 130 km thick.217 We can also observe the continents movement matching striations on the Bass Strait sea-floor. Life is getting exciting for this new science, and we keep learning as we go along, and new finds could help scientists model how mantle plumes interact with the continental crust to create volcanism.

8.4.4 The Eurasian Plate Description of the movements: Off the western European coast in the North Atlantic Ocean, the Eurasian Plate is in a divergent boundary situation with the North American 217

‘Now that we know there is a direct relationship between the volume and chemical composition of magma and the thickness of the continent, we can go back and interpret the geological record better’, said co-author Ian Campbell, also an earth scientist at Australian National University, and reported in the Sept. 2015 issue of the journal Nature.

144 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… Plate; both the plates are moving in the opposite direction, helping create the northern part of the MAR there. The tidy and neat separation is displayed by a red line there, and along with the two opposing vectors, telling us all we need to know about what is happening there — that the plates are moving at different speeds away from one another, but in a uniform manner. From the Azores to Iceland on the plate’s west, the whole of the composite giant of the Eurasian Plate is moving in the direction of the Pacific Ocean to the east, whereas the North American Plate is moving west and also in the direction of the Pacific Ocean. On its southern border with the African Plate, it is in a transform and a convergent boundary there. Results of the movements: The plate moves slowly and over a vast area, and its frequent rumblings go unnoticed and largely in the eastern half of the sparsely populated lands on that plate. The plate’s SW boundary in Europe starts its movements at the triple junction around the Azores, and although it moves east in a divergent boundary with the North American Plate, it is in a transform boundary with the African Plate, and that causes some consternation in the area; especially in Italy and Anatolia. Here, the North Anatolia fault is always a potential earthquake threat with its strike-slip action at the border of the two. However, along the Alborz Mountains, there is a convergent fault too, and where anything can happen. All along its long southern border, the Eurasian Plate bears down on the Alpide belt or Alpine Himalayan orogenic belt, while all the opposition — the African, Arabian, Indian, and the Australian plates — gang-up in an attempt to push the mighty intruder away, and ensure she stays north. So she creeps east, and the Alpide belt is compressed in that long orogeny and she gives vent to her frustrations at her eastern boundary, where she turns down and into the vast and the empty Pacific Ocean. At this eastern boundary, she rides the Pacific Plate, hiding it under her great cover at a fair rate, and all over the trenches there — from the north in Kamchatka and through the Kuril Islands in the KurilKamchatka Trench, then down on to Japan and finally ending in the north of the Philippines. Then there is the Caucasus Mountains — the range which separates the Anatolian Block from the main stable continental areas of central Asia — which cuts across between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. This is an area of continental convergence; the result and consequence, of uplift and still a confusing area to geologists of our time. In the SE, she remains steady, however, allowing the Australian — and to an extent, the Indian Plate — to subduct into her underbelly, as she moves slightly south and south-east. However, the movement east creates a smooth divide at its western boundary that helped form the MAR. On the north of the plate’s western front is Iceland — unique in the fact that we are today, privileged to observe a divergent boundary in action on land. Just outside the Arctic Circle, on latitude 20° W, the land splits smooth and evenly in a divergent boundary. Not many earthquakes or agitations here, but lots of lava flows on to the ocean’s surface, from a hotspot at the centre of that ever-growing island nation.

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Here in Iceland, Earth’s unique tectonic sketch plays out in the open for us to watch in awe, and where rifting, volcanoes and flood-basalt oozing lava can be observed at close quarters and all in the same place and time. Their combined actions have resulted in Iceland being today an island country, having risen from the depths of the molten mantel, through cracks, fissures, and volcanoes at that point in the rift — and maybe because of a soft spot or a hotspot below it — in a relatively short span of 13 Ma, over the waves. Besides the normal rifting, volcanoes erupt regularly — Snaeffelsjökell 1500 ya, again in 1973 and in July 2010, and Hekla in 1970. Its lake waters boil at ground level, and geysers sprout about endlessly. Its land splits open at times, and the greatest fissure eruption ever witnessed, was on 8 June 1783, when in Laki near Skaftarjökull, a 24 km long rift opened in its floor and began spewing scorching lava while adding 122 million tonnes (Mt) of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere. It ruined crops and caused the death of more than 10,000 Icelanders — a quarter of the nation’s population, and possibly 6 M worldwide at the time while disrupting rain and weather patterns around the globe, affecting humanity in Europe and as far away as Japan. No numbers are available for decimated livestock, or fauna in the wild. Between the years from 1975 to 1984, rifting took place along the Krafla fissure zone, and some events were accompanied by volcanic activity. There was a gradual signalling of an upwelling of magma below the crust. In that time, the upward displacements caused by rifting totalled about a 7 m rise in the level of the land there.

Fig. 8.5: Walking on two continental plates simultaneously — Europe and North America Credit: EPOD/USRA/NASA

A narrow man-made road separates two lithospheric plates; carrying the separate continents of North America and Europe, here. We are in Iceland, walking on land, but right in the middle of the MAR! Walking on a road shared equally by two tectonic plates!

146 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… Iceland started small and at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean but 170 Ma later — JURZLQJDWWKHUDWHRI§PP\U³,FHODQGWRGD\KDVDQDYHUDJHKHLJKWRIPDERYH sea level, having grown from all that way down on the Atlantic sea-floor at the average depth of 3339 m below sea level. Continuous effusions of molten basaltic lava that flows from long parallel fissures continue to build the lava plateaus while adding to the growth of the island. In the air travel age, we still survive, though the Eyjafjallajökull volcano that erupted on 14 Apr. 2010, produced ash that disrupted air travel across western and northern Europe, getting 20 countries to close their airspace to commercial jet traffic while affecting more than 100,000 travellers. Its tephra was even found as far away as northern Russia — almost halfway around the Arctic; and this volcano is one of the smaller ones in Iceland. We had another scare in 2014-15. However, the greatest impact the Eurasian Plate has on our planet, is its west-east movement that creates an unseen transform boundary all along its southern face, all the way from the Azores, through Europe, the Levant, Iran, the Himalayas, and then right down to the islands of the Indonesian Archipelago. All along the border with the Alpide belt, a thousand tremors each day remind us that the earth is alive under our feet. The volcanoes that created the Azores, that caused the Vesuvius deaths, and that helped spew out the largest of them all — Krakatau and Toba — are in part, the result of this slow movement of the Eurasian Plate eastwards. The recent earthquakes in Italy in 2012, 2013 and in Aug. and Oct. 2016, remind us that tectonic activity there will not go away in the near future, with the big plate looming large over them, and that the inhabitants of that unpredictable land are, and will always be, at nature’s mercy. Turkey is even more perilous because of the three types of boundaries plying their trade there and anything can happen, anytime. The pressure of Arabia and Eurasia being squashed together in the east, forces the crust of the Anatolian Plateau sideways, and into an area where the pressure is lower. This lateral motion is largely accommodated by a strike-slip along the North Anatolian and East Anatolian Faults, eventually subducting the eastern Mediterranean. Unpredictable are movements here that the 7.2 Mw earthquake that hit Turkey on 23 Oct. 2011, appears to have occurred near the junction of two mountain belts; the Zagros and the Alborz ranges and not at the transform boundary or convergent boundary with the Eurasian Plate. On land, the inter-plate relationship can be observed, like in the Urals, which formed when proto-Europe collided with proto-Asia, and the two were sutured or welded together. It does not make good news in the common man’s newspaper, but much more is happening at the plate’s east and south-eastern borders and its interactions with the Pacific Plate. Under the long folds of her skirt, there is just too much going on right up from Kamchatka in the north, to the northern Philippines in the south, where earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes occur, in numbers too long to relate. Kamchatka hosts the largest number of volcanoes per square kilometre, and Japan having given us the word ‘tsunami’, reminds us how dangerous this corner of the Pacific — where four plates meet — is. The 11 Mar.

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7żKRNX2NLHDUWKTXDNHWKDWVKRRN1(-DSDQZDVD0ZPRQVWHUWKDWXQOHDVKHG a savage tsunami in the aftermath of the quake; described as an ‘undersea megathrust earthquake’. Along with a death toll of 15,893 confirmed, the effects of the great quake were felt around the world; from Norway’s fjords to Antarctica’s ice sheet, and two years later, debris from the disaster were still being found on coastlines of other continents. ‘The tsunami itself died out a long time ago, but the effects in Japan will be there for decades’.218 The tsunami that followed on that day in Mar. 2011, was recorded on film for posterity. Though it is, as of today, the best-documented megathrust earthquake in the world, its causal mechanism is still in controversy because of the poor state of knowledge on the nature of the megathrust zone. We can expect more from the Eurasian Plate’s movements. At its eastern extreme, the vectors show a southward thrust. Here, on that eastern plate’s inner boundary, Lake Baikal — once a sea, now a trapped lake and the world’s deepest, oldest and most voluminous mass of fresh water — is growing larger, with its eastern and western banks moving away from one another by about 0.5 cm/yr. The area is seismically active and monitoring stations around and within the lake pick up more than 2000 earthquakes each year. It sits in a huge rift valley and its sides are gradually moving apart, created by its eastern shores moving in the ESE direction. Though it does not seem much, its length of 636 km multiplied into its depth of 1637 m, and the lake gets an extra 5205 Mm3 of fresh water a year. The lake is also growing deeper. In 1959 its floor dropped by 20 m at a stroke, increasing the volume of the basin by 104,100 m3 in an instant. When the splitting happens in a long elongated lake like Lake Baikal, we do not notice it. Even when tectonics is not visible to us, it has an immense impact on Earth’s geography and ecosystem, though we do not see their outcome physically — it being a process of extended time in our life terms. In this case, this ancient 20 Ma old lake currently harbours some 2000 species of life; two-thirds of which are unique, and found nowhere else in the world. This ‘Galapagos of Russia’, is now set to become a seashore once again, as it once was. The trapped seals, and known as nerpa (Sibirica Pusa), that now live in it — the only freshwater pinniped — are in the process of moving back to their old hunting grounds in tectonic time. When that happens, they will be reunited with their old relatives, the Arctic ringed seals that were separated from them, by 3220 km of land and mountains a few million years ago. Moving lands had closed off their abode around the Arctic Circle, pushing them south along a narrowing river, to find sanctuary in the deep saline lake; developing separately, in unadulterated seclusion, into a genetically different species, after the lake turned into a freshwater lake from the rivers that began to feed it. Tectonics does such things to life on the planet. Speciation is a product of tectonics. 218

Attributed to Vasily Titov, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Centre (NOAA) for Tsunami Research in Seattle, Washington.

148 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors…

8.4.5 The North American Plate Description of the movements: At its north, the North American Plate displays little movement and action, as is normal for lands near the poles, where there exist lower rates of reaction to rotational forces. On its eastern boundary, the vectors indicate a westward movement at the MAR. On its southern face, the plate is in a transform boundary movement with the Caribbean Plate, indicating that the North American Plate is moving west. The vectors tell us that the North American Plate is also turning anticlockwise while moving west, and it is for that reason, on that same boundary, at its corner touching the MAR, it displays a divergent boundary. We can see it in the Fig. 8.2; as the North American Plate is falling face-forward into the Pacific, in the process, it raises its ‘backside’ off the South American Plate at its SE. All along its western face, it interacts with the plates in the Pacific Ocean as follows: 1) it rides the Cocos Plate at its SSW in an O-C encounter 2) near the state of California, it engages the Pacific Plate in a transform boundary 3) further north, and it encounters the little Juan de Fuca Plate, where the westbound continental plate overrides it in a convergent boundary, and once more is in the O-C engagement, 4) further north again and it is in a transform boundary with the Pacific Plate in the country of Canada and 5) all along its NW, we see the plate moving into the direction of the Pacific, again riding the Pacific Plate in the trenches in the Aleutian and the northern half of Kamchatka in an O-C engagement. The plate is moving in an anticlockwise manner, and in the general direction towards and into the Pacific. Results of the movements: The plate’s movement at its eastern border is responsible for the creation of the northern half of the MAR along with its other two proponents on the opposite side of the ridge — the Eurasian and the Africa plates. The volcanic island country of Iceland is also the outcome of this rifting here — a confluence of the actions of two tectonic plates separating over a spot with a weak lithosphere. Hinged somewhere near the Caribbean Plate, the North American Plate moves anticlockwise around that point, while the South American Plate moves clockwise, hinged around the same area near the Caribbean Islands. This is interesting, as both are heading into the ‘empty’ Pacific theatre. On its SE corner, the plate moves west at approximately 0.2 cm/yr, sliding slowly and serenely over the little Caribbean Plate. However, at that southern corner, a babble of tectonic noise can be heard, with most of it coming from the Caribbean Plate. Here, things are complicated by the confluence of the four plates that meet in the area. The Caribbean Plate’s attempts to move into the Pacific arena is held back by the Cocos Plate pushing at it in the opposite direction on the west coast of North America. The little Caribbean Plate is then once more crushed by the North and South American plates pushing at it both its northern and southern flanks. This results in the formation of some trenches, with the deep Puerto Rico Trench going down there, to a depth of the 8,648 m — the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean — to push the area to succumb to a transform-strike-slip like faults there.

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Earthquakes will happen, and the area is capable of producing earthquakes greater than 8 Mw. The 7.5 Mw earthquake that realigned the Puerto Rico trench on 11 Oct. 1918, also generated a tsunami that produced 6 m high waves off the western coast of Puerto Rico that alone accounted for at least 91 fatalities while causing untold damage and misery to the luckless inhabitants of that archipelago of islands squeezed between the two giant landmasses. Big quakes hit the area in 1692, 1843, 1946, 1953 and 1974, confirming the area’s status as an earthquake and tsunami prone zone, and strikes occur on an average of every couple of years or so. The largest in recent memory, was the 7.0 Mw monstrous quake that struck on 12 Jan. 2010, and by the 24th of that month, at least 52 aftershocks measuring 4.5 Mw or greater had been recorded. An estimated 3 M people were affected by the quake, and death toll estimates range from 100,000 to about 160,000. The frequency of the earthquakes and their intensity has been of such concern in the region that ‘The Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency’ was formed in 2005 through an inter-regional supportive network of independent emergency units throughout the Caribbean region. On Mexico’s Pacific shores, the plate rides the incoming northern half of the Cocos Plate at its SW, and the melting magma of the trench there, rise to form the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt, and known locally as the Sierra Nevada. Like partners in crime, the Rivera Plate at its north, adds its little might to the subduction process at Mexico’s NW. Moving in tandem and at different speeds — 3.8 cm/yr for the Rivera Plate and 5.4 cm/yr for the Cocos Plate — they distort the lithosphere on the land, while the Pacific Plate adds to the consternation by diverging away from them and lowering the pressure the two little plates are applying. The little Rivera appears to be ‘brushed under the carpet’ so to say, by the huge menacing American Plate approaching it, but it is not so. On the contrary... the little plate is behind the eruptions of the Volcán de Colima; one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world, with 30 periods of eruptions recorded since 1585, and rated by the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth’s Interior (IAVCEI), as the second most threatening of the lot active today, and is designated a ‘Decade volcano’.219 Large earthquakes hit the area at regular intervals, and since records have been kept; 7.9 Mw in 1900, 8.1 Mw in 1932, 8.0 Mw in 1985 and an 8.1 Mw on 27th Sept. 2017. All these happen parallel and inland to the Middle America Trench, where the Cocos Plate slips under the country of Mexico. Moving north along the coast of Mexico and into the USA, we come to the most infamous fault of them all; the 1,287 km long strike-slip San Andreas ‘transform’ Fault in California. It slipped and struck in 1906, with the quake measuring a healthy 7.8 Mw. 3,000 lost their lives, and over 80% of San Francisco was destroyed, with some 225,000 people suddenly finding themselves homeless. The quake retains its position in the ‘top 10’ list of natural disasters in US history. 219

One of the 16 volcanoes identified by IAVCEI, as being worthy of particular study, in light of their history of large destructive eruptions and proximity to populated areas.

150 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… Further north along the continent’s boundary with the Pacific Plate, is the place where the little Juan de Fuca is dismissively pushed under the American Plate moving west into the empty Pacific at the Cascadia Subduction Zone. The little plate also moves tangentially away from the movement of the Pacific Plate, and in the process, it lifts and crunches the North American part of the continent, helping create the majestic Rocky Mountains through which the rapid descending Columbia flows into the Pacific. In the process, it throws the freshwater salmon smolts: the Sockeye, Coho, Chinook and the steelhead into the salty ocean; the precursor to the salmon runs. What is not known though, is that this lifting of the continent of North America by little Juan de Fuca in the area around British Columbia tilts the plate, perceptibly sinking the East Coast of North America.220 New research using GPS data has shown that nearly the entire coast is affected — from Massachusetts down to Florida. The sinking could also be the uncurling of the ‘concave’ depression of the continent, due to isostasy, which is, still in progress, after the melting of the Laurentide Ice Sheet that stretched over most of Canada and down to modern-day New England and the Midwest. Further up, into the NW, the North American Plate eats up the Pacific Plate with tectonic consequences. On record is the 9.2 Mw earthquake — also known as the Great Alaskan earthquake (or the ‘Good Friday’ earthquake) — that occurred on Good Friday, 27 Mar. 1964. Across south-central Alaska — in that sparsely inhabited belt — ground fissures, collapsing structures and tsunamis resulting from the earthquake, brought on the rage and wrath of death and destruction to that peaceful and quite corner of the continent. Lasting 4 min 38 s, the megathrust was the most powerful recorded in North American history, and the world’s 2nd largest and most powerful earthquake. Major earthquakes continue in the area and further on to the west and into the peninsula of Kamchatka; greatly helped along on this route of destruction by the largest of the plates... a plate anything but peaceful.

8.4.6 The South American Plate Description of the movements: All along its eastern flank, along the MAR, the South American Plate drifts westwards in a divergent boundary scenario. In the course of its journey, it has moved faster at its south than at its north, to give the southern tip an advantage of 1330 km in their race westwards. The two different physical readings of the distances at its north and south of Africa starting 200 Ma, also tell us that the southern part of South America has also moved with a little clockwise twist in the process. The clockwise rotation of the plate can be visualised, if you imagine it pinned to a pinboard through Lake Maracaibo, below the Gulf of Venezuela. The plate moves west and twists clockwise, and as it does so, it moves a little north into the southern part of the little Caribbean Plate. This movement of the plate moving west, a little north, and then also rotating clockwise, stresses the MAR in a way that the plate’s separation at the ridge is in 220

‘The Atlantic Coast Is Sinking’ — reported by John Upton in Climate Central dated 14 Apr. 2016.

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sort of a slide-drift-turn mode, that the separation at the MAR displays the movement in a zig-zag red-green pattern. Compare this to the MAR separation in its northern part, where the North American and the Eurasian plates only move away from each other and the drift there displays a clean red displayed divergent boundary. In addition, the curve of the plate at its southern border with the Scotia Plate shows a clean green curve, telling us that it is moving west and sliding easily, a little clockwise and in line with the fault, which depicts the movement correctly. However, this movement also opens up the sea-floor at the divergent boundary at the triple junction, where it meets the African and Antarctic plates. At the west of the plate we see a convergent boundary with subduction all along the entire length of the plate in an O-C encounter. Results of the movements: The clockwise movement and the plate going north is interesting in that such a clockwise movement also strains the seabed by placing a divergent vertical north/south stress on either side of the rift, and more on the Atlantic’s eastern half of the southern hemisphere’s seabed. This secondary clockwise movement is what initiates the opening of cracks in the sea-floor. Bisecting the MAR is the Romanche Trench (Romanche Furrow or Romanche Gap) that had its beginnings in the ocean floor, some 40 Ma ago. Try the experiment that we did with the trenches in the North Pacific off the coast of North America. Of great interest on this plate, is what happens at its western edge. As the South American Plate moves into the Pacific, the entire length of its western border rides the two heavier oceanic plates there, helping create the 5900 km long Peru–Chile Trench (also known as the Atacama Trench), about 160 km off the coast of the Andean countries. The subducting of the two oceanic plates here, helps to carve out South America’s great spine — the volcanic Andes — the world’s longest mountain range. All along, this great length of a subduction zone, plate melts from the submerging slabs pile up inland, and the melts that create the lava from the heated submerging oceanic crusts, throw upwelling into the loose piles of broken porous earth, following the heated gases out of the Earth’s heated interior. The shavings of the submerging plates pile up to keep lifting the longest range of WHUUHVWULDOPRXQWDLQVXSZDUGVDW§FP\U2YHUWLPHWKHRXWSRXULQJPDJPDZRXOG turn the landscape into volcanoes that now dot the mountain belt of the ‘backbone’ of South America. The movement played out, tells us that the plate has a lot of determination and commitment to its purpose and goal, to move west; pushing and thrusting its landmass that not only raises the mountain chain even higher but pushes the Nazca and Pacific sea-floor even deeper all along the length of the trench on the continent’s shoreline. At Richards Deep where the Tropic of Capricorn intersects the Atacama trench, the trench reaches a maximum depth of 8066 m below sea level for a length of 1500 km. The build-up of the Andes continues with the help of the Nazca Plate, in that it moves (1(DW§FP\UDQGDOPRVWDWGRXEOHWKHVSHHGRIWKH6RXWK$PHULFDQ3ODWHPRYLQJ over it, adding more pressure on its leading and submerging edge.

152 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… What is amazing is that the South American Plate appears in a hurry splitting and moving away from Africa and into the Pacific, in spite of continuously adding to a heavy backpack of the Andes on it. Such is the silent power of tectonics. The subduction of the Nazca and the Antarctica plates below it, it is then associated with numerous earthquakes in the area and along the length of the mountain belt. The people of the Andes experience tremors regularly and small earthquake shake the ground on a daily basis. Several of the earthquakes in these mountains are notable for their size, and the 16 Apr. 2016 event that hit Ecuador and measured 7.8 Mw, stands out in recent memory. The largest in our remembered history is what is now known as the ‘Great Peruvian Earthquake’, the 7.9 Mw 1970 event that even triggered landslides, with large VQRZDQGLFHFRPSRQHQWVLQYROYHGNLOOLQJ§SHRSOHRQLWVVORSHVDORQH7KHVHDUH just a few big ones that are known to us in our recent history. Now that we have GPS stationed above to track movements below, we learnt something interesting that happened on that fateful day of 27 Feb. 2010 with the 8.8 Mw event near the coast of central Chile. Recorded as fact by US scientists, was that the city of Concepción moved 3.04 m WSW, Santiago by 27.7 cm west again, and even the distant Buenos Aires in Argentina — that lay 1336 km away on the other side of the continent — moved 2.5 cm west, with respect to its location before the earthquake.221 The slippage along the fault was as large as 9 m in some areas, with Chile’s coastline springing west into the Pacific, by as much as 6 m in places; confirming the vector directions in the Fig. 8.2. Then there was the vertical and horizontal deformation of the land over a large area, and while the land rattled, it was also raised by more than 2.5 m near the coast, and sinking farther inwards222 (while moving the city of Maule 3 m to the west). It caused marine platforms to rise out of the ocean while shifting beaches on its western coastline up to 500 m in some places closer to the ocean. In reality, the whole of South America inched into the Pacific Ocean to occupy a little part of it while further confirming Wegener’s theory that South America moved west away from Africa. 221

222

The analysis comes from a project led by Ohio State earth scientist Mike Bevis who has been using GPS to record movements of the crust on Chile since 1993. This was not the first time it was recorded by science. At 11.00 am, on 27 Feb. 1835, an 8.8 Mw earthquake struck Chile south of the city of Conceptión. Charles Darwin was there to witness and record the event and its aftermath. Inspecting the seashore sometime following the event, Darwin and Captain FitzRoy noticed that the low ground near the village of Santa Maria, had been upheaved by some 2.75 m. Incidentally, Darwin read geology at Edinburgh, and when he set sail on the Beagle, he was armed with a book barely off the press then; Charles Lyell’s ‘Principles of Geology’. With a little help from two minutes of terror, Darwin figured out the process of mountain-building (and probably the rudiment of tectonics — a hundred and thirty years before the theory was made known to us). It is fascinating to think that the incremental earth-building process he observed on those Chilean shores, would have triggered his mind to the incremental ways of evolution.

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Earlier, on Sunday 22 May 1960, the 9.5 Mw earthquake that struck near the city of Valdivia was the granddaddy of them all. The Valdivia earthquake or ‘The Great Chilean Earthquake’ also caused tsunamis with devastating destruction; all the way from California and across the Pacific Ocean, to New Zealand, Australia, Hawaii, Japan and the Philippines. For 11-13 full minutes, the ground shook violently, leaving over 2000 dead, and injuring some 3000 while also leaving another 2,000,000 people homeless. The earthquake physically distorted Chile’s landscape with major landslides, violent volcanic eruptions, along with coastal deformations all over its western front. Rock falls and landslides in the Andes Mountains created an artificial lake on the Rio San Pedro, and about 47 h after the main shock, the Puyehue volcano violently erupted on the 24th of that month. It was a ‘megathrust’ earthquake that occurred at a depth of about 33 km in the Atacama trench. The earthquake’s rupture zone was 800 km long, stretching from Arauco (37° S) to the Chiloé Archipelago (43° S). The velocity of the rupture was estimated at 3.5 km/s. The destruction from the Valdivia earthquake was devastating, and although earth has not seen an earthquake with such magnitude since, it is a stark reminder of what could come on to those highlands in the future, and geophysicists consider it a matter of time before this earthquake will be surpassed in magnitude by another. Our memory is short, recorded earthquake history is only a few hundred years old, but Earth’s historical tectonic mayhem is millions of years old. Those unforgiving results of tectonics, are here to stay and will continue to shake the unstable length of those forgiving countries of the Andes. An interesting and very visual and obvious feature on the South American continental map on any atlas, is its jagged coastline at its SW, starting somewhere near the latitude 41° 39’ 54” S, and going south on to its southernmost point in the southern Pacific. The lithosphere there rides the Antarctic Plate on those shores and the South American Plate is forced upwards over the thick Antarctic Plate, to expose its eroded shoreline, where softer earth was washed away by the ever-receding ocean (comparable to lifting your hand out of a murky pond, where the bare fingers are then exposed). With the subduction process on, on its western front, coupled to the rising of the Andes, the plate slopes eastwards. This tilt, has made sure that all the South American rivers now flow into the Atlantic. At its north, the plate dips under the Caribbean Plate while lifting its southern part over the Antarctic Plate, ensures that at the rivers at the north and east flow NE.

8.4.7 The Pacific Plate Description of the movements: We have now come to understanding and visualizing plate movements over the globe, so let us move on…

154 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… Results of the movements: Covering an area of 103 million square kilometres (Mkm2), the Pacific Plate — with the longest of boundaries — interacts with the most number of plates on Earth’s surface, thereby hosting the most number of interactions and plate movements in all their permutations and combinations on Earth’s surface. It is also a party of the most complex of all the plate movements, considering that it has the Australian and the Philippine plates to contend with too, and whose proximity to the South China Sea compound matters further. Aggravating the situation in the middle of the muddle and the mix-ups, are some microplates in the immediate vicinity; most notably visible on the map being the New Hebrides, and the Caroline plates on its western border. Along the plate’s northern eastern half, strange things are happening at that border, and particularly along the fault line that coincides with the shorelines of Canada, the US, and Mexico. Three little and innocuous looking plates — the Juan de Fuca, the Rivera and the Cocos plates, are in open revolt with the Pacific Plate while openly confronting the large North American Plate with unusual vigour! Not only do they not cooperate with the Pacific Plate — for reasons only known to themselves — but move tangentially away from the Pacific Plate’s direction of travel; as if in open rebellion. The ‘red’ divergent boundaries they all have in common with the Pacific Plate show them all moving away from it. That is fine, but then while they do this little ‘running away’ from the Pacific Plate, they attack the North American Plate with surprising and vigorous bravado; digging themselves into the underbelly of the huge plate. Strange little fellows, who decide to bravely swim against the tide while contradicting the actions of the big boy they share a common border with. The three different and unrelated renegades move at different speeds but all in the same direction, suggesting that there could possibly be some order in their madness. Is there a ‘mind’ here that is instructing them so, or another ‘unseen’ energy? So, what forces are there at play here? Are there little independent convection currents down under in the mantle of magma of such force that cook things up to help fire their bellies that compel them to revolt to move against the tide? Three separate entities working in space, but in total agreement in movement and behaviour. Three impertinent little, inert slabs of earth, scurrying away because big brother is moving the other way and has his back turned on them. At the plate’s eastern boundary, at the top is Juan de Fuca, working tangentially against the grain and its mighty neighbour while ploughing itself with some mighty determination against a huge opponent coming towards it, and is neither pushed out of the way nor overawed by it. There, in a little arc, in the corner where the western boundaries of Canada and the USA are drawn, and off Vancouver Island, she goes down into the depths of the earth and beneath the North American continent. The action brings on the resistance to the change and intrusion, and at the deforming arc’s extremes, earthquakes happen, and >7.0 Mw abound in the region, and are not an unusual happening there. Inland, in the Canadian state of British Columbia and the NW coast of the USA, earthquakes are the result of this subducting process. Here, the land moves the fastest out to sea, and

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where the Cascade Volcanoes constantly rumble, and in the region of only 1,126 km long — from Silverthorne Caldera in southern British Columbia to Watts Point, USA — 20 volcanoes line up!223 Not of any great danger to life and property at this moment in time — going by historical data — but then the Juan de Fuca has another 19.23 Ma of a boisterous life left in it; until it completes its journey into the bowels of North American and into oblivion. However, with time on its hands, the little renegade worries many geologists; in that the cities of Vancouver, Seattle, Washington, Portland and Newport, all lie in that fateful corridor. In the meantime, further south, the transform boundary between the Pacific and the North American Plate continues rattling the place all along the San Andres Fault. In recorded history are the earthquakes at Fort Tejon, 9 Jan. 1857, 7.9 Mw; Owens Valley, 26 Mar. 1872, 7.4 Mw; Imperial Valley, 24 Feb. 1892, 7.8 Mw; San Francisco, 18 Apr. 1906, 7.8 Mw; west of Eureka, 31 Jan. 1922, 7.3 Mw; Kern County, 21 July 1952, 7.3 Mw; Landers, 28 June 1992, 7.3 Mw. These again were the big ones; hundreds and thousands of lesser ones complete the picture to tell us that there is constant movement here. Further south is the little troublemaker... the Rivera Plate. The difficult-to-identify, inconsequential little microplate is, in fact, of great concern to the country of Mexico. Seismicity and tomography images show that the Rivera Plate dips at 40° beneath the forearc region, and WKHQGLSV§ƒEHQHDWKWKH7UDQV0H[LFDQ9ROFDQLF%HOWPRYLQJZLWKGHWHUPLQHGLQWHQVLW\ inwards at the rate of 1.4 cm/yr. It has been the cause of the strongest earthquakes in the history of Mexico, including the largest during the 20th century — the 8.2 Mw quake that shook the little country on 3 June 1932, with a 7.8 Mw aftershock; both of which caused widespread casualties and damage. The devastating 1985 Mexico City earthquake was once more a result of this subduction near the Cocos Plate there. On 9 Oct. 1995, the 8.0 Mw Colima-Jalisco earthquake caused significant loss of life and property. Then the 7.8 Mw earthquake on 24 Jan. 2003, confused students of geology and tectonics even more, as to why this little breakaway renegade harbours such venom spitting behaviour. Is it the sharp angle of its subduction process the cause of the intensities? Scientists are still out on the answer. Maybe the three renegades are not part of the Pacific Plate after all. The situation is the same in its interaction with the Nazca Plate, both (the Pacific and the Nazca) moving in tangential directions and away from one another, and at different speeds. The Pacific Plate is moving NNW while the Nazca Plate moves ENE, and it is the faster moving Nazca Plate — once recorded at a phenomenal rate of 32.2 cm/yr — that helps to grow and maintain the ridges we know as the East Pacific Rise and the Chile Rise (or the Chile Ridge). This creates an interesting feature down there, as the three ridges are the fastest spreading faults, and it is here that magma flowing through the spreading centres is not sufficiently solidified before more magma surfaces and builds on them, thus creating a build-up of a raised ocean floor. Hence the names. 223

The ones we hear about the most are: Mt Baker, Glacier Peak, Mt Rainier, Goat Rocks, Mt St Helens, Mt Adams and Indian Heaven.

156 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors…

Fig. 8.6: A clear visual description of the action of the Juan de Fuca Plate, and the reactions that take place in the area Credit: Public domain

Leaving the North American continent, the plate’s eastern border meanders down to the triple junction it creates with the Nazca and the Antarctic plates. Here, nesting between the three is the little Juan Fernández Plate; formed possibly from the upwelling in the spreading plates at the junction. While the Pacific and the Nazca run away from each other in tangentially opposite directions and away from the static Antarctic Plate, the little round plate at that triple junction goes nowhere, but spins clockwise on a perpendicular axis; pulled like a spindle by invisible threads unwrapping it to spin at the rotational speed of 8.3 cm/yr, allowing the sun to rise on its lovely island of Robinson Crusoe, at a different point on the horizon every day. Juan Fernández poses a question, as we learn that Santa Clara the oldest island on it is only 5.8 Ma old; the youngest, Alejandro Selkirk, is only 1.7 Ma old. Could it be that the triple junction opened up when the three plates began to move apart 5.8 Ma ago? Was that the time we began to see action in the Pacific theatre? Or was it 33.5 Ma ago, when the

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Pacific Plate made the turn north, and a little plume sprouted on the Pacific floor, to then rise over the waters 5.8 and 1.7 Ma ago? While we wait for the answers, the huge plate moves NW and thrusts itself under the belly of the earth, from down in the south of New Zealand, right north to the Aleutian Islands in a great arc over thousands of kilometres while expanding an incalculable amount of energy, simply to bury itself into those deep trenches along its western and northwestern borders. Add to that, over thousands of times more pressure needed to push it through the water column above it. Multiply that by the effort required to push its 16 km thick leading edge into trenches all the way from the southern oceans on to the northern circle, and a length of 16,330 km! An incalculable amount of energy expended in its inherent need to move NW, and that too at an average speed of 9 cm/yr! It moves, though, at speeds that are governed by local conditions; the speed with which it slip-slides over the Australian Plate is different to that in the Kuril Island trenches. That aside… looking at the vectors on the big plate, we see all of them telling us that she is running fast and in a uniform NW direction. The plate’s movements are again highly variable at different locations on it, but in general moving NW at speeds ranging from averages of 10 to 18 cm/yr along the East Pacific Rise, to 4 to 10 cm/yr where it runs into Australia and Asia. This differential movement deforms the ocean floor, and is probably a reason that the Pacific Ocean is dotted with volcanic islands; so many that the exact number has not yet been determined, and the best estimates put the numbers down to around 20,000 to 30,000 islands. On that SW to W to NW to its northern front, the havoc it causes along its long frontier are too numerous to enumerate, but let us tick out the notable ones. Volcanoes and earthquakes of note are: the 6.2 Mw 2011 Christchurch earthquake; 6.4 Mw 2018 earthquake LQ7DLZDQWKH0W3LQDWXERYROFDQLFHUXSWLRQWKH7żKRNXHDUWKTXDNHDQGWKH6DNXUDMLPD volcano in Japan. Japan, for that matter, is situated in the collision area of four great lithospheric plates: the Eurasian/Chinese Plate, the North American Plate, the Philippine Plate, and the Pacific Plate. On the fertile volcanic floor of Japan, early settlers farmed and lived and little hardship did the Japanese nobleman Tokugawa Ieyasu suspect in the year 1600 when he chose the village of Edo as his new residence. The city rapidly grew to become modern Tokyo. How was he to know that this strategic position at the bay of Tokyo was and is a seismic area? At the plate’s opposite bank in the east, in the cities of California, the story is repeated. Written Japanese records of strong earthquakes and their aftermath date back at least 1,600 years, but until 1860 the Japanese were less interested in exploring the cause of earthquakes than their effects. Their mythical explanation and belief in divine intervention prevailed, and it was only during the second half of the 19th and early 20th century, that scientific research on earthquakes became rapidly established there. In Jan. 1995, the industrial city of Kobe was heavily damaged by an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.2 Mw; the strongest earthquake in Japan since 1923. More than 6,000 people

158 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… were killed and more than 300,000 people lost their homes. Since then Japan has experienced at least seven major earthquakes of 6.8 Mw and above, which will unfortunately continue, and unpredictably so. The island country sits atop a complex mosaic of tectonic plates where over 2000 active faults can be found that grind together and trigger deadly earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.224 The continuous movements of the plates here generate a lot of energy, and which is also released from time to time in volcanoes on the major islands — some 50 of them on the island of Honshu alone, erupting unexpectedly, as and when magma is squeezed out of them by an earth that is toning up and tightening up its surface features. Add to this are the earthquakes of varying magnitude, but the seismic hazard of the whole subduction zone is extremely high, so large earthquakes are more common there than in any other place. About 1500 earthquakes strike the island nation every year, and minor tremors occur on a nearly daily basis. At times, the four plates move vertically relative to one another, and if under the sea, it is your ideal condition for a tsunami, and four plates multiply the probabilities of tsunamis happening, and is a key factor in tsunami genesis in the region. Further north, is the peninsula of Kamchatka, a place where 160 volcanoes are known to rumble, and at the time of this writing, 30 active ones were belching noxious gases into the atmosphere, and all along that long trench, it sends magma melts up on to the surface to explode in the volcanoes there. Earthquakes are no less frightening, and the world’s first recorded 9.0 Mw earthquake struck off its east coast on 4 Nov. 1952, even generating a 13 m tsunami locally, causing destruction around the peninsula, the Kuril Islands, and even Hawaii, where livestock losses were reported. No human casualties were recorded though, in those days that were devoid of on-the-spot communications. So what goes on at the western front? Too many questions are being asked here, and for us, the everyday man, are: where does all the energy come from? What generates it? Where is the plate going? Why in that particular direction only? Or is it by some coincidence; is the whole stretch of trenches in fragile ocean floor? Only on the western front? Have they all decided to lift up their skirt hems to the big boy? Is he bullying the others, or are they all ganging up on him? We also note that the Pacific Plate is shrinking and the empty space is being converged upon. Its reactionary forces are what is causing the earthquakes, volcanoes and the resulting tsunamis. Why here? What is so special about the Pacific? Why not Africa? Why not in Antarctica? It’s a useless piece of real estate just lying around doing nothing. Plates change their movement patterns when natural forces compel them to, and this big plate tells us another part of an interesting story, and in great clarity; that it abruptly 224

According to the 2013 White Paper on Disaster Prevention, issued by the Australian cabinet, some 20% of earthquakes in the world measuring 6.0 Mw or over occur in, or around Japan. Further, there are 110 active volcanoes in Japan accounting for about 7% of such volcanoes in the world.

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changed its direction of movement, midway during its long journey into the trenches. Tectonic plates have inched their way across the Earth’s surface to where they are now over the course of millions of years, and fortunately, they have left behind for posterity, traces of their movements through the bumps, gashes and striations that dot the sea-floor. On the Pacific seabed, are the trails of the Hawaiian and the Louisville seamount chains over their individual ‘hotspots’, and this picture tells us that the Pacific Plate was moving NNW heedfully, when suddenly something made it change its direction to move NW; and which it does till this day. The time of this sudden change in direction over those stationary flames of the hotspot below, happened some 33.5 Ma ago, when the South American Plate freed itself from the bottom of South Africa, changing the balance of the globe in one swift movement, forcing all the plates to change course midstream. $IWHUDYRODWLOHWKH.ūODXHDYROFDQR³ZKLFKKDGEHHQFRQWLQXRXVO\HUXSWLQJ since 1983 — finally seems to be taking a break following 35 years of nonstop activity, and as of the beginning of 2019, no lava currently flows from the Big Island’s most famous of them. What we see now, is that the giant plate is diving into the trenches on all fronts, and the questions in our mind now are: is the Pacific Ocean getting smaller? Another appears to be: what initiates these massive amounts of incalculable power needed to push the giant slab into the depths of the earth? That had been one of the big mysteries in the history of this recent science since its emergence. There must be a logical answer but at this moment, scientific opinion varies widely on the subject. Even the timing of the onset of tectonics is debated at the moment, with one camp claiming that oceanic plates have been pushing under other plates and sinking into the Earth’s mantle since the beginning of the Hadean eon, more than 4 Ga ago while others date its onset to the Neoproterozoic era of 500 to 1000 Ma ago. Which is it? The Pacific though, is half the story.

8.4.7.1 The Ring of Fire The other half actually, happens around the coasts of the Pacific Rim countries, after earlier seismicity recordings had identified it as a distinct band of a ‘horseshoe’-like arc that coincided with the plate’s borders for the most part. All along its 40,000 km long borders, scientists would also note that most volcanoes also resided on that strip — 452 of them — more than 75% of the world’s volcanoes — both active and dormant. They proliferate along the ring, with the heaviest concentrations being in the Kuril Islands; a volcanic arc that nourishes about 45 volcanoes. If that was not enough, all but three of the world’s 25 largest volcanic eruptions in the last 11,700 years happened here. The area has also generated the four largest earthquakes since the beginning of the 20th century: Kamchatka, Russia in 1952; the Aleutians in 1957; southern Chile in 1960 and at Prince William Sound, Alaska in 1964, while also proving once more that the bigger earthquakes occur in subduction zones.

160 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… By quantity and frequency, most of the tectonic activity happens here, and where most of the subducted plates are eaten up, only to be reborn as surface matter in the weaker and lighter spots around Earth’s crust; very noticeably, in the northern hemisphere. The deep trenches and the subduction of the plates create tremendous pressures all along the rim, helping create about 90% of the world’s earthquakes, with 81% of the world’s largest ones accounted for along this belt alone. Scientists christened, this busy, eventful but a sometimes frightening area, ‘The Ring of Fire’. The ‘Ring of Fire’ is the borders of the Pacific Plate, minus its southern border.

Fig 8.7: Credit: Wikipedia Commons

Coloured purple in Fig. 8.7 is the area we are talking about and that encircles the Pacific basin; the trenches are shown in blue. The volcanic island arcs are parallel to and always landward of the trenches, and there are at least eighteen major trenches around the arc. The SW portion that also comprises the South China Sea, has the archipelago of some 14,000 plus islands of Indonesia alongside, and is in a complex tectonic jumble beneath and around the islands. A number of smaller tectonic plates are also in collision with the Pacific Plate here — from the Mariana Islands, the Philippines, Bougainville, Tonga and New Zealand and the Kermadec Islands, then add to complicating the picture. In this big ocean, we are told that it is responsible for the unpredictable El Niño and La Niña weather changes. It is blamed on hot water rising from the central, south and southeast

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Pacific, in the area of the east-central Equatorial Pacific (approximately between the International Date Line and 120° W). Question: are not the fastest, longest and deepest ridges here in these parts? Could the warm waters not be attributed to the ridges when the heat of subduction is set free during the process? We have a long way to go before we begin to understand our earth.

8.4.8 The Antarctic Plate Description of the movements: Little vectors that are displayed on its boundaries with all the other plates surrounding it, show more divergence, less transform, with no convergent modes of movement. In other words: no plate is coming towards it; on the contrary, all are moving away from it. This is a crucial happening in the understanding of tectonics on our planet’s surface. Results of the movements: The vectors on the Antarctic Plate on the African side of it (remember… we are assuming the African Plate as being stationary and with no continental movement), show that the Antarctic Plate is diverging away from Africa. In fact, the African Plate is moving north away from Africa. The Indian Plate, the Australian Plate, the Pacific Plate and the Nazca Plate all follow a similar pattern of moving away from the Antarctic Plate. In the opposite direction with the Pacific Ocean on the opposite side, south of the Pacific, we see little vectors on the Antarctic Plate, moving north into the Pacific. You would expect that such a movement, would play out into a convergent boundary. This does not happen, as the vector down south on the Pacific Plate tells us that the part of the ridge on the Pacific side there — known as the ‘Pacific-Antarctic Ridge’ (PAR) — moves away faster than the Antarctic Plate following it, thereby continuing to maintain an ever-expanding divergent boundary between them. On Antarctica’s eastern boundary, the vectors tell us that the South American Plate is moving west, and the comparatively lighter southern tip of the South American continent, subducts the dense oceanic part of the Antarctic Plate; helped also by the action of the Nazca Plate to its immediate north, having already leveraged and lifted the western edge of the southern continent there in its subduction process. While these activities are in progress, two little plates also take advantage of the rising of South America’s western shelf, and gleefully slip under Antarctica’s skirt; the Scotia does it on its western front and the pint-size Shetland breaking away from Antarctica at its south, slips slyly under Antarctica’s spread-out skirt and digging it in with its northern face at the South Shetland Trench. ,QWHUHVWLQJO\WKH$QWDUFWLF3ODWHDOVRURWDWHVHDVWZDUGVDW§FP\U:LWKQRFHQWULSHWDO forces from Earth’s rotation acting on it — the land being at the pole — it is Earth’s spin and the cohesion forces on the lithosphere’s underbelly that assist in this drift east. The weight and friction of the deep waters of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC)225 in the Southern 225

Also known as the ‘West Wind Drift’.

162 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… Ocean226 moving at a speed of 4 km/h, and transporting water at the rate of 173 sverdrups227 (Sv), also helps her slow drift eastwards. This is not strictly tectonics at play, but the ACC’s drag effect on the ocean’s floor, the rotational inertia at work here, and the ‘Coriolis effect’228 forcing the single and water-surrounded southern plate to relent a little and ‘move with the tide’. Since the time both South America and Africa prised themselves out of her northern pocket 33.5 Ma ago — where now lies the Weddell Sea — the huge landmass of Antarctica has rotated eastwards at its periphery, some 1,450 km relatively to the South American Plate. The plate, for all practical purposes, is quite and lonely down south, and as such, not paid much attention to. Very few seismographs dot its wide expanse, to hear of some abnormal sounds from her, as the ground does occasionally rumble there, but not really from moving plates. On its periphery, there is some action and the hotspot near the Balleny Islands — south of New Zealand and on the Antarctic Circle — is a triple juncture between the Antarctic, the Australian and the Pacific plates; the three moving in different directions and speed and it is here, where, in recent times, earthquakes of 8.1 Mw (1998) and 6.2 Mw (2014) have been recorded. Again, most of the large and more frequent earthquakes have been on the southern part of the PAR, where the southern border of the Pacific Plate is moving away from the Antarctic Plate at that juncture, in a divergent boundary and with the greatest of speed when compared to the other two plates. The same action is played out by the Nazca Plate, as it moves north slower and eastwards at a quicker pace. Also, in that southern corner of our globe, are the two little plates that ride along with South America’s tail, and as they do, cause earth-shaking problems; especially the little one — the Shetland Plate, which seems to be in a great hurry to move more north along with the South American Plate, rather than west into the empty Pacific. In this great hurry, that locale is subjected to an unusual number of little slips and thrusts that all result in the frequent earthquakes there. However, where Antarctica is concerned, it is the movement north and away from her by all the other plates, that is of utmost importance to us understanding as to why the continents ride the globe, and the motive and principal forces behind tectonics. 226

227

228

As per the terms of the International Hydrographic Bureau’s (IHB) 3rd edition of the ‘Limits of Oceans and Seas’ currently in force, the territory of the ‘Antarctic, or Southern Ocean’, is presently divided among the Pacific, Atlantic, and the Indian oceans, and hence found referred to variously as the Austral Ocean, the Antarctic Ocean, or even the South Polar Ocean. The draft 4th edition published in 2002 calling it simply the ‘Southern Ocean’, has not been adopted owing to other disputes, but is sometimes used as an authority for the ocean’s existence. We shall use it so. The name given in honour of Harald Sverdrup, who calculated the volume of water transported by the ocean currents, to a million cubic metres per second (m3/s); the largest amount of water transported amongst other established water current cycles on the globe, or 135 times the transport of all the world’s rivers combined. The Coriolis force is an inertial force (also called a fictitious force) that acts on objects that are in motion relative to a rotating reference frame. In a reference frame with clockwise rotation, the force acts to the left of the motion of the object.

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8.5 LAVA AND MANTLE MOVEMENT UNDER THE SOUTH-EAST PACIFIC OCEAN SEABED Of the 22 trenches we have around Earth’s oceans, 18 are in the Pacific, 3 in the Atlantic, and 1 in the Indian Ocean. Fig. 8.8 depicts those deeper than 9000 m. Serial No.

Name

Location

Depth (metres)

Latitude

Longitude

1

Mariana Trench

Pacific Ocean

10,911

11° 21’ N

142° 12’ E

2

Tonga Trench

Pacific Ocean

10,882

21° 94’ S

174° 73’ W

3

Philippine Trench

Pacific Ocean

10,540

08° 00’ N

127° 00’ E

4

Kuril-Kamchatka

Pacific Ocean

10,500

47° 50’ N

155° 35’ E

5

Kermadec Trench

Pacific Ocean

10,047

28° 00’ S

175° 00’ W

6

Japan Trench

Pacific Ocean

9,000

40° 11’ N

144° 31’ E

Fig. 8.8

All the above trenches we see, are in the Pacific Ocean. In this rectangle (47° 50’ N to 28° 00’ S and 127° 00’ E to 174° 73’ W), lie the six deepest trenches on earth, and to narrow that down to the deepest three, we get into an area (11° 21’ N to 21° 94’ S and 174° 73’ W to 127° 00’ E), of only less than 20 Mkm2. Interestingly, we see in Fig. 9.17, hundreds of pockmarked attempts of the ocean crust giving way to attempts by lava trying to ooze out of weak spots. You see these here, as underwater volcanoes, guyots, dome volcanoes and little new volcanic islands that dot the area. While this little area in the SW of the Pacific Basin is in a compressional mode, pushing plates under continents, at the antipodal end is the Atlantic Ocean in an extension mode, and devoid of volcanic activity.

8.6 THE ALPIDE BELT OR THE ALPINE-HIMALAYAN OROGENIC BELT There is one more piece of the puzzle that completes the picture of tectonic activity on earth. From Gibraltar in Western Europe through the Mediterranean, the Levant, the Zagros Mountains, the Hindu Kush, Tibet, then down through the Andaman Group of Islands, and on through the Malay peninsula, and then finally resting at the tip of eastern Indonesia in East Timor, lies a restless network of orogenic faults, created by the southern plates forging northwards into the Eurasian Plate. Massive cities — including Lisbon, Madrid, Rome,229 Constantinople, Tbilisi, Tehran, Kathmandu, Yangon, and Jakarta — are situated on this dangerous and unpredictable land; the second most seismically active region in the world, where 17% of the world’s largest earthquakes have been recorded. 229

Colli Albani is an extinct volcanic complex of hills located 30 km from the centre of Rome. An analysis of rocks from the volcano revealed a history of past eruptions, the most recent of which occurred 36,000 ya. Within the next 1000 years, it is expected to get active again — Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience, 13 July 2016.

164 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… This collisional zone is characterised by thrust belts and uplift on land for the most part of its length, and it can at best be described as a motley collection of little scraps and islands of the old Tethys Ocean, now long compressed into orogenies by the plates pushing and pinching them from both the north and the south. Why does this strip of crushed land rumble in the middle of everywhere? For that crushed reason precisely. The land is squeezed from forces in the north and the south, and the result of these actions is the orogenies, that can clearly be observed on relief maps of the globe. Take Spain as an example; a separate island, but the northward-moving African Plate pushed the little vagrant against the European landmass, thereby crushing their faces in a convergent and destructive manner, driving up the mountains at that border with present-day France, pushing up the Pyrenees to form what we now assume to be their natural geographic border. France and Kyrgyzstan fared no better, having moved there from the balmy tropics with their cargo of rehabilitated penguins, whereas Georgia once a part of North Africa brought along with it, some long-buried bipedal fossils from Africa. In their crushed spaces, they all take turns to grumble and rumble — two recent earthquakes in Italy in 2017, reminded us that the belt is not going to disappear for some time to come. To complicate the Pacific’s problems, at the edge of the Ring of Fire, the eastern end of the Alpine-Himalayan orogenic belt tickles the already agitated commotion in the South China Sea. In here lies Indonesia, a land of volcanoes and earthquakes; not far behind Japan for that matter. Here, once more we see the Boxing Day upheaval located within this belt, and not without a small measure of coincidence. Vesuvius, Santorini, Krakatau and on to Tambora, tell us that at a time, humanity was at the mercy of plate-movement-induced-tectonics. Humanity survived in spite and because of it, too.

8.7 QUIRKY QUAKES So, all these plates combine as a unit, go about what they are ordered to do, and on an average, earthquakes happen about 1.44 million times annually, or at an average 3957 times a day, and these are the recorded ones, and of the 2.0 to 9.9 Mw range. Thousands upon thousands of smaller ones go unnoticed, and even larger ones in barren areas are not accounted for: e.g. in the Arctic, the Antarctic, the Sahara Desert, or maybe even the Gobi Desert and such. We must also remember that 71% of Earth’s surface is water, and that the sea-floors are not monitored, as it is done on land. What we are recording then is a mere 10 to 20% of the earthquake happenings on Earth’s surface, and a few months go by without another devastating earthquake somewhere in the world, reminding us how we all remain at the mercy of major seismic events that strike without warning.

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A majority of the quakes are in the 4.0 to 4.9 Mw range, which occur at an average of DURXQG  WLPHV D \HDU 7KH VHFRQG ODUJHVW LQ RXU UHFHQW PHPRU\ LV WKH 7żKRNX earthquake, which also forced the Fukushima nuclear power plant to experience a meltdown which led to widespread radioactive contamination in the area. In recent times, we have also had Sumatra in 2004, Wenchuan in 2008, Haiti in 2010, and Sumatra again in 2012, and Japan once again this time around. In each case, the story is the same: an earthquake struck without warning, taking the lives of unsuspecting humanity along while felling buildings as if they were ‘houses of cards’. However, with all of our accumulated knowledge today, about the forces that shape our planet, geoscientists are still unable to foresee when a major quake will strike.230 Predicting one with certainty in the near future seems a long way off, and many have given up the struggle.231 With our inability to tell why a plate moves in a certain linear direction, or just sits there and rotates, or moves at the speed it does, predicting when it will take issue and object to a neighbour’s ‘sticking-out-part’, lays bare our ignorance regarding matters of our host and benefactor... Earth. Some, though, still keep trying, and our search for answers moves on, with one such being the work carried out by the ‘Global Earthquake Model’ foundation, who have developed the ‘seismic risk platform’ since 2009 while compiling a list based on tens of thousands of earthquake records, stretching back more than a 1000 years. It is the largest seismic database of its kind ever constructed, to be used by scientists, to issue more general forecasts of hazards and potential damage, and for the better understanding of these unpredictable calamity-causing happenings. Are we making progress on the subject?

8.7.1 Aftershocks, ‘Dynamic Triggering’ and ‘Chain Reactions’ For a start, we may be on to something... The 8.1 Mw Macquarie Islands earthquake occurred three days before the Boxing Day quake. Interesting! Was there any relation between the two? The quake was very far from 230

231

Yes, we can! The Chinese did an amazing ‘prediction’, saving the lives of thousands of their people, when a 7.3 Mw quake struck Haicheng on 4 Feb. 1975. It damaged more than 2000 bridges, as well as homes, transport pipelines, hydraulic facilities, and a host of the districts infrastructure. Of the estimated 1 million residents, 27,000 were injured, and 2041 people lost their lives, but Chinese officials said that their prediction and subsequent evacuation orders just hours before the shakeup, saved the lives of thousands more, with experts saying that the toll could have been greater than 150,000. Then there are the volcanoes and we remember Mt St Helens that erupted on 18 May 1980. We knew the mountain was going to explode, from the growing bulge on its side and lives were saved. ‘No single model takes home all the gold’, said the seismologist John Vidale of the University of Washington, after half a dozen teams decided to participate in an experiment to identify the likeliest places where 4.9 Mw quakes or stronger would occur over a five-year period, in seismically active California. The exercise, which began in 2006 and wrapped up in Dec. 2010, told us that our new science still has its doubters. Since the experiment ended, scientists are applying lessons learned, to a similar international effort currently under way.

166 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… the site of the yet-to-occur earthquake, unfolding on a different plate boundary altogether. The occurrence of two great earthquakes within such a short space of time is indeed striking. However, at this time, even in retrospect, we do not yet see evidence of even a physical relationship between the plates or boundaries where the two earthquakes happened. But then... When the ‘Boxing Day’ earthquake took place off the coast of Sumatra, sensors around California monitoring the San Andreas Fault not only sensed the quake but recorded simultaneous movements within its entire fault line. In the 8.6 Mw Indian Ocean earthquake on 11 Apr. 2012, its epicentre was within the Indo-Australian Plate. On that same day and a few hours later, another massive 8.2 Mw movement in a strike-slip fault took place in the same area off the shore of Sumatra. What interested semiologists however, was that in the week that followed, 15 major quakes were recorded in their wake; 13 were around the Pacific Plate rim alone. Were these 13 quakes around the Ring of Fire just a coincidence following the Indian Ocean earthquake? Or did the plate shift enough that it created gaps all around it for the neighbouring plates to move in? The latter appears the likely scenario. Of the other two, one was on 25 May in the Aegean Seismic Zone. This inland plate is a highly complicated zone, squeezed on all sides, and an earthquake here is waiting to happen, could not possibly be pinned on the Sumatra quake that happened over a month earlier and some 8100 km away. However, as from the start of that year, increased seismic activities there — mainly around the Aegean Sea region — were being reported. On a single fault line, or around a plate that has moved, repercussions are understandable, even to be expected... like what happened on 11 Apr. 2014 with the 8.2 Mw that struck offshore off Iquique in Chile, where all along that line were quakes of 7.5 Mw and 7.0 Mw on that very day! 6 Mw in Panama the next day and back to Iquique on the 3rd day — striking three times, with intensities of 6.5 Mw, 7.7 Mw and 6.2 Mw, at different locations and depths — and then another one on the 4th day with a 6.1 Mw quake. These are all quakes > 6.0 Mw and were on a single fault line, where a plate was recently displaced. That’s understandable. The whole of the Nazca Plate moved it appears, and then after a lot of murmuring around the plate with numerous little quakes, a large one struck two months later. On 1 June 2014 at 05:07 in the morning, an earthquake of a 5.6 Mw appeared to create a domino effect that would reverberate around the Pacific and beyond, shaking up the world that day. Earthquakes of 4.6 Mw and higher struck at 06:18 in the Mollusca Sea, at 06:56 off the northern coast of Papua, Indonesia, 08:48 in Japan, 11:03 in Pakistan, 12:32 in southern Xinjiang, China, 13:31 in the Fiji Islands, 14:59 in Sumba, eastern Indonesia, 18:10 in San Juan, Argentina, 19:11 once again near the north coast of Papua… and the list went on... and these were the bigger adjustments made. An un-recordable more, would be made all along of Earth’s plate boundaries.

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Why is that so? That must now be obvious. One cramped up and cranky little fellow down south decided one early morning that he needed to shift a little in his sleeping position and simply woke up his mates sharing a cramped bed with him, creating a hundred little adjustments all around. Ever watched a seventh person enter into a church pew from the side? All the others keep shifting away from the ‘intruder’ for the next few minutes; the first ones with the big adjustments that then progressively decreases till stability is achieved. On the evidence of occurrences of these ‘aftershocks’ are what scientists now call ‘Dynamic triggering’. The ‘chain reactions’ are plausible and probable that a single earthquake will have produced a redistribution of tectonic stresses along and near the boundary between two plates, freeing space for a neighbour to move a little, for its neighbour in turn, to then adjust its contour even a fraction, and that would be enough for another plate at its wits end, to retaliate; the proverbial ‘last straw’ in its case, and enough to start another ‘chain’ reaction. In some areas, this redistribution of stresses will be such as to shorten the time to the next big earthquake compared to what would have been the case if the earthquake had not happened. In conclusion, that 13 earthquakes happened following the one on that fateful day of 11 Apr. 2014, suggests that the Pacific Plate moved and its movement touched others and the earthquakes that followed were the result of that single movement by a bedfellow. The quake shook up the world. When on the 25 Oct. 2010, tectonic movement sent the Indo-Australian Plate into the underbelly of the Sunda Plate, triggering a 7.7 Mw earthquake on that very same fault of the earlier Boxing Day earthquake, scientists were on their guard and waiting, and half a world away — on the eastern edge of the Pacific Plate — seismic monitors registered simultaneous seismic activity all along America’s west coast. In another instance, an extraordinary number of earthquakes of 4.5 Mw and greater were triggered worldwide in the six days following the 8.6 Mw East Indian Ocean earthquake off the coast of Sumatra in Apr. 2012, with some occurring as far away as Mexico and the San Andreas Fault. Then again... why did an 8.6 Mw earthquake trigger after quakes 8000 km away while a 9.1 Mw did nothing of that sort? The answer lies in the amount of the plate’s strike-slip movement or displacement; not its magnitude. The larger or longer the slip, the more area available for plates to move around, adjusting their respective boundaries to move to a more comfortable position. This allows for more plates around Earth’s crust to adjust themselves while moving out of the stress and strain they were hereto subjected to; hence the more aftershocks on plate boundaries the result.232 The magnitude of an earthquake is 232

In results published in the 2 Aug. 2018 edition of the journal Scientific Reports (8 article number: 11611; doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-30019-2), analysis of seismic data from 1973 through 2016, provided the first discernible evidence that in the three days following one large quake, other earthquakes were more likely to occur. Robert T. O’Malley et al. Evidence of Systematic Triggering at Teleseismic Distances Following Large Earthquakes.

168 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… also dependent on its depth. A large slip of a shallow crust and a large magnitude quake at a greater depth could produce the same domino effect. The variables are too many and complicated for computation, and for us to understand at this moment in time.233 Maybe we could figure out why earthquakes are of varied duration. Maybe it is the time taken for a rupture to travel from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’ after it breaks away and moves on in its original path or journey. At this moment in time, seismologists are busy in this still very nascent subject of science that we are only beginning to understand the fringe action. Predicting earthquakes is still a long way off. There are no verifiable concepts based on fundamental principles of physics, to predict earthquakes with any degree of certainty. The only time men need to be alarmed is when a plate moving along quietly and without any fuss, slows down or abruptly stops moving.

8.8 THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE PLATES In Earth’s history of its physical formation through tectonics, an unknown number of plates have moved over her surface with an unknown number of them having subducted into the depths of her molten interior... into oblivion. Never will we ever know about them, or even imagine they were once around. It was a process repeated before, constantly destroying and redrawing Earth’s canvas; forced upon her by forces obeying our cosmos’ physical laws of motion and matter. In a few million years, the little Rivera Plate would have slipped under Mexico, to be consumed in the cauldron of Earth’s magma chamber, never to be heard of again. We see this happening in all the trenches and we cannot even so much as take a guess as to what went before us. If we were looking at tectonics for the first time a million years down the line, we would not have known about the Rivera Plate, before it slipped away just before we had a chance to catch a glimpse of it. Or is its tail we are looking at right now? So, it could be possible that the smaller plates in the present mode of subduction — as we look at them now — may have once been large plates that have over millions of years — before we knew there were plates around earth — subducted most of their mass into the bowels of the earth. The purpose to all this madness, is that we now know that carbon cycles to the subsurface and back to the atmosphere through natural processes — and it is the volcanism that releases gases into the atmosphere — and then through weathering, carbon dioxide is pulled from the atmosphere and sequestered back into surface rocks and sediment. Balancing those two processes keeps carbon dioxide at a certain level in the atmosphere, which is really important whether the climate stays temperate and suitable for life. Earth, crusty shell of a planet that regularly kills off its occupants with violent earthquakes and massive volcanic eruptions, does not sound like the ideal habitat. 233

Material for reading: W. Fan, P. M. Shearer. Local near instantaneously dynamically triggered aftershocks of large earthquakes. Science, 2016; 353 (6304): 1133 DOI:10.1126/science.aag0013.

It is happening...

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Nevertheless, tectonics is what makes earth the only planet in the solar system that harbours and promotes life — notwithstanding, on its unpredictable surface.234 This then has been an interesting place for tectonics, as geologic features here contain sites of continuous earthly movements; spreading centres, convergent and transform boundaries, volcanoes (under the sea and on land), ocean trenches, underwater mountain ridges, guyots, seamounts and hydrothermal vents. The whole gamut of tectonic triggers that mingle with little microplates, that all then combine to test the limits of our trying to understand as to why they all behave so. We now know that the landmasses on earth are in perpetual motion all over the globe, and as we read this, we have moved a little, relative to any other position on the continent. Though we may be at rest and apparently appear stationary, at the end of the day, we are displaced on Earth’s surface, and even to any other point in the universe, even if unmeasurable by our standards. We have learnt that at plate boundaries, faults move at a rate that is consistent with the rate of earthquakes. Historical data and past events are now looked at as reliable guidelines to the future earthquake predictions. However, there is still a long way to go before we can predict earthquake hazards. Most of the time, we never see the telltale physical signs of impending danger, and lives are lost. Man is still powerless against the forces of nature and until this day, we cannot predict earthquakes. However, new studies encourage us, and as we set up more earthquake monitors and develop new and more advanced imaging techniques, studying the Earth’s floor, it will allow seismologists to draw up higher-resolution images of deepearth processes, hopefully enabling us to predict future crustal behaviour.

8.9 THE ULTIMATE RECYCLER As the oceanic plates are subducted back into the bowels of earth, they get destroyed in the mantle, only to be recycled once again, appearing elsewhere on Earth’s lithospheric hotspots, in newer areas of the land and sea, through volcanoes, rifts, fissures and flood basalt eruptions, and in a process that takes an average of around 500 Ma.235 Scientists have today calculated that the oceanic lithosphere moves into trenches at a global rate of about 3 km2/yr. Nothing called ‘life’ we know, could have been if bacteria did not produce oxygen and trees did not photosynthesis the carbon dioxide. Free oxygen life breathes; the excess is stored in reservoirs in Earth’s mantle in composites of rock, soil, and matter. Tectonics would take up the relay’s baton, to convert rocks to magma, to explode through Earth’s crust in turn, and man to die and return to carbon once more. Tectonics is the pump, the heart that pushes the rock into the furnace of a stomach deep within the 234 235

Planets that do not support tectonics, are called ‘stagnant lid’ planets. We are just beginning to understand this process through the chemical analysis of tiny glassy inclusions in olivine crystals from basaltic lava.

170 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… earth that, in turn, melts them and then cycles it back to the surface. Through fissures, rifts and volcanoes, it emerges in various forms; pillow lava at the bottom of the oceans, light rocks on Earth’s surface, and in the atmosphere through the release of tephra, gas and heat. While the largest portion of gases released into the atmosphere is water vapour, others include the common ones that are familiar; carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, hydrogen, methane, and vapour clouds in the form of hydrochloric acid, hydrogen fluoride and hydrogen sulphide. While the gases, for the most part, are airborne and circulated to become salts and such, those that concentrate and lump up together can be harmful to life. They can burn vegetation or contaminate drinking water. This process is also critical to the planet’s metabolism; recycling of underwater life, while also helping to maintain the delicate balance of carbon in the ocean and atmosphere. Tectonics rejuvenates all life on earth.

‘With such wisdom has nature ordered things in the economy of this world, that the destruction of one continent is not brought about without the renovation of the earth in the production of another’. — James Hutton

9

Why does it happen?

He was right!236 The 18th century genius is now fittingly referred to as the ‘Father of Modern Geology’. Hutton’s words — literally the ‘cornerstone’ of tectonics as we understand it now — are plain, simple and elegant! He would neither have heard of ‘thermodynamics’, nor dreamt that a simple equation that would describe much more than his world — including time and space — would be encompassed by his simple but singular observation. Earth is a stable entity in our universe, and looking down at her from space, she appears blissful in undisturbed peace; the ‘Blue Dot’ that Carl Sagan would be proud of. While she appears so, outwardly and nearer home, we hear her rumble within — tectonics being at the heart of her domestic difficulties. Tremblors, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, flooding, climate change, and the abrupt appearance of new islands from below the waterline... all add to trouble ‘life’ on her ever-evolving surface. Why is this agitation of a body that appears, from a distance, content and stable? Why earthquakes and the ensuring turmoil? Why do the plates have to move around on her surface? Can they not just be there? Why do volcanoes erupt? Why do new islands pop up in the seas? Why tsunamis?

9.1 THE FIXED ENTITY While trying to understand tectonics, we must first comprehend the movement of material over and inside earth while acknowledging the fact that earth is a ‘fixed’ entity. Earth maintains its constant mass, no matter what state her elements are in, or have sublimated into; solid, liquid or gas. It was the French geophysicist, Xavier Le Pichon — the pioneering plate tectonic modeller — who upheld Hutton’s hypothesis when he said: ‘... plates form an integrated system, where the sum of all crust generated at oceanic ridges is balanced by the cumulative amount destroyed in all subduction zones’. In 1968, using a computer, Le Pichon was able to demonstrate a model of the physical motion of six major plates that form part of Earth’s 236

His thinking influenced probably, by Antoine Laurent Lavoisier’s discovery of the ‘Law of Conservation of Mass’ (or matter) of 1756. The law simply states that in a chemical reaction, matter is neither created nor destroyed.

174 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… crust. He demonstrated that the total crust created at the ocean ridges equalled the amount of crust lost due to subduction. Earth came into our solar system weighing in at 5.94 billion trillion tonnes (GTt), and she is still 5.94 GTt today.237 Armed with this information, we can therefore confidently say that hard dense rock of the subducted lithospheric plates are pushed down into Earth’s mantle, where they sublimate into magma and compressed gas. This then emerges through spectacular volcanic eruptions, or as shield volcanoes, or in the many unheard of slow lava flow in cracks, fissures and rifts all around the globe, or as ‘blow torch’ like sea-floor flares. There is a continuous equitable movement, of what goes in and what comes out. The equation may not be constant in volumes, but whatever the outcome, the net transfer or exchange of material between old dense submerged rock and new soft lava and gasses emanating from Earth’s cracks, fissures, and vents, is quantitatively the same; no loss, no gain. As we accept Earth as a ‘fixed’ entity, we must now relate this to what is known as the ‘Fixed-Earth Theory’.238 This theory verifies the mechanism that accomplishes the movement of lands on the surface of the earth and within it, where new lithosphere — most created on oceans and sea-floor trenches — spread away and cools as it ages, although older ones become dense and some slowly slide and sink or subduct back into the mantle at plate boundaries and trenches. The subducted crust is then recycled in the bowels of the earth and goes on to rise again, to eventually form volcanoes, volcanic island chains, volcanic mountains, flood basalt traps, or mid-ocean ridges. The process is continuous; ongoing recycling, back and forth. However, the oldest crust is not necessarily recycled first. The entire eastern shores of the Americas and the entire length of the western shores of Africa, and that in the Madagascar Channel have the oldest crusts around since tectonics began (there are more older ones in Hudson Bay in Canada and the Jack Hills of Australia), but they are not being sent down into the trenches. Those that go down into the trenches are sent down there by other forces, and we will come to that, but in the meantime... The more she is recycled, the more earthquakes and such happen, and to sum up our brief: Crust destroyed = Crust created + some much needed recycled fresh atmosphere.

9.1.1 ... and the Questions The question that has perplexed scientists since we began to understand tectonics and its unreasonable behaviour is: why does it happen? Why do these inanimate slabs of rock — 237

238

We are still at sea though, on what is the net gain from cosmic dust accumulated on earth, and net loss from hydrogen and helium escaping her exosphere, and into the voids of outer space. Some estimates say that our planet gets lighter by losing 0.000000000000001% of mass every year (an amount hardly worth paying attention to), but no one really knows for sure. A new proposal called ‘Cosmic Dust in the Terrestrial Atmosphere’, is aimed at providing us with a more accurate estimate, of how much material hits earth, as well as how it might affect the atmosphere. (Source: Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics). As against the ‘Expanding Earth’, or EE theory which is not relevant here.

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displaying a ‘mind’ of their own (remember the Pacific and Rivera plates?) — move around? Why do plates destroy themselves by diving headlong into the fiery hell of the earth? Just to emerge clean and fresh, in another form, on Earth’s beautiful surface? Personal hygiene? What is that force that commands them to behave so? Does it happen only that Earth’s old skin is recycled? Is it ‘recycling’ the old as well as fresh earth, or is it ‘balancing’ the slabs out to form a nice light compact little orb with an inch-perfect dynamic rotational axis? Underlying all this, is once more, the other eternal question of tectonics that remains to be answered — that what is that mighty force that moves huge plates of dense heavy rock in certain definite directions? What is this force that pulls and tears away a huge slab of compressed earth from its moorings, and that which is weighed down by millions of trillion tonnes of water and land above it, and then nonchalantly sends it along thousands of kilometres across the globe’s surface? That surface too is certainly not a slippery ice-rink, but one with rough stony, rocky, potholed, and with earthly contours on it. How much is this power that sends a monstrous slab of a thick blunt granite or compacted dense and 100 km thick sedimentary stone slab, deep into the hard dense compressed crust of an ocean floor of the Eurasian, Philippine, American and the Australian plates combined? At such borders, earth fights back the offending forces and shudders in response. Logically, it is incomprehensible to understand those unseen forces. Sadly, the power of its outcome cannot be physically demonstrated by our present-day laboratories.239 Neither can the directions of its plate movements be modelled compellingly on a computer. How do we justify a ‘mother’ plate moving in one direction while simultaneously sending a tiny plate sharing a common border with it, in a tangential direction, is yet not computable by present science, let alone predict which way it will move, and at what speed it will do so? Predicting when earthquakes will happen, is not on our future’s horizon yet.

9.2 A PART TIMER’S CONTRIBUTION In 1891, while studying and measuring Earth’s physical movements when he was associated with the Harvard College Observatory, Seth Carlo Chandler240 discovered small deviations in Earth’s ‘dynamic’ axis of rotation, relative to its ‘assigned’ geometric axis of rotation. Over time — 30 years of dedicated work actually — Chandler measured and plotted the positions of Earth’s dynamic rotational axis, and that showed that it was not steady at the North Pole, but was over a period of time wobbling about its assigned North-South geometric axis (that cartographers draw on their maps of the globe that bisects earth with symmetry and equally). 239

240

‘Earthquakes are immense forces of nature, involving complex rock physics and failure mechanisms occurring over time and space scales that cannot be recreated in a laboratory environment’, said USGS Director Marcia McNutt. For his methodical and dedicated pursuit in understanding our world, this American astronomer, had the Chandler Crater on the moon named after him.

176 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… When plotted in real spinning time, the dynamic axis wobbled in a rough circle, amounting to a variable change of about 6.5 to 9 m from cycle to cycle; with reference to the point at which the geometric axis intersects with Earth’s surface. When last measured, the wobble displayed a cyclic period of 435 days.241

Fig. 9.1: The 1968–1970 cycle of the wobble recorded at the North Pole

The odd behaviour of the real-time axis would come to be known as the ‘Chandler Wobble’.242 So, what was behind the wobble? It had to do with some imbalance in Earth’s rotational dynamism and its physical properties. We know that an imbalanced toy top spins clean for a time, and when on its final spinning legs, progressively increases its wobbles before the spinning motion dies. A well-balanced toy top spins longer and dies quickly, with little or a non-discernible wobble. Try this: stick a little hobby putty on the well balanced top and observe its reaction and the duration of its rotation as it did without the putty.

9.2.1 Wobbling Inconstancy? Interestingly Chandler’s detailed and meticulous readings showed that the wobble was not consistent in its cyclic movement when the amplitude fluctuations from the equilibrium were compared with previous cycles. In 1925, and again in 2005,243 the record showed abnormal spikes in the wobble. Why this sudden erratic behaviour? Was it a passing comet 241

242

243

Though the IERS defines it as ‘A free oscillation with period about 435 days’, some studies calculate it to be 437 days. See: ‘The Earth’s figure axis determined from the polar motion data’ — Yoshio Kubo, 22 June 2012. Now referred to as ‘Polar Motion’, as described by the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service, and defined as the motion of the rotation axis of the earth, relative to the crust. This is not to be confused with ‘Precession’ which is a 26,000 year old cycle and is related to the influence of gravity of external heavenly bodies — like Sun and Moon among others — on the dynamic earth. “Earth’s Chandler Wobble Changed Dramatically in 2005”. TechnologyReview.com MIT Technology Review. 2009. Retrieved 25 July 2013.

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or an asteroid that was disturbing Earth’s balance through gravitational attraction, or were the gravities of the planets Venus, Mars or Jupiter influencing Earth’s rotational cycle? Was it some unbalanced earthly thing within earth we knew nothing about, or could it be that some earthly matter within earth had moved around suddenly, creating this abnormality? Aligning its magma within? Volcanoes? Ocean currents? Plate movement? Earthquakes? All other possibilities investigated and discounted — including the movement of ocean waters, magnetic abnormalities, extra-terrestrials designs, the gas giants’ behaviour, changes in ocean currents, changing temperatures, or melting glaciers — the swarm of earthquakes at that precise time, hinted of a possible ‘earthquake’ connection. What could cause such sudden abnormalities if not the earthquakes having something to do with the shifting of Earth’s mass around within it… or over its surface? The interior being molten and fluid, it could only then be the giant slabs of the lithosphere that suddenly shift their massive weight around. Scientists then honed in on the timings of an abnormal surge in earthquakes and compared them with the curious and sudden surge in the wobble amplitude points measured in those two years of the greatest deviation. There was something here; the two matched, and it could not be a coincidence. It was not a ‘Eureka’ moment, but answers were coming in... From Feb. to June of 1925, earth experienced major earthquakes, like the ones in the 6.2 Mw Charlevoix-Kamouraska quake in Canada, the 7.0 Mw Dali quake in China; the 6.75 Mw Wyoming quake; the 6.75 Mw Montana quake; and the 6.8 Mw Santa Barbara earthquake, and all three in the USA. Others greater than 6.0 Mw occurred in Iran, Japan and the Philippines. That year alone, there were 6193 earthquakes above 5.0 Mw. Compare this with 1152 earthquakes in 1924, and 622 in 1926, on either side of it. A sudden 700% increase above the average of those two figures combined! Between 2004 and 2005, the average number of earthquakes was 30,836; the highest in the period between 2000 through 2012 (Sumatra-Andaman: 26 Dec. 2004, and 28 Mar. 2005 standing out, and those two are in the top 10 of the all-time biggest earthquakes list).244 From the timings of these two different intervals of abnormal earthquakes on Earth’s surface that were consistent with the deviant wobbles, it sealed our understanding of the subject. While one part of the puzzle was being stitched up, the other was to find out what was causing the earthquakes.

9.2.1.1 Earth’s Dual Axes In everyday life, when we see the clothes washer vibrating, or a car wheel does so often after you hit a curb, we understand that the loads are not evenly distributed around the machine’s axis of rotation. Chandler’s Wobble would send us into that direction to 244

Source: USGS — Number of Earthquakes Worldwide for 2000-2012.

178 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… investigate further, and one of the questions would have been about Earth’s uniformity around its assigned axis of rotation. Now that we have this new ‘dynamic’ axis, we can plot its movement on paper and read, and understand the wobbling unbalanced mass of our globe. It is apparent that it is not the ‘static’ straight line that our cartographers draw on the map of our globe, depicting it as the North-South axis that is supposed to be threaded through the poles. This new dynamic axis is also called the ‘figure axis’ of rotation — the axis about which Earth’s mass is balanced while in motion. Our cartographer’s ‘apparent’ or fixed axis, is symmetrical on maps of earth, is set to his personal disposition on a static globe (and which also leads the mind into erroneously thinking that earth is symmetrical about that depiction), and in practice, not aligned with the figure axis. The conflict between natural reality and the assumed, is that it brings forth a difference. We can now confidently say that with two axes now allotted to earth — the ‘symmetric axis’ and the ‘figure axis’ of rotation — we have a problem on our hands. The figure axis is, in fact, Earth’s dynamic rotational axis, and that the ’Chandler wobble’ is justified at this moment in Earth’s history. Since the discovery of the ‘Chandler wobble’ and it’s circulating around in the scientific community, this imbalance had to be investigated. The hunt was on... ... but where on earth was it?

9.3 THE UNBALANCED GEOID Once again, it was the old ‘Cold War’ that won us the day for us. Now it was from above the water line! It became the time that spy satellites that were designed to look and listen for enemy movements from above the terrestrial earth, would develop to that moment, where we could not only spot continents moving, but also the whole planet in whatever position we liked. We spied on her from the sky, and what we saw...

9.3.1 …Earth is not Barycentric All the other planets in our solar system had achieved a state of ‘roundness’ during their accretion and formation, at the time of their slow birthing into the solar system family. They had time on their hands, and as they formed bit by bit, and layer upon cosmic dust layer, they grew within the family, into perfect orbs of the less stressful planets of rock or gas. Earth, however, entered our solar system from an extra-terrestrial location, and in a different form — in the shape of our proverbial ‘teardrop’. Earth is out there in space; from her ‘teardrop’ or ‘egg-shaped’ entry into our solar system, she is still in that process of getting as round as she can get, or is allowed to in the time she has. She does this, by shifting her weight around, and as she moves, her belly shifts and moves internally too. During these movements, her brittle skin stretches and contracts, fissures and fractures while plates disappear into the depths of her molten

Why does it happen? 179

graveyards. In the meantime, mountains are thrown up, lava spews from crevices and volcanoes, and all the while moving towards balancing her unequally distributed mass of earthly material. These activities cause her to quake, shake and rattle, millions upon millions of times. Though we only see these results on her surface, it keeps happening in her interior too. It is her natural ‘growing up’ process. Earth is still in the process of getting in shape, and is a little wobbly in her movements at this point in time. In the 4.54 Ga since the ‘teardrop’ entered our solar system, she has been experiencing the action of cohesive forces within her, gravitational forces acting on her, centripetal and centrifugal forces acting to reining her in and pushing her parts away respectively; all attempting to get her into shape (these also include the centripetal force that sun exerts on her while reining her in, lest she decides to wander off into space) and into a round and spherical, ‘stress-free’ form. All of Earth’s dynamic entities throw in their weight to help create a healthy atmosphere to aid Earth’s earthly material movement. These create the dynamic forces that then act on the upper layers of her surface, as she spins about going through the motions of her daily life. These forces of imposed energy activities, then lift, lower, slide, move her unhinged parts, and possibly even offset the molten matter within her. It is possible that the heavy inner core even moves off centre; compensating for the imbalance within or over earth. She is round and spherical we think, as our ancient mariners proved and told to us so. We have since measured it to be 46 km less in height than in width, and it is because earth revolves at a speed of 1670 km/h at the equator, where centrifugal forces tend to swing everything at its surface here, into space.245 So we went on to understand the shape of our planet, and much more confidently since new data continue to educate us about this fascinating globe that we are fortunate to be born to live on. So we know that earth is not spherical, and the mass within it is both unevenly distributed and prone to moving around. As a result, the axis around which earth spins, and the north and south rotational poles at each end of the axis, move about. How do we prove this…

9.3.1.1 The Empty Pacific — Visual proof Observe the Figures 9.2 and 9.3 (taken from 12,756.3 km up in space), centred on the equator and latitude 160° W while looking down at the largest exposed area of the Pacific Ocean, as in Fig. 9.2. Turn the globe around 180°, and we find at its antipodal, at latitude 20° E, the picture of the earth we see is as in the Fig. 9.3 — the rock-solid thick continent of Africa, and of an average elevation of 600 m. Moreover, it is surrounded by the shallow Atlantic, even shallower the Indian Ocean, and the two oceans once part of the once huge 245

The bulge at the equator shows slow variations and in recent years had been declining, but since 1998 the bulge has increased and most certainly due to redistribution of landmass through tectonics. We know this happens, as on the Boxing Day earthquake, Earth’s geoid height changed abruptly. Earth’s oblateness (flattening on the top and bulging at the equator) decreased by a small amount. “It decreased about one part in 10 G, continuing the trend of earthquakes making earth less oblate” (quoting Dr Richard Gross and Dr Benjamin Chao of NASA’s JPL, in California).

180 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… and high Pangaea. (These two oceans formed from solid land that rifted and took them apart with water entering the rifts, and which eventually became oceans. The shallow Red Sea is starting a similar exercise to form another shallow ocean at Africa’s NW). However, in the present, we see our planet very different, but we can attempt to make a connection between the old Pangaea and Panthalassa, to the lands and waters we see around us today. So for the moment, let us assume that the Pacific Ocean is the old Panthalassa — wide, deep, and empty of land... as it was in the beginning. Earth appears lopsidedly loaded with the land, against an area devoid of the weighted landmass. With a large deep ocean of an average depth of 4280 m and an area of 165.25 Mkm2, it stretches from the shores of Antarctica to the Bering Strait246 — some 15,500 km in length. Between the Malay Peninsula in Asia on its west, and all across the waters to the coast of Colombia in South America, she is a good 19,800 km wide. She has double the area and more than double the water volume of the Atlantic Ocean — the next largest division of the hydrosphere — and its area more than exceeds that of the whole land surface of the globe. This spread covers 44.7% of Earth’s surface area and makes up 49.4%247 of the world’s ocean waters, containing a volume of 714 Mkm3 of water.

Fig. 9.2

Fig. 9.3 Credit: NASA/World Wind 1.4

Or, let’s put it another way: the world’s greatest north-south expanse of landmass from Knivskjellodden in Norway (71° 11’ N) at the top of Europe, to Cape Agulhas (30° 50’ S) at the southernmost tip of South Africa (Fig. 9.4), opposes the world’s greatest north-south expanse of the uninterrupted Pacific Ocean (Fig. 9.5). Once more, we see the heavier land opposing Earth’s vacant and landless Pacific Ocean. 246 247

Also known as Beringia. B. W. Eakin, and G. F. Sharman — Volumes of the World’s Oceans from ETOPO1, NOAA National Geophysical Data Centre, Boulder, CO, 2010.

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Fig. 9.4

Fig. 9.5 Credit: NASA/World Wind 1.4

A third opinion... centring NASA’s World Wind cameras on the largest possible landmass visible to us from space (Fig. 9.6) we still find that at its diametric opposite end (Fig. 9.7), the vast ‘emptiness’ of the Pacific Ocean.

Fig. 9.6

Fig. 9.7 Credit: NASA/World Wind 1.4

Our story does not change much. Earth is unequal in the surface distribution of its landmass around its surface, and the big ocean, devoid of the heavier land, is empty; it is also very deep. In this large round tub, we could fit in all the continents of the world, and still have another 25% of vacant space to throw in another Africa, for good measure. Under its surface, we could then cover a lot more; Mt Everest for example, and for extra pleasure, hide it under 2 km of water! Earth, we can conclude in all certainty, is an unbalanced geoid.

182 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors…

9.3.1.2 Differing densities — Chemical Proof Let us back that statement by adding some numbers to it. As the elements began to separate and earth began to cool after the LHB, cratonization started in earnest, and thick heavy crusts began forming on Pangaea. The land and Earth’s core began to get heavier, densities began to change, and today we have the specific gravity of the ocean’s water at 1.025 g/cm3, and the average density of the lands in the lithosphere, as 5.515 g/cm3 .[248] With the specific gravity of the land over five times more than that of seawater, Earth’s land-loaded side must obviously be heavier than the side where the Pacific Ocean is. The heavier land that sits above the MSL, and along with the mountain ranges above that, produces a significant differential and cantilever-like force, biased towards the greater landmass side, and which only adds to confirm that our planet is grossly imbalanced. Again, in this heavier half lies the Andes, the Atlas Mountains, the Alps, the Ethiopian highlands, the Great Escarpment, the Caucasus, the Pamirs, the Zagros, the Himalayan range, the Tibetan Plateau, and almost everything else (even the Great Wall of China!) of significant weight. Earth is a giant unbalanced seesaw, caught in a crisis with nature’s dynamic laws.

9.3.1.3 A shapeless Lump of Water and Earth Earth’s surface is not yet of an even density, but a mixture of fluid and rock. Her contour too has its highs and lows. Diverging from the MSL, we have a difference of 19,842 m between the peak of Mt Everest at 8848 m, and the lows the Challenger Deep in the Marianas at –10,994 m. That earth does not have a geometrically perfect shape has long been established, and the geoid249 is a convenient way now used to describe the irregular shape of the earth, rather than the old ‘oblate spheroid’. Using the MSL as a reference, new advances in measurement have noticed substantial irregularities on Earth’s surface. This happens so because upheavals and crustal movements have distorted her surface. She is shapeless and polarised in material density too. Weighted unequally, the planet moves its water, earth, and lava around from higher ground and heavier areas, into lower, thin, sparse, and empty places, in and around her body, in an attempt at tweaking its irregular and disproportionate figure. When a correction is initiated on and around her body, it involves the shifting of the crust or action imposed on it. It need not be correcting earth’s contours; it would be correcting her imbalance. Look at it like this: when the Indian Plate broke away from Africa, it began to move at a rapid pace NNE into the northern hemisphere, it did so, only to counterbalance the larger and heavier South American Plate moving away from Africa in the opposite direction, in 248

249

5.515 g/cm3 is taken as the mean between the density of rock at 2 to 7 g/cm3 and the density of iron at 7.87 g/cm3. With reference to Earth’s geology, density becomes a function of depth too, reaching from about 2.7 g/cm3 of rock at the surface, up to an estimated 15 g/cm3 at the centre of Earth. An approximation of the shape of Earth, where the MSL is its surface projection, corresponding with its extensions over and under this waterline.

Why does it happen? 183

the southern hemisphere. As it hit Eurasia, it was (and still is) in the process of counteracting the imbalance and it still does, though greatly restricted by the giant at its north. With Eurasia retarding India’s progress, it only helped to pile up its land at the convergent boundary, creating the highest mountain range in the Himalayas and the table top plateau of Tibet. Earth’s contour and the collision zone would get even more out of shape in this process, but the geoid is being balanced around the globe, around its figure axis of rotation. So, as the process continues in rectifying and balancing Earth’s body as she spins about, we must admit that she gets out of being in the ideal shape, but then, in better balance than she was a little earlier.

9.3.1.4 The Southern Pedestal In our perception of Antarctica, we assume it as just an expanse of a waste of earth, paying little attention to the white nonentity at the south while looking at a map of our globe. With no city lights to brighten her dark nights, she sits down there, cold, colourless, featureless, forlorn, lonely, and uninteresting. Uninhabitable she may be, but without her, we would have trouble inhabiting this planet. She plays a weighty part in humans being present on the planet, and it is through tectonics. Antarctica, once a central part of Pangaea, was thick and of high elevation, we know. We also noted this in Fig. 7.3. The continent has an area larger than that of the contiguous USA and Mexico combined but more importantly, the average thickness of its crustal land hangs about around 70 km, as compared to 36.5 km for the USA, and around 30 to 50 km around the rest of the globe. On the top of this area of thick compacted land of 13,720 km2, sits another 3.8 km thick giant of a compacted ice cap, amounting to 52,136 km3 of solid ice! 250 However, to proceed with our understanding of Earth’s behaviour, let us take some short-term liberty, in temporarily assuming that the old and deep Panthalassa Sea is our present-day Pacific Ocean. Pangaea, was where all the bunched-up-lands were, and are today’s lands that surround the continent of Africa — North and South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, Antarctica, and the bits and bobs that made up Asia, India, and that range of mostly mountain terrains of the Alpide belt. This, for the time being, is our imagined image of earth (Fig. 3.1). In this position, her rotation would bunch up the lands at one end through centrifugal force. The force that was strong enough to create the orogenies of the Caledonian251 and the Appalachians252 in that time earlier than 390 Ma ago. So, in all 250

251

252

It is an enormous weight in actuality, and makes up an average of over approximately 61% of all the fresh water on the earth. If this ice cover were to melt in its totality, earth would be inundated with sea levels rising by about 70 m around the globe. Asian cities like Osaka would disappear under water. In the USA, inland cities like Denver, however, would be saved. The New York skyscrapers would be like sentinels poking their heads out of the sea in the Atlantic Ocean. The Ordovician to pre-Devonian mountains of Pangaea that formed in the years 490 to 390 Ma ago, and that today run though parts of Ireland and Britain, the Scandinavian Mountains, Svalbard, eastern Greenland and parts of north-central Europe. The orogeny having taken place during the middle Ordovician Period of around 480 Ma ago. Today we know that remnants of these mountains are found in North America, Greenland, the Atlas Mountains and in Scandinavia, among others.

184 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… probability, early earth was a highly unbalanced entity. It just wobbled around eccentrically, and would only temporarily change its rotational position, if some wayward asteroid came in and struck it. What do we see at Antarctica’s antipodal end? The Arctic Sea... that has little land and a rather small ice cap that is at an average of around 3-4 m thick. Antarctica’s ice cap alone is therefore over at least a thousand times heavier in comparison to the Arctic, for the same amount of ice cover. Multiply that into Antarctica’s greater area and we have one heavy bottom, adding to make our continent lopsidedly loaded with land at both is eastern and its southern regions; when observed centred on the Prime Meridian and the equator. With all the ice atop the thick southern landmass, we note that Antarctica is thick, Antarctica is heavy, and Antarctica could even act like a nicely weighted pedestal, should we decide to place our beautiful globe with all her blue waters down on the cosmos’ flat top sideboard. People who consider Antarctica to be a small continent will be surprised to discover that it is larger than Europe and nearly twice the size of Australia. The Antarctic continent, excluding its ice shelves, covers an area of over 13 Mkm2 compared with 7.7 Mkm2 for Australia, or 10.5 Mkm2 for Europe. Ideally centred on the South Pole, this very heavy continent acts like a damper on the figure axis or rotation, watering down any violent movements of the spinning earth at the south, though it amplifies the wobble at the north. Antarctica is the solid floor on which our earthly top spins steadily.

9.3.1.5 An Unbalanced Geoid Take a football-like clay model of earth, and rest it on its pedestal of Antarctica on the palm of your hand, looking at it at eye level, and you are looking at it as it appears in Fig. 9.8, with its two Prime, and 180th meridians (or anti-meridian) on its east-west horizons respectively. It is kept steady by the finger pressure of the other hand on the Arctic pole. Now imagine this model suddenly drained of all its blue waters. You would be staring at a grotesque miss-shaped lump of a dark greyish-brown clay on half of the globe, with a large flat and deep depression on the side where the Pacific Ocean was, the raised land of Antarctica at the South Pole, and the raised portions of western Africa, with bits and pieces jutting out here and there. Release your fingertip pressure at the north, and your lump of clay would roll over and lie on its back, between South Africa, Antarctica and Diego Garcia; exposing its ‘flat face’ of a pock-marked Pacific bedrock, in a ‘Garfield’ like ‘mouth-open-to-the-skies’ pose, as you see in Fig. 9.9. Shapeless and an almost unrecognisable round earth that we knew from a little while ago. Could we spin such a shape — like in Fig. 9.9 — on our index finger like idle basketball players do with their well-balanced ball? Her craggy and pockmarked shape glares back at us, telling our senses that the possibility of that happening is not on for a few million years into the distant future, and only after earth’s earnest attempt to get in shape, is activated then achieved.

Why does it happen? 185

Fig 9.8

Fig. 9.9

Credit (for Fig. 9.8): NASA/World Wind 1.4

9.3.1.6 Mass Migration To add to all this balancing modes, another factor comes into play; the seasonal mass migration of Earth’s waters. During winters in the northern hemisphere — with the huge build-up of ice and snow there — and combined with the melting of the ice on Antarctica, Earth’s centre of mass (CM) shifts north. In summer in the northern hemisphere, the ice melts and water evaporates which is then dispersed into the atmosphere while the CM migrates south with help from the build-up of ice on Antarctica. Continents caught up in these seasonal shifts and particularly in the heavier southern parts of the globe — Australia being a classic example — tend to change their speed of movement; like the difference we note while wading in shallow water as compared to deeper parts of the seashore.

9.3.1.7 The Misplaced Axis — Scientific or mathematical proof It should come as no surprise to us then, to see earth not yet an ideally balanced sphere; her figure axis of rotation, still a good 10 m away253 from the imaginary axis of rotation. The imbalance is, of course, biased in favour of the heavier landward side — centring about the Prime Meridian, and away from the Pacific Ocean’s (the old Panthalassa) side, and towards its antipodal and the heavier half (the old Pangaea) of the globe. In conclusion, we see that in all the six cases we elaborated about, it can be concluded that earth is an unbalanced but a somewhat round piece of a globe, working around rhythmically in our solar system, attempting to get in shape. 253

Attributed to Alan Buis of the LPL, Pasadena, Calif., with his article in the NASA magazine on 14 Mar. 2011, under the title: ‘Japan Quake May Have Shortened Earth Days, Moved Axis’.

186 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors…

9.4 IS EARTH ADDRESSING THIS IMBALANCE? The answer is a definite... ‘Yes!’, and we shall elaborate on some of the methods that earth resorts to in doing so. Looking at our waterless clay model, what would we do to set things right for earth? How would we balance this now deflated, misshaped, and flat-faced old crappy discard of a dump yard football? Our first thoughts would be to dab in some clay into the Pacific depression, filling her up with more ‘land’ and patting down the peaks and mountains at the opposite end. That is exactly what good old Mother Nature is doing... in her own way and time. Earth has no resources to additional clay and has to make do with what little she has and available at her disposal, and that she carries along with her on her surface. Fortunately, she is not of solid rock, but of a ‘liquid-through-viscous-through-crusty’ makeup, and she could shift the liquid, dust, and the bits and pieces if they were in a dynamic state. At rest, her body would remain the way it is. However, rotating around an axis, she is thrust into a dynamic state, with centripetal and centrifugal forces helping her move her mass around her axis, involving a combination of her molten interior, a fluid mantle, and a brittle lithosphere distributing the movable elements around where and when possible. Earth’s shape also changes over time due to a number of other dynamic factors than those stated; mass also shifts around inside the planet, altering those gravitational anomalies, while meteors occasionally crack up or sink her lithosphere, and ice caps add to deform her surface. Added to all this, the gravitational pull of the Moon and the Sun that not only cause ocean tides but internal earth-tides as well; cyclically pulling, lifting and straining her crusts above the plasticity of the mantle and the asthenosphere by as much as a 30 cm in places. Though hard proof of the gravitational tug of the Moon and Sun that set off temblors remain as yet inconclusive in many quarters,254 it is logical to say that the flexing of the plates causes ‘fatigue’ stress at potential plate boundaries, thereby helping create new plates. The gravity also helps to prise loose adjacent plates, and help move them along or be pushed around by the big boys. Tides also help in leveraging the plates, nudging them out of their gridlocks at times. In essence, a dance of permutations and combinations, of changing partners when it suits them, but all working collectively, to get earth into a shapely sphere. 254

Researchers at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece analysed more than 17,000 earthquakes records that struck the south of that country between 1964 and 2012. Rather than occurring at random intervals, the team found that the quakes related to oceanic tidal effects as well. Their study was published in Feb. 2015. Another study by researchers from the University of Tokyo in 2016 concluded ‘that large earthquakes are more probable during periods of high tidal stress; meaning that quakes that occur on the days of the full, or the new moons — every 15 days, when the tidal forces affecting earth are the strongest — are likely to be strong ones, compared to those on other days.

Why does it happen? 187

There are basically four methods earth employs to adjust her shape into that — at this time — elusive perfect figure that she aspires to be: 1. Ballasting her shape with her mobile assets 2. Isostasy, Sun and Moon tides 3. Tectonics The first two do not constitute classical tectonics per say, but their actions shift towards balancing the globe, which then justifies them as a sub-process of tectonics.

9.4.1 Water Ballasting the Planet At the forefront of Earth’s dynamic necessity, is the help she receives from the partners who share the planet with her. The first to come to her aid to counter her unevenly distributed loads are the waters of the seas — while waiting for the slow process of tectonics to happen — filling the empty Pacific with additional ballast as best they can, with extra waters that they can spare. As much as the laws of dynamic-stability permits, the waters of the earth move into the lighter quarters first. Here we notice that the Pacific’s sea levels today, are 20 cm higher than those of the Atlantic Ocean’s, and even higher than that in the Indian Ocean. We see this happening more in the SW Pacific, and more so, within the tropics and between the east longitudes 100 to 200, and as we see in Fig. 9.10.

Fig. 9.10: Examination of the detailed work by The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Atlas NESDIS 15, shows that in general terms, the mean steric 255 sea level of the Pacific Ocean is higher than that of the Atlantic Ocean, which, in turn, is higher than that of the Indian Ocean’s 255

Though the word refers to global changes in sea level due to thermal expansion and salinity variations, it applies comfortably here. The noted changes in heights are very complex, as superimposed on this mean level difference, and the variance can fluctuate due to tidal and seasonal weather patterns.

188 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… What does it tell us? The first line of help is in place — a differential of some 180 m contributing to help counterbalance and stabilize Earth’s lopsidedness. As tectonics moves on and the trenches all around the Pacific Plate continue to absorb her sinking slabs, their molten outcome would find refuge elsewhere; in the ridges that help fill in the spreading centres, in the volcanoes, or the creation of new islands in the oceans. As the other plates move into the Pacific, the ocean shrinks and the trade-off between soil and water will show a perceptive drop in Pacific’s water levels, and those in the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans will rise correspondingly, with their leased waters returned in tectonic time. We have this happening currently and can confirm reports to say that the Pacific Ocean’s sea levels are falling. In the early 1990s, scientists had forecasted that the coral atoll of nine islands (out of 82) of Vanuatu — which is only 3.66 m above sea level256 at its highest point — would vanish within decades because the sea there was rising by up to 1.5 cm a year, measured globally. However, a new study has found that sea levels around Vanuatu have fallen by nearly 6.35 cm since those readings were recorded! Similar sea-level fall was recorded in Nauru and the Solomon Islands,257 which earlier were also considered to be under threat of being submerged by the waves. From a source within the Pacific Ocean, wherein the tiny country of Tuvalu, ‘the official meteorological agency began measuring sea levels, and ten years later, they were shocked to discover that sea levels had fallen 5 cm during that time. The same is true with Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands’.258 On the other hand, sea level rise along the Atlantic Coast of the United States was recorded at rising 0.2 cm faster in the 20th century than at any other time in the past 4000 years.259 Or..., ‘The rate of sea level rise along the US Atlantic coast is greater now than at any time in the past 2000 years’260. In 2010, in the journal Nature, it was reported that America’s great cities, including Portland, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Norfolk, Charleston, and Miami were under threat, and that sea level rise along that eastern coast was 3-4 times faster than the global average. 256

257 258

259 260

This has nothing to do and is not linked to climate change, which is another subject all together, and dependent on a number of factors. Earth’s climate system is characterised by complex interactions between the atmosphere, oceans, ice sheets, landmasses, and the biosphere (parts of the world with plant and animal life). Ice ages have come and gone and Earth’s MSL has changed accordingly. In another abnormality, scientists were at a loss to explain a sudden 7 mm drop in sea levels worldwide in 2010 – 2011. In Aug. 2013 and as reported in the Geophysical Research Letters, John Fasullo — a climate scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research, USA — solved the mystery, attributing it to a 17.8 cm rise of rainfall over Australia that stored a large amount of water on the land and especially in Lake Eyre. London Telegraph, 6 Aug. 2000. Ooops! Alarm over ‘sinking Islands’ premature as sea level falls at Kwajalein Atoll. WUWT — Anthony Watts, 28 Mar. 2016. ScienceDaily, 11 Dec. 2009. ScienceDaily, 21 June 2011.

Why does it happen? 189

Another report: ‘Communities and coastal habitats in the southern Chesapeake Bay region face increased flooding because, as seawater levels are rising in the bay, the land surface is also sinking’, a new USGS report released on 9 Dec. 2013 concludes about this land that borders the Atlantic. The US ‘Environment Protection Agency’ report of Feb. 2016 is no different. While Fig. 9.10 shows very low sea levels in the Indian Ocean, the Maldives appear to be among the countries most vulnerable to rising sea levels,261 as those in the Pacific fall. The smallest Asian country, the Maldives is made up of more than a thousand islands — about 200 of which are inhabited by about 300,000 people — and are on average only about five feet above sea level. As earth gets in shape, the Maldives will go under the waves in good time; this time, sadly, the beautiful islands will be taken down by tectonics’ reshaping of earth. More confirmations come in July 2010, in the paper Nature Geoscience. Researchers from the University of Colorado detect rising sea levels in parts of the Indian Ocean, including the coastlines of the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea, Sri Lanka, Sumatra, and Java. Sea levels are especially high near New Guinea but very low south of India. Could we positively say that the Pacific Ocean is being narrowed and the borrowed waters are being returned? The actions here are too complex to monitor, but then yes, something is happening here. It is also possible that not all of the Pacific’s waters are being returned to where they came from; some of them may have been diverted into the other lighter parts of the globe as ‘weighty’ equations are ever-changing. A study by the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Potsdam, Germany, recently revealed that Arctic land today falls back on average by about half a metre per year along with more than 60,000 km of its twisting and winding coastline. In some cases, much more... as at Drew Point — an exposed site on the Beaufort Sea — that loses more than 8 m of land each year to the sea. Is the northern hemisphere’s Arctic ice being replaced by waters of the Pacific? Another study by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and published on 26 Aug. 2015 says that according to a 23 year record of satellite data, the sea level is rising if you live on the U.S. East Coast, and if you live in Scandinavia, it’s falling, and rising once more on the Pacific side of China’s Yellow River, once more confirming our readings in Fig. 9.10, where the blue areas in our map are rising whereas as the reds are falling. What this is all telling us is that, as the tectonic process slowly plays out its role in getting earth into a trimmer shape, natural laws are stepping in to ease out the balancing problems. The sea level changes are then telling us that earth is getting a little curvier and smoother shaped each little day and slowly ridding itself of the borrowed ballast with the lower specific gravity. However, another point of interest here is that tectonic plates on North America’s west coast — the Pacific Plate, the Juan de Fuca Plate, the Rivera Plate and even the Cocos Plate 261

Until date, the country’s parliament has already had one cabinet meeting under water, to highlight this fact.

190 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… — are all diving below the North American Plate, thereby lifting and rising the big plate up at it western quarter! Would this not tilt the American Plate in the east to create a subsidence there into the Atlantic, making it to appear that the sea level is rising? Remember too that the Alaska-Yukon Orogeny and the Gorda-California-Nevada Orogeny are still active and ongoing with the constant subducting and trust of the Pacific and the Juan de Fuca plates on that western shore.

9.4.1.1 The Slippery Antarctic Ice Sheet While all this is happening, unobservable and silently down at the south, the Antarctic Ice Cap increasingly melts on its western shelf, beckoned there by the empty Pacific. As we look at the map in Fig. 8.2, the vectors tell us that the plate harbouring the South Pole appears to remain almost stationary, with little movements on it. Yes, the plate does not move much, but the solid ice cap moves, though, slowly diverging away from the Indian Ocean and moving west through the South Pole, to emerge in chorus apparently, on the opposite side of the globe, going north towards the Pacific Ocean, at a speed of 1.3 cm/yr. Visually, the picture explains the movement too. The whole continent’s ice cap is moving westwards towards and into the direction of the Pacific Ocean, creeping in between New Zealand at its south, and South America at its WNW, and both away from the Indian Ocean to its east.262 Then again, on the opposite, in the east and on the Indian side, the ice sheet over Antarctica is growing.263 Fig. 9.11 also visually tells us that most of Antarctica’s land and ice mass is currently Fig. 9.11: Antarctica — The South Pole is centred on the concentrated in the half away meridian which is in the N/S position from the Pacific Ocean and Credit: NASA/World Wind 1.4 262

263

Published 18 Nov. 2015 in the journal Nature that uses an ice-sheet model to predict the consequences of unstable retreat of the ice, which recent studies suggest has begun in West Antarctica. The scientists were led by Catherine Ritz from Université Grenoble Alpes in France, and Tamsin Edwards from The Open University. Referring to a research study conducted by a NASA team and published in the Journal of Glaciology in Oct. 2015.

Why does it happen? 191

offset towards the Indian Ocean, where we also see the landmass just bordering the outside of the Antarctic circle. The combined data suggest an accelerating rate of ice loss in West Antarctica is being balanced by a steady increase in the rate of ice gain in a wide area of East Antarctica. Shoring up the accelerating ice loss, are the seas just behind and east of the South Pole. We have information that the ice cap is growing in the Ross Sea — which gained some 13,727 km2 of sea ice per year, in the years 1978 to 2010,264 although during that same period, the region of the Bellingshausen and Amundsen Seas, lost an average of about 8288 km2 of ice every year. The Thwaites glacier in West Antarctica also melts, feeding its waters into the Pacific Ocean, whereas the Ross Sea adds to moving additional weight into those lighter parts of our planet, by increasingly growing in size. A study of images along 2000 km of West Antarctica’s coastline has shown the loss of about 1000 km2 of ice over the past 40 years, said researchers who were surprised to find that the region has been losing ice since records were being kept.265 They found that ice has been retreating consistently along almost the entire coastline of Antarctica’s Bellingshausen Sea since satellite records began. They do not say how the ice is being replaced.266 The Pacific Ocean is being inhabited in imperceptible increments, helping out in a minimalist way, to shaping up our planet’s body. As the polar ice/water balancing continues, the earth could add milliseconds taken off its daily rotational cycle with the Chandler wobble getting a little less violent. Moving into the Arctic, NASA scientists say that the ice melts there is a worrisome happening.267 Can we now not argue that the lands from the south that are moving north are being compensated with the ice there sacrificing and trading their ice-melts to the seas around them, in an attempt to distribute the lopsided loads and keep Earth’s shape as round as it possibly can at the moment?

9.4.2 Lava Flows, Vents and Volcanoes While earth without much hesitation could send in the fluid water around her surface to ballast the lighter side of her body in quick time and with apparently little difficulty, it has to coax the more viscous fluid magma in its belly to do likewise. It takes a little more ingenuity on her part, to deposit its heavier but molten and liquefied magma on to the lighter corners of Earth’s surface, through the means available at her disposal. So, when the opportunities arise, molten magma is moved towards the lighter side of the globe, 264

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Studies conducted by climate scientists Claire Parkinson and Don Cavalieri, from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre, Greenbelt, Md. USA, and reported on 23 Oct. 2012 in NASA > News > Earth. The research team from the University of Edinburgh also analysed hundreds of satellite photographs of the ice margin captured by NASA, the USGS, and the ESA. Their study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, was carried out in collaboration with Temple University in the US. It was supported by the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, the Natural Environment Research Council, and the ESA. So worried are our scientists, that NASA, on 15 Sept. 2018, launched the ICESat-2 satellite, programmed to measure ice, cloud and land elevation (sea ice) of the Artic, all year-round.

192 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… remaining under the shield of the lithosphere while waiting for an opportunity to erupt on to her surface. The waiting game is a combination of: 1) lava pressure, 2) a weakening crust laid low by tectonic movement, and more importantly 3) when a plate subducts, its very dense crust is melted in the furnace of earth, and the resulting expansion of liquid and gas looks for areas to vent itself, and at opportune moments, volcanoes erupt. One can be sure that for every outburst of a volcano, somewhere on earth, a plate subducted just before the eruption. Active volcanism is one of the most ingenious and exciting dimensions in Earth’s balancing bag of tricks. However, predicting when a volcano will erupt, is still hard to tell with current knowledge, though we are getting there, and we have an excellent example of successful forecasting that occurred in 1991. Volcanologists from the U.S. Geological Survey accurately predicted the 15 June eruption of the Mt Pinatubo Volcano in the Philippines, allowing for the timely evacuation of the Clark Air Base while also saving thousands of lives. Sadly, many did perish surrounding areas which were severely damaged by pyroclastic surges,268 ash falls, and subsequently, by the flooding lahars269 caused by rainwater that re-mobilizing earlier volcanic deposits. Now, imagine earth to be a little rubber ball filled with a viscous liquid, and with small holes poked into one of its sides, representing the volcanoes and the fissures. Squeezing the ball by putting variable pressure on its external surface, we see liquid ooze out of the little holes, in direct proportion to the pressure exerted on its exterior surface. As plates move while aligning themselves with an earth getting a little more round, tighter and smaller after each earthquake, her insides are squeezed in, and the magma spills out. Interestingly, the magma spills out in the more lighter weighing parts of the globe, in any of the many lithospheric soft spots around the globe. The volcanism can be of three types: 1) flood basalt spreads, 2) divergent and transform margin eruptions, and 3) stationary cone-volcanos. Flood basalt spreads: Spreading the Earth’s surface like a river flooding, where large areas of the planet have from time to time, had lava overflow from cracks in its lithosphere. Identified mostly as continental flood basalt, they have in the last 66 Ma, being the following notable ones: Location

Region

Age (Ma)

Volume (Mkm3)

66

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Deccan Traps

India

North Atlantic Igneous Province

Northern Canada, Greenland, Faeroe Islands, Norway, Ireland, and Scotland

62 to 55

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Afro-Arabia

Yemen — Ethiopia

31 to 25

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Columbia River Basalt

USA

17 to 6

0.175

Fig. 9.12 268 269

The sudden eruption of red hot fragmented rocks from a volcano. Word of Indonesian origin for the destructive mudflow on the slopes of a volcano that resembles wet concrete.

Why does it happen? 193

What is interesting here, is that in the case of these four big ones that we have learnt of down the ages, the oozing of the magma on to Earth’s surface, have been in the northern hemisphere; a total averaging 7 million cubic kilometres (Mkm3) of lava! Here is the confirmation that dynamic forces are at work, exchanging Earth’s bottom-heavy lands into the northern hemisphere — through a thermodynamic process in this case — and using molten lava as its medium. Divergent and transform margin eruptions: While lava constantly emerges from the deep magma reservoirs to fill in the ridges in motion, it appears to do so only to cement the exposed tear between the tectonic plates; e.g., magma filling the MAR plays a secondary part in straightening out the unbalanced globe. Its act is the result of a ‘cleaning up’ after the two Americas move away in the direction of the Pacific. So, we have to look at the opposite end to understand that the North and South American plates are swallowing up the Pacific Plate in the trenches of the western coasts of the Americas, in equal or probably even more than the quantity of magma deposited in the MAR. Visually impossible to substantiate or physically measure, the magma quietly filling in the gaps in the MAR, contributes significantly to the attainment of physical equilibrium that earth-forces initiate. An exception is Iceland, in the northern hemisphere of the ridge, where it is also guilty of contributing to syphoning away magma from the southern and heavy end of earth and depositing it into its lighter northern half. A reason could be that the crust around the area is thin and weak. However, forces fighting for equilibrium have fostered a solid island country, built from magma seeping out of the depths of the MAR, and still adding more land to the scenery of that country while once more reminding us that the globe’s northern half is still in need of matter to put some weight in the proper places. Plate boundaries play their part in distributing the magma. When plates move, earthquakes happen and where they move, the possibility of lava emerging around those cracks is high. So, let us examine the last 10 major earthquakes of the recent past, and as displayed in Fig. 9.13:

Date 4/25/2015 3/11/2011 4/13/2010 1/12/2010 9/30/2009 5/12/2008 5/26/2006 10/08/2005 3/28/2005 12/26/2004

Major earthquakes around the world Location Coordinates Nepal 28.15, 84.71 Japan 38.30, 142.37 Southern Qinghai, China 33.17, 96.55 Haiti region 18.44, -72.57 Southern Sumatra, Indonesia -0.72, 99.87 Eastern Sichuan, China 31.00, 103.32 Indonesia -7.96, 110.45 Pakistan 34.53, 73.58 Northern Sumatra, Indonesia 2.07, 97.01 Sumatra 3.30, 95.87 Fig. 9.13

Deaths 6,204 20,896 2,200 316,000 1,117 87,587 5,749 86,000 1,313 227,898

Mw 7.8 9 6.9 7 7.5 7.9 6.3 7.6 8.6 9.1

194 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… Only two of the quakes were around the equator and in Indonesia; the rest were all in the northern hemisphere. Most of the larger plate movement activities are therefore located in that half of the globe, and most we see here are in the Alpide belt (which is for the most part, in the northern hemisphere). It is, therefore, safe to assume that most of the lava flows into the fissures and the plate boundaries are all in or around the northern half of the globe. Earth sends its recycled plates out to fill the little spots around the globe while attempting to balance the disparity in its weight distribution around it. Stationary cone-volcanoes: These again come in two types: terrestrial and submarine volcanoes.

9.4.2.1 Terrestrial Volcanoes From deep within earth, matter that emerged to form volcanoes, have shaped the planet’s surface since its beginning, and volcanologists have identified the existence of more than 10,000 volcanoes over Earth’s surface, with only about 1500 of them currently active.270 It is to be assumed for the moment, that a volcano that is out of business has played its part in the transfer of material on Earth’s surface, when the configuration of plates at the time it was active, required it to perform its part in the imbalance levelling-off process. It has done its job and is now only a fixture on Earth’s landscape; a sentinel to the history of the blistering beginnings of our planet. Others that helped in this activity are the extinct volcanoes: Mt Kilimanjaro in Kenya, Mt Fuji in Japan, Hohentwiel in Germany, Shiprock in the Navajo Volcanic Field and the Zuidwal volcano in the Netherlands that all played their part in the stabilizing of our planet in the not too distant and violent bygone era. No longer needed, they stand peacefully as quite reminders to humankind, of Earth’s unsteady past. Retired in the highlands of Scotland, and very inconspicuous but noteworthy, is the 700 Ma old Castle Rock; famously crowned by Edinburgh Castle. Interestingly, all above mentioned parties, left their ware and produce behind in the northern hemisphere, before finally shutting shop. In a little way with the comparatively little mass that they cough up, volcanoes do put up their hands when it comes to contributing to Earth’s physical balance and stability. Thousands of their telltale cones litter Earth’s surface, and we only notice some of them, when they unexpectedly begin to rumble and spew lava or simply exhaust some smoke, or let out some steam, to announce their sudden awakening from hibernation, and to remind us of their disturbing presence and possible intentions. History has seen some monstrous eruptions of volcanoes in recent past that have been scientifically recorded — from the explosion of Mt Tambora in 1815, to Mt Pinatubo’s (today, one of the tallest peaks in the South China Sea; a testimony to its ageless, countless and continuous eruptions) weather-cooling burp in 1991. Old volcanoes may look tiny now but could have been significant contributors in their heyday. Not the largest of volcanoes, but in one single erupting moment in time, Novarupta 270

Volcanologists classify an active volcano as one that has erupted in the last few hundred years, or show signs of erupting in the near future.

Why does it happen? 195

in Alaska, alone accounted for the deposit of 12.5 km3 of lava over Earth’s lithosphere. Top of the list is Tambora, with a discharge of 50 km3! In line with what we said about the possibilities of lava flows predominantly at plate boundaries, we can now safely say that over 60% of all active volcanoes occur at the boundaries between tectonic plates; most found along the Ring of Fire271 and in the area within those boundaries — around the big empty tub of water... and in its northern half of the globe. On another note... for all their destructive power, volcanoes are vital to man’s existence. Volcanic gases helped create Earth’s atmosphere and continue to affect its composition today, where AMHs hotly debates ‘Climate Change’. On a more prosaic level, ancient humans used volcanic glass (obsidian) to make tools, to move us primates, quickly through evolution. Erupting volcanoes can build new land — as in the case of Hawaii — or entomb whole cities — as in the case of Pompeii in A.D. 79. Today we know enough of the power of such eruptions that we now measure it using the Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI);272 a classification system developed in the 1980s that are somewhat similar to the magnitude scale for earthquakes. The scale goes from 1 to 8, and each succeeding VEI is 10-times greater than the last. So, let us examine 10 of the noted ones that have erupted over Earth’s surface, and that we now know of and as depicted in Fig. 9.14. Event

Country

Time

VEI

640 Ka ago

8

1000 AD

7

1815

7

Yellowstone

USA

Changbaishan Volcano

NE China-N. Korean border

Mt Tambora

Indonesia

Ambrym Island

The Republic of Vanuatu

50 AD

6+

Ilopango Volcano

El Salvador

450 AD

6+

Huaynaputina

Peru

1600

6

Krakatoa

Indonesia

1883

6

Santa Maria

Guatemala

1902

6

Novarupta

Alaska

1912

6

Mt Pinatubo

Philippines

1991

6

Fig. 9.14

What is very noticeable here, is all the above-mentioned earthquakes, locate themselves in the Ring of Fire, in and around the Pacific Ocean and interestingly again, in our globe’s northern half. 271 272

Source: NOAA — US Dept. of Commerce. It is a number on a logarithmic scale that represents the estimated magnitude and violence of a volcanic eruption, and the index is based on the volume of material ejected, height of eruption, clouds, duration of the eruption, and other related factors.

196 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… Now, let us look at volcanism from another angle, and look up the decade’s 16 notable volcanoes — a list drawn by the IAVCEI. These have been singled out for study, because of their recent activity, volatility, unpredictability, and the danger they pose to nearby inhabitants. Volcano name

Country

Latitude

Longitude

Avachinsky-Koryaksky

Kamchatka

53° 19’ 15” N

158° 42’ 45” E

Rainier

USA

46° 51’ 10” N

121° 45’ 37” W

Etna

Italy

47° 35’ 03” N

14° 59’ 07” E

Vesuvius

Italy

40° 49’ 00” N

14° 26’ 00” E

Unzen

Japan

32° 45’ 24” N

130° 17’ 40” E

Santorini

Greece

36° 25’ 00” N

25° 26’ 00” E

Sakurajima

Japan

31° 35’ 00” N

130° 39’ 00” E

Teide

Canary Islands

28° 16’ 23” N

16° 38’ 22” W

Colima

Mexico

19° 30’ 46” N

103° 37’ 02” W

Mauna Loa

USA

19° 28’ 46” N

155° 36’ 09” W

Santa Maria

Guatemala

14° 45’ 20” N

91° 33’ 06” W

Taal

Philippines

14° 00’ 07” N

120° 59’ 34” E

Galeras

Colombia

01° 13’ 00” N

77° 22’ 00” W

Merapi

Indonesia

07° 32’ 26” S

110° 26’ 41” E

Ulawun

Papua New Guinea

05° 03’ 00” S

151° 20’ 00” E

Nyiragongo

D. R. of Congo

01° 31’ 00” S

29° 15’ 00” E

Fig. 9.15: Our planet’s 16 most dangerous volcanoes — List is drawn up by IAVCEI

Once again, our attention is drawn to the fact that 13 of the volcanoes in the list are on our globe’s top half. The three that are in the southern hemisphere, are at a maximum of 452 km away from the equator — hardly a distance to be considered. What is happening here is analogous to the water of the seas that flowed into the Pacific to confront Earth’s excessive imbalance. In this scenario, the molten insides of earth convey and deposit their produce into the northern hemisphere; away from the bottom heavy and the lopsidedly loaded globe. Looking at their east-west coverage, we find a majority of them on the Pacific side, and discharging their lava into that great empty-quarter while attempting to reset the inequality around our globe’s rotational axis, thereby confirming our analysis of earth as an imbalanced geoid, trying to get into shape on its own. Let us take another route and look at the longest active volcanoes around, and we recognise the top five as Mt Yasur, Vanuatu — 111 years; Mt Etna, Italy — 109 years; Stromboli, Italy — 108 years; Santa Maria, Guatemala — 101 years; Sangay in Ecuador —

Why does it happen? 197

94 years. Once more, these too, are in the northern hemisphere, emptying Earth’s molten interior into her lighter northern half. While we do say Stromboli has been active for just over a century, the Aeolian Islands273 volcano has, in fact, been erupting almost continuously with lava flows and relatively small explosions, and occasionally bigger ones and for the last 260,000 years, along with its other partner; interestingly named Volcano. We cannot forget Kamchatka either; the volcanic power of her 29 active volcanoes is still spectacular. Kamchatka’s volcanic spine includes the Kluchevskoi Volcano, the largest active volcano in Eurasia, and one of the largest in the world. It is nearly 5000 m in height, with 35 times the average productivity of a land volcano. On average, it erupts 60 Mt of basalt a year or 2.5% of the material ejected from all the 850 active land volcanoes. The peninsula’s most reliable volcano is Karymsky, which has been erupting continuously since 1996. Earth, in small little ways, is filling up the void in little incremental steps. In the end, it has to add up to be of some consequence. At this very moment, 15 to 20 volcanoes are erupting around the planet, mostly in the northern half of earth, and their individual longterm contribution must be significant. The 1991 Mt Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines ejected roughly 10 Gt or 10 km3 of magma, and some 20 Mt of SO2. Mt St Helena emptied another Mkm3 of lava to that same northern surface. Add to this were the discharge from the Huaynaputina, Peru; Krakatoa, Sunda Strait, Indonesia; Santa Maria Volcano, Guatemala; Novarupta, Alaska Peninsula; Ilopango Volcano, El Salvador; Mt Thera, Island of Santorini, Greece; Changbaishan Volcano, China/North Korean border; Ambrym Island, the Republic of Vanuatu; Mt Tambora, and a host of thousands of smaller eruptions. All of them are spewing and discharging their earthly ware into the northern hemisphere or into the Ring of Fire, in the empty Pacific Ocean’s theatre. In conclusion, the heavy south sends its lava north, and the overweight east sends it lava into the uninhabited waters, and through the volcanoes on its rim of fire in the west. The process continues... and that tells us that earth is not yet a perfect sphere, but is in the process and working towards attaining that perfect or ideal sphere of least resistance that all heavenly bodies aspire to.

9.4.2.2 Guyots, Seamounts and Submarine Flows Thousands of guyots and seamounts pock-marking the Pacific floor, leading us to think that these old volcanoes have been reduced to tabletop cones due to the gentle but deliberate wearing of the volcanoes by the actions of the ocean currents. Many are fizzled out volcanoes whose calderas have been capped by ocean sediment and now dot the ocean floor. The question though remains, as to why so many of them are in this corner of the globe? Why not on the opposite side... in the Atlantic or the Indian Ocean? Is the Pacific Plate floor weaker here, or is there mantle pressure of liquid magma pushing from beneath 273

The Aeolian Islands were listed by UNESCO in 2000 as a World Heritage Site, for providing ‘an outstanding record of volcanic island-building and destruction, and ongoing volcanic phenomena’. Studied since at least the 18th century, it has featured prominently in the education of geologists for more than 200 years. The site continues to enrich our scientists in the field of volcanology.

198 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… it? Though there are no clear data on this, we think the ball of the molten interior is pushing upwards here. Or rather, the ball of fire is closer to the Pacific Ocean floor here, than it is to the Atlantic side of earth. On the contrary, at its antipodal, is a very smooth Atlantic sea-floor off the South Americans eastern coast. It is once again, the simple equation of dynamics, and this time with Earth’s mantle lava much in the picture here — loaded and siding with the lopsidedly weaker section of our planet. Then again, these may not be subdued underwater volcanoes and could be that of a hot rubbery sea-floor, scorched and blistered by its proximity to the fire beneath it, from an off-centred core, leaning towards an inadequate and lighter side of the globe to support it. We must remember that this area is also a part of the deepest parts of the world’s oceans, where lies the deepest trenches too, placing it nearer the source of Earth’s belly fire.

9.4.2.3 The Off-Centred Mass of Molten Matter Besides those on the ridges, we have many hotspots too, and one of them is the Axial Seamount located on the Juan de Fuca Ridge, where two plates are slowly diverging from one another. Along the plate boundary, magma rises up to fill the gap and creates a new ocean floor. Axial is so volcanically active that oceanographers use it today as an underwater research observatory. Besides this, the ones whose activities were recorded in recent times are as displayed in Fig. 9.16: Seamount Name

Last known eruptions

Location

Healy

1360

.HUPDGHF9ROFDQLF$UF3DFLÀF2FHDQ

Kolumbo

1650

Aegean Sea, Mediterranean

Dom João de Castro Bank

1720

The Azores, Portugal, North Atlantic

Ibugos Island (Unnamed yet)

1854

:HVWHUQ3DFLÀF2FHDQ

Campi Flegrei Mar Sicilia

1867

Mediterranean Sea

Monaco Bank

1911

The Azores, Portugal, North Atlantic

Banua Wuhu

1919

Sangihe Islands, Indonesia

Protector Shoal

1962

South Sandwich Islands, South Atlantic

Rumble III

1986

.HUPDGHF9ROFDQLF$UF3DFLÀF2FHDQ

Supply Reef

1989

0DULDQQD,VODQGV6RXWKZHVW3DFLÀF2FHDQ

Loihi Seamount

1996

+DZDLL3DFLÀF2FHDQ

Axial Seamount

1998

1RUWK3DFLÀF2FHDQ

Kick ‘em Jenny

2001

Grenada, North Atlantic Ocean

Monowai Seamount

2008

.HUPDGHF9ROFDQLF$UF3DFLÀF2FHDQ

West Mata

2009

7RQJD5LGJH6RXWK3DFLÀF2FHDQ

El Hierro

2011

Canary Islands, North Atlantic Ocean Fig. 9.16

Why does it happen? 199

Once again, except for the Protector Shoal Seamount, all the others are either in the Pacific Ocean or in the top half of the globe; the area where earthly matter is scarce and wanted. The area where the South Pacific meets the Australian Plate is best seen in Fig. 9.17. What is interesting in the picture, is that the world’s deepest trenches are to the south and to the west of these seamounts and where the ancient Fig. 9.17: Guyots and seamounts in the South Pacific Credit: NASA World Wind 1.4 ocean floor plunges over 1000 km into the earth’s deep interior. In a recent UCL-led study,274 scientists observed that hot rock in the lower mantle flows much more dynamically than previously thought. Would the hot mantle flows have to do with the attempts of lava to bubble the thin ocean crust and look for openings to burst out? We are still learning…

9.4.2.4 Island Popping While guyots and underwater eruptions do not come to our attention normally, some do though, but only when the growing eruptions of the layers of lava display themselves above the shoreline. Tiny islands sprout initially, and some go on to be bigger by the day, to become habitable by humans in good time. Iceland is an astounding example. However, the latest and better-documented new arrival to see the sunrise over the watery horizon for the first time was a 10 m wide and 305 m long piece of land that surfaced overnight — 15 m out over the sea in Hokkaido, Japan, and as recently as the 24 Apr. 2015. In just three days, the crowded country gained some much-needed real estate... a respectable 2.46 km2 of virgin land. Earlier that year, a volcanic eruption 45 km NW of Tonga’s capital, Nuku’alofa, began to form a new island that is now over 500 m long; appearing and growing soon after an eruption at the Hunga Tonga volcano in Dec. 2014. We have had other new island pop up around the globe; in recent memory — Hunga Ha’apai, Home Reef, and Metis Shoal (Tonga, in 2014, 2006 and 1995), Jadid and Sholan islands (Yemen, in 2011 preceding 2013), Nishinoshima, Fukutoku-Okanoba, and My jin-sh (Japan, in 2015, 1986 and 1952), Yaya Island (Russia, in 2013), and Norderoogsand (Germany, in 1999) — and they are just some of the examples of these new arrivals that 274

Published on 25 Mar. 2019 in Nature Geoscience. Credit: Ana M. G. Ferreira et al.

200 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… surprise us every now and again. All are either in the Pacific or in northern half of the globe; the most celebrated of them being Surtsey, off the coast of Iceland, born on 30 Nov. 1963.275 So let us look at a small list of continuously forming islands that have been around for some time, as displayed in Fig. 9.18: Country

Years of land formation

Kavachi

New Island name

Solomon Islands

2014, 2007, 2004, 1999-2003, 1999, 1997, 1991, 1986, 1985, 1982, 1980-81, 1978, 1976, 1975, 1974, 1972, 1969-70, 1966, 1965, 1963-64, 1962, 1961

Kuwae

Vanuatu

1974, 1971, 1959, 1949, 1948, 1923–25

Fukutoku-Okanoba

Japan

1986, 1974–75, 1914, 1904–05

Metis Shoal

Tonga

1995, 1979, 1967–68

/ż‘ihi Seamount

Hawaii, USA

Continuously, for the last 81 Ma Fig. 9.18

The above five islands have been forming continuously since records were noted down in the beginning of the 20th century, are, once again, all in the Pacific Ocean; the empty space being slowly occupied by weighty land. In Fig. 9.19 are the ‘Top Ten’ countries with the largest volcanic islands: S. No.

Island

Country

Location

1.

Sumatra

Indonesia

3DFLÀF2FHDQ

2.

Honshu

Japan

3DFLÀF2FHDQ

3.

Java

Indonesia

3DFLÀF2FHDQ

4.

North Island

New Zealand

3DFLÀF2FHDQ

5.

Luzon

Philippines

3DFLÀF2FHDQ

6.

Iceland

Iceland

North Atlantic Ocean

7.

Mindanao

Philippines

3DFLÀF2FHDQ

8.

Hokkaido

Japan

3DFLÀF2FHDQ

9.

New Britain

Papua New Guinea

3DFLÀF2FHDQ

10.

Halmahera

Indonesia

3DFLÀF2FHDQ

Fig. 9.19

Once again, we are looking at volcanic activity pouring out its lava into the Pacific Ocean to form islands — the exception being Iceland. 275

On the island’s first spring, plants were observed growing there. Since then, Surtsey — whose north shore touches the Arctic Circle — has provided scientists a laboratory, to observe how plants and animals establish themselves in new territory. In 1965, it was declared a nature reserve for the study of ecological succession, that is, how plants, insects, birds, seals, and other forms of life have since established themselves on the island over time.

Why does it happen? 201

In conclusion, we can confidently say that lava is taken out of the southern and eastern halves of earth slowly and deliberately — like many little-disjointed conveyor belts — transported to the empty Pacific, and the lighter northern half of our lopsidedly imbalanced planet; the area with a continuing ‘positive mass balance’.276 In recent years, geophysicists studying the way that seismic waves bounce off and pass through the inner core have noticed something odd. Seismic waves seem to travel more rapidly through the western hemisphere than through the eastern hemisphere, and that is precisely because, denser the medium, the faster the velocity of wave carries through the medium. There lies our confirmation that the core and the dense mantle of our earth, has shifted to the Pacific side of our planet, only to assist our globe in balancing its mass around the figure axis.

9.4.3 Glacial Isostatic Adjustment Finally, there is isostasy; postglacial rebound; the depression created by the weight of huge ice sheets on the lithosphere and the asthenosphere in the last ice age, now rebounding upwards — though only on a scale of 1 cm/yr. Deglaciation is a relatively recent and a slow process but it continues its process in lightening the load in the top half of the globe. So, while the ice sheets in there keep getting depleted, the rebound in the top half of the area there, continues. Monitored by a GPS network called BIFROST, we know that northern Great Britain experiences an uplift of up to 10 cm/century, and we can confidently say that results of network data show a peak rate of about 1.1 cm/year in the north part of the Gulf of Bothnia. Glacial rebounds flex Earth’s plates most at the boundaries and faults. In some northern parts, rapid rebound does take place, and if spasmodically, earthquakes result from the fracturing crust. Thus, when the glacier melts, the crust returns (rebounds) to the position, it had been before the ice advanced over it. It may do this smoothly and gradually, or the rebound may happen in quick jumps, resulting in earthquakes as faults form, and sudden 20 m rebounds are not uncommon in initiating earthquakes. Gradual rebound though is the more common, and one record of such shows in Fig. 9.20, and a part of the Wisconsin Glacial Episode, also called the Wisconsinan glaciation. Researchers have found that the shift of water mass around the globe, combined with the so-called post-glacial rebound, is shifting Earth’s surface relative to its CM by 8.8 cm a year toward the North Pole.277 The land is exchanged for the ice in the northern hemisphere. So… while earth is always about attempting to get in shape, tectonic activity will continue. 276 277

An area that has gained more mass than it has lost is said to have a positive mass balance. Researcher Xiaoping Wu of the JPL in Pasadena, Calif., who was involved in the study, thinks the shift of Earth’s surface is largely due to the melted ice-sheet, of the Last Ice Age. While this movement will not have an impact on our day-to-day lives, it could affect spacecraft tracking. “Satellites in space orbit around the CM record information from space, and our corresponding instruments are located on the Earth’s surface, so this movement may affect how we track spacecraft”, Wu said. The research, published in Sept. 2010 in the journal Nature Geoscience, and conducted by scientists from JPL, Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, and the Netherlands Institute for Space Research.

202 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors…

Fig. 9.20: This layered beach at Bathurst, Nunavut, Canada, is an example of post-glacial rebound after the Last Ice Age, giving the shoreline its layered cake-like look. Isostatic rebound is still underway here Credit: Wikipedia/CC BY 2.0

9.4.4 When Resources are in Short Supply, Plates Get Active… ... to bury the Pacific, mainly. So the Pacific and our globe’s northern half have been ballasted at best it could from the mobile assets earth had at its disposal. Let us re-examine the plate movements depicted in Fig. 8.2. The vectors on the Eurasian Plate are all pointing to a converging point eastwards, telling us that the plate is moving clockwise into the Pacific. So too, is the behaviour of the North American Plate, this one moving anticlockwise and into the Pacific. Both plates are riding the Pacific Plate, subducting her under their bellies. As if it was ashamed of something about herself... she is burying her face all around her western, NW and northern boundaries, and into the trenches there and at great speed, in the arc from Tonga, through the Marianas, Japan, the Kuril Islands and then on to Kamchatka and then suddenly NNE into the Aleutian Islands and even northern USA. At her rear and on her eastern flank, the whole of the continents of America are gobbling at her rear. An easy conclusion here is that material from a higher level is moving into lower levels. The great big empty depression of the Pacific Ocean is being occupied by the lands around it, inching into it, gradually eating away at its space; disappearing slowly, her place being taken over by the solid lands of North America, South America, the Australian and Philippine plates, and along with the solid continent of Eurasia. The anomaly of the pebble rolling down the hill and into the lake is apt here, where huge slabs of land are rolling down into the ocean. It is natural; energy from higher levels flowing to lower levels.

Why does it happen? 203

The process will continue as long as Earth’s width is greater at the equator and plate tectonics will continue for a few more million years, till earth is a nice round stressless ball.

9.4.5 Other Elements That Help out in the Earth Balancing Equation So, what would happen if our old droplet-on-the-glass were to find itself in a vacuum and with little or no relative gravity acting on it, with no surface to lay or rest on and deface it? In a gravity-less spacecraft, astronauts have shown us how water floats around their space capsules; little transparent globules not really round but hanging on together for dear life, fighting to remain a single cohesive unit.278 In time, they do become round — spheres of uniform radii. Our not so solid earth with the exception of the crust and probably the little core though not of uniform density but is malleable, is also attempting to do just that — to become a sphere in the relative emptiness of space. In little steps, incrementally, earth eases out her shape, transfers her load around and only attempting to attain a physical state of equilibrium. The weathering action of rainfall, flowing rivers, glaciers and the wind, aided by gravity, relocate material from higher elevations to lower ones, adding in their little ways in helping our globe into the roundness she so much aspires to be.279 Sun too, lends a hand: Sun’s position adds a little more to the dynamics, and we learn from the GPS monitors that in summer in the northern hemisphere, the plates moving north are accelerated during the day, and creep comparatively slower at night; in the winter, normalcy returns. What this is telling us is that the lands the equator, are being pushed northwards by tectonics, and Sun’s marginally extra gravitational influence, only gives the moving lands an added boost. Added to the acceleration in summer, Moon also adds to the gravitational influence on the plate’s movement north, when aligned with the plane of both Sun and Earth. Not all deformations originate within Earth and the combined gravity of Moon and Sun have been measured to cause Earth’s surface to undulate by tenths of meters at a point over a 12 h period. Then again… ‘The continent of Australia tilts and shifts a visible amount as the seasons change, new research suggests’. The continental wiggle occurs because of seasonal movement of water around the globe, the research finds. ‘That motion causes quite a detectable, sizable deformation in Australia’.280 278

279

280

Some visually recorded experiments in elementary physics, conducted in a gravity-less medium underlining these cohesive properties, were demonstrated by Dr Donald R. Pettit, the NASA Science Officer while on the International Space Station. Not to be viewed lightly, as this seemingly quiet and passive activity, drains 1200 million hectares of soil into the seas, each year. Said the study’s lead author, Shin-Chan Han, a professor of engineering at the University of Newcastle in Australia.

204 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… And... does this one count? Having evolved on the eastern and southern flatland savannahs of Africa, equally straddling the equator, 88% of AMH now live in the northern hemisphere. Coincidence, or is it that man, as mobile as he is, was prodded into the north by those very forces that moved mountains and directed huge slabs of earth in directions it thought fit to move them? $ ÀQDO FRQÀUPDWLRQ WKDW RXU ODQGV DUH PRYLQJ QRUWK LV WKDW WKH $UFWLF 6HD LV EHLQJ ‘pinched’ or ‘squeezed in’ by the two large landmasses in the north — the North American Plate and the Eurasian Plate — and that has resulted in the creation of the Lomonosov Ridge, the Alpha Ridge and the Mendeleev Ridge, along with the Makarov Basin, the Fram Basin and the Nanson Basin and all running parallel to one another (similar to what happened during the formation of the Gondwanide orogeny that today we know them as the Caledonians and the Appalachians).

Fig. 9.21: Credit: Geology.com

To understand this practically, is to take your thumb and forefinger and lay them on the top of the other arm about a couple of inches apart and then draw the two digits an inch inwards and observe the folds of the skin on your arm. That is what is happening at the Arctic Ocean.

Why does it happen? 205

9.4.6 Mass Transfer These attempts by the body of earth exercising itself to get in shape has had earth scientists coin a simple new term called ‘Mass transfer’ — a process that starts with the erosion of rocks on certain areas of Earth’s surface and redepositing it in other locations of comparative lower levels of energy. In time, the matter would redistribute itself to conform to the dynamic equilibrium of our earth and its functioning in the solar system. Are we sure that our earthly geoid is being balanced? One, we know for sure we are, is that...

9.5 EARTH IS ROTATING EVER FASTER ABOUT HER AXIS The redistribution of Earth’s mass is going to the right places, and earth is shaping up. Redistribution of mass changes Earth’s moment of inertia and anything that redistributes its mass will change its balance, and which will affect its speed of rotation. If the balance is in favour of a more trim and compact Earth, then its speed of rotation will increase, and vice-versa. Our ‘ice-skater’ pirouetting faster and faster as she draws her hands in is the perfect analogy to use here. We have seen earth working long and hard to shape up, and as she does so, she must be getting a little more stable and we now know, a little smaller. This results in changes to her rotational parameters, namely, the orientation of its figure axis and its spinning rate. What we happily note, is that her spinning rate is climbing progressively. The day shortens, as we move quickly through our calendar year. On Boxing Day 2004, the earthquake shortened our day by 6.8 μs, shifting the figure axis 17 cm towards Earth’s ideally perceived centre; the result of sending a stretch of 1600 km of the Indian Plate into the underbelly of Sumatra, suddenly and without warning. The net effect was a slightly more compact earth. What is interesting to note, is that Earth’s rotational axis shifted towards its ‘mean North Pole’ end in the direction 133° E latitude281 (and we can assume this for the whole of the axis moving in that direction, since the shift of the mass was in the area that almost bisects the axis). This movement is towards the deepest parts of the Pacific Ocean, in the latitude of the Marianna Islands, and centred on the island of Guam. In Fig. 9.10, we make this out as the lightest corner of the globe and confirmed by the ballasted waters we see in the area helping the imbalance out. The movement of the axis in this direction confirms that Earth’s empty spaces are being filled out in small increments. The resulting inertia forces from the 8.8 Mw Chilean earthquake of 2010, compelled earth to shift its figure axis by as much as 8 cm towards a less stressful centre from the more wobbly ‘Chandler’ axis it just left, and shortened our day by 1.26 μs.282 281 282

Quoted by Frazer Cain in ‘How much did the Earth move?’ 11 Jan. 2005. According to calculations conducted by JPL’s geophysicist Dr Richard Gross of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

206 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… ,QWKH7żKRNXHDUWKTXDNHWKHIDXOWVOLSDPRXQWHGWRDQDPD]LQJP,WLVWKHKLJKHVW tectonic slip ever recorded till date, with the Pacific Plate consigning itself into the fiery depths of the Japan Trench for eternity (that part of the Pacific sea-floor never to be seen or heard of again). The jolt moved Japan’s main island of Honshu 2.4 m eastward whereas the Pacific Plate slid westward 24 m (and all in accordance with the movements shown in Fig. 8.2, and once again, fanning out from the area where the lands are and into the Pacific — literally gobbling it up in tectonic parlance). The earthquake shifted earth on its axis by estimates of between 17 cm, increasing Earth’s rotational speed by 1.8 μs per day.283 In the more than 5000 aftershocks that hit Japan in the year after, we can be sure that the retribution of the global mass sent us even more into the future, in minuscular proportions.284 In only the above three events recorded, Earth’s increased speed (remember the ice-skater?) of spin, would have hypothetically shortened our day by 9.86 μs (6.8 + 1.26 + 1.8), had they all occurred in a single day. Here is our scientific confirmation that earth is shaping up and in doing so, is moving towards getting to be the ideal sphere; round and small, and above all, to achieve its goal of hydrostatic equilibrium. This shifting of the figure axis towards the Pacific is today the clearest scientific measurement that tells us that earth has been, and is one-sidedly imbalanced and that its movable mass still keeps moving into the lighter Pacific and the half above the equator, to attain a stress-free state for itself. On the other hand, imagine we have a perfect sphere that is rotating about some spin axis, and if you remove some material from any location... the axis would be heading away from the direction where you lose the mass. All earthquakes have some effect on Earth’s rotation. It is just they are usually barely noticeable.

9.6 ... BUT THIS IS HALF THE STORY In the last 15-20 years, geologists have come to understand that the solid earth is measurable, and so better and sophisticated seismic techniques have brought us to a better understanding of the 3D structure of Earth’s mantle and lithosphere. Today we ‘see’ through solid rock, observe a molten lava jet stream deep within earth through radar piercing satellites, and measure, watch and listen to the action going on around us. We think we can now describe in numerical terms how earth is behaving deep inside her, and to record unseen changes miles below our feet. Electromagnetic waves sent below, allow us to map her, like a ‘body scanner’. Measuring Earth’s crustal movements, scientists today use GPS satellites, radio telescopes and satellite lasers while observing minute movements on the ground; both lateral and vertical. 283 284

ScienceDaily, 5 Dec. 2013. Interestingly, as tectonics sends us rotating faster, Moon moves away from Earth at the rate of 3.82 cm/yr, thereby slowing down our spin. Ref.: S. R. Meyers, A. Malinverno. Proterozoic Milankovitch cycles and the history of the solar system. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2018; 201717689 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1717689115.

Why does it happen? 207

Recent technical advances have created a fertile ground for global cooperation between neutral political bodies and the scientific community, in an effort that integrates state-ofthe-art methodology, and the assembly of global databases for a better understanding of the earth beneath our feet. It is here that we observe the power of the theory of tectonics, lies in its ability to combine all of these observations into a single model — of how the lithosphere moves, over the fluid mantle. Therefore, the Pacific Ocean shrinks as Earth’s land mass comes in to occupy its space. As tectonics moves on, the Juan de Fuca, the Cocos, the Nazca and the Pacific plate respectively, will eventually all drop into the trenches bordering the Pacific Plate, as they are currently doing. In a few million years, the sinking of the plates — down into the 18 trenches that surround her around the Ring of Fire — along with the landmasses moving in to occupy the Pacific’s vast emptiness, earth will begin to slowly begin to experience a state of equilibrium, with some much needed quiet and long due stability. By then, the Pacific Plate will have shrunk further, with the extra 20 cm of ocean water she now still bears, having eased down into the seas around her; the borrowed water ballast not needed anymore, will return to where they belong. Today, having balanced her body considerably, the movements of her plates have begun to slow down progressively; to now creep and crawl, but surely and steadily, feeding the waters of the Pacific into the neighbouring seas. It still has a long way to go before the Pacific Ocean drops her water levels to align them with the rest of the other water bodies — when the geoid becomes a perfectly round geometrical object in 3D — a completely round ball. All conditions remaining the same, far into the future, plate tectonics will produce much higher mountains or deeper trenches and depressions than we have today. Gravity will see to it that pebbles will roll into the depressions one at a time, and like us, as earth strives for perfection to find its ideal form, it will ease out into a nice smooth ball, spinning resistance-free on shorter days and ever-shortening years. Almost a century later, Wegener’s hypothesis has been proved correct. We now accept that the Earth’s surface, its lithosphere rides on the dense but fluid asthenosphere, subjected and subjugating to forces Fig. 9.22: From her 3.8 Ga (Fig. 3.1) body at the start of her moving its fragile exterior. cratonization, tectonics has shaped Thanks to Wegener, we now know the reason ‘why’ our earth, to look like this tectonic happens. picture alongside Picture Credit: NASA

R.I.P. Alfred Lothar Wegener 1st Nov. 1880 To (Date unknown) Nov. 1930

PART – II Continents Drift While Islands Scatter

‘The good thing about science is that its true whether or not you believe in it’. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

10

Early Earth’s Life

So Wegener’s assessment of Earth’s movement of the landmasses has been vindicated, and we now know that plates inch their way about the surface of the earth, but do we know for certainty, how the various plates came to be in the positions they are in now, and where they were on a map of our present world? Scientists have linked some of the movements of these rigid puzzle-piece slabs, to tell us today which way these plates are moving and at what speeds. However, they have struggled to explain past movements with clarity, and especially with the many terranes enclosed in the middle of continents, and whose presence in strange surroundings baffle us today. We need to dive into that undocumented past a little deeper while piecing together the probability of the outcome of the events, in the course of sifting through empirical data now made available to us while along the way bridging up of some of the missing dots with little hypothesis, now and again, to give our Earth’s journey, some ‘plausible continuity’. So, if you have ever felt the earth shudder or gently rock rhythmically beneath your feet, you are no stranger to the movements of Earth’s ever-shifting plates. You had experienced a tremor from a nearby earthquake; one of the millions that take place around the globe’s surface, year in year out; helping earth get in shape, wriggling her bodily skin, shedding some, growing new skin while ironing out her wrinkles. You have and are experiencing ‘tectonics at work’ on a daily basis, although you do not physically sense it all the time. Among other things, the earthquake you experience moved the plate you were on — a minuscule distance maybe… but you moved... and in all probability, in the general direction of the vectors displayed in Fig. 8.2. The emergence of plate tectonics in our planet’s life, is arguably a defining moment in its young and still growing body — alone amongst known terrestrial planetary bodies; evolving a unique plate form of a balancing-recycling act — helping keep the planet alive and kicking, in a breathing and living entity.

10.1 THE BIG QUESTION? However, another question is... when did tectonics effectively start? The subject is new, and most of what we know is what we learnt after World War II. What is heartening

212 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… though, is that the subject is being studied vigorously as of date, and we may answer this question sooner than we think, as in the field, are an ever-growing number of active participants too. We know that all of Earth’s lands — without exception — sail over the asthenosphere, and those that are within divergent boundaries, open up the land and seabed. The seabeds can be dated efficiently, and they are no older than a maximum of 200 Ma old.285 So, let us assume that as a starting point for ‘active’ tectonics, and as we know it today; the time when the continents began splitting apart in earnest, goaded on by natural and dynamic forces acting on the globe and on the various plates in turn.

Fig. 10.1: Age of the seabed The oldest seabed is seen along the North Atlantic, off the coasts of the two continents that were once a single piece of land. At its diagonally opposite, is the whole of the coast of East Africa. The other old lands we see in this picture (in the eastern Pacific just west of the Marianna Trench), are the last remnants of the Panthalassa sea-floor Credit: NOAA/BY SA

While we temporarily agree on a convenient starting point for the start of the movements of ‘plates’, at the back of our mind is the nagging question: where were the plates before our chosen and arbitrary starting point? When and how did the plates begin to separate from one another? We know they did, and the subcontinent of India and South America are often quoted as being typical movements of plate tectonics. These two are the celebrated ones; what about the others? Did the plates separate in a process that took place over 285

According to the dating of the sea-floor done in recent times. The map we see in Fig. 10.1 was drawn by NOAA, from data provided by institutions like the University of Sydney, The Geological Survey of Canada, Lab. de Geodynamique, O.O.V., La Darse, B.P. France, Institute for Geophysics, University of Texas, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, USA, and work contributed by specialists in the subject, like R. D. Mueller, W. R. Roest, J.-Y. Royer, L. M. Gahagan, J. G. Sclater, et al.

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millennia and before 200 Ma? Briefly: when did the ‘eggshell’ crack-up all over, or who did it, or why did it break-up in so many places from a single continent that it was at the beginning? We think they broke up with asteroid strikes but they why did they start moving only 200 Ma ago? These are difficult questions to answer, but tectonic is still an emerging science and we will find the right answers in good time. However, let us attempt to reconstruct the early earth, not to be finite about it, but only to channel us through to the configuration of the lands that we now know so well — the beautiful lands and waters of the ‘Pale Blue Dot’.286 We can look at the ‘dot’ with a little more detail, in that iconic picture that the Apollo 17 astronauts clicked from their spaceship on their journey to the moon.

10.2 THE UNRAVELLING OF THE FIRST PLATE We know that Earth’s outer solid layer was once a single solid shell, both on land and under the seas. Before it was broken up into huge tectonic plates, earth may have looked like as in Fig. 3.1, and she would have rotated on a somewhat perpendicular north-south axis and most likely parallel to sun’s axis. Lopsidedly loaded with land at her thick extreme, and waters at her thinner end, and she would have wobbled clumsily in her daily rotational movement, and only gravitational attraction kept her in an acute elliptical orbit around sun. Compared to the waters of Panthalassa,287 the heavier lands all bunched up at one end of the new planet, forced into that corner by the centrifugal forces brought about by Earth’s rotation (as she rotates, the heavier side creates a centrifugal force on the landmass side, bunching the outlying lands, even closer together, and much like a laboratory centrifuge does). Earth’s soil would have looked a dullish grey-black; like slag in a furnace of an iron foundry. Its surface would remain so for millions of years, and with little change. The asteroid bombardment would abruptly begin and would go on and through the LHB during the 4.1 to 3.8 Ga of hell she was subjected to, and with little change in her shape. However, the end of the LHB would start the process of changing the status quo. With the end of the LHB, and through the benevolence of the new neighbour, earth is isolated from the asteroid impacts — that had earlier prevented cratonization and continent formation due to the regularity of the impacts, which created a hot and blistering lithosphere all around earth’s surface. However, in the relative calmness, she began to witness after the LHB, her crust is allowed to solidify, and proof comes with our dating of the oldest rocks at around that time. 286

287

An excerpt from Carl Sagan’s book ‘Pale Blue Dot’, inspired by an image taken at his suggestion by the Voyager I on 14 Feb. 1990, when the spacecraft was about 6.4 Gkm away from earth, and where it appears in the centre of scattered light rays. Earth appears as a tiny point of light — a crescent only 0.12 pixels in size. Or Panthalassic Ocean and sometimes called the Palaeo-Pacific, or old Pacific Ocean.

214 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… During the LHB, to an observer in space, earth may have looked like as in Fig. 4.2; with a molten, churning, fire and brimstone like surface. When the LHB ended, earth was a smouldering, hissing entity of hot lava almost all over its surface. However, it had begun the slow process of cooling down; its crust now in undisturbed contact with the cold emptiness of space, as, at the time, earth had no atmospheric cover to absorb or shield it from Sun’s radiation in the day, nor the cold of space at night. Its surface was not temperate and warm, as we know it today, but either too hot or too cold.288 This differentiation of a hot inside of the earth and a cold outside of space, led to cratonization of the outer cover of the shell we know as the lithosphere while transforming its surface into the crust we know today. Earth would probably have started rearranging her elements then, and it is possible that it experienced its first change in layout or change in body shape that, in turn, affected the crust then. Look at it like a ball of freshly baked bread, with a soft core and a brittle crust. The crust was ready to be broken up.

10.2.1 Unplugging Tectonics’ Early History Since how long has earth been attempting to regain a shape of a spherical body — a shape of least resistance, a shape at peace with itself? Does it take 4.6 Ga to do so? If the average movement of plates on earth today were 2.5 cm/yr, a single plate would have now moved around the globe at its equator, at least a thousand-times already. Or, did tectonics stop at some time... and for what reason? If Earth’s plates have been at it all these years, then why is she still on square one; dynamically imbalanced and lopsidedly shaped? Or could it be that for billions of years she was dormant and that this running around of plates, earthquakes, the erupting volcanoes, etc., is a recently initiated activity? Studies conducted recently by an international group of scientists, claim that tectonics did start at the time at the end of the LHB; their study focussing on an area near the southwestern coast of Greenland where there is a rare outcrop of ancient rock, called the Isua Supracrustal Belt, which has been dated at 3.8 Ga old.289 The Isua rocks are classified as ophiolites, which have a green hue from the chlorite minerals within them. At that time, Earth’s surface would have been covered with some rocks that are now found in their virgin form in a few select places. Then again, we have no proof to say that more than 200 Ma ago, tectonics was active over Earth’s surface. We see the oldest sea-floor in the Mozambique Channel and on the eastern coast of North America, and the west coast of NW Africa and believe that this is the time active tectonics started in earnest, albeit very slowly and leisurely. 288

289

Even today, temperatures can vary between Sun and Earth, and depending on where you are — in sun, or shade, or, at various points away from the centre of earth. It could be very cold out there, as we are made aware of what is known as the ‘cosmic background temperature’ — a numbing –271°C! Source: Scripps Institution of Oceanography/University of California, San Diego. ‘Geophysicists Find Evidence of First Plate Tectonics’. ScienceDaily — 23 Mar. 2007.

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Why then these plates began moving around only recently? 200 Ma over 4.543 Ga translates literally to... just now! Why? Why at this last moment?

10.2.1.1 Asteroids Bully Planets without Moons On another front, plate forming and its movements would have been helped along by the occasional meteor strike that would have caused some temporary havoc around the impact area, rearranging the landscape and cracking up the crust. Large asteroid impacts leave their marks on our planet, and their impact effect and scars linger on for millions of years. Whatever size they are, meteorite impacts are one of the most destructive forces in the solar system — capable of breaking up large rocks, or disorienting planets and their rotation, disturbing their positions in the plane of the solar system and probably even their revolutions around the sun. We think this is what happened to Uranus. A large meteorite or a number of them may have hit her at a point that would tilt and send her axis spinning in another direction. Sitting at our vantage point above sun and looking down at the plane of the solar system, Uranus now appears to be rotating clockwise by a whopping 98° (relative to the plane of the solar system), meaning it essentially spins on its side. Uranus was vulnerable to such external influences to change its movements, as it had a large surface area to attract asteroid hits that either banged into the planet, or got themselves captured, to eventually become its moons; succumbing however, to an asteroid strike. Earth has a comparative smaller area exposed to asteroid strikes… so in the beginning... Earth was without Moon...

10.2.1.2 Ancient Scars 4.5 Ga ago and until the Cretaceous, earth was in a similar situation to what Venus is in now. It could be pushed around by large asteroid strikes. Those asteroids did strike, and earth has retained some of their thumping marks for posterity, and to tell us ‘Yes! We did to you what we did to Venus’.

10.2.1.3 Other Crust Spoilers Though meteorites may have had a hand to play in the forming of the early plates, Earth’s surface could have been broken into pieces by other bit-players and side actors. Stationary hotspots under a moving plate do cut away at the lithosphere’s underbelly as a welder’s blowtorch would do under a thin iron sheet, and we can observe this with the Cosgrove Volcanic Track. This makes it easier to split Australia in two at that grove if differential pressure is put on the two sides of the divide created by that stationary hotspot. There is then the example of the Indo-Australian Plate’s movement that is held back at the Sunda trench, whereas its south-eastern half is moving NNE at a faster rate. This creates a stress on the lithosphere in the area off the SW coast of Banda Aceh, on the island of Sumatra, off NW Indonesia, and as can be seen in the shaded area in Fig. 8.2, which is a future fault in the making. In good time, the Australian Plate should break away from the Indian Plate and move NNE on its own. We will then have another transform boundary to contend with.

216 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… Then there is the differential rate of cooling with the shrinking and expanding of the crust that is in contact with the hot asthenosphere below which can fracture due temperature stress from the constant differential it is being subjected to. In addition to all this, there is the stress placed on the crust, in that, earth flexes from glacial rebounds (both postglacial and late-glacial),290 and as what is now happening in the Great Lakes area presently. Here, the crust and mantle — that were depressed by the huge ice sheets that sat on their surfaces during the last ice age — are rebounding upwards at imperceptible speeds. Added to these rebounds, are Sun and Moon’s gravitational and tidal forces that rhythmically flex earth’s surface, where the fatigue stress helps to finally break the crust up. So, let us go back and look at earth and the impact that probably — down the ages — prepared it for the tectonic voyage it was being groomed to undertake.

10.3 IN THE BEGINNING... Let us take a bit of old Holmes’ advice and take a look back at what Earth’s shape was in the beginning, go through her stages of growing and shaping up, and finally see how she arrived to be what she was at the end of the Cretaceous, the time that earth was still moonless. Since the LHB stopped some 3.8 Ga ago, earth has been left alone and in peace, to conduct her personal affairs in private and undisturbed in the solar system. She would not have it easy though, as now and again, she would be peppered by asteroids. In the meantime, she has constantly been trying to achieve a state of becoming a sphere from an egg-shaped like physical state, and we shall hypothesize in between available empirical data, as we move through her stages in life, to see just how all this took place and came about. Today we know that it was Antarctica that was the centre of the old Pangaea and that the Pacific Ocean is the old Panthalassa. Over time, the single landmass on Earth’s thicker side would have been subjected to centrifugal forces on its body, and its outer fringes closer to Panthalassa would push at the landmass away from the centre of rotation on its axis. The softer earth would crack up and pile up from these pressures, throwing up many mountains on that single landmass. We would later identify some of these as the Caledonian and the Appalachian mountain ranges. The tectonic split along these mountain ranges would be another link to tell us that orogeny and mountain building was active and real on the single continent of Pangaea, as these mountains are recognised to be the roots of the same Palaeozoic orogenic belt of Pangaea. 3.8 Ga ago, as the Hadean period ended, earth had not changed much in shape since it joined the solar system family but may have gained in mass, from the accretion of meteorites 290

Relating to the later stages of the final glaciation (Weichsel, or Devensian), from the beginning of the rise in temperature about 15,000 ya, to the beginning of the Flandrian about 10,000 ya.

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matter over her surface. However, it was the time that cratonization began and the changes started slowly, and in time, the single giant continent of Pangaea began to unravel itself from the Hadean chaos and was beginning to settle down into a single landmass once again and surrounded by Panthalassa. In Fig. 3.1, we see Pangaea’s centre in the tropics, centred around the equator, and behind and all around her is Panthalassa. Earth rotates on an axis that is perpendicular to its plane of revolution and parallel to Sun’s. There is, therefore, no obliquity and hence no seasons on earth and no abnormal changes to the way heat from the sun is distributed around the planet. It was a predictable day/night cycle, season-less, uneventful and undisturbed. In that peace and lifeless solitude, life could evolve... Earth began to change her shape; from the teardrop or ‘egg-shaped’, she was to a little round egg-like body. By 3.4 Ga ago, a semblance of a core of heavy metals formed, and we know that the ‘dynamo’ forming within the earth, began to create a semblance of a magnetic field around her. In fact, there is the possibility of it having had more than one magnetic field291 in that early period of its core and mantle in the process of differentiation, and settling down to business. As the heavy elements find their way into Earth’s interior, thermonuclear fires are lit. Her mantle gets hot and soft and her surface spreads out a little, and simply because her top-heavy landmass sinks into a softer mantle owing to its massive weight. The motion started initially because of gravity, where huge chunks of land (future continents in the making...) flattened out under their own weight. 3 Ga ago, in a more stable orbit, with time and with the dissipation of heat into space, Earth’s crust consolidates and solidifies further and comparatively quicker. It was at this time that the giant Pangaea was now a single and the only continent on earth, and of an immense area and depth. However, it was only by 2.58 Ga ago, in the Achaean period, that Earth’s outer layers cooled substantially, with the heavier metals settling down further into her core and mantle. Below the forming crust, it is still hot and volatile; an area, we now associate with its asthenosphere and upper mantle. For up to 150 Ma, gravitational spreading drove the early plate tectonic activity with its top-heavy weight bearing down on the softer mantle under the crust, and it begins to stretch out too, edging its outreaches under the shore waters of Panthalassa. It sinks slowly, and these movements are a simple exercise necessitated by gravity, and in the long term, may have led to the larger landmasses spreading out only to crack at the underbelly of the solidified crust on Pangaea, adding to the reasons in the making of the first plates. The landmass was still ‘top-heavy’, and especially at the centre of Pangaea. Even to this day, it is still top heavy, and we know this as the sea-floor in the Southern Ocean, has an average depth of 4000 to 5000 m around the land there, with the deepest point being at the South Sandwich Trench, at a depth of 8202 m at the Meteor Deep Trench. The land itself still has a depth of its soil today, of an average of around 70 km thick, and the thickest on the planet. 291

‘Ancient Earth had more than two magnetic poles’ EurekAlert, 24 June 2016. Credited to Carnegie’s Peter Driscoll and published in Geophysical Research Letters.

218 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… By 2.5 Ga ago, earth has unknowingly created its first ‘plates’. These are not because of tectonics or its movements, but by Earth’s own attempt to get in shape; her width larger at its thicker end and her rotation around her axis is slow, as its energy is absorbed in its awkward wobble. 2.5 to 1 Ga ago, in the Palaeoproterozoic era, Earth’s crust solidified further, and the geoid taking a fuller shape than its ‘teardrop’ shaped birth — now looking a little ‘pear’ shaped. It is a time when large asteroids strike earth, and as its atmosphere is still forming and therefore still thin, they fall in large unbroken chunks, unburnt from friction from an almost non-existent atmosphere on earth. Asteroids struck at regular intervals, with the latter ones destroying emerging life but helping in cracking up Earth’s lithosphere into the many small shells of future land that we see around today. Africa is marked out firmly on Pangaea’s surface, and a crack develops over the future southern Europe and North America. The oldest impact crater on earth is the Vredefort crater in South Africa. A meteorite — or an asteroid bigger than South Africa’s Table Mountain — blasted out the giant crater 2.02 Ga ago. It gouged out the land in a circle while sinking the plate around the impacted area, sending a violent shock wave around the brittle lithosphere, cracking it up in progressive radiations from the centre of the impact. Despite the effects of weathering over time, to this day, we still see the scars of its huge impact — an impact that must have cracked the lithosphere of Gondwanaland and defined the borders of the southern African continent and that of South American and Antarctica too. Large impacts would have hit Africa more frequently, but forests and land erosions would have hidden the craters.292 Was Lake Victoria also an impact crater? The city of Kampala at its north either sits in a small impact crater, or is the caldera of a huge and sunken ancient volcano. Seven hills that surround the city incline our arguments to lean so. 292

Fig. 10.2: The Vredefort impact Crater may have been responsible for marking out the plates of the southern continents

Earth’s surface could hide some big blemishes. More than 90 impact craters larger than a kilometre across await discovery, researchers estimate in the 1 Sept. 2014 Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

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Sudbury crater in Ontario, Canada, clocks in at 130 km wide and 1.85 Ga old, and close in age and size to Vredefort. The original crater is believed to have sprawled 260 km across its diameter. Rock fragments from the impact have even been found over 800 km away, in Minnesota, in the USA. In a way among many others, the Vredefort and Sudbury impacts293 were a blessing in disguise for future life on earth; it led the way to early ‘plates’ forming over Earth’s lithosphere, by first cracking up its crust in the different places that they struck. There were the precursors to the lead up to actual tectonics — the physical dispersal of the landmasses — that started to happen, very slowly, some 200 Ma ago, until the end of the Cretaceous. 1.1 Ga ago, in the Neoproterozoic era, the landmass at its thicker end congealed sufficiently, but upheavals in the crust continue. Erosion of the emerging topsoil from the new rains and wind helps the crust begin to get thinner, and due to gravitational forces though still of low intensity, it fans out into the Panthalassa waters as alluvial deltas; helping in a little way to spread out the land and counterbalancing Earth’s lopsided shape. However, with the ‘top-heavy’ weight on the single continent takes its toll, it begins to crack-up, but these cracks are in its valleys, where gravitational forces have more bearing there. Up until 600 Ma ago, all the landmass was on one side of earth; the larger and thicker end and did not separate much even after it settling further into Earth’s mantle and spreading out into Panthalassa; centrifugal forces still acting on the landmass to bunch Earth’s entire soil at one end. 573 Ma ago, an asteroid strikes the Katanga, in Congo, Africa. The Luizi impact structure is 17 km wide, striking earth when travelling at a speed of 72,000 km/ hr. The future continent of Africa Fig. 10.3: By 1 Ga ago, with the relentless asteroids and is now even more defined, and meteor strikes, earth would have been cracked all over its especially in the corridor that surface. Africa has its borders identified clearly 293

There are of course more, like the Suavjärvi impact crater in the Republic of Karelia, Russia, about 50 km north of the town of Medvezhyegorsk. The approximately 3 km wide Suavjärvi crater lake is located in the centre of the crater. Studies continue, and a new crater was discovered in Greenland in 2012; is being vigorously studied, and appears to be the oldest ever, with estimates turning up dates of 3 Ga and such.

220  The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… would separate the future continents of the Americas from Africa. Cracks are evident all around it. The impact also defined several boundaries of the future continents that emanated from Gondwanaland, notably India and Madagascar. 541 Ma ago in the Cambrian, some anomaly in the solar systems plays to reduce sun’s gravitational pull on earth. Could it be that the planets spread out away from sun? On the other hand, could a 10th planet have taken some temporary refuge in our solar system, thereby forcing sun to part with some of its gravitational hold on the others Fig. 10.4:  The Vredefort impact having already defined Africa’s to accommodate the newcomer? southern borders 2.2 Ga ago, the Luizi impact in the centre, We will have to figure that out, probably hastened up the opening up of long deep rifts along Africa’s western and eastern borders but what we know is that life suddenly begins to grow large, and the Cambrian explosion had started. South America cracks up and earth is now made up of a small number of prominent plates. Laurasia begins to drift away in the east and so does Greenland and parts of Central Europe in the west of Pangaea, and what remains of Pangaea, is Gondwanaland. 490 Ma ago the centrifugal forces continue to push at the lands and we see the start of the build-up of the Central Pangaea Mountains, and what we would later know of as the Caledonian orogeny. It could be a period of some warmth or that Earth’s rotational speed increased but whatever it was, the centrifugal forces were instrumental in the build-up of the orogenies. 488.3 to 443.7 Ma ago, during the Orodovician period, we see earth bulge a little more at the equator and Panthalassa falls down further, as the waters now move into the slowly separating lands. More cracks develop in the crust, being slowly pulled apart by the expanding girth of the planet. 480 Ma ago, the Appalachian orogeny is in place. Once again… both the Caledonian and the Appalachian orogenies are the result of centrifugal forces and not through any destructive margin process. An analogy here would be as such: think of the build-up like a pair of loose and comfortable socks you were wearing while walking in the park and you

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suddenly decided to jog. Your socks would migrate towards your feet in folds or pleats. Two such pleats would be the Caledonian and the Appalachian orogenies; aligned almost parallel to the equator and the tropic of Capricorn. 450 Ma ago, during the End Ordovician, the changing shape of the earth that started with the breaking up of Pangaea, and the waters circulating inland, vegetation and inland aquatic animals that came in with the ocean, would adjust and live in fresh inland rivers that were beginning to form with the increasing rainfall. 425 Ma ago, southern Britain Fig. 10.5: There are now basically two continents, with was set in a sea, on a small continent Laurasia having drifted apart from Gondwanaland. Countries in the tropics are greener — Antarctica, situated in warm, southerly Madagascar, Borneo, Sumatra, Africa, the future subtropical latitudes. Rocks found Kazakhstan, India, the future Georgia, Turkey and the in Herefordshire, Welsh Borderland, Caucuses, Italy, Southern Europe, Norway and Greenland, parts of Northern Europe and parts of Newfoundland and dated to the Silurian period, tell and eastern North America us this story. 416 to 359.2 Ma ago, in the Devonian came more changes and around 370 Ma ago, instead of earth being like a spinning ball made of steel, it has a bit of plasticity that allows the shape to deform very slightly, accommodating and counterbalancing the lopsided weights around her. The effect would be similar to spinning a bit of ‘moulding plaster, or like our lopsided weighted basket ball. The lands with identifiable plates and on the edges of Pangaea begin to slowly separate, resulting in the waters of Panthalassa moving inland. Once again, water levels begin to fall around the continent. With the sea inland, we see a gradual but more humid climate come inland, into the two giant islands. Changes in the atmosphere would begin to create some humidity around these lands and especially around the inland water bodies. Still, there are no seasons on earth, and there is uniformity in vegetation growth, in a wet, moist temperate climate all around the coastlines and along the banks of the emerging rivers. Looking out from space, our alien friend would notice that some colour was beginning to show up in places and particularly around the tropics.

222 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… 400 Ma ago, and still in the Devonian, the Yunnan province of China was under the sea. We know this today, as a fossil of a coelacanth was found there. This province of China was then in and around present day East Africa. 340 Ma ago, there are still two continents, Gondwanaland and Laurasia. 310 Ma ago, Yorkshire in the UK was still in the tropics, with tropical rainforest teeming with life; on its edges were swamps and the sea. Today we find the fossils of shark and crabs of that time. It is the same in Texas, USA. From Jackborough we have evidence that giant sharks hunted in waters around that place at that time. 270 Ma ago the American state of Arizona was a sea and this was 45 Ma before the first dinosaurs even appeared. 290 to 254 Ma ago, parts of the current North American Mid-West, along with Europe and parts of Asia, were heavily marine, with seas covering parts of the continents. 254.14 Ma ago we see some more growth in the Central Pangaean Mountains, once again giving way to the slinging pressure of the centrifuge, on the rotating and lopsidedly loaded earth; the Caledonian orogeny build-up continuing to grow the mountains. 251 Ma ago, the still debated Bedout High, and the Wilkes Land asteroid impacts are said to have struck in tandem on Australia’s NW and SW. If all tests are in order in the studies being done now, they would turn out to be the ones responsible for the plate formation of the lands of Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica, and Papua New Guinea, leaving a distinct mark on our globe for ages to come. The ‘Wilkes Land’ crater was a 50 km wide meteorite that helped create a 500 km wide crater and could have been the biggest explosion ever seen on the planet. 150 Ma later, this crack would widen and start Australia’s slow journey NNE. That tectonic movement is still ongoing in that same direction and manner, until date. It was a time too that the Siberian traps were in full flow that also helped bring about the Permian–Triassic extinction event; colloquially known as ‘the Great Dying’, where 90 to 96% of Earth’s life of flora and fauna went extinct. In that time between Permian and the Triassic, it is possible that a third impact hit earth. Though there are no remnants or tell-tale signs of the impact, volcanic activity began in Siberia approximately 248.3 Ma ago and ended approximately 247.5 Ma. There were flood basalts there and that resulted from a massive plume of lava that poured out of the ground in sheets and an estimated 1.6 Mkm3 of it was deposited there, oozing out through cracks in the ground, releasing tonnes of sediment and ash into the atmosphere, as well as massive amounts of greenhouse gases; mainly carbon dioxide. Many more impacts would have occurred in the period and of which we do not know anything about, and would have also caused some physical damage to Earth’s crust, we believe. Something did cause the biggest mass extinction at that juncture, and in all probability, it is these asteroid impacts all over the planet. Pangaea would have looked like in Fig. 10.7, soon after the impacts — starting with Vredefort and ending with the twin Australian hits.

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By the End Permian, we see Nova Scotia, Canada, Morocco, and New Jersey adjacent to the Western Sahara. It was a time when large ferns grew along the banks of the great nascent rifts that had developed between these high and thick lands. In addition, the equator ran from northern North America, through Greenland, Morocco, through the African continent to Mozambique and finally on to present day Antarctica. In this period of the End Permian, splitting of the earth and connecting of the oceans and the drop in sea levels is observed. There are the beginnings of a Fig. 10.6: 251 Ma ago, the borders of Australia and Antarctica rift observed on the right of would have been defined by the two impacts we are currently studying; the Bedout and the Wilkes Land craters India, where the long strips of land are. As the huge landmass of the future North America keeps inching away westwards, Gondwanaland splits all the way from the present-day tip of the ‘Horn of Africa’, and right down to the present-day Antarctica, and counterbalancing (or see-sawing) the moving of the continent of North America is little India while also defining the future of Africa’s east coast along the way. These thin and narrow rifts, some 7000 km long, were deep and harboured terrestrial life that sank with it from the grasslands above. As time went by, the rift would widen further and the waters of Panthalassa would seep in, and deep freshwater-filled rifts would begin to mix with water of Panthalassa, and where land mammals would also adapt to a life in the rifts near the salty seas. All over Gondwanaland, the rifting was slow though, and in time, from a barren darkish grey rocky outcrop, squishy deltas, ponds and lakes would gradually emerge. Earth’s crust was becoming a softer place to live on. Burrowing creatures would rejuvenate the topsoil for more delicate plants to grow in that virgin topsoil. 245 Ma ago, Acipenseriformes294 have made their appearance in the salty oceans of earth. 215 Ma ago, Poland would have been under water.295 294 295

An order of basal ray-finned fish that includes the sturgeons and paddlefish too. Scientists say they have discovered a rare early turtle fossil in a landfill site there, near the small town of Poreba.

224 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… 201.3 Ma, an asteroid strikes at the Triassic-Jurassic boundary, in the area around the present-day Newark basin in the eastern USA. An iridium anomaly in the area confirms this strike. Could it be the cause of the split of the North American coast from Africa? It was, of course, close to the nascent rift (the future MAR) between the two future continents. 201±2 Ma ago, another strike is confirmed at the now eroded Rochechouart crater in France. Could it be from the same family? Could they have been the catalyst that started the sudden and abrupt breakup of Pangaea? Could these strikes have shaken our planet and also put an end to the Triassic Period, and start the breakup of the continents while ushering in the Jurassic Period?

10.3.1 The End is Near... The strikes slow down Earth’s rotation while sending Africa to centre itself on the South Pole. The Pole Fleeing Force would now send the two halves of Pangaea on either side of Africa to being to separate from Africa. It was a slow process and the separation along West Africa and on its opposite side in Mozambique would be apparent. And so... 200 Ma ago, with a couple or three major plates having formed on the single landmass, the future geography of earth was almost ready to be drawn. Due more to erosion, sedimentation, some centrifugal forces and the flexing of the lithosphere through the twice-daily tides, the gradual changing shape of earth and the settling down of the central piece of the top-heavy landmass, a piece of Gondwanaland snaps along the whole length of the west of Africa, from present-day Morocco to Nigeria. In time, this initial split would tear the landmass, right down to the south of Africa and into the bowels of present-day Antarctica, and begin to move west, triggering a balancing act at the other end with Madagascar, India, and the future South East Asia. We have the second oldest 296 seabed in the north Atlantic, dated to about 200 Ma ago, and it is in the area where North America separated from Africa and is located close to the two continents and on opposite sides of the MAR, and far as possible from the ridge where they were both born. Those two parts were close to the equator at the time, and at the opposite end of the large continent of Gondwanaland, where at the time on the equator too, was present-day Mozambique and Madagascar. The little island along with some the Andaman Islands, part of Malaysia, the islands of Indonesia and Borneo would counterbalance the large North American continent moving west, and they would inch east. In time, that part of the sea-floor would move on to create the Mozambique Channel and is of the same age as the one in the North Atlantic. Two unequal pieces of land on the equator, over 7000 km apart, suddenly moved in the opposite directions at the same time delineating for the first time, the western and eastern shores of the future continent of Africa. Could it have been a coincidence? No! It is our proof that active ‘earth-balancing’ tectonics happened here, and at that particular time in our planet’s history, by physical forces counterbalancing one with the other — playing the old ‘sea-saw’ game. 296

The oldest sea-floor is found in the Mediterranean Sea, and is some 340 - 280 Ma old, and a remnant of the Tethys Ocean. With Africa moving north into Europe, the old sea-floor is being squeezed out of existence and slowly disappearing.

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190 Ma ago, rifting begins to separate West Africa and the future continent of North America while initiating the beginnings of the North Atlantic Ocean. It was the humble beginnings of the MAR too. During the first half of the dinosaurian 185 Ma reign on the earth, all of the world’s few plates and the continents had clumped up loosely together into one giant landmass with little long deep rift-like oceans between them. It was at the beginning of the Jurassic, and a time when great beasts began to roam the lands. It was the time the dinosaurs that moved in herds, began to run over the waters between hunting grounds to feeding grounds, where the slow tear of the landmass began to split up their migratory pathways. They would be undaunted and cross those little breakaways and then eventually, ‘flap run’ over the waters that began seeping into the cracks that would become a sea in good time. They could run over the waters as at the time, gravity was 1/6th of what it is today. It was the time we can now say with certainty, when tectonics began to make its presence felt on the evolving and growing planet; a time when the old bunched-uptogether pieces of the old lands began to move apart. It was a slow breaking up of the giant land, and at the time, plate movement was the result more of sinking lands, and new shorelines forming due to the erosion of the elevated Pangaea’s topsoil, from the new and ever-increasing inland rainfall and river spin-offs. As North America moves west in the northern half of the globe while separating it from Gondwanaland, it leaves behind the future continent of Africa, along with Australia, Antarctica and the lands comprising of Madagascar and India. Its split starts somewhere where Nigeria and Ghana are now, although the bottom of South America is still connected to South Africa and Antarctica. In the Mozambique Channel, we have confirmed data that Madagascar was at this time 183 Ma ago separating from Africa, with splits appearing in the Mozambique Basin and the Riiser-Larsen Sea off Antarctica. Plates would move and split away, especially at the then equator. With the new phenomena of tectonics moving lands apart, weathering of the topsoil would quicken, with the doubling of the rivers and shorelines, and would continue for a good 135 Ma. 165 Ma ago, Madagascar was still connected to Africa, although it has deep freshwater rift lakes along its western flank with Africa. For 5 Ma, the freshwater lakes would play host to a variety of terrestrial wildlife that lived on its banks, just as our hippopotamus do today. 160 Ma ago, Madagascar along with India, and the rest of it on its east are finally torn off the motherland. The separated lands drift slowly to the east, defining the Tethys Ocean (and the future Indian Ocean) even more. At times during this million-years-long transformation, sea levels rose and fell and land bridges occasionally emerged between the newly forming individual landmasses. During times of connectedness, dinosaurs like Stegosaurus would have been able to cross across those land bridges to new pastures.

226 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… At the end of the Jurassic Period, about 150 Ma ago, the supercontinent is still slowly splintering: North America, Europe, and Africa began to drift apart and in the widening rift between them, the emerging Atlantic Ocean was evident — wider at its north and narrowing down to a point at its south. 150 Ma ago, long-necked herbivorous dinosaurs roamed in and around the present-day Yemen. Oman too was closer to the equator at the time, when boaboa trees were common on the island of Madagascar as well as in the present-day Antarctica. A large portion of the North American continent — including parts of Alaska were submerged under shallow seas. 145.5 to 66.0 Ma ago, in the Cretaceous, it was calm and the landmass was slowly settling down, and dinosaurs were moving from hunting grounds to breeding grounds in their yearly ritual of “going home to Mama’s”, to breed. 140 Ma ago, the eastern shelf of Pangaea began to move away east (exactly as what we see today happening, in the EARS). Africa’s ‘top heavy’ crust, with its huge mountain range (comprising of the present-day Zaire, Tanzania, Botswana, South Africa and Antarctica) began to erode into the Tethys Ocean from Southern Tanzania and right through to South Africa. The atmosphere gradually built up, winds and rains increasingly appear, lakes and rivers formed, the land began to erode and it spread and steadily filled in the low lying and empty spaces too, with Botswana, Fig. 10.7: We see that in the End Cretaceous. At Africa’s SE, sinking into the South African it is held there by the clutch of South America’s tail, continent. These were slow and wrapped around Africa while Antarctica helps holding it firm there, not allowing it to move away with gradual changes that were primarily caused by gravity and erosion, with Earth’s rotation aiding it, encompassing the law that all bodies aspire to a round shape; that is, in the least stressful of conditions. As the continents drift apart, we see the flora rapidly diversify, as life is now simultaneously on separate continents, where they begin to adapt to new changes and in many cases, change physically, adapting to local conditions. The same species that separated when Pangaea split and Panthalassa threw up many new oceans and seas, now

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living on different continents, they began to evolve in response to different stimuli, and to look a little different from their cousins they left behind in a now forgotten place; a process now known as allopatric speciation. 130 Ma ago, sea-floor spreading west of Australia marks the breakup of the land bordering India with its western shores, when a terrane breaks off Australia and inches north. It would later lodge itself between India and Eurasia, becoming a part of the future plateau of Tibet. The future continent of South America begins to split from Africa and the South Atlantic starts to form from the tear down that African corridor. It is also a time that the Sahara is under water. 125 Ma ago, or a little later, Africa along with South America wrapped around its southern end, break off Gondwanaland and begin a slow movement NNE. The Tethys Ocean sees its area made smaller. It was a time when Europe was a motley collection of seas and islands and the weather warm and balmy. 120 Ma ago, we see huge crocodiles in Tunisia, and Arkansas was a mudflat where dinosaurs walked. By this time most of South America is separated from Africa but its tail still clung on to southern Africa. 115 Ma ago, the two continents split along the west of the Congo craton and the western coast along the south of the West African craton. The coastline roughly corresponds to the coast of the Borborema geological province of NE Brazil, which separated from this part of Africa. 100 Ma ago, Madagascar is separated from Africa, by only a long thin rift of sea between it and Africa. India too separates from it and the island is isolated, and has been since then. Vast forests cover Antarctica, made up largely of ferns and conifers. Flowering plants — such as most trees that we recognize today — had only just evolved. At the north of Africa, a piece breaks off it and heads north. Our globe, however, is not even a perfect geoid, because mass is distributed unevenly within the planet. The greater a concentration of mass is, the stronger its gravitational pull, creating bumps around the globe. 96 Ma ago, Australia splits from Antarctica, helped along by the rift that started when 251 Ma ago, the Wilkes Land crater formed. Antarctica goes it alone, and begins its long journey into isolation, freeing itself on its south-western border, from Gondwanaland, with rift valleys forming on its southern border. In the exposed rocks there today, we find abundant evidence of life from the Cretaceous period. The separating of Australia and Antarctica had dramatic global consequences. With the part opening of the future ACC, the climate changed. 88 Ma ago, Madagascar becomes a new part of the future African Plate, along with the islands of Réunion and the Comoros. It has been there since, with its flora and fauna evolving independently and uniquely, in an island isolate, to be found nowhere else on the planet; among them, the extinct Dodo, the Great Elephant Bird, and the extant lemurs.297 297

The 2016 report from The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew that focused on Madagascar that year, said that 83% of 11,138 of Madagascar’s native species occur nowhere else on earth. Sadly, at least 1600 are judged to be at risk of extinction.

228 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… 85 Ma ago, Australia began to separate from Antarctica. The separation started slowly at first at a rate of only a few millimetres a year. This accelerated to the present rate of approximately 6.7 cm a year. 80 Ma ago a deep rift valley formed along the southern edge of Australia; this widened to form the present Southern Ocean. Roughly, at the same time, subduction east of Australia ceased and since then Australia has been moving steadily north. The break between Australia and Antarctica was the last event in the Gondwanaland break-up. The rift would widen, to help form part of the present-day the Southern Ocean. It is a time too when Greenland cuts it ties with North America and begins travelling east. 72 Ma ago Arabia had not yet separated from Africa and was bounded on the east by the Tethys Ocean. Parts of Arabia were underwater. 70 Ma ago, a cousin of T. Rex frolics near the Alaskan River. Alaska was in the tropics then. The Rocky Mountains begin to rise in North America, as the movement west of the North American Plate and into the Pacific Ocean, subducts a plate from the Pacific Ocean there. 69 Ma ago, the Prince Creek Formation in Alaska, is a unit of rock that was deposited on a coastal flood plain in the tropics of the present-day Alberta, Montana and South Dakota, then moved along to now be in the Arctic. Our world, in the Mesozoic (252 to 66 Ma ago), was a very different place. For the most part of this era, the landmasses were still in the southern hemisphere. It was the Age of Reptiles and the Age of Conifers. Sometimes, just before 66 Ma ago, Alberta and Alaska were dinosaur country, hanging around in the tropics. At that time, the continents were in other locations and they had somewhat different shapes. North America was still connected to Europe, which was an island archipelago of sorts. Ajkaceratops kozmai is found in Hungary and Leptoceratops is found in China. In this time, Zhucheng, in eastern China’s Shandong Province and eastern North America, were connected, where the dinosaur Zhuchengtyrannus magnus roamed the area. 66 Ma ago, the lands that had separated had moved along too slowly and under a week gravitational force. A ‘hotspot’ in the Pacific Ocean begins to bubble with the emergence from the sea-floor of a nascent volcano. Earth, at that time, was still without Moon.

‘False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science for they often endure long; but false hypothesis do little harm, as everyone takes salutary pleasure in proving their falseness; and when this is done, one path toward error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened’. —Charles Darwin

11

When the Equator Went South

The geological record suggests that until 3 Ga ago, Earth’s crust was immobile. So what then sparked this unique phenomenon that has fascinated geoscientists for decades? Tectonics as we know it today, could not operate effectively on its own. In the early years, it was gravity and isostasy that sank the top-heavy lands. It needed more than that, now that life on the planet was beginning to take hold in larger numbers, coupled with the ever increasing rainfall, new and changing weather patterns, and the faster recycling of life’s ‘essentials’ becoming the order of the day. Something had to give to accommodate the changes. Earth needed help. It would soon arrive and unexpectedly, from quarters hence unknown.

11.1 THE ALVAREZ SLEUTHS In 1980, a young Berkley geologist investigating in Gubbio, Italy, about how long it took certain kinds of rock to be deposited and configure themselves aeons later, Dr Walter L. Alvarez discovered a thin greenish-brown clay layer in rocks that were dated to around 66 Ma ago.298 That intrigued him. He was fortunate that he came from good stock. Discussing it with his father — the eminent Nobel physicist and CALTEC professor — Dr Louis Alvarez, they decided to take a laboratory check on the clay’s properties and sought help from nuclear chemists Frank Asaro and Helen Michels. The sample, they discovered, contained a very high concentration of the mineral iridium. Why was this so, and why the anomaly at the 66 Ma timeline? Iridium is extremely rare in Earth’s crust but remains abundant in most meteorites and comets. When they compared the concentrations of iridium in meteorites, it matched the concentration levels in the clay samples. They all contained a high concentration of the PLQHUDODFRQFHQWUDWLRQRI§SDUWVSHUELOOLRQSS* DQGYHU\PXFKKLJKHUWKDQWKH §SS*W\SLFDORIWKDWDYDLODEOHRQWKH(DUWK·VVXUIDFH 298

There are so many scientists out there at this moment, measuring the exact date of this boundary in Earth’s soil, that there are so many ‘accurate’ readings out there. Most of them, thankfully, record it as a few thousand years after 66 Ma. It is also because of the advancements in dating instruments and improved technology that this is being done regularly and maliciously by our scientists today. However, in this work, we will use 66 Ma as the age of the greenish brown layer.

232 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors…

Fig. 11.1: Louis and Walter Alvarez at the site of the unusual clay layer, here in the Umbrian Apennines (Gubbio section), in northern Italy, 1981 Credit: US Govt./Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory/PD

Fig. 11.2: A Wyoming (USA) rock, with an intermediate clay-stone layer that contains 1,000 times more iridium than the upper and lower layers. Picture taken at the San Diego Natural History Museum Credit: Eurico Zimbres/CC BY-SA 3.00

Was this evidence that an asteroid had struck earth, and the thin off colour layer of clay was the airborne deposits of the impact? Something substantial had happened to form this thin greenish-brown line in layers of sediment; evidence that something devastating happened to the planet 66 Ma ago. It was then just known that the large dinosaurs had been eliminated at that time and that there was a mass extinction then, and there were speculations of the possibility of an asteroid impact, but no evidence had been uncovered till then.

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The Alvarez team then settled on the calculated assumption, that an asteroid must have struck earth at the time, resulting in the formation of the strange layer. The team then also proposed their theory, that an asteroid had hit earth, throwing up a dust layer that encircled it, causing a nuclear winter, and that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Using estimates of the total amount of iridium in the layer, and assuming that the asteroid contained the normal percentage of iridium found in chondrites,299 the Alvarez team went on to calculate the size of the asteroid. ‘A 9.7 km beast of a bolide’ they said, with enough energy of a 100 trillion tonnes of TNT, or about 2 million times greater than the most powerful thermonuclear bomb ever tested by humankind. That same year, the Alvarez team presented their hypothesis: that the clay layer was dated to be 66 Ma and it corresponded to the extinction of animals which were observed in sedimentary rocks around the globe. They pinned the cause of the extinction, on a meteorite impact. This ‘impact theory’ would be known as the ‘Alvarez hypotheses’. When it was originally proposed, no documented crater matched the event. It was not an issue so as to discard an idea that made sense, as Earth’s geological processes hide, or destroy craters over time; obscured, or obliterated by forest cover, desert sands, surface weathering, and tectonic processes... so... ... the hunt was on... ... for the smoking gun.

11.2 THE ‘CRATER’ HUNTERS It would be found, eventually, but it was not to be a straightforward ‘eureka’ moment! In 1978, geophysicists Antonio Camargo and Glen Penfield were working for the Mexican state-owned oil company Petróleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, as part of an airborne magnetic survey of the Gulf of Mexico, north of the Yucatán Peninsula. Penfield found a huge underwater arc of ‘extraordinary symmetry’ that intrigued him. He had known that a decade earlier, a gravity map of the peninsula had suggested an impact feature to the contractor Robert Baltosser, but the service provider was forbidden to publicize his conclusion by Pemex’s corporate policy of the time. Comparing the two maps, Penfield found the ground-based gravity map was the missing link of his underwater arc, and that the two readings formed a perfect circle, 180 km wide, and centred near the village of Chicxulub Puerto, on the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. He felt certain the shape had been created by a cataclysmic event in geologic history. Pemex disallowed release of specific data, but let Penfield and Camargo present their results at the 1981 Society of Exploration Geophysicists conference. It was poorly attended, and their report received little attention. At the time the Alvarez’s put forth their hypothesis, they were unaware of Penfield’s discovery; neither he, of theirs. As all this was happening, a University of Arizona graduate 299

A stony meteorite containing small mineral granules (chondrules), and mainly silicates.

234 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… student named Alan R. Hildebrand published a draft of an Earth-impact theory in 1981. He asked and sought for a candidate crater. In 1990, the Houston Chronicle reporter Carlos Byars told Hildebrand of Penfield’s earlier discovery — of a possible impact crater in South America. Hildebrand contacted Penfield in Apr. of that year, and the pair soon secured two drill samples from the Pemex wells. When Hildebrand’s team tested the samples, they clearly showed shock-metamorphic material,300 a gravity anomaly, and tektites301 in the surrounding area; a condition in the soil, consistent with impact events. The age of the rocks marked by the impact showed that they dated from roughly 66 Ma ago; at the end of the Cretaceous, and the start of the Palaeogene period. Further, more tests confirmed that the melt rocks were also isotopically indistinguishable from the impact glasses. The half-buried structure was the final confirmation that it was the long-soughtafter impact crater. Similar sedimentary layers would be found all over the world302 and we would soon refer to this geological crossover line, as the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K/T) boundary.303 Penfield’s persistence would also vindicate the theories put forth by Hildebrand and the Alvarez duo. Their reasoning and conclusion too, could be right, in that the fallout from the impact, could have led to that last of the five great extinctions of much of the living life forms at that time. In the years following, the work of Hildebrand and his colleagues would be tested, to further identify the importance of Chicxulub as the site of a K-Pg impact boundary. Today we know more; that the asteroid’s diameter was 10 km, and weighed in at 4 trillion tonnes or so, with a density of around 3000 kg/m3, and that the projectile came in from the NW, and at an angle between 20-30°, at a speed of about 72,000 km/h, and its impact on the Yucatán Peninsula of the present-day Mexico, gouged out a crater 900 m deep and 180 km wide! 300

301

302 303

Rock that has undergone transformation by heat, pressure, or other natural agencies, e.g., in the folding of strata, or its mixing with the intrusion of igneous rocks into it. Small black glassy objects found in large numbers over certain areas of Earth’s surface, believed to have been formed as molten debris in meteorite impacts, and scattered widely through the air. Over a hundred such sites have since been discovered till date. It would later be changed to the Cretaceous-Paleogene or K-Pg boundary. Stevns Klint is arguably the most famous, scenic, and best exposed K-Pg boundary section in the world, with an exceptional boundary layer easily recognisable immediately beneath a pronounced topographic overhang, separating the underlying soft Cretaceous chalk from the overlying, harder Tertiary limestone. This site in Denmark, is a UNESCO World Heritage site; a 14.5 km long coastal cliff located about 45 km south of the Danish capital, Copenhagen, on the east coast of the Danish island of Sjælland. The exposed succession is about 45 m thick, and shows the stratigraphic evolution from the late Cretaceous, across the boundary, and into the early Tertiary period.

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It is the most studied of the impact craters,304 and today we even know that it had struck in early June! It is though still difficult to precisely date the impact, recent technological advances have brought the margin of error down to ± 11,000 years, which is accepted, given the exploratory tools we currently have at our disposal. The impact crater would be known as the Chicxulub Crater. It is better known as the site of the asteroid impact that hastened the end of the rule of the large dinosaurs. What is now known as the ‘impact theory’, has stood the test of time, and is now widely accepted by the scientific community, and gets ironclad over time, where only a little over 40 ya, it was a laughable suggestion. In Mar. 2010, 41 experts from 33 institutions worldwide spanning diverse fields, from climate modelling, to geochemistry, to palaeontology, reviewed all available data collected over a of 20-year period, and concluded that the impact at Chicxulub triggered the extinction of life at the K-Pg boundary, including those of the large dinosaurs.

Fig. 11.3: The Chicxulub Crater Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula Credit: Unknown

The Chicxulub impact on Earth’s brittle lithosphere, reverberated across her surface, cracking up the lithosphere in several places. Rivers of lava would sprout out of the cracked lands, and volcanoes would erupt like the sudden breath thumped out of a just pulverized 304

In 2007, David Vokrouhlický, William F. Bottke and David Nesvorný, argued that a collision in the asteroid belt 160 Ma ago, resulted in the ‘Baptista’ family of asteroids, and proposed that the Chicxulub asteroid was a fragment of this family group. In 2010, a newly discovered asteroid P/2010 A2, a member of the ‘Flora’ family of asteroids, was offered as a possible remnant partner of the K-Pg impactor. Over 39 years on, and the impact is still being studied vigorously! In Apr.-May 2016, a team of US and UK scientists retrieved cores of the impact, drilling down to a depth of 1300 m from the peak ring. The project was organised through the European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling (ECORD) and the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP). Studies continue...

236 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… scrum-half. Earth was engulfed in a fiery mayhem, where debris sent into the sky after the explosive impact, also rained fire and brimstone on a shattered surface, on a planet only just experiencing the emergence of its first major life forms. We must remember here that gravity on earth was 1/6th of what it is today. Debris would have gone high and wide and struck at high speeds. Dust from the impact would hang in the air for months... the sun would be not seen... it was dark... the oceans hissed with steam rising out of fissures on the sea-floor and it was burning hot! It was one of earth’s worst and hellish day. Death and destruction followed the impact. Earth’s 5th greatest extinction event was on its way.

11.3 WAS CHICXULUB THE ONLY ONE RESPONSIBLE? Recent studies 305 tell us that the eruption of the Deccan Traps in India, began 250,000 years before the asteroid struck and continued for 500,000 years after the giant impact in Mexico. During this time, earth spewed out some 2.4 Mkm2 of lava on the subcontinent while the immense volcanism may have released dangerous levels of volatile chemicals into the air, poisoning the atmosphere and oceans much before Chicxulub struck. When the Deccan Traps began to spew lava, the western coast of India was only some 7000 km away from the Chicxulub impact and on the western side of the African continent. Why then did the surface of India fissure all over the land to release molten lava from the bowels of earth? On the other hand, did the Deccan Traps erupt because of something or some event that we know nothing about? There was an impact in Ukraine, named the Boltysh Crater. Did it have any impact in the outpouring of lava in India or on the demise of the dinosaur; it was also happening at the same time as the celebrated impact in Mexico? Then there was the Silverpit crater that left its mark on the ocean floor of the North Sea. Did the resulting tsunami it lashed out, have any bearing on life on the planet at that time? Then again, we are beginning to hear of Shiva…

11.3.1 The ‘Multiple Impact Event’ Though the Yucatán impact explains most of what happened at the iridium-rich clay layer of 66 Ma ago, some unexplained physical characteristics are better understood by attributing multiple asteroid impacts at the time, and this allows us to say that the family of asteroids that came along with Moon, entered Earth’s atmosphere too, following one another, and in good time, crashed furiously down here. We have identified a number of impacts that hit us around that same time, but the 24 km wide Boltysh Crater in the Ukraine and the 20 km wide Silverpit Crater in the North Sea tell us that these two may have been of the same family. This is what we now suspect and that there could have been more; some having 305

Confirmation of these dates came about through tests conducted separately in 2014 at the laboratories of Princetown and the MIT, on zircon crystals from the Deccan Plateau.

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probably slipped under continental plates at subduction zones, or trenches, or their traces obliterated by forests, and now oblivious to us, and making it even more difficult for us to more accurately reconstruct Earth’s recent past. This theory has its backers, and in 2002, Kevin O. Pope, along with the Geological Society of America, released a press release saying that the original Cretaceous–Paleogene impact event by a 10 km diameter asteroid was not large enough to trigger a dust-connected ‘cosmic winter’. It would require significantly more fine dust to be generated in order to create this effect than has been detected. Instead he proposes that sulphate aerosols and ash from global fires was enough to create the effect of global cooling by interfering with photosynthesis. There was, however, an unseen benefit awaiting earth after the mayhem and the madness of the impacts... a blessing in disguise, as even more of the lithosphere, cracked up, leading to the potential creation of more tectonic plates of the future. Though all these impacts were enough to crack up Earth’s lithosphere in several places and send the large dinosaurs to oblivion, it also did one more thing... It threw earth off balance!

11.4 ‘FLIPPING’ EARTH! Though the impacts did not shift Earth’s orbit noticeably, nor did it lose any mass or matter in the process, earth is shaken, reels and relents. In the frictionless world of space, the force of the asteroid impacts sends Earth’s lands at the equator rolling southwards, sending most of the landmass to the south. There was no Moon orbiting Earth to hold her in place, and she simply rolled over; changing the time of day and the weather, on every corner of her surface. It changed all the dynamism, including Earth’s axis of rotation, but in time, Earth’s core, obeying the ‘right-hand thumb rule’, and governed by Sun’s magnetism, slowly reorients itself in the north-south position, bringing the axis of rotation back into the position that the dynamism of the solar system compels it to maintain. The angle and force of the four or more asteroid impacts helped send earth temporarily off its axis and everything to be topsy-turvy, especially the daylight hours. With the help of the solid core, the magnetic field and mantel slip, Earth’s axis slips back in place in the north-south position, falling short though by 23.44°. It would be a blessing to future lifeforms in that the inclination would aid earth in one area — it would have four seasons from that day on. The asteroid attack would then flip earth a good 60° clockwise. Morocco would find itself in the sunny north and Antarctica would now have to endure the dark cold of the South Pole. To our alien observer, in the wink of an eye, Earth’s orientation suddenly looks different. Antarctica is SE and South America at its SW, along with a large chunk of earth that would later become the ‘Rockies’ of North America. The Rockies, you will now notice, have also

238 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… changed their orientation similarly; a good 60° clockwise too. So too does the Caledonian orogeny likewise, that was earlier creased parallel to the axis through the centrifugal process imposed on the Pangaean landmass and now at an incline before the asteroid struck. Earth was in for a huge make-up. This single action — this moving of Gondwanaland while centring Antarctica at the South Pole — would be the defining act that would physically change the body and face of earth, as never before, and would continue through our times, 66 Ma on, and will continue till Earth’s unbalanced mass is Fig. 11.4: What we notice here also, is that the equator is redressed, and she becomes a well- way up north, and the continent of Africa is some 1275 km away from where it is at present balanced lady. It would start the process of tectonics in earnest, ratcheting up plate speed over its surface, to be faster than at any time in tectonic history. As the mantel slips over the core leaving the landmass and all life on it stranded in the lower half of our planet, Earth’s revolution creates centripetal forces on the new layout of the landmass in the south while driving them to move into the new and empty areas around the equator, the old Panthalassa Sea (the future Pacific Ocean) and the Artic. A ‘merry-go-round’ effect comes into play as opposed to the “hammer-thrower’s” forces that acted on them before the equator went south. When the lands went south, forces on and within the planet began to beg for change in accordance with the changed dynamism. The pirouetting dancer’s skirt begins to rise... With earth now looking like a giant egg spinning on its head, the pole fleecing force comes into play, as Gondwanaland in the south harbours all but one of the continents. Moreover, like a fairground ‘merry-go-round’, the spinning earth begins to send the lands up north. Little terranes break off Gondwanaland and scurry at great speeds into the new and vacant north; generally in the direction of the North Pole while attempting to counterbalance the sudden lopsidedly loaded southern half of Earth’s new physical configurations. Some terranes would get arrested at outcrops. We can confirm this today and confidently say that a part of Texas was a part of Antarctica, where the rocks in the Franklin Mountains in the west, are similar to those of Coats Land in Antarctica.

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As the top half of the planet was now empty of land — being the old Panthalassa — the spinning earth would start to send the landmass north, as quickly as the forces permitted them. The spinning earth would begin to pick up speed in earnest, centripetal forces lifting them all and towards the north. The huge continents of Africa, South America, and Australia, all bunched-up around Antarctica in the new South Pole, begin to inch north, driven by the Pole Fleeing force, driven by tangential acceleration, which is greatest at the farthest point from the centre of earth. Little landmass would be moved by the force, but many would be sent up north, simply to balance a lopsided load, created by the massive landmass now in the south. Svalbard, an island and part of Norway, for example, in the tropics earlier, would now move to being in the High Arctic! We know this from several angles, and on a couple of them, we have found fossils of Devonian forests there,306 as well as that Norway is a producer of oil, which essentially, is compressed forest extract. It is a similar story with Greenland too, and a few others. At the End-Cretaceous, on the continent of the present-day Africa, the equator ran through Morocco on its west and on through Mozambique on its east, and on through the emerging continent of Antarctica307 that was then in the tropics then. Without any warning, those two parts of Africa find themselves suddenly on the edge of the tropics at opposing ends, while with its tropical flora and fauna to match,308 Antarctica is moved to the South Pole. Earth now looks like a giant pear, with all its landmass in the southern hemisphere, and centred at the South Pole, through which the North-South axis threads itself but at an inclination that it finds itself today.

11.5 THE FALLOUT With the equator going south, changes were made to almost every process that affects the earth, and more so, life on it. Among them were: 1. All over the globe, the climate would change: ocean currents would behave differently, change direction midstream and the circulation of warm and cold waters would create new and localized hot and cold spots. 306

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Christopher M. Berry and John E. A. Marshall. Lycopsid forests in the early Late Devonian palaeoequatorial zone of Svalbard. Geology, vol. 43, no. 12, p. 1043-1046; doi: 10.1130/G37000.1. Dr James Bendle from the University of Glasgow, was one of the team who took part in a study that uncovered the first direct evidence of a much warmer, greener Antarctica 52 Ma ago, with temperatures around 16°C, with summers reaching a balmy 21°C. Their study was published in Nature on 2 Aug. 2012. ‘In the sediments we found fossilised pollen representing two distinct environments with different climatic conditions — a lowland, warm rainforest dominated by tree-ferns, palm trees and baobab trees and a cooler mountainous region dominated by beech trees and conifers,’ he says. An excerpt from ScienceDaily (19 Dec. 2011): ‘Dr Ignacio Alejandro Cerda, from CONICET in Argentina and his team’s identification of the remains of the sauropod dinosaur in Antarctica, suggests that advanced titanosaurs (plant-eating, sauropod dinosaurs) lived in a leafy environment in the Late Cretaceous’. Their work has been published online in Springer’s journal Naturwissenschaften — ‘The Science of Nature’.

240 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… 2. Most creatures living on land would experience a huge negative fallout from the tilt, with the daily life cycle changing along with the weather. Mobile marine life was not affected as much, as most of the mobile ones would move on to better climes, in their one big ocean of Panthalassa. Shore life like clams, reefs and crabs, would have to adapt, but those in areas of severe weather change would perish. Food cycles on land would collapse, and those feeding off it would see a domino effect of scarcity and starvation in many areas around the globe. It would add numbers to the total of the extinction event of the time. 3. New vegetation would spring up in once dry lands, and a relocation of mobile life is evident. With the constant daily flexing at the equator and the tropics of the egg-shaped looking earth, its crust was rearranging itself all over. There were frequent earthquakes, volcanoes, flood basalts, and tsunamis. Physically, earth would change in the next 66 Ma, faster than at any time in its history. She began a sincere attempt to get into a shape as fast as she could. She is more of a sphere now than ever before in the 4.543 Ga that she has been around in our solar system — just 42 km from being an ideal sphere. Though our blue dot may appear spherical, she is though still an unbalanced globe. All this was happening... but more was to come to add to the consternation.

The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best and therefore never scrutinize or question. — Stephen Jay Gould

12

Asteroids drift in...

12.1 A VISIT BY A FAMILY OF ASTEROIDS 66 Ma ago, a family of wandering asteroids, ejected from the asteroid belt — possibly remnants of the giant asteroid Vesta, born from a collision with another giant there or left the belt simply because of some perturbance there — entered Earth’s gravitational field; were engaged with, and were pulled in. From our usual lofty perch above Sun and facing north and observing earth in its perennial anticlockwise revolution, and in front of us, this family of giant asteroids, approached our solar system, and in a wide-angle approach, pass close to Earth309 on its side away from Sun. They are ensnared and are diverted by Earth’s gravitational field, and they all went a little further and in a slingshot movement, returned. Except for the largest of them, or the ‘Mother’ asteroid, they would, in due course, and one at a time, crash onto earth. From the impact craters they left behind, we would in time, learn about some of them, and would name them Chicxulub, Boltysh, Silverpit and Shiva.310 The mother asteroid — with its greater mass, inertia and momentum — is naturally attracted by the combined influence of both Sun and Earth’s gravitational fields, and is enticed into an orbit around Earth; initially circling Earth in a highly elliptical orbit. However, with both Sun and Earth‘s gravitational forces acting on it in unison, its eccentricity is quickly dampened. In quick time, it settles it into a near perfect circular orbit around earth, and looking down onto the plane of the solar system, we see earth rotate anticlockwise from west to east, and the newcomer orbiting it in the same manner as most other heavenly bodies in our solar system — if not the universe — do. This ‘mother’ asteroid was not round as is the case with most asteroids, but shapeless, like the present-day ‘rocks’ orbiting Mars (Fig. 4.6 and 4.7). It could have been a squarebased pyramid, maybe even a tetrahedron, or a truncated like cone-volcano perhaps. 309

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This is still a common occurrence with smaller ‘rocks’ passing close to earth and somehow avoid getting snared by Earth’s magnetic field. 13 Apr. 2019 in the INQUISITR: ‘The weekend brings yet another set of close celestial encounters, with no less than five asteroid flybys announced for today. While most of them have already occurred at the time of writing, one is still waiting to happen later in the afternoon, as shown by NASA’s Center For Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS)’. As of now, this feature has not yet been accepted by the geologic community as an asteroid impact event.

244 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… Whatever... but it was Earth’s gravitational pull on this ‘cone-volcano’ like object that held the attention of the larger surface area at the bigger end, with the greater mass. This overbearing and biased gravitational attention on its larger surface area prevented the asteroid from rotating, and effectively locked it into place, with its larger surface area side, facing earth. Looking down from our familiar vantage point above sun and facing north as usual, we see the asteroid revolving around earth. In this scenario, Earth looks like a giant squashed pear, revolving anticlockwise around Sun, and in a rotational anticlockwise wobble on its axis, and along with its new half-conical companion, also revolving around it, similarly, but locked-in an eternal ‘frontal’ embrace with her, and with no rotational element in her dynamics. In time, we would call this large ‘captured’ piece of space rock, ‘moon’ 311.

12.2 SHAPING UP TO NEW REALITIES With Moon now in Earth’s gravitational sphere, earth holds onto her and the gravitational equation goes up six-fold on Earth, and equally so on Moon. Wandering asteroids and loose meteorites now are diverted to this new phenomenon of twin-gravity in the region, and would regularly crash into the two. On earth, they usually burn up in the new and denser atmosphere since moon arrived, though a small number of rocks did — and still do — land on her surface. However, on moon with no atmospheric friction to slow them down and then burn them up into cinders in the heat caused by atmospheric friction, they strike constantly and violently and at speeds of 25,000-100,000 km/h or more, forming craters and impact basins, pounding the barren rock and throwing up their exploding debris high312 and wide into the lunar space (remember? Less gravity...). Impacting at 311

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Recent studies conducted from data sent by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft while orbiting the giant asteroid Vesta, throws out new insights into its creation and relation to Moon, pointing to a possible close relationship to its common origins. We will, in due course know more. ‘We are working on creating an asteroid family tree of sorts’, says Joseph Masiero, in mid-2011, the lead-author on the Vesta studies. Says Vishnu Reddy of Max Planck Institute for solar system Research in Germany: ‘We know a lot about the moon, and we’re only coming up to speed now on Vesta, and comparing the two, gives us two storylines, for how these fraternal twins evolved in the early solar system’. Moons and their capture are such a common feature in the solar system that virtually every planet except Mercury and Venus has moons. Mars has Phobos and Deimos, and Jupiter and Saturn have 79 (as reported by Dr Gareth Williams of the IAUs Minor Planet Center, in July 2018) and 62 officially named moons, respectively. Even the recently demoted dwarf planet Pluto, has five confirmed moons — Charon, Nix, Hydra, Kerberos, and Styx. Very high and wide, with the 1/6th gravity on the Moon as compared to that on Earth. In 2013, earth-based telescopes detected a flash of light from the moon. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) checked it out and found a new crater 18 m across. ‘What was surprising was how far the ejecta went’, said LRO project scientist John Keller, working at Goddard. Debris had been tossed 35 km away — much farther than expected from a space rock estimated to be only about a meter wide.

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those speeds, the asteroids not only destroy themselves, they also break down the uneven rock-like asteroid surface of the moon while spreading dust and debris all over her surface. To this day, rocks continue crashing onto her, blasting huge craters 313 on her surface, scattering themselves all over, continuously churning up her surface while levelling out the ditches and shallows with the debris. Her surface is heavily cratered and tells us that she has been bombarded by an intense pummelling by space rocks,314 and the scars have not eroded, as moon is not geologically active, and with virtually no atmosphere around her surface —neither wind nor water to disturb the impact craters. We know that there are more of these because as lifeless as she is, our little handmaiden tells us so, in her exquisitely preserved cratering history. Her record of over 300,000 of them — visible to us from down here on earth telling us that space rocks visited her — is her legacy to the history of our solar system. Then there are the scars of the asteroid bombardments on the near side that we can count and she tells us another thing: that with our area of over 13 times greater than hers, and with six times more gravity and hence, a higher attraction capacity, there should have been over 4 million (M) craters on our planet’s surface! Why we cannot count them down here, is another matter. We must also remember that Moon’s craters are a record of past impacts; unless obliterated by a subsequent larger or equivalent impact. On moon, there is little, or no internal activity — like volcanoes or earthquakes, along with tectonics, that constantly remake and renew our planet’s surface. However, for 66 Ma now, in its orbit around Earth, it is still subjected to bombardments by meteorites and space dust, which are attracted by the combined and greater gravitational pull of Earth and Moon. Moreover, when these Hadean bodies miss earth, they then move on and pound the unfortunate newcomer, breaking up her surface while disintegrating themselves into more fragments of rock and dust. The majority of the stuff is then allowed to settle on the earth-facing side, pulled there by the greater gravitational interaction of earth. This is also partly because Earth’s constant gravitational force acting on it, as against its far side, gets more space debris heading towards it and that eventually land on the Earth-facing side of the Moon. The gravitational forces the Moon and the Sun exert are responsible for Earth’s rising and falling tides. Earth’s gravity also exerts forces on the Moon in the form of solid body tides that distort its shape. Moon is slowly receding away from Earth and forces build as the Moon’s tidal distortion diminishes with distance and its rotational period slows with time. These tidal forces have created faults on her surface, as she is of hard rock. Combined with the shrinking of the moon from the cooling of its interior, they have influenced the pattern of orientations in the network of the young fault scarps. 313

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A new count of moon’s craters has turned up 33% more than predicted. Journal ref: http://nature. com/Articles/doi:10.1038/nature19829. In both constitution and looks, Moon has several companions in the solar system, like Dione and Enceladus of Saturn, or Phobos and Deimos of Mars for example.

246 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… She arrived and began circling Earth all these last 66 Ma since, the upper part of her crust has been broken, re-melted, and mixed every now and then with new impact material from asteroids of different families in the Asteroid belt. Today, her surface rocks tell us a story of the different visitors that changed their physical state on their encounters with her that in an instant, spread their rock-hard bodies out there on her surface.315

12.3 THE SQUASHED PEAR As the asteroid and meteor bombardments continued little uneven hills crumbled down to Fig. 12.1: This is the side of Moon that we see from Earth; it settle in the nooks and crevices, tells us the story of the many impactors that left their marks and in time, cohesive forces down on her now rock and powdery surface Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University would make it as spherical as it could possibly coalesce into. With Earth’s gravity acting on her side facing it, floating and free-falling elements are drawn closer to Earth’s side, resulting in this side of Moon, being larger and heavier. This then has Moon’s CM now offset by some 2 km, and closer to Earth. The moon looks spherical from down here but, it is actually somewhat elongated and an egghead, if we looked at her side-on. We also know that Moon’s gravity affects the Earth’s oceans. Well, Earth’s gravity also affects Moon. It distorts the moon’s shape, squashing it out so that it is elongated along a line that points towards Earth. Just as Moon causes tides on Earth, we say that Earth raises ‘tidal bulges’ on Moon.

12.3.1 The Enchanted Pair She is large… as moons go. By cosmological standards for celestial moons, she is an oddball; being 27% as wide as Earth, and who, in turn, is 81 times more than the mass of Moon. It is not the largest of moons in our solar system, but the fifth largest natural satellite 315

Studies emanating from China’s Yutu robot, which landed on the moon in 2013 as part of the unmanned Chang’e 3 mission, has found a different type of basaltic rock on the Earth’s satellite, suggesting that Moon was never a fully homogenized body like Earth. Moon’s surface materials are chemically different from those retrieved by the Apollo and Luna missions. ScienceDaily, 22.12.2015: ‘First new ‘ground truth’ in 40 years’.

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around.316 No other planet in the solar system harbours a moon so large relative to itself. In fact, in some quarters, the two are known as a ‘twin planet’. Unlike other moons in the solar system, she controls the lives of the living creatures on her adoptive planet — not because there is no life on the other planets, but because she is, by comparison, a huge whopping neighbour, who influences our behaviour significantly. Understandably, this little sidekick dominates Earth’s daily, monthly, and seasonal life. Without it, life on this planet we live on, would at best be colourless and sterile. Still, she is a mystery; decides when fishermen can go out to fish and when life on earth can have sex!

12.3.2 Tidally Locked Before we go on with our subject, let us all think about this for a second. Earth and all the other planets spin, as they orbit around the Sun. Most other moons of all the other planets spin as they travel around their planets. Our moon behaves a little differently in that she does not spin around an axis all by herself. So, we are bound to ask as to what is going on with our moon and why is she not spinning? There is a difference in the two, in that, Moon came in with a shape like a pyramid possibly, and Earth’s gravity paid special attention to that larger part at the base of the pyramid. The influence on that part of the moon was greater than the effort required for the moon to rotate, and hence, it was held steady at that point. Over time, it turned into a bulge, and moon’s tidal bulge is now permanent and which still attracts Earth’s undivided attention. This lopsided gravitational attraction by Earth on the larger volume of material on Moon, now and as before, gives it neither impetus nor momentum, to begin rotating around an axis, as most heavenly bodies do.317 It has also lost its angular momentum soon after the time of its entry around Earth while adjusting its angular velocity and slowing down Earth’s rotational spin too, balancing it to suit celestial equations; forced on it and by Earth’s greater gravitational force, on its greater ‘earth-exposed’ side. Moreover, Moon does not have a core of iron, ‘sufficient enough’, to be excited by Sun’s and Earth’s magnetic fields that could start up a geo-dynamo disturbance, and push-start Moon to rotate. It is a hard rock, and so Earth and Moon are now in a state we call ‘tidally synchronized’. Thus, Earth’s gravitational pull holds sway over Moon. However, like all planets and natural satellites, the moon is compelled to spin but does so with a difference. While Earth rotates once a day, Moon rotates once every 27.321582 days (or 27 d 7 h 43.1 min), and so, this single rotation is almost exactly the time she takes to make a revolution around Earth. From out in space, Earth and Moon appear like two star-struck dancers, pivoting about and waltzing around a dance floor! To observers down here, Moon does not seem to be spinning but appears to be keeping almost perfectly still. 316 317

Ganymede, a moon of Jupiter, claims that title, and is almost 3-times the size of Earth’s Moon. A fair number of moons in our solar system are in a similar predicament. Titan is tidally locked to Saturn, and so are the Jovian moons locked similarly.

248 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… So, as the two rotational dynamics are equated, Moon only shows us one side of her surface — the side that has the face of the ‘Man in the Moon’.318 It is because she is in a sort of orbital lockstep that resulted in an enchanting eternal and blissful frontal embrace with Earth, we only see this one side of her from Earth. Alternatively, if you were standing on the surface of the Moon facing Earth, you would see Earth in the same spot in the sky, forever and ever and ever, and constantly rotating west to east every day of the year. And yes, you would see her waning and waxing depending on which side of her the sun shines on, and on which side of Earth is Moon, in her monthly rotation. This, ‘eternal embrace’ is a phenomenon we call ‘tidal friction’. In doing all this, she invariably hides from us her rear; the hard pockmarked rocky half.

12.4 ATTRIBUTES, FACTS AND FIGURES She is a cold/hot, dry, and dusty orb, whose surface is studded with meteorite impact craters, and strewn with rocks, debris, and dust. She is a practically dead object (after all, she is, basically, a barren and sterile rock), with no volcanism, plate tectonics, or even weather 319 to stir things around, with nothing moving on her surface. With no atmospheric cover to deflect or radiate Sun’s heat when sun shines on it, her surface temperature rises to 93 °C, and when it is dark, it drops down to –184 °C! This extreme variance in temperatures subjected on her surface rocks, stresses them, inducing much fatigue; they crack, break up, and wear down further, turning them into smaller bits, and eventually, to dust. Moon is basically a sphere, made up of a containment of rocks of all sizes — rock through dust.

12.5 OF CHALK AND CHEESE AND DIFFERENT LINEAGES The incomparable surfaces of Moon and Earth shown in Figs. 12.2 and 12.3, send us hints of their different lineages. For example, 1) Moon is composed of much less iron than there is in Earth320 — a mismatch paradox really, with two objects so close to one another in space. 2) The two most essential components of Earth: solid land and liquid water, are missing on the Moon. 318

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It refers to any of several perceived images of a human face, head, or body that certain traditions recognise in the disc of the full moon. Different tribes, peoples, and even civilizations, perceived other images on Moon’s surface. For most practical purposes, Moon is considered to be surrounded by a vacuum. The elevated presence of atomic and molecular particles in its vicinity, referred to as ‘lunar atmosphere’, is only used for scientific objectives. It is negligible in comparison with the gaseous envelope surrounding earth, and less than one hundred trillionth of Earth’s atmospheric density at sea level. Readings derived from the first moon rocks brought from the moon via the first Apollo Moon Landing Mission.

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Fig. 12.2: Moon

Fig. 12.3: Earth!

Credit: Wikipedia/NAA

Credit: Wikipedia/Antandrus

On its surface is only meteoritic material, loose impact-formed rocks called breccia321 and regolith,322 which are the remains of crashing meteorites; a mixture of rock fragments and packed powdery material. The regolith and the breccia average about 30 m deep in the highlands, and 40 m in the troughs and ditches.323 Asteroid impacts on the near side of the moon, produce larger basins than those on her far side — the difference hinging upon the composition of the surface, of its two sides; 324 the near side composed of softer material, allows asteroids to sink in deeper and the throw-off of regolith, would account for the wider spread of the impact material. Here, undisturbed by the absent wind and weather, her impact mascons325 are untouched, at peace, and still visible on that unearthly and desolate landscape (Fig. 12.02). Even space dust attracted by it, or blown off its surface, gravitates to settle closer and finally on its ‘Earth-facing side’. So, we know today, that the craters on the near side of the moon are larger than those on the farther side. The far side, of course, has a rocky surface due to the lesser quantity of ‘moon dust’. However, it shows more craters than the near side, because the near side, with its softer surface, has covered up earlier craters with moon dust — the fallout of later asteroid impacts. 321 322

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Rock consisting of angular fragments of stones, cemented by finer calcareous material. The layer of unconsolidated solid material covering the bedrock of a planet. This product of meteoritic bombardment consists of microscopic particles, about 0.01 mm in size, making it a mixture of fine dust and rocky debris, which resembles ready-mix dry mortar. Pictures of the Apollo 11 astronauts shoe impressions walking on its surface, confirm that. In 2012, two probes — the Ebb and Flow — that were both simultaneously orbiting moon, indicated that its crust is on an average of 34 to 43 m thick. They also confirm that 12% of its surface is porous — the result of loose rocks on it. ‘When we look at the maps of both hemispheres, we realize there are more big basins on the near side than on the far side,’ said Katarina Miljkovi of the Institute de Physique du Globe de Paris, lead author of the new moon study published in the 8 Nov. 2013 issue of the journal Science. ‘There are eight of them on the near side that are bigger than 300 km and only one on the far side.’ A concentration of denser material below the surface of the moon, causing a local increase in gravitational pull.

250 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… Geologically, Moon is not very active, so earthquakes, volcanoes, and mountain building do not destroy the landscape, as we know it to do on Earth. With virtually no atmosphere, there is no wind, or rain, and so surface erosion does not occur. The far side of the moon, the one that we do not see from here,326 is a little rougher, with mountains, and a comparatively more uneven surface, and little moon dust. The craters are dry, though a recent lunar mission indicated that there is some frozen ice at the poles, and that sends out a minute amount of condensation on a small part of its surface, where Sun’s rays heat it.327 This may have come from the hydrogen atoms from the solar wind along with the little oxygen on its surface, which combines to form a little water and related compounds called hydroxyls. From a craggy unshaped space junk, this rock328 has been shaped into an almost perfect spherical ball, 3476 km in diameter, orbiting earth at an average distance of 384,403.1 km. Its origins, however, date back to 4.51 Ga ago — just 60 Ma after the Fig. 12.4: The ‘far side’ of Moon, the side that we do not solar system itself took shape.329 see from Earth; sometimes referred to as the ‘dark side’.

12.5.1 Composition

The Picture taken from the Apollo 16, on the 24 Apr. 1972 Credit: NASA/Apollo 16 astronauts.

As she has no atmosphere, and no sound transmission is present on the moon. There is silence, no life on it, and practically no dynamism in its internal structure. Moon, however, 326

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We have recently been observing impacts on the moon through the Moon Impacts Detection and Analysis System (MIDAS), and captured the moments when two rogue meteoroids hit its surface on 17 and 18 July 2018. This happened twice over two different days, with the meteoroids striking two different locations on the lunar surface. On the night of 20-21 Jan. 2019, the first ever meteor strike on the Moon was filmed from down here on Earth. Analysis by Spanish astronomers says the space rock collided with the moon at the speed of 61,000 km/hour, excavating a crater 10-15 m wide. The rock had a mass of 45 kg and was 30–60 cm across. The study was published on 27 Apr. 2019, in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The discovery was made by the Indian lunar mission Chandrayaan-1, during its 2008-09 sojourns to the moon. Except for Ganymede, most moons in our solar system are typically just big hunks of cold rock with little geological activity to speak of, quietly orbiting their host planets. By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer — 11 Jan. 2017 02:01pm ET.

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contains iron and hence possesses gravity, though only about 1/6th to that of Earth’s. It does have a small iron core330 though, and there are small amounts of malleable elements; namely, chondrites of nickel-iron in its interior, or under its surface, as these do bubble up and can be observed, as ‘volcanic’ like mounds, on its surface. Lunar rocks closely resemble earth rocks in many respects, but moon rocks are more depleted in volatile elements like potassium, sodium, and zinc which tend to have lower boiling points and vaporize readily. In the gravity-less, atmosphere-less lunar surface, these elements would have long evaporated into space and the rocks left depleted.

12.5.2 The Positive Outcome of the Dynamics of Gravity Fortunately for us, the Earth-Moon eternal embrace stabilizes the Earth’s rotation, preventing otherwise dramatic movements of Earth’s poles (although both Earth and Moon still wobble a little; Earth, from its unbalanced mass). It stabilizes earth from wobbling too much and stabilizes its rotation on its axis which would otherwise have fuelled unpredictable and sudden weather changes and possibly, long-term climate change on earth, and life as we know it, would not be recognizable to us.331 This strong gravitational pull has kept Earth in line, limiting the planet’s axial tilt to oscillate between 22.1° and 24.5° from the vertical, since Moon arrived and entered into the equation. The oscillation goes on in a loop on a 41,000 year cycle and is currently on its subsiding journey. Today, we know, that Moon is the ‘anchor’ that keeps Earth rotating evenly though somewhat a little unevenly because of the misplaced load about its axis. Had it not been for this comparatively large rock around that it holds in place with its gravitational hold, earth would be merrily rolling around at the whims and fancy of asteroids striking it on a regular basis. However, the biggest impact that the Moon has on life on the terrestrial Earth, is through the tides she causes, in that regular movement of water that exposes the land at the edge of the ocean, and then covers it again just a few hours later.332 This could have encouraged life to adapt and move from the oceans to land quicker. More importantly, it now gives us two extra tides in a day and keeps our fishermen busy and our bellies full. Tides, generated mostly by the moon, would have been a logical place for life to originate. When the seas got crowded, sea creatures used the tidal region to poke their heads out of the shallows, developing lungs in the process while hastening the emergence of life from the seas and on to land. She would also send the large creatures to their deaths. As Moon began to revolve around the plane of the Earth’s equator, gravitational equations changed down here. Earth takes on the responsibility to hold Moon in its 330

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Studies conducted on the Allende meteorite by Laurent Carporzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Linda Elkins-Tanton of the Carnegie Institute of Science, do confirm that meteorites, do indicate that they possessed molten cores. Earth might have rolled over on its axis on a regular basis, and astronomers think this happens to Mars, because it never had a large Moon to stabilize it. Every 6 h 12.5 min, to be precise.

252 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… embrace, and Moon, in turn, holds on to Earth dearly. It could be looked at an experience as similar to a human mother holding her little child by its palms, with its arms stretched over its head while twirling the child around, with the child a little over the ground, free in space and the mother anchored to a fixed spot. Both the parent and the child create dynamic reactional forces in their arms equal to the speed of the rotation about a pivot. Let us examine this little simulation, and imagine the mother standing alone and inactive, and the child at arm’s length in front of her. They are in a state of rest. The child could go over and hug her mother and we are in the same situation and in a ‘state of rest’. However, before the child does that, let us say the mother picks the child by the hands, and swings it around, pirouetting about a spot, with the child happily whirling around her. Equations change, with mother now having to accommodate new dynamic forces, having to tilt back to hold the child’s force of new dynamism tugging at her through her hands, then shoulders, and right down to her feet; new centripetal forces now coming into play. The child too does not let go and clings on to dear life, defying the centripetal and centrifugal forces. The faster the twirl, the greater the combined forces the duo encounter, as an increased gravitational pull is exerted by the two. Like our proverbial mother, pulling at her child, creating her own gravitational force while bringing into play new forces in the dynamics of revolution, Earth and Moon do so similarly. In her effort to hold on to Moon, an additional and greater gravitational force on Earth surfaces. The greater gravitational force it now needs is six times more than before Moon entered the equation. Things happen down on Earth and Moon begins to assert its counter gravitational pull on Earth; this, coupled to Sun’s renewed and greater gravitational hold now on both of them!

Fig. 12.5: Another view of Earth’s atmosphere from space; colours roughly denoting its various gaseous layers. The outermost, scattered more than the other wavelengths, gives Earth a blue halo when seen from space; the ‘Blue Marble’ Credit: Wikipedia/NASA Earth Observatory

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Things change; everything on land suddenly gets heavy; everything in between Earth and Moon is tugged at and is drawn down in the process. There are now layers of gases surrounding the planet that are drawn in and retained by Earth’s gravity closer to its surface. The atmosphere gets dense and heavy, and it now acquires a mass of about 5×1018 kg — three quarters of which is within about 11 km of Earth’s surface. Air now carries a lot of weight. The new ‘atmospheric pressure’ down at its sea level, now reads a healthy 1.03 kg/cm2. Without that pressure, our planes would not take to the skies today and humans would not be found out of Africa. It took 74,000 years for the moon to tectonically spread humanity across the globe; today, AMHs migrate in hours.

12.5.2.1 The New Orb’s Influence on Mother Earth The dense atmosphere now reduces Sun’s heat on Earth, deflecting its rays, while also creating a greenhouse effect down on the ground. Temperatures change though and drop as much as 10°C. Heat is dissipated more evenly, and sunrise and sunsets experience a longer dawn and twilight, due to dissipation and absorption of light by the dense atmosphere. Light is mellower, especially as we go further away from the equator. Moon’s gravitational pull is greater in the area between the tropics, and the oceans here rise more than at the poles; the tides bringing in a new sequence to shore life and a new type of life, with new living and eating habits evolving. Moon’s gravity on Earth, lifts her molten interior too. Today, at high tide, Moon’s gravity has been recorded to lift parts of North America as much as 15 cm. In tandem with Sun, they together lift the Pacific Ocean a whopping 78 cm! Moreover, these tides now happen every 6 h as against 12 h before Moon’s arrival. The tide Moon creates, at times, even slows Earth’s rotation momentarily, unbalancing her loads at certain junctions. Earth, in turn, holds on to the newcomer Moon, producing additional counterbalancing forces, and the gravitational interaction between the three, continuously flexes Earth’s lithosphere (in daily, monthly, and yearly doses) while physically moulding her further, to rotate a little more effortlessly. Rivers emptied into seas faster! Unintentionally, it would also help start the ‘salmon run’. The side of Earth nearest Moon is always tugged 6% more than the side farther away from Moon. Here the reactionary forces are balancing Earth around its axis, but are weaker than Moon’s pull, and the tide is less than the one on the side directly facing Moon. Every part of earth now gets to flex its lithosphere a few centimetres every 6 h, creating fatigue stresses in the plates, and in the ongoing process, those stressed plates crack, or move. The additional gravitational force does help energize Earth’s plates into action as never before — gravity aiding the movement of the lithosphere, especially in the areas of the tropics. Volcanoes and lava flow easier, and earth is recycled quicker. We might owe our very existence to it because its pull of gravity sets our plate tectonics in motion. Without plate tectonics, our planet might be more like Venus — stale, insipid, toasty, and dead.

254 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors…

12.6 AMAZING, BEAUTIFUL MOON... WHITE, SILVERY, SWEET AND BLUE! In the years that followed, this single happening changed earth and life on it, entirely; along with its dynamics and its four little asteroids, it decimated almost all of Earth’s earlier life. Life would recover to her tune, and differently. In compensation, she was also the catalyst, which in time sent terrestrial creatures to the ‘wing’, and eventually, created man. For most of human history, moon was largely a mystery. It spawned awe and fear and to this day, is the source of myth and legend. However, over 32,000 ya, our hunter-gatherer ancestors discovered its predictable and regular cyclic behaviour and soon thought themselves to use its unfailing pattern, to plan their planting and harvesting. Fishermen would also learn of its timely tides — their life’s daily work hours regulated by her; now every angler’s favourite space orb. Man’s celebration of their ‘harvest’ would then add flavours to their cultures around the globe. Its prominence in the sky and its regular cycle of phases has, since ancient times, made moon an important cultural influence on calendars, language, art and mythology. All across the globe the list of Moon-Gods are on every human habited continent, as well as on the oceanic islands of our planet. Though of dark colour with a similar albumen, or of reflectance to coal like the meteorite material that she is, next to sun, she is the brightest object out there in the heavens. She has fascinated humankind ever since he walked this earth; inspired poets, writers, musicians and lovers, and moved some to mournful love songs. Moon described in all colours and adjectives; white, blue, silvery, and sweet! The ‘Man on the Moon’ is even imagined in the image of himself a human face smiling down at us. She did, however, inadvertently though... bring in the night creatures... 66 Ma ago, Moon started off a chain of events that changed the shape of Earth, changed the wind, weather, and oceanic current directions, and sent the world’s weather into a tizzy. She sent the dinosaurs 333 to near extinction, and very abruptly changed the lives of the ‘flap runners’ and unwittingly, sent — from small beginnings to a long journeys — bird and fish to ‘migrate’ home to “Mama’s”. One of the most subtle effects from moon is what it has done to life itself. Nocturnal animals behave differently depending on where moon is in her orbit. When it is full and bright, prey fish stay hidden in the reef, when they would be most visible, and amazingly, lions are less likely to hunt during this time,334 and many bats will be less active during the full moon. 333

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Dinosaurs were small in the beginning. About 230 Ma ago, most weighed between 10 and 35 kg, and were as big as a medium-sized dog. Nevertheless, many species soon soared to tractor-trailer proportions, reaching 10,000 kg within a span of 30 Ma. Dinosaurs like the mighty Argentinosaurus — which stretched some 35 m from nose to tail — would weigh in at a staggering 90,000 kg today. Researchers have found that lion attacks on humans happen 10 days after the full moon. The new research could well explain our fear of darkness and our mythology surrounding the full moon, says ecologist Craig Packer, a lion expert based at the University of Minnesota, whose group published its findings online on 20 July 2011 in PLOS ONE.

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With so many species on Earth affected by the Moon, it is reasonable to think that there would have been a different evolutionary direction for life on Earth over the aeons, and humans might never have evolved. Moon is important to the evolution of life itself — life that will keep on evolving, as Moon’s tidal forces that cause the tides on Earth keep microscopically slowing down Earth’s rotation. This, in turn, slowly changes the dynamics of evolution of life on Earth, as Moon continues to drift away a few centimetres a year to compensate for the change. An insipid ball of rock gave earth ‘life’! ... and brought death too. Then Chicxulub arrived.... ... and Shiva struck!

’In science it often happens that scientists say, ‘You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken,’ and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion’. — Carl Sagan

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Then Shiva Struck!...

13.1 STRIKE! Another One? Yes... sometime just before the Chicxulub event... but we are only coming up to date with it now. This hit is in the just-beginning-to-form Paratethys Ocean, somewhere on the eastern rifts of Africa. The culprit, this time, was bigger and meaner than Chicxulub, and it left its visiting card on the continental shelf off today’s western coast of India, telling us so. It was not too far from the Chicxulub event on the other side of the continent of Africa at the time, as Mexico then, was somewhere near the coast of Ghana in western Africa, and a distance of 7000 km apart (that distance has grown to be a whopping 18,100 km today!). It left a scar on the sea-floor — a 500 km diameter impact structure (centred at Lat. 18° 40’, Lon. 70° 14’ E), to tell us it was here. 66 Ma ago, one of the greatest events of them all, was taking place with two global events occurring simultaneously at two different locations, thousands of kilometres apart. If nature abhors a vacuum, science detests coincidences and we tentatively consider the two to be related to the event that changed the face of our world. This strike could be the author of the K-Pg boundary, and Chicxulub a later collaborator, and in all probability, of the family that harboured the Boltysh and Silverpit fellows; not to forget, our very own moon too. It must also have been the one who burnt a large hole in India’s belly that then kept spewing lava, which eventually created a gigantic plateau of granite on the West-Central part of the subcontinent (see Fig. 14.2). It had to be the one who brought death, destruction, and then a slow renewal of life on that ancient land. It was a 40 km wide destructive beast of an asteroid, and true to its powers, it would be named Shiva.335 Earth’s lithosphere cracks up in many places and especially in the triangle between the SE of the future Indian Plate, Australia and Madagascar, paving the way for the smaller 335

It was given the name of the Hindu god of destruction and rebirth. Currently, it is not recognized as an impact crater by the Earth Impact Database of the Planetary and Space Science Centre at the University of New Brunswick in Canada. However, Prof. Sankar Chatterjee, a palaeontologist at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, who first talked about it, is still studying the structure.

258 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… pieces, terranes and little plates, to now move independently. More importantly, it added to the total fracturing of the Sunda-Australian Plate in that event, which had started off with the Wilkes and Bedout bolides of 251 Ma ago. At this stage, the impacts also had Earth’s crust fractured into some eight or so large plates, as we know them today; assuming that none had subducted since we were made aware of them. If not Shiva, who then is responsible for the thousands of pieces of fractured lands that dot the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea? If not Shiva, what was it then that helped open up India’s central lands, that had her throwing up vast quantities of molten lava from within her, and on to her surface, and that we know today as the Deccan Traps? Chicxulub was 7000 km away on the other side of the African continent. Neither were the strikes at Ukraine and that of the North Sea close by. The fallout of the impact on India’s western shore, sent impact residue to settle on its mainland, which is 1.0 m thick in some places — the thickest K-Pg clay boundary in the world. It could not have flown over the African continent only to land in India, if it was the fallout from the Yucatán impact. Until we know differently, we will hold Shiva to account. Shiva did another thing. It was the one that sent the equator to the south. While Chicxulub, Silverpit and the Boltysh impacts left circular imprints telling us they came in at a large angle and just thumped the earth, Shiva tells us it sort of ‘slapped’ Earth’s face with a swinging left... to send her equatorial lands, facing south. Shiva’s shallow angle impact that left a teardrop depression on Earth’s crust, tells us that story. It (or they) did start a new era in Earth’s geological history.

13.1.1 Earth Begins her Perennial Pirouetting! We are at the beginning of the Palaeogene era (66–23.03 Ma ago), having left the Cretaceous behind, and what we see during this period, is that the continents begin to rapidly drift away from Antarctica, and closing in to arrive at their current positions. India was on its way to colliding with Eurasia. The Atlantic Ocean continued to widen by a few centimetres each year. Africa was moving north to meet with Europe and form the Mediterranean, while South America was moving closer to North America, and Australia would finally separate from Gondwana towards the end of the era. The southern plates — Africa, India, Australia, South America, and barring Antarctica — are all moving north and away from Antarctica, as earth spins and exerts some centrifugal forces on the southern landmasses, and much quicker after the upheaval of 33.5 Ma ago, when the break between South America and Africa was made. The vectors in Fig. 8.2 also show that except for Antarctica, all the other have a common ‘north’ element in their vectors, and all headed in the direction of the Pacific Ocean and the northern half of the globe. The global climate changes, and is mainly caused by the formation of the ACC, which significantly lowered oceanic water temperatures after the hot and humid conditions of

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the late Mesozoic era. Water tables around the globe fall and new water bodies grow in the separating lands. All this happens as Moon simultaneously brings in two additional forces to act on Earth’s lands: 1) Earth flipping and sending its central highlands to the south, creating new and active ‘centripetal’ and ‘centrifugal’ forces. 2) Moon and Sun’s increased gravity acting on Earth’s body, to hasten up the process. These are then coupled to 3) the force of the disparity in the lands of earth, where the ‘higher’ potential moves into the ‘lower’ potential and where the Pacific is being occupied (or should we say into the ‘vacuum’ of the empty Pacific). The above three forces are what drives ‘tectonics’ to work. Call it what you like, ‘the pole-fleeing force’, the ‘merry-go-round effect’, or our twirling dancer’s skirt flaring... the effect is the same — all the lands lift off from the south and are heading north — given the passage, where and when permitted to do so. When this happened 66 Ma ago, our alien friend would have seen earth looking somewhat like as depicted in Fig. 11.4. As we move away from the equator, we notice a comparatively and progressively slower movement of the plates, especially as we get closer to the Poles. On the Gakkel Ridge in the Arctic Ocean, the spreading of the plates is a miserly 0.8 cm/yr, whereas, at the equator, the MAR separates at an ‘average’ speed of 2.50 cm/yr (averaging the spread in both hemispheres). This compares reasonably to the movement of the Nazca Plate in the tropics, close to the equator, and its readings of a relative speed of 8.5 cm/yr (and as much as 10 cm/yr, where it was, on one occasion, recently recorded). So, we observe that the centripetal force is maximum at the equator. Because of more mass and higher centre of gravity, the centrifugal torque of the continent is bigger than the oceans, and the plates with lands in it. At the equator, the spin that earth imparts, produces a force that threatens to throw off her many bits and pieces into space, with the Pole-fleeing-force; a force that tries to send and redistribute Earth’s mass along the equator, and sometimes referred to as ‘true polar wander’ 336. Earth’s girth increases progressively at the equator. With the sudden rise in gravity the crust experienced, earth is stressed more by the pull of the moon on the lands and waters; now coupled with new centripetal forces brought into play and all helping to break up Earth’s unbalanced lithosphere in quick time, playing out another episode in turning earth into as spherical a body free in space as it ought to be. They coax earth to bulge at her waist, whereas at her south — now centred in the present-day Antarctica — there are no reactionary forces; all this is being done over a backdrop of an unbalanced mass on planet earth, sincerely and naturally attempting to shape up her body on her own with the help of moon. 336

This ‘pole-fleeing force’ is universal for all rotating bodies. We can see its effect on Jupiter even with our backyard telescopes; their bulges at the equator making them look more like squashed softballs. Had Jupiter been born with a sliver of land at its pole, we would have found it today, rotating around its equator.

260 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… Though gravity tends to contract celestial bodies into perfect spheres, like the soft Gas Giants further out, earth gets chubbier at her girth, simply because she is made up of a softer material than the other inner ‘rocky’ planets. She is soon made oblate — the measure of distortion dependent on a variety of factors, including the angular velocity, density and elasticity of Earth’s material make-up. So, she does increase her girth at the equator. She has in fact overdone this, to the state that she is now literally a ‘squashed pear’. Her girth is wider than her height now, by 42 km. Before Shiva and Chicxulub struck, Earth’s lands, we know, were bunched up at the equator, all clustered in one big lump of earth and matter, and rotating west to east. As the teardrop earth rotated then, the centripetal and centrifugal forces only helped the lands on the sides, or the equator, to push radially outwards, literally behaving like a centrifuge. With the new location of the lands, we see that earth also attempting to balance out its mass equally around its axis of rotation, or its figure axis of rotation, and the empty Pacific Ocean is ever so present to accept the lopsided loads. Each force seeking its own level; the ‘merry-go-round’ competes with the ‘see-saw’ act, and both assisting gravity, centripetal, centrifugal and all other forces to even out Earth’s lop-sidedness — as she does until this day. With earth now spinning with its lands all in the south and all loosened up, the dispersing of the fractured plates from the static South Pole and into the equatorial region in the tropical belt and into the vacant north, is in earnest now. It was the start of a frenzy of activities, and as the plates moved around, new seas were created and old ones landlocked; new landmasses appeared from the joining of two separate plates. Literally, the plates were now all moving around like cars in a ‘demolition derby’. A dizzy time for plates begins... The cauldron boils... Things were happening and suddenly, and at a very brisk pace too. Earth was changing shape quickly, and lands were being scattered with almost all going north, and those obstructed to going north, would look at alternative spaces to go into the empty Pacific; Borneo being the classic example, along with the islands of Fiji and Christmas and Easter islands. We know this today, as we are fortunate that field scientists and geologists have just begun to piece together the large jigsaw puzzle. We are still on our ‘merry-go-round’ and will be for a few million years into the future.

13.2 A PALAEOGENE HISTORY 66 Ma ago, along with a few others, the Sunda-Australian Plate cracks with the new stresses earth is now subjected to. 65 Ma ago, Europe was a collection of motley islands and seas. It was a time that Zhucheng, in eastern China’s Shandong Province and eastern North America were connected while the Dinosaur Zhuchengtyrannus magnus roamed those lands at the time.

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The earliest proof we have of the lands splitting and moving around after the asteroids strikes of Shiva and Chicxulub, is that of 60 Ma ago, when the single large landmass of Greenland broke away from North America (a look at rocks exposed in today’s Appalachian Mountains reveals their common origins some 480 Ma ago, telling us that they were part of the supercontinent of Pangaea, and part of the Little Atlas in Morocco, the mountains of Newfoundland, Labrador, Greenland, and the Caledonides of Ireland and Scotland too) and began to move away at a very slow rate; as is normal, as we get closer to the poles. As earth shaped up and got a little more spherical, the MAR ridge had widened enough to work its way under Greenland, and breaks it apart to form the breakaway island that would be today’s Norway. The movement was slow and that has them today at an average of 800 km NE of North America. There was no Iceland at the time. The Nordic country moves away to become part of the Scandinavian group of countries near the Arctic Circle, its eastern border subducts under the Scandinavian landmass while lifting up its western shores out of the icy Norwegian Sea. Also, from the icy waters, Greenland’s east coast rises above the waterline, its western part sinking into the sea, off-balanced by the old missing half 337 of Norway freeing it from its load suddenly, unsettling it while falling on its rear; the same thing happens to Norway in the opposite direction. 60 Ma ago, earth may have looked like this (Fig. 13.1):

Fig. 13.1: The separation of Norway from Greenland 337

We know that this upheaval happened, by simply looking at the contours of her eastern shores, where the land lifts out of the waters. Here we find fjords and little costal islands on that boundary. These telltale signs are there too, on the south-eastern shores of China — that rose out of the waters as it was pushed down by the Tibetan Plateau on its NW. In the southernmost part of Chile, we see the same contours on those shores where the land lifts itself over the waterline, where it rides over the Antarctic Plate.

262 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… At this same time, the northern part of South America was moving away from Africa at a faster rate than its southern half which had its tail still wrapped around the southern tip of Africa. At its north, the North American Plate was moving WNW. Counterbalancing these two weighty movements, the little Indian Plate that had just separated from the ‘Horn of Africa’, began to slide slowly to the SE, carrying along with it assorted parts of the future Alpine-Himalayan orogenic belt. Further to its east, the huge Eurasian Plate moves north easily. That would change in a little while, as other plates around the southern continent begin to break apart and move north. As all this is going on, water would wade inland, resulting in the water levels dropping globally. 55.8 Ma ago, with lower water tables created by the increase in gravity, water levels dropped progressively and increasingly and the warming — known as the PalaeoceneEocene thermal maximum (PETM) — was at its peak. While the plates and pieces were breaking away, they would find themselves surrounded by the oceans. Evaporation of the oceans was now happening globally, and water currents and wind patterns were pushing the heavier and lower water vapour to condense increasingly. This brought in clouds and nascent rains more frequently on the lands, and by 55 Ma ago, a period of global ‘greenhouse-like’ condition prevailed. In time, much of the world would be shrouded in tropical rainforests. 54.95 Ma ago, water levels are back to normal, as the Gulf of Mexico was inundated once more. It took its time, but the PETM contributed to the warming and the melting of the ice sheets globally. It was different from what was being left of Gondwanaland, stranded at the south around the Pole. As the sun does not shine much there, flora dwindles in the central provinces as it gets increasingly colder there. However, the fringes of the isolated land, are still forested at that time, though thin and mostly with trees and hardy shrubs. Hardy and adaptable dinosaurs would change their habits to adapt to the new cold waters and dwindling vegetation; having to change their diets to eating off the cold waters of the Southern Ocean. 54 Ma ago, Norway moves east at a faster pace, eager to become a piece of Scandinavia. In the years between 46 and 42 Ma, the Indian Plate continues its journey SE, in the Tethys Ocean, dragging along with it, its north-western end along the seas floor bed, leaving its heavy striations in its path. Down in the south of our planet, it keeps getting progressively colder at the centre of Antarctica. Surprisingly, eucalyptus fossils found in Patagonia are dated to be 51.9 Ma ago. This may have had to do with the three continents there at the time, where South America was attempting to move away from South Africa, with both attempting to dislodge and untangle themselves from Antarctica. This process had the sea-floor bubbling in that part of the Southern Ocean, keeping things warm in the waters near the triple junction that formed sometime just before 43 Ma ago, just somewhere at the north of the Ross Sea,

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accommodating motion between East and West Antarctica. At the same time, spreading between India and Australia ceased and the northward motion of India accelerated. Australia was still attempting to separate itself from Gondwanaland, with the rifting process spreading more at its south-western border with the old continent. 45 Ma ago, New Zealand’s South Island detaches itself from Antarctica and becomes part of the Pacific Plate and begins its journey NNE. 40 Ma ago, South America and Africa lift themselves out of the cusp of Antarctica, where the Weddell Sea is now. With its tail still wrapped around the bottom of Africa, South America appears to be lifting the continent of Africa, as they both move north and out of the stationary home they just left behind at the South Pole. In the process of moving north, a new seaway is created at that point, now known as the Drake Passage. As the break happens, there is a sudden surge of water from the Pacific Ocean, flooding into the Atlantic Ocean, compounded by Earth’s anti-clockwise rotation. A new current begins to form in the southern Pacific and going west to east, moving north into Paratethys Ocean. The Indian Ocean begins its journey to becoming a reality of our present times. This new current flowing west to east around a part of the withering Antarctica, brings in more cold waters inland in the hollow left behind by South America and Africa, and by 38 Ma ago, Antarctica begins to go into another cold spell and the vegetation begins to wither; especially the tall conifers. The opening of the Drake Passage has some sudden effects on the climate on earth.

13.2.1 The Difficult Divorce 33.5 Ma ago, the shores of Antarctica and Australia were still covered with lush vegetation. It was a time when primates began evolving in central Africa and began moving south. It was a time some physical happening shook our globe, and it may have been the meteorite that crashed into Siberia, gouging out a crater there that was 100 km wide. We know it today as the Popigai crater.338 Then another one! Buried under sea-floor mud, offshore off Virginia in the USA, it shows its curve on the western shoreline of the 85 km marine crater. We would know it as the Chesapeake Bay Crater. It was two knocks too much the uptight globe could bear, as it shook and shuddered, sending its impact reverberations across the globe. Something had to give way. We would soon know of those ground-breaking vibrations. All through the rifting process, the smaller and lighter continent of South America — migrating westwards towards the empty Pacific — was being restrained at its southern end by its own tail wrapped around Africa’s southern shores. Africa would not relent, as it was also being held in place by the landmass of the future Europe, and all along its 338

According to the Russian government, the impact’s immense pressures and temperatures converted the carbon-rich graphite rock deposits into diamonds.

264 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… northern border starting from the south of the Iberian microcontinent in the west and right on to the Anatolian microplate at its NE. The relentless pull westwards at its south and the restraints at the north, keeping Africa from turning clockwise had its consequences on both continents. While the northern part of Africa would not be allowed to budge from its position, its southern half had no restraints holding it and obliged South America by moving along with its southern tail, for a fair distance. This action stressed South America’s western shores, and Africa’s eastern shores, breaking off little terranes there off those strained backs. With the reluctance of Africa to budge, South America is forced to bend its back too — like a straining Alaskan Husky — resist the pressure, as it is unable to extradite itself from its own grip around southern Africa. It is at this time that little terranes break off Antarctica and the southern coasts of South America bidding the call to move into the empty north by both the centripetal and the pole-fleeing force. Some of them land on the coasts of South America’s north-western coasts, on the NW of the land, with the bigger chunks getting stuck further north, where the countries of Peru and Ecuador are. It was at this time that a change in course by some plates of the NE Pacific would turn right, and meet the North American Plate moving west. The big American continental plate would ride the smaller and denser oceanic plates that would subduct under the continent. However, the subduction was an ‘intrusive’ type; the thick oceanic plates slipping through the asthenosphere of the land. It would begin to rise and crumble the land of the NW of North America. All along the North American coasts, and on to Texas, we would have these types of intrusive oceanic plates changing the surface of the continent there. This mountain building in western North America would be known as the Laramide orogeny. The little terranes that would break off eastern Africa would have most of them heading east while only a couple of islands and the western part of the Alpide belt would head north. All parts that broke off the western shores of South America would move hastily north. A couple of them would lodge themselves under North American’s west coast. The outcome would be the Rockies, the Sierra Mountains, and the San Andres Fault. Alaska, carrying along with it, its fossils of dinosaurs from the southern hemisphere, would reach up into the Artic. Pulling even harder at its southern end, Africa digging its heels in, resulted in the gradual building of the Great Escarpment by the unceasing pull on it westwards.339 This also resulted in the uplift of its western shores out of the waters of the Atlantic while dipping its NE into the shallows of the Paratethys Ocean. This is a fascinating period in the history of the evolution of life on earth, and especially for those that found themselves in the very active boundary and shores of the everchanging Tethys Ocean that extended from the western shores of the Indian continent to the eastern shores of North America. 339

The unique dolerite sills we find here is the result of solidified lava that was forced under high pressure between the horizontal strata of the sedimentary rocks (that make up most of the Karoo), resulting from lateral pressure on the land.

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Up to 33.5 Ma ago, early whales would swim an ocean from India, west through Egypt 340 and Tunisia, through the current Mediterranean, down through the deep ravines of North America — that was then not too far away from the shores of Africa — and on through the gap between the Americas, and further on into the old Panthalassa. Basilosaurus and the dorudontids that lived in this period, approximately 41 to 33.5 Ma ago in the Late Eocene, have left their bones on the western shores of South America for us to study today. Though their early distribution is probably worldwide, they are mainly known from fossils from the eastern United States and from Egypt, but we find them in Chile and of course in the Himalayas, from where they evolved; in the old Paratethys Ocean that now forms part of that mountain chain. At this same time, the Hawaii chain would turn course, with a sharp bend in the chain indicating that it took a westerly turn from its earlier northerly direction. Why the Pacific Plate changed direction is down for serious study. Something somewhere stopped moving — probably the collision of India into Eurasia, which began about the same time—or an asteroid struck that change Earth’s rotational position at the time, or the separation. There is time on our hands to figure that one out. Beginning after the asteroid impact and up until 33.5 Ma ago, mountain building in western North America, continues. One such process was known as the Karamide orogeny. It was similar to the processes that created all the other ranges in North America’s west coast, with terranes that broke off from Antarctica and South America and that moved north at great speed, only to be trapped by the big Pacific Plate that began to move east, shoving the terranes under the American Plate.

13.2.2 The Little ‘Rock’ That Broke the Backs of Two Continents At the place where the Iberian Peninsula meets Africa, the huge continent is stressed in a convergent fault margin, crumbling lithosphere there to throw up the Atlas Mountains and the rocky terrain of the north-west of the desert lands there of present-day Morocco, Libya and Tunisia, as the ‘rock’ stands steady on its opposite shores. The orogeny started small, but subjected to a relentless convergent boundary pressure, the mountains of NW Africa would be thrown up in a short span of 18 Ma. Africa though, resists and tires, bends and fractures its back while dipping the present-day Tunisia and Egypt into becoming shallow seas and raising South Africa’s western shores, out of the Southern Ocean. Today, at the Djebel Chambi National Park in Tunisia, we see fossilised remnants of a primitive aquatic sea cow that lived in those shallows, some 48 Ma ago. It is in these shallow seas that primitive whales that have their origins in the waters of the now called Indian Ocean began to move in the Paratethys Ocean. 340

Today, we find their fossils strewn across the sands in Wadi Al-Hitan (Whale valley in Arabic), some 150 km south-west of the city of Cairo.

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Fig. 13.2: From the relentless pressure on Africa’s southernmost end, and the recent asteroid strikes, a crack would develop at the thinnest part of the southern portion of South America, leaving behind a separate island there, with evolving penguins on them

In the process of the relentless pressure on it, terranes would break up along its eastern half right down to Madagascar. The Red Sea, the Dead Sea, and the EARS were the result of this stress. More terranes there would form the future countries of France, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Burma, bits of western Siberia, and even eastern China. A couple of pieces off Australia’s eastern and western coasts — still attached to what is remaining of Gondwanaland — break off and go north; one lodges into what is now eastern China, and the other heads NE, to become part of eastern Alaska. Chunks of the present-day Antarctica break off too and head north past the Americas at a rapid pace. The splitting land would separate the feeding and breeding ground of a little fleet-footed wader of a dinosaur. The little runner would live to tell us of an epic — of commitment, loyalty, and endurance.

Fig. 13.3: 42 Ma ago, Earth’s lands were somewhat aligned so. An atmosphere had developed and the waters would now reflect the blue tinge of the sky. Saudi Arabia and the NE of Africa have sunk below the waves and the Tethys Ocean has opened up

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In the ocean around the broken backs, are where we see the most action — in the Indian Ocean, and the eastern Pacific. On Google Earth, looking at the striations of the sea-floor of the Indian Ocean and the eastern Pacific, tells you that story. Compare that to the sea-floor of the Atlantic — just a simple separation on the striations there.

13.2.3 The Rope Snaps! Unable to cope with the pressure the empty Pacific was urging it to move into, and loosening its grip eventually, South America let slip its hold on Africa, and in a violent moment that might have wobbled the planet on its axis, the two continents move away from one another; South America swinging and turning in a clockwise direction — while leaving some lands behind on South Africa’s south-eastern end — and in a great upheaval, the two continents move apart like a spring uncoiling, or like a rope snapping during a ‘tug of war’ game. This clockwise movement stresses the ocean floor in the North-South direction and eventually spreads it, to open up trenches there, and most notable, is the ‘Romanche Trench’. Striations on the Atlantic sea-floor tell us this story. Like in a tug-of-war game, and in a sling-shot like reflex action, Africa swings back on itself from the pressure suddenly released at its southern end, lashing its southern half into the Indian Ocean, while its NW moves away from the face of Gibraltar, opening up of the strait there, allowing the waters of the Atlantic to flow and mingle with the waters of the Tethys Ocean. The Red Sea, just a small fissure in the land there then, is later closed at Sinai and the Mediterranean sees itself a sea for the first time. Tectonics in that part of the world would open and close the Mediterranean a number of times since it first formed 33.5 Ma ago. With the closing of the passage out to the Tethys Ocean after Africa moves NE and into Sinai, the Mediterranean soon overflows, creating the Black Sea. The small Arabian Plate is pushed away from the Red Sea, shovelling the lands there to create the mountains of Yemen and the adjoining region of Dhofar in southern Oman. At this time, the NE of Africa rises out of the Tethys Ocean. A new sea is born. In this sudden release of pent-up energy, earth shudders, and the Indian Plate is jerked east and changes course abruptly, to now move NE at a faster pace, counterbalancing the South America tail, which is moving at a greater speed west now, than its northern half. At the opposite end of the globe, and in the northern hemisphere now, the little Indian Plate see-saws with the South American Plate. Further south, on the eastern shores of Africa, the Southeast Indian Ridge completely separates from the Australian and Antarctic plates, while at the same time, spreading between India and Australia ceased, and subduction north of Papua New Guinea was initiated. Earth would witness dramatic global weather changes and their consequences, with this sudden partying and the resulting vibrations around the globe from that violent separation would reverberate around the globe.

268 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… The instigator of South America’s rapid movement west would initiate another piece of earth into counter reactionary motion. Australia too loses its last hold on Antarctica and slips north and the separation is complete and a new ocean is born. With the opening of the Southern Ocean, a circumpolar current developed; climate changed and life radiated in new ways. The weather changed, and old species suddenly perished and new ones evolved, filling up the empty niches. Australia would begin its journey north and into isolation, having begun its effort to free itself from Gondwanaland 45 Ma ago. Along with New Guinea and Tasmania, it would become an island continent, all on its own. It was the last separation from Gondwanaland; leaving behind Antarctica to sit alone, silent and forlorn, in the darkness of the South Pole. That may be, but it had played out its part in Earth’s great balancing act, and still does to a large extent; for one… minimising the Chandler’s Wobble at the North. On Africa’s southern end, new currents would evolve in the three oceans that she now finds herself surrounded by — the Atlantic, the Indian, and the Southern Ocean. Two new currents form though; the cold nutrient-rich Benguela Current, and the warm Agulhas Current; a heady mix that supports a healthy marine ecosystem in the area. With the separation of the two continents, Africa regains its balance, and its western and southern parts, sink back into the ocean, and the NE of Africa is back up out of the Tethys Ocean, and by 31 Ma ago, western Egypt and all the way to Tunisia, had changed to become a tropical rainforest. The ‘demolition derby’ is at its height now. Plates separate, especially the little ones in the southern hemisphere. The Arctic grew slowly with little terranes running in from the south — especially those that broke of Antarctica and the western shores of South America. Here the snow would fall on these former tropical lands. Arctic ice floes became the seedlings that gathered and grew with the now new snowfall and blizzards and these were to become today’s solid Arctic sea; an ocean on which you can walk on, with no landmass beneath it; only solid ice! It is part of the old Panthalassa, but now ice-rock solid. While we have gone through Earth’s physical history since the asteroid impacts, a few milestones must be elaborated in more detail while earth balances her weight around the globe, distributing her landmasses in the places she feels need buffering. These events had dramatic climatic repercussions around the globe. One such event was brought about with the final separation of Australia from the motherland, 33.5 Ma ago. Two new continents were formed in an instant — Australia (along with New Guinea and Tasmania), and Antarctica. One would head north, whereas the other one would stay put. Between them, they would form a new ocean too. The separation would also be the proverbial “straw that broke the camel’s back”.

13.2.3.1 The Cameroon Line Earlier, some 47 Ma ago, we have proof that the little but unforgiving continent of South America has the big continent of Africa ‘pinched’ from the relentless pressure exerted by converging forces in a convergent boundary of sorts, with the tail of South America tugging

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at South Africa, and the continent of Africa, resisting the pull by a door-stop at its NW; the Rock of Gibraltar. The continent buckles at the mid-way point as Africa is unable to rotate. This stresses in a line running horizontally midway between the two reactionary forces, marking a 45° angle with the equator. It bisects the region where the coast of Africa makes a 90° bend from the southern coast along the west of the Congo craton, and the eastern coast along the south of the West African craton. This ‘pincer like’ action at the two extremes lying on a line running from Morocco to Natal, is bisected by a stress fracture, in a direction starting offshore in the Gulf of Guinea, and going inland through the little country of Cameroon, and as far as Lake Chad in northcentral Africa. It, in fact, buckles the land upwards like the fold of an upright pleat, in a thin stretch, in a single straight line running 1000 km across the plate. 33.5 Ma ago, as the continent of Africa had an ‘elastic rebound’ as South America lost its last hold on the toe of Africa, the continent of Africa sprang eastwards with pent-up fury, and in a violent upheaval, it spread out at the pinched line, releasing the pressure on the compressed fault there. Lava would spew out from the exposed crack, starting in the Gulf of Guinea and extending all along the line that starts at Annobón Island in the Atlantic Ocean and goes NE through the little country of Cameroon and on to Lake Chad. This volcanic line is geologically unusual in extending through both the ocean and the continental crust. It is technically, a simple lithospheric fracture. The hotspot dotted chain would be known as the ‘Cameroon Volcanic Line’, or simply, ‘The Cameroon Line’. In geological terms, it is a ‘wrench fault’, created by the release of the ’wrenching’ of the African south, by the tail of South America. In the sea, it consists of six offshore volcanic swells that have formed islands or seamounts, and that have now formed the basaltic islands of Annobón, São Tomé, Príncipe, and Bioko. On land, Mt Cameroon would spring up and be the largest volcano around, and the fourth highest peak in Africa. With the release of hydraulic pressure on the area around the Cameroon Line, the land to its west sinks, to form the Benue Trough. There is also the possibility that the ‘wrenching’ by South America on Africa could have something to do with the Central African Shear Zone (CASZ); a 4000 km long, NE-striking wrench fault system. 30 Ma ago, there would be more eruptions on the line, further enhancing its unique stamp on the African Plate. In recent times, it was in the news for releasing a huge amount of carbon dioxide one quite night in 1986 that gassed over 1746 unsuspecting villagers in their sleep, while another 10,000 suffered burns and blistered skins. Overnight it also suffocated to death, an estimated 3500 livestock, and an uncountable number of animals and birds. The gas came out of Lake Nyos, which sits atop a caldera of a supposed-to-be extinct volcano. The gas under the funnel of the lake was released by the pressure of fresh lava forced into its chamber below the caldera, which had accumulated a huge volume of carbon dioxide inside it. In modern times, it was the first known large-scale asphyxiation caused by a natural event. Tectonics is not always kind to ‘life’ on earth.

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13.2.3.2 The East African Rift System The East African Rift is one of the great tectonic features of Africa, caused by fracturing of the Earth’s crust (See Fig. 8.3). It is one of only two rift systems on land on our planet; the other being the Baikal Rift in Siberia. The earliest we think we know when this phenomena started, was 33.5 Ma ago, as we said earlier, the tug of South America on Africa’s south, cracked the big continent’s back. There is no other event that can account for this fracture, as the lithosphere of Africa is too thick to succumb to any heat pressure from within earth or whatever. The EARS is made up of three parts — the Albertine Rift from the Great Lakes area, the Kenyan Rift to the east, and the Ethiopian Rift — that make up the EARS and which is thousands of kilometres long. It does not appear that the plate is going anywhere yet, and the movement east is miniscule comparative to the overall rifting process globally. Moreover, at its southernmost point, the Madagascar craton shows no intention to move and has been there for eons. Volcanoes that do erupt occasionally are from fissures already made at the time Africa split from South America; most of them in the rifts of the areas above the equator while down in Mozambique, we do not see much.

13.2.4 Things Get Back to Normal… 33.5 Ma ago, would be the date when the ACC was born from small beginnings, to today flow at the voluminous rate it does. It effectively cuts off Antarctica from the warm waters of the other oceans and that now forgotten land centred on the South Pole, heads for an eternal winter. 28 Ma ago, there is a sudden rush of islands off the West Coast of North America to move into the Pacific. The San Andreas Fault is created. In another part of the globe and almost on the opposite side of the Americas, while in the present-day Kutch in Gujarat, in India whales swam about in that area, telling us that this area rose from the sea a little later. The state supplies marble to the rest of the country; marble formed from in the seas, from calcite deposits of dead coral. The Arabian Plate is once more out of the ocean along with part of the western Indian Plate that will later merge to form part of the Alpide belt. The giant rift in Eastern Africa was born when Arabia and Africa began pulling away from each other about 29 to 26 Ma ago. Although this rift has grown less than 3 cm/yr, the dramatic results include the formation and ongoing spread of the Red Sea, as well as the East African Valley. 25 Ma ago, is a time when the huge Eurasian Plate continued to move clockwise and is confronted at its east by a large piece of a part of Laurasia moving west. The two pieces would come together, squeezing out the Yana in their midst while forming the great deep Lake Baikal in the process. As like with the Caspian Sea, a saline lake is formed near the shores of Baikal.

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Arctic seals with seawater lineages, were trapped within the original salty Baikal Sea. Now increasingly fed by the vast Siberian steppe, the river and the lake, gradually turn into a river and the deep freshwater lake to go with it. Ocean dwelling pinnipeds from the Arctic Circle were squeezed into the two landmasses and trapped within it. The helpless Artic seals, would mutate to become freshwater seals — the only freshwater seal on our planet; now a separate species altogether. From an earlier way of life in the salty Arctic, they would adapt and evolve, and now live happily there as a new subspecies — the Baikal Seal (Pusa sibirica). Like the Caspian seal, it too is related to the Arctic seal. A similar fate would befall the widely distributed Siberian sturgeon that also resides in the northern half of the lake, and now known as the Baikal sturgeon. It would be tectonics that helped create the subspecies of Siberia. Siberia’s emergence as a single landmass is significant; important to the emergence of new flora in particular, as fauna was non-existent at the time on that big right half of the new land. As the two large landmasses of the present-day Siberia collide, a cross-pollination of species occurs, and a wide variety of plants soon emerge. ‘Life’ on that continent developed in isolation for millions of years. It was different from Gondwanaland; in time, it had wolves, bears, sturgeons and little cats were dominant. Gondwanaland had the monkeys in the trees and the hoofed mammals on the plains that naturally brought in the fleet-footed predators of the present-day savannahs and the velds. In a turnaround, of what happened earlier, today that part of the land of Siberia, is moving east, and now moving apart at about 0.6 cm/yr, in the process, forming the world’s deepest lake. The right half of Lake Baikal, on the western edge of its tectonic plate, is moving into the Pacific along with the Amur Plate at the rate of 0.4 cm/yr, and towards Japan. 25 Ma ago, tectonics would also bring together the microcontinents of Iberia and France, to form the Pyrenees between them. It was a process in the making for 25 Ma. They continue to grow with pressure from the African Plate that constantly threatens to subduct the Iberian Peninsula at its north. It was the time that the subcontinent of India was also pushing into the country that is now Burma and began forming the Arakan Mountains. The development here is complex, as the spreading of the eastern Indian Ocean is compounded by one force moving east into the Pacific Ocean and another — the Indian subcontinent — moving north into Eurasia. The rift between Australia and Antarctica widens and until 23 Ma ago when the South Tasman Rise was breached and the uninterrupted ACC was formed. Australia was now an island continent of its own. The separation that started slowly at first — at a rate of only DIHZPLOOLPHWUHVD\HDU³QRZPRYHV11(DWDKHDOWK\§FP\U The eastward flowing current from the Pacific Ocean would now be forced to reroute its journey around the Drake Passage. The East Wind Drift and the West Wind Drift would send Pacific waters right into the Indian Ocean. It would even out the local ocean hotspots for more moderate temperatures in the oceans.

272 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… 21 Ma ago, a chain of massive eruptions ripped apart the islands of Indonesia and much bigger than the Toba eruption of 74,000 ya. The geography of the Indonesia archipelago is changing rapidly, in a series of plates submerging all at the same time and in all directions with both the Indian and the Pacific lithospheres converging on it. As of today, this area is seismologically the most active and in the past million years, has witnessed catastrophic eruptions in Krakatau, Tambora, and Toba. Our ‘Soup Caldron’ is on high heat and starts to bubble. Plates move apart from the Americas to the other side of the globe, balancing each other in constant equilibrium. Down and on the south-eastern side of the Indian Ocean, Sumatra and Borneo separate from the African continent and move NE and then east along with its flora and fauna; the African rhino would in time be known as the Sumatra rhino, and so with Borneo, where the elephant of the grasslands of Africa changed not only its name, but its size; getting smaller to suit conditions of the dense jungles of that piece of land that he sailed of from Africa, that changed to become a dense tropical jungle on the equator, during its long journey from the coasts of Africa and into the South China Sea.

Fig. 13.4: 20 Ma ago, India has moved and locked part of the Tethys Ocean to form a saline lake at its north with many islands jostling about for positions, in the future Indian Ocean. Two bits of the tail of South America have also now become two separate islands and would move into the South China Seas in good time

15 Ma ago, the Australian Plate collides with Eurasia at their plate boundaries. The Lesser Sunda Islands began to form in the western Indian Ocean, adding to the collective growth of the Indonesian archipelago. 15 to 12 Ma ago, the Peruvian Desert was a shore line or just under the seas, as we today find fossils of early whales there. 12 Ma ago the Cocos and the Caribbean plates keep pushing into South America. Their confrontation began when the Nazca and the Cocos — on their borders with the Pacific —

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changed course and turned to move east. The confrontation between the three plates — especially with the subduction of the Cocos under the Caribbean Plate — results in underwater volcanoes, tsunamis and a build-up to mountains popping out of the sea and the land there rise out of the ocean. It all happened when the Caribbean Plate continued moving westwards under the shadow of the two huge landmasses at its north and south; resulting in the rise of the Caribbean islands from the depths of the Atlantic. More and more volcanic islands filled in the area over the next several million years, bringing up the coconut-fringed islands of the West Indies. 15 to 12 Ma ago, the Peruvian desert was under the Pacific Ocean or on its shores. Whale fossils found there, tell us this fact. It is a time that driven by the prevailing south-easterly trade winds a broad, northward flowing ocean current forms in the southern waters and becomes part of the eastern portion of the South Atlantic Ocean gyre, moving north into the tropics around South America and between Africa, as the currents flowing around Antarctica surrounds and insulates her totally. The current extends from roughly Cape Point in the south, to the position of the Angola-Benguela front in the north. Antarctica now cools further the last remnants of Antarctic vegetation that existed in a tundra landscape on the continent’s northern peninsula, is buried in snow and ice. Antarctica is isolated; now inhabited only by proto-penguins. The glacial expansion of Antarctica is finally complete, going through a long gradual process that was influenced by atmospheric and oceanographic changes, brought on by tectonics. 15 Ma ago, New Guinea on the leading edge of the Australian Plate collides with the south-western part of the Pacific Plate pushing up the New Guinea highlands while its southern end sinks, effectively separating it from Australia, for good. Its southern end reverses, buckles and creates the Torres Straits. Australia and Eurasia collide at their plate boundaries. The Lesser Sunda Islands began to form in the western Indian Ocean, adding to the collective growth of the Indonesian archipelago. As the Pacific Plate pushes New Guinea westwards, it collides with a newly arrived Indian Plate, where the islands of Bali and Lombok are, and where the ‘Wallace Line’341 separates the flora and fauna as Eurasian and Australasian. Two different worlds separated by a thin imaginary line that Alfred Wallace drew on paper. African lands had reached a dead end in our minds. Those that escaped the line, like the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Samoa, and Christmas Island (Rapa Nui), were ignored by our geographers. On the east of Rapa Nui, islands subducted into the Chile Trench brought there by the Nazca Plate. 10 Ma ago, the future islands of Burma, Malaysia, Java, and a part of Vietnam spilt away from the Indian mass and began to move east. The Javan and Indian rhinoceros are separated from their original lands of Africa, for the second time. 341

An imaginary line that Alfred Russel Wallace drew, to differentiate two very different worlds, in a distance of only 18 km, between the islands of Bali and Lombok. Unknowing to the great evolutionist and naturalist at the time, it was also the point that separated Africa from Eurasia and Australasia; a significant marker in the study and understanding of tectonics.

274 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors…

Fig. 13.5: 10 Ma ago, and we can see Europe coming together. India is firmly in the belly of Eurasia. The thin strips of lands on her sides will move on to form the parts of the Alpide belt, on her western and south-eastern flanks. On the west of Africa, the Caribbean Plate is moving west to form the isthmus of Panama

10 to 8 Ma ago, the tail following India suddenly picks up speed, and moves furiously east, leaving back the island of Mauritius stranded in the now clearly the very distinguishable Indian Ocean. The Aleutians, Kamchatka, the Kuril Islands, Japan and the little islands below it (where the short tail albatross breed), were once part of the western part of North America. North America’s West Coast breeding salmons, the Chinook and the Chum, would move along to keep a date with nature, but now in Kamchatka. 9.4 Ma ago, we can confirm the Amazon has reached the Atlantic Ocean; the rising of the Andes helped with the South American Plate subducting and riding the Nazca Plate, contributing to the Amazonian waters to fast flow east. 7 Ma ago, marsupials begin to evolve in Australia. 6 Ma ago, the ice age covers large parts of the northern hemisphere. The Samoan plume mantle underlies the northern Lau Basin. Africa collides with Europe at Gibraltar, shutting off the Mediterranean from waters of the Atlantic. When the Mediterranean dried up, a land of vegetation arose there, where African elephants made the Mediterranean home. When waters rose, they moved to higher ground and ended up in Sicily. The island is not suitable to their old way of life, and maybe for want of sufficient food, they eventually became small, and in time, went extinct. Restricted to the north by the giant Eurasian Plate, Africa buckles at its NE, and we see the beginning of the rise of the Africa Plateau and Ethiopia starts to uplift its lands, creating the Savannahs south of the rising land. Less than 6 Ma ago, the Straits of Gibraltar reopens again, and the Mediterranean is once again a sea, but once again goes dry around 5.9 Ma ago.

Then Shiva Struck!... 275

5.5 Ma ago, due to tectonic uplift and a fall in sea levels around the globe, the Caspian Sea gets landlocked. It is one of the remnant seas of the ancient Paratethys Ocean and is until date, a saline lake. The same would happen to the creation of the Black Sea. It was a time when sea levels would fall. The waters of the two seas are until date semi-salty in their taste and composition — remnants of the old Tethys Ocean. Kazakhstania would be as complete as it looks today; made from various little blocks and islands. On its eastern shores, the Altai Mountains would begin to rise from the west moving Siberian craton. 5.33 Ma ago, the Mediterranean is filled again with the Zanclean deluge, or the Zanclean flood. The reconnection marks the beginning of the Zanclean age. According to this model, water from the Atlantic Ocean refilled the dried up basin through the modern-day Strait of Gibraltar. For the last time, the rearrangement of the lands in Europe through Asia Minor was at its peak, the Strait of Gibraltar is breached by the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean is once again a sea. There was a period than that the opening and closing of the Strait of Gibraltar a number of times re-flooded the Mediterranean Sea. It evaporated and dried out a number of times, and records tell us that this happened at least 69-times, and 5 Ma ago, we know, was last time it closed at its western end, by the usual collision of Europe with Africa. In all the time that tectonics happens, the mountain building goes on and most of it happened during the Oligocene, from the time 34 to 23 Ma ago. It continued slowly in the Miocene and up to 5.3 Ma ago, and continuous until date — at what speeds, is hard to say, as it does not give us an effective and large enough ruler to measure, and compare the growth. So, let us be content with the knowledge that the mountain building process is still on, almost everywhere we see them; the Rockies, the Sierra Nevada, the Alps, or the Himalayas. What it tells us though, is that tectonics is still pushing at the lands in different places, just as it did when it started millions of years ago, when stationary land obstructed moving land attempting to balance Earth’s lopsided load. It tells us that our lopsided globe is still not a balanced mass of earth. The Alpide belt was responsible for the building of the mountains from the Alps to the Himalayas, including the two mountain belts in between — the Zagros and the Alborz ranges. Until this day, the Zagros is still active, with the current rate of shortening in SE =DJURVE\§FP\UDQG§FP\ULQWKH1:=DJURVUHVSHFWLYHO\7KH\DOVRKHOSHG form the country of Georgia — a strip of North Eastern Africa that was logged in between the European and Asian parts of Eurasia. Down in the southern hemisphere, Australia begins to turn into a dryer place, as the cold southern waters no longer flow around it. The old deciduous forests of Gondwanaland begin to give way to the distinctive hard-leaved sclerophyllous plants that characterise the modern Australian landscape. The collision of the Australian Plate moving north into islands of Wallacea, pushes up both the Sunda and the Pacific plates; which serve as island ‘stepping-stones’ that allowed plants from Southeast Asia’s rainforests to colonise New Guinea and some plants from Australia-New Guinea to move into Southeast Asia.

276 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… 5 Ma ago, North America moving westwards, starts the foundation for the orogenies of the Sierra Mountains on its south-western borders (from terranes that broke off the South American shores) in a process still ongoing today. In the South China Sea, more complicated plate movements began to start, and the process subducts whole islands, moves and raises some, and until date, the process continues as in no other place on Earth. This area is indeed a tectonically complicated place and that has changed dramatically in the last 5 Ma that drawing maps with enough detail to determine precisely how the islands, or ocean currents, may have shifted during this time, is now only guesswork. The boundary between the Burma and Sunda plates is a marginal sea-floor spreading centre, which has led to the opening up of the Andaman Sea (from a southerly direction) by ‘pushing out’ the Andaman-Nicobar-Sumatra island arc from mainland Asia, a process which began in earnest approximately 4 Ma ago. 3 Ma ago, islands in the South China Sea and the archipelago began to rise from the relentless thrust of the Indian Plate’s southern half. This reduced the flow of warm waters spilling southward from the equator along the western coast of Australia, and by 2.95 Ma ago, temperatures off its coasts dropped. The region was slowly robbed of rain and precipitation needed to maintain its lush rainforests, which eventually die away, leaving the western portions of Australia relatively arid to this day. 2 Ma ago we see the beginnings of the islands of Rodrigues and Réunion in the Indian Ocean; leftover by the giant terrane off Africa. The breakaway land would eventually go on to attaching itself to mainland China’s south-east. It was all part of Africa before that. Another piece of evidence to be observed is that a long strip of land that was originally attached to Africa, Madagascar and Antarctica, left Gondwanaland like a tail, along with Borneo at its head, looking like a disfigured stingray. This strip of the tail of a landmass consisted of the Andaman Islands, southern Thailand, Sumatra, and its adjacent parts, Java, Bali, and Borneo. When India’s upward thrust into Eurasia was arrested, this strip of land — initially looking like a trailing spike — suddenly started drifting northeast and only arrested there by the terranes from the Asian Plate and the Australian Plate. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands will not move much further; they sit on the Burma Plate which is a transform boundary with the Sunda Plate as she is also being subducted there at the same time, creating the island arc there while creating the Sunda Trench. As the strip of land pushed, it curved towards the eastern side of Australia and its tail moving up, almost merging with the terranes of the Asian Plate, but physically separated from Lombok and Sulawesi. The tail of Sri Lanka has so recently arrived from Africa that at the most eastward island of Lombok, Africa’s flora, and fauna go no further. Eighteen km ahead east, are the shores of Lombok, where begins of a different world; flora and fauna of a mixture of Asian and Australian species. It is a time when a plate that split off from somewhere on the west coast of the North America, would be sent WNW where 2.5 Ma ago, it would become the volcanic island of Kamchatka.

Then Shiva Struck!... 277

10,000 ya, with the warming and melting of the glacial ice caps, ocean water levels rise. With a combination of the subducting of the Australian Plate under the Sunda Plate, Australia is cut-off from New Guinea sometime later, to be isolated once more. Kazakhstania, which began to come together some 6 Ma earlier, is now a combination of islands and bits and bobs of the old Tethys Ocean. On its east, you have the Siberian craton and on its south, the Indian Plate that crashed into it. The middle-south boundary is the Apsheron Threshold, a sill of tectonic origin between the Eurasian continent and an oceanic remnant. Greater gravitational force in the tropics, made the plates with greater mass and riding the mantel at the poles and the outer limits of the tropics, migrate to the equator. Earth was getting to bulge at the equator, with its thin and elongated top getting stouter, whereas its thicker bottom half getting thinner. Earth was in its middle age days to attempt to get in shape. 7KHODQGEULGJHEHWZHHQ$XVWUDOLDDQG1HZ*XLQHDLVVXEPHUJHG§\DUHVXOWLQJ in a 500 km displacement of the Carlsberg Ridge and initiated rifting between India and Seychelles.

13.2.5 The ‘Little Big’ Isthmus Up until some 20 Ma ago, there was a land gap between the continents of North and South Americas, through which the waters of the Atlantic and the Pacific mingled freely. However, below the water line, three plates converge at a gap between the Americas, with the South American Plate moving slowly north, the Nazca Plate fast and furiously east, and the Caribbean Plate moving leisurely west. Little by little, the islands grew out of the sea, and by about 2.7 Ma ago in the Pliocene, the Isthmus of Panama sprang up from the depths of the sea. It is complete in the sense that tectonics has performed its duty, in that, it had effectively separated the two great oceans on that part of the globe, and would be complete enough to have stopped the mixing of the waters of the two oceans. Here ended an important tectonic process which gave a new dimension to life on the planet — the most important and significant geological event to have happened on earth, in the last 66 Ma. The little strip of land would have an immense impact on Earth’s climate; new ocean currents would be forced on the Earth’s oceans, Europe would get warmer from the waters of the new Gulf Stream. It introduced a new pattern of a seasonal rainfall across the globe. It put in place the weather pattern that we see on earth until this date, moderating Earth’s climate, wind patterns, and ocean currents, to satisfy Earth’s life now for a good few thousands of years with no dramatic changes we foresee in the future in our lifetime. Evidence also suggests that the creation of this little piece of landmass, and the subsequent warm wet weather over northern Europe, resulted in the formation of a large Arctic ice cap and contributed to the last ice age. It set the stage for glaciations in the northern hemisphere 2.7 Ma ago, when the waters of the Pacific no longer flowed into the Atlantic.

278 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… Once again, tectonics would change the water current behaviour, and the rain belts would change accordingly. 2 Ma ago, Africa would become an even drier place and the savannahs would encourage the grazing mammals to prosper. Bipedals would follow their food and a new toolmaker would stalk the land. More importantly for biodiversity, the land bridge would help exchange the fauna between the two Americas, even playing a major role on the planet. The bridge made it easier for animals and plants to migrate between the two continents. The opossum, armadillo, the porcupine, etc., would move into North America, as the cats, dogs, horses, bears, etc., of the northern hemisphere, would move south. In palaeontology, this event is known as the ‘Great American Interchange’. By shutting down the flow of water between the two oceans, the land bridge re-routed ocean currents in both the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. Atlantic currents were forced northwards and eventually settled into a new current pattern that we today know as the Gulf Stream. With warm Caribbean waters flowing towards the NE Atlantic, the climate of north-western Europe grew warmer. The Atlantic, no longer mingling with the Pacific any more, grew saltier. Each of these changes helped establish the global ocean circulation pattern that we see in place today. In short, the little isthmus, directly and indirectly, influenced ocean and atmospheric circulation patterns, which regulated patterns of rainfall, which, in turn, even sculpted a different landscape. All life on earth, we come to understand and realize, owes its origins to tectonics.

13.2.6 The Big Circular Ocean Had we not had earth flip south, we would not have heard of tectonics and the merry-goround effect she brought about, and earth would not have had that new and fifth ocean; no ACC and no penguins either. However, the real story goes back a little longer... 251 Ma ago, soon after the time of the Wilkes Land impact along with the Bedout impact on Australia’s north-western coast, the impacts cracked the plates there, and Australia’s boundaries were defined; her southern boundary with Antarctica particularly, and that sowed the seeds to begin its journey to separate from Antarctica. The separation started slowly at first, and at a rate of only a few millimetres a year. This would later accelerate and the present rate is 6.7 cm/yr.342 It was not finished though and would initiate another happening — the opening of the Tasmanian Passage (also Tasmanian Gateway or Tasmanian Seaway) about 30 Ma ago, and Australia would be physically separated from Antarctica. Antarctica was effectively isolated from other lands by a deep ocean of water, and when it freezes up, current around its shores keeps it away from the warm northern currents, shielding it also from any transportation of heat southwards. This shielding of the continent from the warmer waters of its northern oceans would get the land to get increasingly cold. In a few years, it would freeze over. Flora and fauna would perish, but a few brave, hardy and ‘never-say-die’ ones, learnt to cope and survive. 342

Fast enough to disturb the GPS on Australian automobiles, and especially driverless cars.

Then Shiva Struck!... 279

The cold circumpolar current turns Antarctica into what it is today— a frigid continent that locks up much of the world’s freshwater, as ice. The transition on its shores, however, was slow and not before 12 Ma had gone by, that the land would finally give way to ice, and Antarctica would freeze up to be the most inhospitable desert (of ice) on earth. The last living plants in Antarctica would succumb to the icy surface, wither and die and no flora would survive. Most life on the once tropical land had soon gone, except for some 17 species of a brave and never-say-die dinosaur. From a tropical forest-covered land, Antarctica today, 66 Ma later, is covered in ice, with an average thickness a staggering 1.6 km and up to 4.8 km in some places. It is the highest, driest, coldest and windiest continent on earth... an icy desert. Antarctica is set to get even colder, as the continents of Africa and Australia inch north, the Southern Ocean will increase in width and the ACC will get even colder, and so will Antarctica. The new waterway would for the first time in Earth’s history, interconnect all her oceans, except the shallow Arctic Ocean. Our planet’s waters were now able to circulate the new continent of Antarctica, and a new ocean was born and would be named the ‘Southern Ocean’.343 Australia would begin to move north and in bathymetry pictures of the Southern Ocean’s floor, are clearly visible sea-floor striations indicating Australia’s movement north, between the parallels E115 and E155. As earth rotates anti-clockwise — or west to east — when viewed from above its north, the drag on the waters of the sea-floor and the drag on her surface by the strong westerly winds, get the waters of the Southern Ocean to follow suit and rotate accordingly, also creating some of the roughest seas in the world in the process. The water current would flow around an isolated continent along all degrees of longitudes, effectively circumnavigating it, and appropriately named the ACC. It is the largest wind-driven current on earth, and is the only current that goes (technically) all the way around the planet, and connects the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian oceans. Flowing up to a northern boundary at 60° south latitude, the ACC transports more water than any other ocean current, as its waters extend from the sea surface to depths of 2000-4000 m with its lowest point at 7236 m, below sea level, in the South Sandwich Trench, and can be as wide as 2000 km. With current speeds reaching more than 1.6 km/h and staying strong all the way down to the sea-floor, it transports about 125 Mm3/s, or about 100 times the flow of all the world’s waters. At approximately 20.3 Mkm2 in area, the new ocean is the fourth largest water body on earth, following the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans, and only larger than the Arctic Ocean. Sea temperatures here, vary from –2°C to 10°C. The Southern Ocean and the ACC are of uncountable benefit to the health of our world. Its cold waters upheave nutrients from the ocean bottom while sending the waters 343

In 2000, from the southern portions of the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the Indian ocean, the International Hydrographic Organization created the fifth and newest of our world’s oceans. It is also referred to as the Antarctic Ocean, or the Austral Ocean. Its boarders, and even its entity, are still contested though.

280 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… circulating through three oceans, regulating the weather and climate patterns in large areas in the tropics.

13.3 FOOTNOTE The story of the wanderings of Earth’s continents and seabeds is here told from what we can see of her lands today. It is not the complete story and only a sketchy beginning. However, we are looking deeper into the past, and we will understand plate movement in the future, even better — in how the continents rotated, how the ancient rocks turned with time, and where their minerals once indicated north they now point elsewhere and we will learn more. In years to come, piecing together Earth’s earlier jigsaw would need the completion of the study of palaeomagnetism. When rocks are formed, usually from lava flows, the magnetic orientation in them is set as they solidify. As these rocks are affected by continental drift and other factors such as earthquakes and orogeny the original magnetic orientation remains. Using the known strengths of the Earth’s magnetic field over time, it is possible to then tell where these rocks originally emerged. Palaeomagnetism will also help us understand the original routes the migrating of the creatures of the land, air, and sea initially took on their yearly journey home.

PART – III Tectonic Output

‘Please do not deny us your water, O Sarasvati! Please do not spurn us, leaving us to travel to other lands distant from you!’344 — Rig Veda (RV, Mandala 6, Sukta 61, Verse 14 – composed by Bharadvja)

344

A translation from the original text in Sanskrit.

14

The Cradle of Civilization

14.1 THE MIGHTY POWER OF TECTONICS Over the course of 3 to 4 Ga, tectonic plates have inched across Earth’s surface to be where they are as we see them now. However, in their not-to-linear journeys, they left behind traces of their movements in bumps, gashes, striations on the seabed and bodily contours on their shores, to tell us who broke away from whom and where. Fortunately, among the many tools available to us to study plate movement — such as palaeomagnetism, satellite technology, etc. — we can today also see topographic maps of the bathyscaphe of the seabed, that has helped researchers chronicle plate movement, as well as the route the plates took to reach their present destinations. On land, where orogenies, transform boundaries, earthquakes and volcanoes are felt physically, we put together the other half of the story of the continent’s wanderings. Among the many plates that have been active on Earth’s surface, one stands out, for being the most fascinating, most studied, most talked about subject in tectonics and its related earth sciences. It is the creation of a subcontinent that in the process, helped create the orogeny of a vast and massive highland, a mighty mountain range and an orogeny of Alps and sorts around almost 18,000 km — almost half way around the globe! Its study is both a lesson, and a showcase of the silent, unseen but mighty power of plate tectonics; the subcontinent’s breaking away from Gondwanaland and traversing the waters of Panthalassa, collecting a few islands on the way while creating the Tethys Ocean in the process, to then crash into another continent some 50 Ma ago. Even that would not stop its determination and resolve, as it forcefully and tirelessly head-butts the mighty opponent’s belly, probably asking for a way through the landmass of Eurasia and possibly looking for relief in the Pacific beyond or some peace in the northern hemisphere. The little plate’s actions would be rewarded and has rightly given her name to the waters that she so majestically sailed across... the Indian Ocean! Tectonics made that happen — chiselling out a piece of land off Africa, sailing it over an ocean, then crafting out a subcontinent of mountains, rivers, plains, and along with a 7516.6 km long and continuous coastline while harbouring within it, a mighty slab of granite. On her northern front, engaged with another continent, she would raise up the land there, to form the largest and highest plateau on the globe, along with the greatest and

284 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… longest mountain range in the world, after the Andes, and enjoys the presence within it, of the lofty Mt Everest. There is, however, much more to it, and not the least of them, is trying to comprehend the enormity of the cataclysmic events that led to the formation of the Indian peninsula. Its movements over the ocean and its thrusting into the belly of Eurasia, along with other lesser associated landmasses and part-time actors, needs us to stretch our imagination a bit, as the changes and events occurring here at this time, were all new and would have worldwide repercussions. All the land and seas of our planet, would join hands and rally around the Indian Plate, to change the look of Earth’s landmass, climate, life, and everything associated with our planet — all the way from the present-day Europe on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, through the Mediterranean coastline, through Anatolia, Asia Minor, the length of the Himalayas, down India’s eastern border, down through the country of Myanmar and then Thailand, through Malaysia, and ending up on the eastern borders of the archipelago of Indonesia in the southern hemisphere. It all started when our four friends left Mother Moon behind, to circle Earth, at the end of the Cretaceous while they crashed the party down here, and obviously, it was the biggest of the four siblings that caused the most mayhem. Crashing into the narrow inland sea on the east of the Horn of Africa, the ‘God of destruction and rebirth’ splintered up the lands on that part of the globe, all the way down towards the edges of the Antarctic Circle. Destruction and havoc he caused, but the rebirth would be spectacular!

14.1.1 The Indian See-saw With the arrival of Moon and the changing gravity, coupled with the new dynamics of centripetal forces created by Earth’s equator ‘going south’, the Indian Plate finds itself closer to the equator. Centripetal, and the pole fleeing force, acting in unison, help to break her away from the mother continent of Africa, and move her SSE initially, counterbalancing the greater mass of land — that would later become North America — on the diagonally opposite side of Africa, moving away from it in the NNW direction, while the subcontinent of India literally plays the little guy on the see-saw changing his position to balance his weight against the big fat North America on the opposite side. Moon added to this acceleration of the plate with the new gravitational pull it brought into play, and now starts the fastest movement of the plates over Earth’s surface, and the fastest in Earth’s history — a fast-forward of forces set loose over her surface. Free of Africa and after the untangling of South America from Africa 33.5 Ma ago, the Indian Plate changed direction abruptly and began to move at an astonishing rate; moving as if to occupy some obviously very empty space around, and probably the vast landless plot of the Panthalassa Ocean over on the other side in the Pacific. It takes the plate as little as 19 Ma for it to severe from Gondwanaland and crash into Eurasia, covering a circuitous distance of 2416 km while moving at an average rate of 12.71 cm/yr, and anywhere in the range to 0.01 to 30 cm/yr, as per local conditions imposed on it.

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Starting off the Horn of Africa and ending up on India’s westernmost point, that part that dragged its belly on the sea-floor would be the future Indian state of Gujarat, where today we find a great variety of fossils, and further south in the area known as Kutch, where a river delta, periodically filled it with waters of the Tethys Ocean. A rich middle Eocene fauna includes many species of early whales (remingtonocetids, protocetids, troodontids, and basilosaurids) and sea cows, as well as sharks, giant crocodiles, rays, bony fish, turtles, sea snakes, and the occasional land mammal. The route that the Indian subcontinent took is so visible to us today, that we can visually trace its journey all the way from the east of Africa, to its present-day position on the mainland Eurasia. Starting at the island of Socotra near the Horn of Africa, the striation on the seabed it furrowed there on its long journey, resembles a giant NIKE-like sign — going all the way to the Indus River Delta. This route on the seabed, is clearly visible to us today, on both Google Earth, and on NASA’s WorldWind.

Fig. 14.1: Striations on the seabed, detailing the movement of the Indian Plate in the old Tethys Ocean (now the Indian Ocean) and so obvious and visible on bathymetric maps

14.1.2 The Plateau of Lava Earlier, as the Indian Plate rode the mantle at high speed, it created a massive amount of friction between its lithosphere and the asthenosphere that not only generated an immense amount of heat, but also sent its underbelly shavings back into the mantel, thinning out the

286 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… asthenosphere and causing its surface of now relatively thin lithosphere,345 to fissure. As its comparative thin belly ruptures at its centre, lava oozes all around and generally in the central triangle we know today in the area of the western Deccan peninsula, and close to the Shiva impact crater. Its periphery though, is cooled and hardened by the waters of the surrounding Panthalassa Ocean, and generally remains intact. Formed in the Palaeocene starting 66 Ma ago, it is today a mass of granite — in some places as much as 5 km thick — covering a visible area today, of around 512,000 km2. It is high and aptly called the ‘Deccan Plateau’. In scientific parlance and academia, it is referred to as the ‘Indian Deccan Traps’.346 These trap-like eruptions are called ‘flood basalts’ — the lava erupting along many linear fractures, rather than at individual volcanoes, and runs over the land in sheets like water during a flood, and when cooled, turns to basalt. The activity had started sometime soon after the asteroid impact but increased its outpouring when the Indian Plate started migrating NNE at an increased pace after the South America-Africa split. When in eruption, it sent up a pall of smoke over 1/3rd of the subcontinent, including the release of dust and sulphuric aerosols into the air, throwing out poisonous vapours and clouds of carbon dioxide,347 which might have also blocked sunlight, thereby reducing photosynthesis in plants. When the flood basalt finally ceased and cooled, it created a tabletop land of hard basaltic granite, bare of soil and water... and almost no ‘life’. It was a traumatic journey for India, and when the outpouring stopped, we see the majority of her flora and fauna, wiped out. The eruption occurred over a short period spanning 25,000 years but was responsible for the extinction of much life on the peninsula, and the delayed biotic recovery thereafter, on a land that was devoid of soil and covered with slabs of bare basaltic granite. Coupled with the Chicxulub event, it helped hasten the extinction of most life on earth at the time. In addition, volcanism might have resulted in carbon dioxide emissions, which would have raised the greenhouse effect, after the dust and aerosols cleared themselves off from the atmosphere. It was the moment when the peninsula was without life, with the exception being, the seaward fringes, and the crescent of hills in the central and NE of the peninsula. Until this 345

346

347

Recent method and with more precision for determining the thickness of lithospheric plates, has been developed at GFZ Potsdam. We now know that the lithosphere of the Indian Plate is only about 100 km thick. Other parts of the old Gondwanaland where it detached itself from, are at an average of about 200 km thick, whereas other sources quote this as 180 to 300 km thick. This is despite the thick layer of basalt and granite on India’s surface that formed in the flood basalt event, and that constitutes the Indian Plate’s lithosphere now. Traps — after the Swedish word to mean ladder, or staircase — referring to the flattops in the way the lava solidified; layer over layer of basaltic granite stems, looking at times like the Saqqara pyramids of Egypt. These layers are very conspicuous to the eye, when on a train journey between the cities of Mumbai and Pune, on India’s western quarter. Events common in Earth’s history, and we mentioned Lake Nyos earlier

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day, the ecoregion of the Deccan Plateau contains only about 20% of its original natural habitat. Then again, these are the ones that crept in off the periphery of the land that mingled with the ones that came down from the crescent of hills, and had survived the molten lowlands. Then there are those that came in from the Eurasian continent from the NW and the NE of the peninsula — like the Asian buffalo from SE Asia, and the bears and the tigers from Siberia. So near to the surface is the basalt floor of the traps, that it is visible today while travelling across the plateau. On a train journey across it, one witnesses endless flat plains, with the topsoil of an average of 1.5 m over the granitic bedrock. Trees grow an average of 4 to 5 m tall and spaced out, and the land is covered with shrub. Few animals are visible — noticeable are the draught and milch cattle, and the water buffalo; the latter, a recent immigrant from South East Asia.

Fig. 14.2: The Deccan Traps

Winds would slowly bring in airborne dust, but until this day, the topsoil of the Deccan Plateau is so thin over the bedrock, that some large trees need to support themselves with extra limbs. We can see these in the many banyan trees that range the plateau, whose roots grow down from the branches and into the ground, to form new secondary supporting structures. On a sadder note, the flood basalts wiped out all traces of palaeontological evidence of both flora and fauna of an earlier era on the land. There is no exceptional post-Cretaceous fossil finds on the plateau, and flora fossils are found of a Miocene era, of evergreen rain-

288 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… forest genera, revealing a past, of a moist climate history; the same geological past of Gondwanaland, with finds like the Glossopteris and Vertebraria 348 fossils, unearthed there. The lands that survived the flood basalts, namely, the Narmada Basin on the peninsula’s western corner, and the Krishna Godavari Basin on the eastern corner of the plateau — have some remarkable fossils, but these are just a few observed on the subcontinent of India. A blessing though, for the people of the land in that the granite was available to build altars and temples and the many beautiful figurines of God and Goddess that have survived time. Granite would even enter the Indian kitchen in the form of the ubiquitous ‘grinding stone’. Tectonics would decide how cultures evolved.

Fig. 14.3: A Banyan tree that is popularly known as Thimmamma Marrimanu,349 in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh - a notable part of the Deccan Plateau Credit: Kiran Gopi/CC BY-SA 3.0

14.1.3 A Land of Many Hues 1.5 Ma ago, H. erectus walked and hunted on the plains of this old part of Africa. He carried the Acheulian culture into India before H. heidelbergensis ferried this toolmaking culture into Europe. Later, evidence from Jwalapuram — another prehistoric site in India — suggests that H. sapiens had arrived in India in an earlier wave out of Africa, at least about 74,000 ya. Humanity had been on the subcontinent of India for a long time350. They were ‘blacks’ of East Africa or the ‘deep honey coloured tan’ of Southern Africa. 348

349

350

A genus of fossil plants based upon root-like remains of Triassic age that resemble the human vertebral column. Located about 35 km from the town of Kadiri, and reported to be the world's biggest tree, with a canopy of 19,107 m2. Estimated to be more than 200 yo, it is the centrepiece of the Indian Botanical Garden located there. A team of Indian and French archaeologists has used two dating methods to show that the stone hand-axes and cleavers from Attirampakkam, near Chennai in India, are at least 1.07 Ma old, and could date as far back as 1.6 Ma ago. These are the oldest stone tools found in India till date.

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Much more... from the hundreds of tribes that arrived at India’s shores from Africa, and each with a different language, some did survive and many new ones came into being. In a recent nation-wide survey concluded that more than 19,500 languages or dialects are spoken in India as mother tongues.351 There are 68 living scripts on the subcontinent, and newspapers publish out their news daily in 35 languages. The state-run All India Radio broadcasts daily in 120 languages! Tectonics would ensure that India would live to be the proverbial ‘melting pot’ of humanity. From the ever rising mountains in the north, rivers would run in regularly and new ones formed now and again. A mutated race of people from the highlands would once more inhabit the lowlands. A ‘white’ race coming in from the NW and the ‘honey-coloured’ ones dropped down by the Brahmaputra at the subcontinent’s NE, would mingle with the original ‘black’s in the south — the drifters and hunter-gatherers would gather on the treeless plains of the subcontinent, where cultures would evolve and that would ensure that the subcontinent would have a people that would range in all shades from black to white. The waves of new African immigrants in the south, would replenish the subcontinent with their animist beliefs; each with his own God — the God who shakes the mountain, or a God that lives under the big tree and they would be many; even a snake God to protect you from the bite of a Black Mamba. Beliefs in dead man’s spirit from Africa and the respect for life on the subcontinent, would merge into a set of new beliefs. On the banks of the Sindhu (Indus), learned men would record their lives in a sophisticated written script some 10,000 ya. The people who lived on the Sindhu would be identified by the way they went about their daily lives. Life was precious. It would not be hurt. Indians would become vegetarians. The animals would have no fear of man. The water buffalo, the bulls, and the elephant, would befriend and help man with his burden. They would live in harmony. A way of life was here to stay. A religion was born.

14.1.4 East of the Sindhu... Some 9000 ya, the rivers Drishadvati, Indus, Shatadru and the Sarasvati, were the first rivers recorded as flowing down from the rising mountains to the north and on to the plains of northern India; carving out an extensive network of a drainage system in the NW of the Indian subcontinent. The present Indian states of Punjab and Rajasthan were green and fertile, where man would settle on the banks of those rivers, where great civilizations would rise and prosper in the amiable cool climate around those fertile riverbanks. The abundant waters of the rivers and copious rains provided ample sustenance for their farming and other activities. 351

According to The Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India, in their report published on 1 July 2018.

290 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… 8500 ya, we find the peoples on the west bank of the Indus, farming and rearing livestock. Man on the plains of India were already farmers at that time, and evidence of this way of life is found today in the excavations being carried out in Mehrgarh, in Balochistan. These people would prosper civilly and their culture and way of life, would trickle down to the SE, where the great cities of Mohenjo-Daro would sprout around the fertile riverbanks and later the city of Harappa up further north on the river. Today we know that area to have hosted the Bronze Age IVC. It nurtured out the world’s oldest civilization on its nascent but fertile riverbanks, where the ancient books like the Rig Veda352 would then be written. Earlier, much earlier, on the fertile plains of the subcontinent, the food was plenty and seasonal, giving rise to a people that were being increasingly reassured of continuity in a seasonal way of life. They would no longer chase their food, and the availability of food was predictable. They were now farmers; rooted in the land they tended and lived off. The people were comfortable, and at ease with life, and increasingly confident in their way of living life. On riverbanks, they lived and tendered the fertile strips around the rivers. On these silted land, the first settlers could be found, and mostly along the Indus, the Sarasvati and the Ganges. People of the rivers and particularly the Indus and the Sarasvati — which first saw urban civilization — tell us their story today; a people that did not make a great difference between social classes, and neither did their rulers display wealth. They did not leave behind large monuments or rich graves; their art displayed in small works of stone. This contentment helped sow the seeds of the great Dharmic religions; peace centred religions of Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism; spiritual actions that looked inwards, to find contentment in serenity, thankful obedience, and a look at death as just another spoke in the wheel of life. Thoughtful pious movements that were bound to respect the existence of the sparse terrestrial life around them, venerated the scarce animals that nourished them, that obediently wore the yoke, drew the plough, and husked their harvest. People of the subcontinent would gather the practices of a thousand African tribes and turn them into religious movements that pleased all. The abundance of food, contentedness in the inhabitants’ way of life, helped in nurturing a beautiful theological and peaceful culture that we would come to know off as Hinduism.353 Yoga, Ayurveda and a host of other sciences would follow suit. Sanskrit would follow, to today contribute to being the basis, of the whole Indo-European group of languages. No less than that were the discoveries made in the sciences — mathematics, algebra, astronomy, metallurgy, mineralogy and astrology, among others. 352 353

The earliest of the four Hindu religious scriptures. Correctly, Sanatana Dharma. ‘Hindu’ is the name given to the people who lived east of the river Sindh, or the Sindhu, who’s belief it was, with their way of life incorporated into it. It is the world’s oldest religion that once spanned from the eastern corner of the Arabian peninsula through the Hindu Kush Mountains of Afghanistan, up north in China’s Xinjiang province that borders Russia and down onto the Indus valley where it all started and on to the outer limits of Indonesia and eastern China.

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A stage was set for trade and commerce. This happens precisely when nature is conducive to their growth. The IVC has been rightly mentioned in research findings, as the Indus Ghaggar-Hakra Valley Civilisation,354 and Indus Sarasvati Civilisation, by scientists. This riding of the Indian Plate over the Eurasian landmass at its NW tilts the plate, while the clockwise rotation of the Indian Plate sinks the subcontinent’s SE, separating the present-day Sri Lanka from mainland India evermore. As the NW of the subcontinent continued to ride the Eurasian Plate there, and the tilt of the subcontinent continued, the Sarasvati would begin to change its course and turn east. The IVC would soon disappear into the sands of the encroaching desert. Starting with crop failures for a lack of waters flowing into its rivers, to the final drying up of the rivers, the end of the IVC came about some 3300 ya. Tectonics helped create those great civilizations; it was also responsible for ending it. Tectonics compensates and new rivers — the Ganges and the Brahmaputra in particular — began flowing east, down the new incline.355 Some 5900 ya, the Sarasvati changed course. Man of the Indian peninsula had figured out a way of life. More than that, more hands were needed in order to tend the vast flatlands of rice that was now grown regularly and seasonally. With his belly full, and content, there was time in hand in the off-season, to contemplate life. A philosophy would take small roots to eventually give the rice cultivators an ideology of tenets, values, principles and ethics that were collected and collated into a single way of life, from the various practices of the small contingents of Africans that were constantly being dropped on its shores. Moreover, with their bellies filled and time on their hands, man would do what man does best when idle — they would make babies. On the rice fields of India, the population would explode. East of the Sindhu, lived the Hindu.

14.1.5 ... and ‘God’ she would be So scant was life on the basaltic plateau, that when humans first started to venture inland, the sparse wide open land was not conducive to their earlier way of life, and they had to abandon their hunter-gatherer lifestyle, for a more sedate subsistence farming, on the monsoon-fed land. On the thinly distributed and barren landscape of the peninsula, men survived on the now new seasonal rains that began in timely earnest every year. With the monsoons coming in regularly, the thin soil would hold enough water for farming again, which needed little depth of soil, and it would begin in small ways, and a milch cow or two would be added to the household. The docile bovine that came with the Africans from Gondwanaland was domesticated for its milk and the bull would be trained to be a draft animal to wear the yoke and draw the furrow to till the land and thrash the grain. With much-needed protein scarce on the 354 355

Ching et al., 2006. It is believed in some quarters, that the Ganges and the Yamuna are part of the old Sarasvati River.

292 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… granite or basalt peninsula, the cow’s milk would have to suffice, and she would sustain man with proteins from her milk. The bovine was everything the new immigrant needed; his life literally hinged to it. With flora so precious, cattle dung would be used in ingenious ways: to pave the dwelling floor, to prop up the hut walls, and sun-baked spat for fuel at the fireplace. On becoming unproductive, grateful man would display their gratitude to the docile cow and set her free. It is for this reason that the milk-giving cow is, venerated as a ‘God’, in India. She was looked after, respected, revered, thanked, then venerated and set free, to eventually become a member of the pantheon of the Hindu gods, as Kamadhenu. Tectonic had created a way of life and a culture.

14.1.6 Of Flora and Fauna So recent was this separation of the Indian Plate from Africa, that unlike the separation of the Americas from Europe and Africa, flora and fauna on the peninsula, are still identifiable and related to the flora and fauna of mainland Africa. Added to that, are the late arrivals from lands that swept past the subcontinent while dropping off their cargo on her shores. The lions of the Gir Forest in Gujarat, the Indian elephants that roam the subcontinent’s length and breadth, the rhinoceros, the now extinct hippopotamus356 and the elegant giraffes,357 are but a few of those that have left cousins behind on the old continent. Some ‘Africans’ still visit the new country regularly and yearly, during the breeding season; the Lesser Cuckoo for one, and from other old African lands that are now in the east, the Asian Koel358 arrives and departs annually from the Indonesian archipelago and south-east China. Most of what is now the Deccan Plateau’s flora originated only 3 Ma ago and is unique to the subcontinent. The known mammal fauna in the ecoregion includes only 82 species, and none endemic to the ecoregion, except the few survivors that rode the Indian Plate from Africa.

14.1.7 The Last African Migrants Across the Bay of Bengal and on India’s south-western shores, in a tectonic process called ‘docking’, where strips of land coming in from Africa, would merge with the Indian subcontinent — like the cordillera happening on North America’s western coast and especially in the Sierra Nevada Mountains — and their lands held back, and that slowly merged with India’s western coast, to now be indistinguishable with the mainland.

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Some 30 ya, in Assam, on a little tributary of the mighty Brahmaputra, were the last reported sightings of a pod there, near the place called Dishangmukh. Ancient Indian temple sculptors recorded their earlier presence for posterity. One such image is carved on the plinth face of the UNESCO World Heritage Monument; the magnificent 13th century Sun Temple of Konark, in the eastern Indian state of Odisha. An Asian cuckoo with a call that resembles its name, the male typically having an all-black plumage.

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Fig. 14.4: Terrane accretion onto a continental land mass. Continued subduction transports the arc terrane to the margin of the continent where it is too buoyant to be subducted so it gets accreted to the continent Credit: Wikipedia Commons

The last of the lands that had left the eastern fringes of Africa 74,000 ya, would brush and pass by India, leaving more groups of H. sapiens on her shores. One such strip of land swept further east and was stopped there by the Burma microplate. That strip of land would be known to us today, as the Andaman Islands. Later, another line of a thin strip would arrive there and would be stopped once again by the Burma Plate. We would know the people there as the Sentinelese islanders. H. sapiens that still live on those islands are the last of the original and still ‘untouched’ hunter-gathers that came when “Out ‘went’ Africa”. Typically of the tribes of Africa, they would live in their comfort zone and would not venture out if food was available locally. They in fact, jealously guard their little resources diligently and do not even approve of outsiders getting close to their shores, and many have reported being attacked by bows and arrows when within range of their armoury. The bow-and-arrow technology is a giveaway of their recent departure from Africa. The ones that left Africa earlier, like the Aborigines of Australia, had not experienced the ‘bow and arrow’ technology — they had unintentionally left the shores of the continent before the technology could reach them from inland Africa. So too was the case of the Fijians and the people of the Pacific who had left Africa on their islands probably even before the Australian aborigines. Though the Sentinelese are armed with the new technology, they are still ignorant of the art of making fire. They preserve fire, by keeping the ambers burning continuously, having collected it during the lightning strikes. In the western shores of India’s coast line on what is known as the Konkan Coast, are found carved in stone, images of sea creatures; hinting of the land having arrived from the

294 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… side facing Africa and obviously with AMH on it. We are beginning to slowly understand how these events must have happened. What did these inland peoples of thousands of years ago know about sea creatures? There are more such petroglyphs in the little state of Goa. Who are the people who did these carvings and where did they come from? Would the people have then crossed over on to the mainland? Could they be the Siddis of western India, the Gonds of northern India or the Irula snake catchers of southern India? Fortunately for science, these rock drawings were first brought to our attention not by palaeontologists, but by two hikers,359 who are today cataloguing the numerous drawings etched in stone, for study by scientists. There is a lot out there we know nothing about. Thankfully, man is a curious animal. So… however unintended it may be, tectonics has fortuitously fashioned out a variety of exciting and unique lifestyles on this planet.

14.1.8 The Cursed Train As the Indian Plate was pushed forward towards Eurasia, the plate’s right shoulder ploughed into the landmass of Eurasia — where is today India’s NE state of Arunachal Pradesh — and down to the present-day western Burmese border some 50 Ma ago. Here, it threw up a mountain range, now known as the Arakan Mountains, in a compressional environment. As it is arrested there, forces acting on the plate allow it to move NNE while simultaneously allowing it to slowly turn clockwise, helped along by the Eurasian Plate that gently turns clockwise and slowly moves east. This movement of the plate, sees India’s western shoreline softly furrow and plough the Tethys seabed all along its western length, collecting enough of the seabed and raising up the land all along that border, throwing up the 1600 km long range of hills parallel to the coastline, and which we now call the ‘Western Ghats’.360 On its NE, where it created the Rankine Mountains, and west of it, the ground is constantly moving. In a place called Sonapur, in the state of Meghalaya, there is a constant erosion of earth from the hills in a transform-divergent like fault all over the place, with no fault lines detectable in that mountainous terrain. As the Indian subcontinent turns clockwise, there must be a divergent boundary here, as volcanoes do erupt on this border, though they are of an unpredictable nature, of low intensity, and far between. Turning clockwise, the Indian Plate would quickly make landfall with Eurasia at its NW corner, locking part of the Tethys Ocean at its north. This also helps the beginnings of the raising of the sea-floor, as it kept moving north. 359

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The love of hiking, brought two Indian engineers — Sudhir Risbood and Manoj Marathe — out on to the hills of western India, where they found these strange stone carvings made into the rocks. More are being found and catalogued; the areas’s thick undergrowth and vegetation adds to the difficulties in identifying many. Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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As it plunged into Eurasia, the Indian Plate scattered and split large shoals of the ancient lizardfish, Harpadon nehereus,361 off their traditional waters off that Eurasian coast. Large shoals are now found on India’s western coast of the Gulf of Kutch, and smaller ones in the Bay of Bengal.

14.1.9 A Time to Reflect… It is the single most momentous time in the subcontinent’s life. In that time, it changed the Earth’s physical shape, when it raised the ocean floor into the highest plateau, sprung the highest mountains, created an enormous range of peaks, formed enormous glaciers on tabletops, germinated and forced mighty rivers to life from humble beginnings, made large tracts of land fertile. Among the rivers that flowed down, the Indus and the Sarasvati would stand out, with their source on Mt Kailash. More... with the subcontinent’s physical contact with Eurasia, it would help H. sapiens that sailed on it from Africa, to hop onto the Eurasian landmass, who then helped populate the world, as never before. The Indian Plate helped do all this, in a short span of 66 Ma — the flash of a lightning spark, on Earth’s geological timescale.

14.2 THE EVER-RISING HIMALAYAS Formed through the cataclysmic and earth-shattering NNE journey of the Indian Plate, the gradual rise of the Himalayas took place in a series of long, curvilinear, parallel folds (compare this thrust pattern with that in Fig. 7.7). The orogenesis with this stupendous up-thrust of the Earth’s crust, created a mountain range that goes all the way north, to the Tian Shan, to the border of Soviet Central Asia, where it constitutes the line of demarcation between two of the world’s great faunal realms — the Oriental to the south and the Palaearctic 362 to the north. On its southern rim, called the Himalaya-Karakorum complex, stands Mt Everest, at a height of 8848.13 m (or 8.85 km above sea level), along with hundreds 361

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Known among the coastal people of India on its northern shores of the Gulf of Rajasthan and the Bay of Bengal, as Bummalo, Bamaloh, Bumla, Bombi, or Bombil. This bizarre and outlandish fish is a gastronomic delight and a common denominator now, between the peoples of the west and the east Indian states of Maharashtra and Bengal. Over a century ago, when the eastern state found out that the western state had surplus quantities of the prized fish, they began to ship the dried version of it (along with its ‘stinky’ smell) eastwards, in trainloads. The stinky mail train that was forced to cart the dried smelly fish, would be cursed along its long journey to Calcutta, and as it arrived from Bombay, its reputation would go ahead of it, and that would empty the train stations in quick time. The Bombay Dak (the ‘Bombay Mail’ in Hindi) has now lent its name to the smelly fish it faithfully ferried across the subcontinent, but only now, with one absurdity — the Anglicized version is literally spelt, and called, ‘Bombay Duck’! Tectonics is a serious science, not without a little humour though. Relating to, or denoting a zoogeographical region comprising Eurasia north of the Himalayas, together with North Africa and the temperate part of the Arabian Peninsula. The fauna is closely related to that of the Nearctic region.

296 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… of other peaks over 7000 m, each higher than anywhere else on earth, and all of the world’s territory higher than 4000 m. Earlier, as the Indian Plate began to turn clockwise, the large concave face, north of the peninsula, begins to trap the waters of the Tethys Ocean along its border with Eurasia. As the peninsula moves north, it joins the Eurasian landmass where the Hindu Kush Mountains are today while forming a large sea in between its NE and NW borders. Unimaginably powerful are tectonic forces that the little Indian Plate relentlessly pushes at the larger landmass of Eurasia at its northern flank, like a giant bulldozer collecting up all the lands up there and thrusting forward, heaving, crushing, and crumpling their lands in between the opposing forces. During all this time, the little mass of India did not buckle against the larger Eurasia Plate while pushing into it; it did the opposite, as its core the Deccan Plateau was by now, thick with solid heavy granite. The Indian Plate being thick at its periphery but with a density too low for it to be subducted beneath the Eurasian Plate while the plateau and mountains weight of the two deterring it, only the lower strata of its leading edge — being of a heavier density, and having been burdened with the thick and weighty slab of basalt of the Deccan Plateau — would slip under the Eurasian lithosphere. During the collision, the Indian Plate pushed about 500 km under Tibet, reaching a depth of 250 km. As this happens, and the Himalayan and the Karakorum ranges keep rising, something remarkable was taking place behind the new and ever-growing mountain range. The ensuing result at the top layer was the collision of two plates, with the lower strata of the Indian Plate pushing under the old sea, along with the seabed sediments of the Tethys Ocean locked in there, now being crushed, bunched, and pushed over, piling it up along with the ever-growing mountain range. More shoving and the Tethys sea-floor would begin to rise. It has a twofold effect on the land there; the sea and the land in Eurasia rise; the land to become the greatest and highest plateau in the world. When the now very heavy and weighted plateau’s rise slows, the orogeny of the Himalayas and Karakorum ranges begins, finishing off with a 2900 km long range of mountains cradling the entire length of the subcontinent’s northern face. The rising seabed traps the sea creatures in there, and among the many, are the whales and the dolphins that lived in the earlier Tethys Ocean. Known as ‘Fold Mountains’, because they formed in a series of parallel ridges or folds, it encompasses an area of 594,400 km2. Here are ranges upon ranges of tiers of rock, sharp sky-piercing peaks, and canyons deep beyond measure and what we now appropriately call the Indus-Yarlung Suture zone, and are marked by the courses of the two greatest rivers of the Kailash — a spectacle of awesome dimensions. Interestingly, the Himalayas are not only the most impressive of all the mountain chains, but also the most dynamic, and raising at the rate of 5 m every 100 years. Interestingly, Mt Everest is still growing at an average rate of 3.1 cm/yr, telling us, that tectonics is not yet finished with us here, and that the Indian Plate is still pushing northwards. This means that the Himalayas are still geologically active363 and structurally unstable as the Indian 363

The 25 Apr. 2015 earthquake in the region, pushed up the city of Kathmandu by about 2 to 3 m while also transporting it south by another 3 m.

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Plate pushes at it, and the reason for frequent earthquakes in the region; all the way from NW of the peninsula, through to northern India, to the states of western China, and down even to Burma. On the downside again, the push of the Indian Plate has created numerous faults parallel to the Himalayan range; the Altyn Tagh (a 1200 km long, active, strike-slip fault that forms the NW boundary of the Tibetan Plateau, with the Tarim Basin), and the Kunlun strike-slip fault, to name just two. These faults move from time to time, as the Indian Plate moves north, slipping without warning. The striking of two thick lithosphere walls here while driving past each other with tremendous force, shake the lands there violently. It so happens, that as the Indian Plate is restricted at its East-West boundaries, and can only move NNE, while the Eurasian Plate is now moving eastwards, and so the southern parts of the faults slip west, and areas north of the fault, slip eastwards. Some of the world’s most destructive earthquakes in history are related to these continuing tectonic processes here, and in 2009, an earthquake in the neighbouring Sichuan province of China killed 87,000 people. In a town called Jiegu, 85% buildings collapsed.

14.2.1 The First Urban Civilizations As the NW of the subcontinent continued to ride the Eurasian Plate there, and the tilt of the subcontinent continued, the Sarasvati would begin to change its course and turn east. The IVC would soon disappear into the sands of the encroaching desert. Starting with crop failures for a lack of waters flowing into its rivers, to the final drying up of the rivers, the end of the IVC came about some 3300 ya. Tectonics helped create those great civilizations; it was also responsible for ending it. Tectonics compensates and new rivers — the Ganges and the Brahmaputra in particular — began flowing east, down the new incline.364 The Ganges was the last of the great rivers that came down from the mountains and trickled into the parched lava-baked plains of northern India. The river originally flowed SSW and could have joined the Sarasvati, or may have been it. However, some 6000 ya or earlier, the ever-rising NW of the subcontinent forced the waters of the Sarasvati to run dry, or maybe to turn east. The old river would dwindle, and eventually disappear into the sands of the new desert now there.365 364 365

It is believed in some quarters, that the Ganges and the Yamuna are part of the old Sarasvati River. So convinced are the Indians that the Sarasvati actually existed, and because the Rig Veda mentions it several times, the Govt. of the Indian state of Haryana, appointed a team to search for the river’s original route. Starting work in Apr. 2016, the team struck water at a depth of only 3 m, in Sept., as they were digging along the old course. The river would have passed through the north-western Indian states of Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, and Gujarat, and even though modern science has still to acknowledge it. Efforts are being made to prove its existence. To the Indians, the existence of Sarasvati is beyond debate. They know that the river valley was a site of flourishing civilisations, which subsequently assimilated into the modern Indian culture. To Indians, the real scientific debate hinges only on technicalities.

298 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… Learned men, from this earliest of the River Valley Civilizations — from Harappa to Mohenjo-Daro, through the Rann of Kutch, to the 32,000 years old (yo) city of Dwarka (recently found offshore in the Gulf of Khambhat) — would make sure the river is remembered for posterity, recording her life in the Rig-Veda and other sacred Indian texts. A thousand years before Mesopotamia, the lives of the people that Sarasvati touched, had learned to write, and they would record their profound wisdom of the most peaceful and great religious movement in the world. We are still learning more today, from the excavations being carried out at MohenjoDaro and Harappa; learning more about the people that the IVC is telling us today, adding to what the Rig-Veda told us 10,000 or more years ago, composed and written by learned men, on the banks of the Sarasvati.366 Later, Hinduism would peter down to form the movements of Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and to an extent, even Shintoism (whose roots came over to Asia from the shamans of Africa, and taken all the way north to Finland, Hungary, Greece, through the Altai Mountains and on to Kamchatka, and then south to Japan; taken there by the Ainu people). The beliefs that first came out of the Africa, would cross Beringia to the Americas, where the Inuit and the American ‘Indians’ still practise it. Ancient beliefs about the world were reflected in their philosophies and religions. Icons and ideas generated at least three hundred years before the birth of Christ, conceived the opposing yet inseparable yin and yang of Chinese philosophy. They are also expressed in the dual nature of the great Hindu god, Shiva — the deity of both destruction and creation. India and China are not only home to these great traditions but occupy some of the most seismically active real estate on planet earth. The earthquakes that have wrecked that part of the world for aeons cannot be classified as simply destructive or creative, as either good or bad, as a blessing or a curse — they are both. On the north-central plains of the Indian peninsula, the river brought relief to the people on the hot and parched lands. These were the new inhabitants of the plains, having come down from the ‘crescent’ hills of India, and the periphery of its southern shores, and from the north-eastern and north-western corners. They had not seen a river and it was new to them; a river coming in from nowhere; or somewhere from the heavens probably.367 It was life-giving; it was ‘God sent’, it was divine... that life-giving entity; it was ‘God’ in his many manifestations. Ganga Ma! 368

14.2.2 Birth of the Monsoon As the Himalayan range of mountains continued to rise, wind patterns would change, altering the weather on both sides of the mountain divide. Cool winds from the southern 366

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It is no coincidence that the name of the river is the Sanskrit name for the Goddess of learning, knowledge, and wisdom. Eventually its source was traced, which is a prominent site of Hindu pilgrimage today. Mother Ganges... like Father Rhine.

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seas that would flow into the northern hemisphere in the summer, was now being increasingly intercepted by the ever-growing Himalayas. The strengthening of the Asian monsoon has been linked to the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayan mountain range, confirmed by studies on records of windblown dust in the Arabian Sea, and that of the Loess Plateau. More recently, studies of plant fossils in China and new long-duration sediment records led to a timing of the monsoon beginning 12.9 Ma ago and again linked to the Tibetan uplift. 10 Ma ago, these ever-rising lands were causing the moisture-laden southern air to move around it, and by 8 Ma ago, the Himalayas had reached heights of 2000 m or so; enough to obstruct the heavy moisture carrying wind coming in from the SW, from moving north. The result was that the first rains began to trickle onto the west coasts and the plains of India. As time went by and the Himalayas grew upwards, the winds no longer moved into Asia, and 7 Ma ago, began to drop their increasingly heavy cargo of moisture on the peninsula yearly and seasonally. The monsoon has varied significantly in strength since that time, and a study of marine plankton suggested that the Indian Monsoon strengthened around 5 Ma ago, having showed its powers some 8 Ma ago. Ice-laden periods contributed to the strength of the monsoon and when this happened, cold waters in the Pacific were impeded from flowing into the Indian Ocean. It is believed that the resulting increase in sea surface temperatures in the Indian Ocean increased the intensity of the monsoons. Although the time when these monsoon patterns were first established say 12.9 Ma ago in some studies, many lines of evidence suggest that they first came to, at least 24 Ma ago.369 That, however, is immaterial now, as, in time, the rains got seasonal and predictable. The monsoon would arrive after the winds began to tell us to get ready for the planting season. There were two of them; the SW and the NE monsoons, and in some parts, those in the shadow of the two monsoons, there would be both of them, resulting in two growing and harvesting seasons a year. With the rising of the land all along India’s western border, new equations came into play. The low and obviously heavy moisture-laden wind originating in the SW, on reaching the southernmost point of the Peninsula, would divide themselves into two parts — at the start of the Western Ghats, the Arabian Sea branch370 that drenches the western part of India, and then the winds would move north and onto the fertile Indo-Gangetic plains. The divided wind on the right would move into the Bay of Bengal, and that branch of the monsoon would then shower the eastern half of India. 369

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‘This synthesis of climate and tectonic studies, from Himalayan rocks to ocean floor sediments, has revealed the ancient history of a dynamic part of our planet’, said James Dunlap, program director in the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Division of Earth Sciences, which funded the research in 2008. The Arabian Sea branch of the south-west monsoon first hits the Western Ghats of the coastal state of Kerala, thus making the area the first state in India to receive the monsoons. These seasonal rains now account for 80% of the rainfall in India.

300 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… However, what is important to the people of South Asia is that predictably, every summer seasonal rains arrived. Agriculture would become a way of life for the ‘people of the monsoons’.371 The timely arrival of the yearly rains became a timetable for half the population of the world, who would then set out to plough and ready their land, plant the crops, and then harvest it. This brought in happy days and festivals, and then in between, preparing for the next seasonal rain, and in the meantime, pickling and salting their food, and drying their fish. A culture and a way of life were on its way to be alive even to this day! The separations of large pieces of land would alter the flow of the oceans and millions of years after the asteroid visits, changing ocean currents would induce weather and climate changes that would swing unpredictably in the heat of the ‘demolition derby’. New waterways in the seas off southern America and Africa changed the weather around the globe. In the ever-growing Indian Ocean, the changes were more frequent, and there was a time when the fledgling monsoon weakened, and atmospheric carbon dioxide decreased by 50%, and the ice age occurred. Slowly and gradually, the monsoon winds would pick up again, but not until 9000 ya, when it began to intensify all over Asia. It would be the beginning of the era of the great civilizations that sprang up on the banks of the first rivers on the subcontinent and a time of the classic neo-urbanization. The mountains play an important role in the cycle of life over the peninsula. 10,000 ya, we saw an increase in rainfall. Today, some areas of the subcontinent receive up to 10,000 mm of rain in a season. The wind would also drop its moisture and rain on the mainland of China, and the south-eastern lands of that continent. As the Himalayas grew and began to obstruct winds moving further north, ebbing rainfall in Eurasia, it helped to create the great Gobi Desert, where once was a land of lush vegetation, at a time when great beasts roamed there in the Jurassic. Today, in a reversal of that climate, the dry Gobi Desert exposes the fossils of those long gone fauna, and it was tectonics that helped open the land for our scientists to study our past from the rich Jurassic fossil beds found there. In time, we would know that throughout history, the changing fortunes of human societies in Asia had been linked to variations in the precipitation resulting from seasonal monsoons, and that the climate over much of Asia is dominated by seasonal winds that carry moist air over the Pacific Ocean into East Asia and over the Indian Ocean into South Asia.

14.2.2.1 The Zanzibar-Kochi-Zanzibar Express When the ever-rising Himalayas blocked the southern winds seasonally, inadvertently creating ‘trade winds’ in the Indian Ocean, it unintentionally created new seasonal weather patterns in the vicinity. Man soon learnt to use the new winds, and their sailboats and merchant ships have been sailing the Indian Ocean for at least 3000 years now. Important trading routes soon linked the east coast of Africa and Madagascar, with the Arabian 371

So much of the economic welfare of the people of the subcontinent is dependent on its timely arrival and subsequent bounty, that it is dubbed there as ‘The Real Finance Minister of India’!

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Peninsula, India, Indonesia and China, and that eventually led to the people mingling, with cross-cultural exchanges. It started small and by chance and on another coast, where the land was barren and men trawled the sea for a livelihood; another earthly act of survival being played out in the waters of the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. Fishermen would learn to harvest the wind, and in time, trade in goods for those people who had little on the land. In time, these early sailors would move progressively farther away from their traditional moorings. It was not the skill they acquired, but the new winds that blew their sails to-and-fro, seasonally. Setting off the coasts of East Africa in early June to Sept., at the time of the SW monsoons, the little-boats-with-no-compasses, would make landfall in 4-6 weeks in and around a specific point on India’s western coast, and it had to be at Kochi, in the state of Kerala. Similarly, catching the wind on India’s western coast when the NE monsoon winds were on from Oct. to Dec., the little rigs would make their way back to the eastern shores of the Arabian Peninsula, and if they wished to travel further, down the island of Zanzibar, and occasionally down to the port of Beira, in today’s Mozambique. That spice of an unopened flower bud, a medicinal plant, the clove (Syzygium aromaticum), would soon be grown commercially in Kerala, and then in Zanzibar; physically brought over by the sailors from another monsoon port, in the island archipelago of the East Indies. While tectonics spread lands apart, the winds they created, would bring the lands closer once again. More ships would be built, and the ‘maritime revolution’ in the Indian Ocean was on... goaded on by tectonics. Twenty-one centuries ago, the new and seasonal annual monsoon winds brought the Greeks to the shores of India, and a trading colony existed in the present-day Chennai. Over nineteen centuries ago in the year 50 AD, Thomas, a disciple of Jesus, landed on the western shores of southern India; again brought there by these new winds. The Indians welcomed a new religion, by the warmth and openness of the well-fed, educated, and culturally advanced populations that they were. After the destruction by the Romans of the second temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD, Jews fled in little boats at a time the SW winds began to pick up the sails, and Jews were at sea at the mercy of the monsoon. Their little boats would deposit them on the shores of Kochi. There are records of numerous Jewish settlers arriving at a port near Kochi. Six centuries later, the Jews and Christians of Arabia, Iraq 372 and Syria, with the bloodied sword of Islam at their back, plunged themselves into the waters of the Arabian Sea and were unknowingly thrown and abandoned onto the shores of Kodungallur, just north of the city of Kochi in the Indian state of Kerala. The Jews and Christians welcomed by the benevolent local Hindu rulers, lived, and prospered there. The old Jewish quarter of Kochi, the vibrant Syrian Christian community there, and the still thriving ‘Orthodox’ church in that southern Indian state is a testament to that gift of tectonics, to the persecuted people of the Middle East. 372

Known in Kerala, as ‘Baghdadi’ Christians, as in the city of Baghdad.

302 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… Nine centuries later, these same winds would send the Portuguese marauder, Vasco da Gama, to those same shores. New cultures arose in coastal pockets along the route from Western Europe, through the coasts of Africa and India, and on right up to the coasts of China in the east. The new wind would unfailingly and miraculously navigate the little wooden ships safely on through the Strait of Malacca. If for some reason they had missed landing on the shores of Kochi, the monsoon wind would then pilot them around the island of Sri Lanka, and onto Macau or somewhere nearby on mainland China. New winds, new cyclones, and Arab dhows would move in circles in the Arabian seas to colonize the little dots in it... Seychelles, Reunion, and the Maldives to Mauritius and more... Chinese sailors were trading with the African east coast as far back as 600 ya,373 and six centuries before Capt. Cook claimed Australia for the crown, coins from the ancient Kilwa kingdom of Kenya, dated to around the year 1100, had found their way to Arnhem Land in the Northern Territories. In a way, tectonics made the world a smaller place for humans.

14.3 A MARRIAGE OF TWO REALMS As the Indian Plate dug into the southern part of Eurasia, their indigenous biodiversities converge, to give the planet a new mixture through the fusion of the flora of the two realms. Today, China’s Yunnan province is one of the most biodiverse place on earth, and the province is said to have ‘as much flowering plant diversity, as the rest of the northern hemisphere put together’. This topographic range, combined with tropical moisture, sustains extremely high biodiversity and high degrees of endemism, and is the richest botanically, in the world’s temperate regions. The province is China’s most diverse; biologically as well as culturally. The land that rose because of the collision, raised snowcapped mountains and situated on the Tropic of Cancer now, a true tropical environment prevails; unusually supporting a full spectrum of over 17,000 species and vegetation types, of which 2500 are endemic. The area of today’s Yunnan Province, with only 4% of China’s lands, contains half of its birds and mammals. A new grass would grow here, and 3 Ma ago the adorable panda would evolve in its lush vegetation, happily living off the leaves of this plant we call ‘bamboo’, whose unique properties would make it a household name throughout the world. Men of the eastern Tibetan highlands would first use it to pick out morsels of meat from their ever-boiling cauldrons.374 They would carry it along with them along their journeys down river. 373

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On the Kenyan island of Manda, field scientists from the University of Illinoi, recently discovered a 600-year old Chinese coin. Trade clearly existed between China and East Africa, decades before bounty hunters set sail from Europe, to change the map of the world. The fat of the meat in their ever simmering pots, was difficult to wash off on the frozen Plateau; the use of ‘chopsticks’ was a handy way to keep hands clean too. It would go on to be an eating culture in the descendants of the Tibetans down the river. River boat dwellers can today wash their hands in fresh water when needed, however, use of the pioneering Tibetan invention — stems cut off the tall grass — would prevail.

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It is in these parts that Camellia sinensis originated, and specifically around the intersection of latitude 29°N and longitude 98°E; the points of confluence of the lands of northeast India, north Burma, southwest China and Tibet. Discovered accidently by Emperor Shen Nong in 2737 BCE, ‘tea’ would go on to become a recreational drink around the globe. The fauna is again nearly as diverse, and it is where primates from Africa made their entry into the mainland of China. Here entered the Asian gaur, the Asian elephant, the Indian tiger, and the primates — who now span right across to Japan.

14.3.1 Ayurveda375 India’s crash with mainland Eurasia would bring another flood of life on the subcontinent’s NW and NE. 45,000 species of flora originating in the area where the two realms met, would eventually arrive from the north and would spread themselves around the new subcontinent. Seven per cent of the world’s flora grow in these parts and are divided into eight main floristic regions, namely — Western Himalayas, Eastern Himalayas, Assam, the Indus plain, the Indo-Gangetic plain, the Deccan, the Malabar and the Andamanese. It was natural, that early man would experiment with the various plants for medicinal purposes too, just as like aspirin was discovered in Europe, to come from a herb — the bark of the willow tree. On the subcontinent of India, it was taken to another level. Moreover, from Africa came men who knew the medicinal properties of various plants, and the science of Ayurveda would be nurtured on the subcontinent of India, becoming an inherent part of life there, with a rational logical foundation, to survive as a distinct entity; from remote antiquity376 to the present day. More than 3000 plants that hold great medicinal potential, have been documented till date. The practice of Ayurveda accomplished much more; providing guidelines on ideal daily and seasonal routines, diet, behaviour and the proper use of our senses. It finds mention in the Hindu holy books and dates to the time of the IVC — or even earlier — with written records dating back 5000 years or more. So advanced was this form of practice that both Tibetan and traditional Chinese medicine have their roots in Ayurveda. Early Greeks also embraced many concepts originally described in the classical Ayurvedic medical texts, dating back to several thousands of years.

14.4 THE ALPINE-HIMALAYAN OROGENIC BELT Of considerable importance here, is the creation of the very visible orogeny at the subcontinent’s north, where it meets the Eurasian continent. Here we see the results of the 375

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An ancient medical tradition from India. The term is derived from the Sanskrit words ayur, meaning ‘life’ or ‘longevity’, and veda, meaning ‘knowledge’ or ‘science’ and is incorporated in the Atharva Veda; the last of the four Vedas. The author of the Sushruta Samhita, Rishi Sushruta, was a medical practitioner and teacher who is believed to have lived around the 5th to 6th century BCE, in Kashi (present-day Banaras in India).

304 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… Indian subcontinent’s untiring push north, head-butting Eurasia. This tectonic action results in the single most visible effect we can see on relief maps of the world, and noticeable to any observer — the large raised platform of the great Tibetan Plateau and the orogenesis of the mountainous Himalayan range, cradling the plateau at its south. However, of significance to us, modern humans are the two long flanks that coupled themselves to the peninsula of India, on both sides of her —looking like a little boy running and play acting an imaginary aeroplane — and their subsequent movement along with her, in her spectacular and action-filled journey NNE. That journey would have shaken the lands and reverberated them with physical action and changes, all the way from the west of SW of Spain in the northern hemisphere, right down to Indonesia’s eastern tip of Bali, in the southern hemisphere, where the imaginary Wallace Line defines the separation of Africa from Asia and Australia. It is where the British naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, showed us how it separates marsupials from tigers and honeyeaters and cockatoos from barbets and trogons. To Bali’s north and NE are her old neighbours from Africa — the islands of Borneo, Sulawesi, the Philippines, Taiwan and southern Japan. Earlier, they rode along; extended strips of land on either side of India, moving along like her extended wings and finally ending, long after the Indian Plate settled into Eurasia with their merging with Europe and South East Asia; thousands of kilometres from their humble origins on Africa’s eastern shores — broken strips of land done so by Shiva’s impact. Parts of the plates moving north into Eurasia, are squeezed there by the African, Arabian and the Indian plates. All moving north, these strips of land and little terranes, have been subjected to orogenic pressure while throwing up hills and mountains in the process.377 These include an array of mountain ranges that extend all along the southern margin of Eurasia, stretching from Spain to the Mediterranean, Anatolia, the Carpathians, through to the Zagros Mountains in Iran. They then go up into the Hindu Kush, then turn to flow into the curve of the Himalayas, then down into the hills of Burma and Thailand, finally petering out into Indonesia, ending on its easternmost tip of the island of Bali. Today, these narrow strips of land that stretch all the way from the west of Gibraltar, to just north of the Australian mainland, are collectively referred to as, the ‘Alpide Himalayan orogenic belt’, ‘The Alpide orogeny’ or simply, the Alpide Belt. On the left of the Indian Plate, tectonics drove the narrow strip of land north, where it merged with the landmass of Eurasia. It is today’s Kazakhstan, Georgia, and France. As Laurasia turned westwards, the narrow strip of land moves into the western flank of Europe and along with the Indian Plate, all moved north, creating the western half of the Alpide Belt.

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After the Pacific’s Ring of Fire, it is the second most seismic region in the world, with 17% of the world’s largest earthquakes occurring here.

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Fig. 14.5: The Alpide Belt Credit: Public Domain

74,000 ya, the right wing of the peninsula would fracture off and move with great haste through the gap between Australia and mainland China, and with some haste, attempts to get into the Pacific through the new forming gap between China and Australia. It would, however, be arrested just at the Lombok Strait by another strip of land moving from the SE, pushing the Bali strip further north. The Alpide belt would now run from Gibraltar through to India and down to Bali, and many of these little terranes would break off and race into the Pacific, and on to the advancing continent of South America, with their cargo of their inhabitants from Africa. The old part of Africa, now called South America, was keeping its date with destiny; neighbours once again, but this time in the form of little islands in the South Pacific. The Alpide orogeny accomplished many things; among them, the closing of the Tethys Ocean and the catalyst for the evolution of whales.

¶,IVFLHQWLÀFDQDO\VLVZHUHFRQFOXVLYHO\WRGHPRQVWUDWHFHUWDLQFODLPVLQ%XGGKLVPWREHIDOVHWKHQ ZHPXVWDFFHSWWKHÀQGLQJVRIVFLHQFHDQGDEDQGRQWKRVHFODLPV· — Dalai Lama XIV, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and spirituality

15

A Plateau’s Legacy to Humanity...

15.1 THE TIBETAN PLATEAU Landlocked for eternity and cut off from this world, we are only just now learning about the fascinating country of Tibet, most of which resides on the Tibetan Plateau. The land comes with sobriquets such as the ‘roof of the world’, ‘the water tower of Asia’, and ‘the Third Pole’. Physically, the land has not been adequately surveyed, and in reality, the landlocked country is difficult to access on foot, and only recently have outsiders begun to visit the country, and we are only just coming to know that it harbours some unique and interesting geological features on this earth; just waiting to be explored. Today, thanks to tectonics, this long unknown, mysterious and forgotten land, is now at the forefront of scientific study. From the view of earth science, the Tibetan Plateau is one of the most interesting regions in the world. A scientific research institute founded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research was thus born, aiming at the study of the climate, its environment, and its surrounding regions. Popularized as the Third Pole,378 it has drawn unprecedented attention among international communities engaged in the study of the whole gamut of earth sciences — archaeology, hydrology, linguistics, and onto human sustainable development. The plateau accommodates the largest glaciological area in the world, storing invaluable ice core records for palaeoclimate reconstruction. On this plateau are hidden some of the greatest human cultural treasures ever to be found on the face of earth. Here remain the last pure and free tribes on earth — progenitors though, to the Siberians, East Asians, and native Americas; their land unexplored and only now beginning to interest outsiders.

15.1.1 The Roof of the World As the mass of India ploughed the Tethys seabed into Eurasia some 25 Ma ago379 and the seabed began to rise there at that destructive margin, it trapped the sea within it, and the 378

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Actually derived from the remote and rugged area called Hoh Xil, in the mid-eastern TibetanHimalayan highlands; home to some 46,000 glaciers in an area of 45,000 km2, and only contains less ice than the two poles. We know this happened then, as fossil of a kind of palm tree is found in the central Tibetan Plateau telling us that the land there was once was in the tropics.

308 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… unstoppable push north kept decreasing the water area of the new sea-basin, resulting in the sea gradually rising and emptying out over its sides, with the land still harbouring shallow lakes or wetlands until as recently as 8 Ma ago. Though the land now having risen to an average of 4500 m above sea level, some 1500 lakes still dot the highlands with many of them saline; relics of the ocean they arose from. Lake Namtso, born in the Palaeogene, is the highest saltwater lake in the world (with a surface area of more than 500 km2), lying at an elevation of 4718 m above sea level. From the relentless and unyielding thrust of the Indian Plate, the land keeps rising, making that ancient seabed today, an immense upland, stretching some 1000 km north to south, and 2500 km east to west. Now called the Tibetan Plateau, this area of 2.5 Mkm2, is the highest elevated flat land in the world and is rightly called the ‘roof of the world’ and with good reason. The area consists of great rivers, prairies, gorges and high mountains, with 6 peaks of over 8000 m, 50 peaks of over 7000 m, and numerous peaks of over 6000 m above sea level. The plateau has many firsts: of interest to recreational sportsmen, mountaineers and white-water rafters, are the highest mountains and the deepest gorges in the world; a notable one and the world’s deepest, is the Yarlung Zangbo River Grand Canyon — and only discovered in 1998 — is defined in superlatives. Carved into granitic bedrock, it reaches more than 5382 m from top to bottom, making it three times deeper than the Grand Canyon! It is also the longest and most dangerous one too. Hiding in here — and compressed into a few hundreds of kilometres — the most abrupt environmental changes in the terrestrial world can be witnessed. It has the largest scale of vertical ecosystem zones, from the highest point on earth, to the bottom of a valley at an elevation of a mere 900 m. The land is dotted with numerous glaciers, with many important rivers that feed Eurasia, originating there. It has a unique environment and many distinctive and matchless terrains reside amidst the numerous mountains and with a spread of a range of hills and undulating alpine prairies and pine trees. The famous Qiangtang Grasslands in northern Tibet, spreads from east to west for over 2400 km, and from north to south for over 700 km — the boundless place being its principal pastoral area for the hardy highlanders. This area is seismically active; still rising at the rate of 0.05 cm/yr. There are many earthquakes in the region, especially along the strike-slip fault lines. Many of the large earthquakes that have occurred in the past 75 years were located on the Red River Fault and related dip-slip faults.380

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Dip-slip faults are inclined fractures where the blocks have mostly shifted vertically.

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Fig. 15.1: Major fault zones around the Tibetan Plateau Credit: Mike Norton/CC BY-SA 3.00

Without this plateau, there would have been little life in the lands below. There would have been no American Indians nor Chinese people around; not even the Filipinos!

15.1.2 Asia’s Leaning Water Tower With the ever-increasing NW rising while the SE tilted into the Bay of Bengal, the rivers begin to flow eastwards, and except for the river Narmada River (also called the Rewa), the Mahi and the Tapti that flow in the E/W direction; the rest — some 10 of them — now all flow generally eastwards, draining their waters into the Bay of Bengal. Proof that this is physically so, is that the NW part of the Indian subcontinent has lifted itself along its NW region that rides the Eurasian Plate, is that we find the surface land of the states of Rajasthan and Gujarat, with marine fossils and sedimentary rocks of calcified marble. On the diagonally opposite end of the NW, was an incident that confirmed that SE of India had sunk over countless years, was during the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. As the waters off the coast of Tamil Nadu receded just before that coast was struck by cyclic killer waves, hundreds of inhabitants of that area, noticed that they were temples and holy structures exposed in the sands a good distance away from the shoreline; proof that this area was above the waterline at some time in the subcontinent’s past. While the Indian subcontinent lifts itself at its NW, the weight of the huge Tibetan Plateau sinks the western border of China with Tibet, in the area between lat. 23° N to lat. 33° N, and centred on the provinces of Sichuan and Yunnan, and it is here that most earthquakes on that land happen. This sinking here is comparable to that of a partly cracked plank of wood a Judo enthusiast could not break through, where the centre is depressed and the two extremes

310 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… rise up. Here, while we see the Tibetan Plateau rise up on its west, we also see China’s SE just out of the waters of the East China Sea. We can see this as that shoreline, is similar to that of the southern tip of South America’s western shoreline, or similar to Norway’s western shores — as we said before — ‘... like lifting your palm out of a murky pond’. So... as the plateau tilts down into the Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, the rivers that have their sources on the high plateau, begin to flow down the incline and into mainland China. Six major rivers do that, including the Tsangpo or Yarlung Zangbo — which changes course to enter India and discharges its waters from the Brahmaputra into the Bay of Bengal. As the Himalayan orogeny continued and the plateau kept rising, glaciers would build up high in their valleys. The thawing of these glaciers would generate many rivers, big and small, coursing down from the mountain slopes. Ice melts would send water down its slopes and into the plains. In time, the breakup of the Himalayan glaciers would turn these little streams into rivers. It is a ‘double-whammy’ for life around the rivers, when ice-melts and sudden monsoon rains would send swift swollen rivers to flood the area and carry man and livestock downstream, to populate the lowlands with new inhabitants, every summer during the south-west monsoon.

15.1.3 Chasing Mountain Goats After the Shiva impact and the equator going south, strips of land leaving the shores of East Africa and sailing through the gap between India and Australia, would regularly drop African hunter-gatherers on the southern and western shores of India and move on if lower down to become the archipelagos that formed from the Andaman to the eastern most points of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. The centre of the subcontinent was generally the hard granite rock of the Deccan Traps. It was devoid of flora and fauna and the early arrivals would traverse the coasts, meeting up with the originals381 that were already on the land over a million years ago, and that took them along when the subcontinent left Africa’s shores after the Shiva impact. We have them in Jwalapuram, in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, before and after the super-volcanic eruption of Mt Toba of 74,000 ya. That eastern part of the land there was the liveable part of the subcontinent. The ‘Flood Basalts’ that had created the Deccan Plateau, had not affected these parts, that were at the periphery at that time and diagonally opposite the Shiva impact site on the other side of the peninsula. AMHs would move on and as the groups expanded, they would reach the north, at the subcontinent’s common border with Eurasia. African bushman would find themselves wandering around, hunting and foraging at that northern and cooler end of the subcontinent. Chasing mountain goats, ibex and hare, they would hunt in the forested highlands and would rise along with the plateau into the thin and cold air, and in time, snow would rain on them. 381

The mention of ‘a troop of monkey men’ in the Indian epic the Mahabharata, may not be mythological after all...

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Earlier, the man from the savannah may have inhabited countries like Bhutan (then part of Tibet),382 as the kingdom was once referred to as Lhomon (literally, ‘southern darkness’) or Monyul (literally, ‘dark land’), and is probably a reference to the Monpa, the aboriginal peoples of Bhutan, who generally live in the lowlands and practise slash-andburn agriculture.

15.1.4 The Prodigious Milk Producer Early man residing in the ever-rising highlands, found the treeline receding and less vegetation grow on the land as time went by. They were fortunate in that, on the new everrising land, on the alpine meadow and steppe habitat, was a strange animal. It was a bovid though and probably a relative of the American bison and the Indian gaur; big, wild, and it lived in herds. It evolved from a ‘plains’ based beast, to slowly adjust to the ever-rising plateau with the lower temperatures, to evolve to be now supremely well adapted to the harsh weather of the highlands, with its thick coat of fur, great lung capacity, and the ability to clamber hills nimbly and over rough and rock-strewn terrain. In winter, it survives temperatures as low as –40 °C. It works and lives on the plateau, where oxygen levels are about 40% lower than there are at sea levels. Further adaptations to the cold include a thick layer of subcutaneous fat and an almost complete lack of functional sweat glands. While the equator going south was the catalyst that encouraged tectonics that changed the topography and climate of lands on Earth, localized climate changed around the globe. In Tibet, this change even added the increasing cold on the ever-rising plateau. It was a double whammy for the helpless beast, but it spurred the bovine on; to evolve at an even faster rate. Strangely, it was a friendly animal and easily tamed. The new peoples of the rising plateau quickly domesticated the ‘yak’. Fascinatingly, unlike the goats and sheep that they had, the yak produced milk all year round,383 and it yielded around 8 times more than a goat and 16 times more than a sheep! The prodigious milk-producing yak was everything to the people of the plateau, who then centred their lives on their new-found love. The bountiful milk it produced now became the livelihood of the highlanders, and life surrounded itself around it. Tibetans would not drink cattle milk, as, like men of the African plains from where they had come from, they were lacto intolerant.384 They learnt as they went along, and milk would be turned into curds, butter, fermented milk, and its by-products, including, in the end, the high protein cheese. 382 383

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Archaeologists have since found stone tools there. More recent animal husbandry methods have since seen a drop in the Tibetans milking the yak in winter and in the year after the calf is born. Also called lactase deficiency and hypolactasia; the inability to digest lactose — a sugar found in milk. It is not a disorder as such, just a genetically determined characteristic, found predominantly in Africans and the Chinese (passed on to them by the Tibetans), and generally most peoples of the world, except northern Europeans.

312 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… The ability to produce a storable product from something perishable, and as hard to handle as milk, and that too, routinely, was another milestone in the advancement and the development of the human race. Tibetan cuisine would revolve around dairy products; it would be the cornerstone of their cooking, with ‘butter tea’ being the favourite beverage, and drank all day; sometimes even up to some 40-times a day!

15.1.5 The Bovine that Abhors Grain As the land rose and vegetation got scarce, the amenable bovine adapted favourably with their new friends on the plateau, and thrived.385 Its dung was used as fuel for firing their hearths, in place of wood — made scarce from the ever-thinning forests. Its fur grew long, sometimes touching the ground on either side of its flanks and thighs, and it came in handy; its wool used, to make tents and clothes, and helped better insulate the new highlanders.

Fig. 15.2: A domesticated yak Credit: Dennis Jarwis/CC BY-SA 3.0

Compared with domestic cattle, the rumen386 of yaks is unusually large, relative to the omasum.387 This allows them to consume greater quantities of low-quality food at a time, and to ferment it longer to extract more nutrients from the sparse vegetation on the everrising plateau. The yak must be regarded as the most remarkable of domesticated animals,388 as it thrives in conditions of extreme harshness and deprivation, yet has supplied the indigenous 385

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For so long have the yak been domesticated by the Tibetans, that it is today, physically, almost half the size of the original specimens; with only a few now found in the wild. The first stomach of a ruminant, which receives food, or cud from the oesophagus, partly digests it with the aid of bacteria, then passes it on to the next stage of digestion. The muscular third stomach of a ruminant animal that lies between the reticulum and the abomasum. Fossil remains of the domestic yak date back to the Pleistocene period, to over 10,000 years or so, developing primarily on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. Ancient Chinese documents, testify to a longestablished role of the yak, in the culture and life of the ancient Qiang peoples.

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people of these mountainous regions with most of their daily needs; meat,389 milk, butter, cheese, wool, fibre, leather, fuel, and packing/trekking/travel requirements. The versatile animal is an integral part of the lives of the Tibetan natives and substantially adds to the renowned health and longevity of these people. If not for the yak, human civilization would not have gone too far. If not for tectonics, there would be no yak.

15.1.6 Domestication The domestication of the yak was a first for hunter-gatherers. It was a watershed moment in the evolution of humans. Man had no knowledge of taming wild beasts before. Now he could do with it. It would be part of his new lifestyle. With their success in taming the yak, man would settle down and make that transition from hunter-gatherer to settlers. The domestication of the wildlife for man’s benefit, was on the cards. The ‘farmer’ was not far in the making.

15.1.6.1 The ‘Creation’ of Canis familiaris 58,000 ya, depending heavily on the domesticated cattle, led to the need for their safety too — from the wolves, specifically. Early man would unknowingly be blessed, and paradoxically, by the very wolves that threatened their cattle. Scavenging on the edge of small human settlements, Himalayan wolves390 would stay close to small communities; a sure source of discarded raw meat waste and cooked bone leftovers from the settlement.391 In time, they would lose their fear of humans, who provided them with their needs without them having to go out to hunt. In turn, the ‘tamed’ wolves would begin to protect their provider — the source of their livelihood — and indirectly, protect the herd of domesticated yak; the very prey they would earlier hound down. Their pups would know humans from birth and would be unafraid of man. The wild wolf would be tamed... on his own accord. The domestication of dogs had begun. The first would be the large Himalayan or Tibetan wolf, trained to be a livestock guardian at night, of the corralled yaks. It led to the evolution of the Tibetan mountain dog. Fifteen or so breeds of dogs trace their lineages to the plateau, and the earliest of these 389

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Yak’s beef is lean and of good quality. In the US, where they are now farmed commercially, their meat is priced at 2½ times the price of beef. In Italy, their milk is turned into quality cheese products. Distinct from the extant grey wolf (Canis lupus) that is common in Europe and North America. In early 2017, writing in BioScience, Thomas Newsome and colleagues, used grey wolves (and other predators) to explore the effects of anthropogenic foods on their behaviour and found numerous instances of species’ changing their social behaviour to acquire human-provisioned resources. In Iran, for instance, grey wolves’ diets consist almost entirely of farmed chickens, domestic goats and trash. Journal Reference: Thomas M. Newsome, Peter J. S. Fleming, Christopher R. Dickman, Tim S. Doherty, William J. Ripple, Euan G. Ritchie, Aaron J. Wirsing. Making a New Dog? BioScience, 2017; 67 (4): 374 DOI: 10.1093/biosci/bix022.

314 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… would be the Tibetan Mastiff,392 the king of them all; the granddaddy and ancestor of the Saint Bernard, the Great Dane, and the Newfoundlander. The Tibetans would call it Do-Khyi — literally meaning ‘tied dog’; initially tied to also protect their livestock from possible attacks from these same old wolves, as it would be tied within the dwelling spaces and would alert the owner with its loud bark, of any intruders during night or day. At present, the Tibetan Mastiff is the oldest and most ferocious dog in the world. As the Tibetans expanded into new environments, they moved with their ever-faithful companions at their sides. 42,000 ya, domestication was in earnest, and it was in northern Eurasia around 33,000 ya, that we see a proto-dog and it is likely that the split between the wolves and dogs would have come around 30,000 years ago. They would be bred to mind the herd of yak, cattle, goat, and sheep, and by 15,000 ya, the old wolves would be thoroughly domesticated. 9000 to 6000 ya, we see dogs well-established in households across China, and especially south of the Yangtze. Tectonics, indirectly helped wolves to evolve into “man’s best friend”.

15.1.6.2 The Taming of the Swine Discarded household remains and waste of the Tibetans would bring the boars to their dwelling sites too, and in time, it too would be domesticated. With the ever-rising plateau and the scarcity of ground grown food in the cold and rarefied atmosphere, and like the wolves, the wild pig would also be tamed. Its fatty meat, was just what the Tibetans needed in their ever-rising and colder temperatures. It would be bread for the table.393 Tibetans love pork, and until this day, Tibetans hang a freshly slaughtered pig in a part of the house, where the cold air draft refrigerates and cures it. This highly prized meat would even be eaten 15 years on; brought down, thinly sliced, and offered to a respected visitor, with the remaining precious cargo, back up in its place near the ceiling. In time, when the rivers of the plateau flowed downstream in earnest, the highlanders would carry along with them, their domesticated version of the ‘tusked Eurasian wild pig’ or mountain boar; down it would go into the future rice fields of Asia. It would be another Tibetan legacy to humanity on Earth, where today, FAO tells us that pork is the most widely consumed meat in the world, accounting for over 36% of the world meat intake, followed by poultry and beef with about 35% and 22% respectively. 27,000 ya, the pig and his keepers were living around the ‘Three Gorges Dam’ area. The river that would deposit them there, would move on to empty its load of human cargo, into the East China Sea too. Pork would be a staple of the Chinese and the peoples of the South China Sea. It would then be deliberately taken into the many Pacific islands, by 392

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Not only one of the most ancient of dogs, it is today also the most expensive of breeds; a status symbol with wealthy Chinese. According to NBC News, in 2011, a 11-month old pup called ‘Big Splash’, was sold for a price of 1.5 million dollars! The world owes a debt to these earlier pioneers. Today, pork is the largest traded meet product on our planet.

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those magnificent mariners of that vast and scattered and sparsely populated world, in that vast ocean. Porky would travel far and wide. So would be the peoples who domesticated them. Today, studies are being done to trace the movement of humans through the DNAs of both dogs and pigs; both from long buried bones, and through the living breeds of dogs, boars and pigs.

15.1.7 Roof-top Farmers As the docile yaks supplied the highlanders with everything they needed to live with, there was a conundrum; everything on the ground was the yaks; except that it inherited a strange quirk, in that the stubborn yaks would not eat grain (it would starve, until some pasture was found for it), but lived on the grass, sedges, herbs, mosses and lichens, and crunched ice or snow as a source of water. Needing carbohydrates in their diet and in deference to the yak, man was left with a choice — cultivate the grain or else, starve. These early ingenious former hunter-gatherers of the plateau, found grain in the valleys — the self-pollinating foxtail millet and broomcorn millet (grains that are indigenous to the area) — the ancestors of wheat and rye — grain that would grow in poor conditions. They found a way too, to cultivate the perennial highland barley, buckwheat, and the millet that grew wild in the mountain valleys and that the yaks would not touch. The availability of these hardy new grasses, led the people of the plateau to focus their energies on gathering and then cultivating them. The millet grass, in particular, thrived in the harsh environment, and it is possible that buckwheat was first cultivated here, as it finds itself being cultivated in Bhutan, where it is to this day, the staple diet of the Bhutanese people.

Fig. 15.3: Sonam Tobgay, chairperson of the Buckwheat Group, with his wife Nazom and the buckwheat products they promote Credit: UNDP

316 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… However, the frost-resistant barley was being cultivated at altitudes of 3000 m and more. Barley, in fact, grew twice a year — in spring and then in the tough winter conditions there. Though man had lived on the plateau for some 60,000 years since, the first planned cultivation of grain by man, was when they began to cultivate it in the valleys of the rising plateau in the early Upper Palaeolithic, some 45,000 to 40,000 ya. Through the years, it was, of course, the old hardy millet that survived, and that helped the highlanders along. Needless to say, the Tibetans most important crop is barley, and flour milled and cooked from roasted barley, called tsampa,394 is the staple food.

15.1.8 The Early Inventors On the flatland velds and savannahs of Africa where the bipedals evolved, moving heavy loads from point A to point B, was either breaking the load into small cartable pieces, to physically carry it away, or hauling it off on a stiff wooden log and supported horizontally over the shoulder of two human carriers — the typical scene of hunter-gathers carrying a ‘kill’ back to the settlement, comes to mind. They were no mountains on the savannah for rocks to roll downhill to ignite any thought process towards using that for any practical need. The first mountain community of hunter-gatherers was the Tibetans, and it is there that the thought would have germinated in their minds. Here in the highlands, was a frequent sight, in the regular upheaval and rumbling, where earthquakes shook the ground frequently, and rocks rolled downhill, as the massive Himalayan orogeny worked ceaselessly. The concept of a round stone rolling further than an undefined one was easily understood.

15.1.8.1 The Grindstone and the Potter’s Wheel Grain grown and harvested is an achievement itself, especially for early man on the plateau. But that was half the battle. Grain had to be husked before it could be cooked and eaten. The rolling stone and the grinding wheel were not too far away in the designing. Over 30,000 ya, AMHs were grinding grains for flour.395 It would also lead to the Tibetan wheels and then on the clay fields of the low-lying areas, to the “potter’s wheel”. Wheels were not too far away, as the grinding stone to husk, chaff and grind the millet and barley, were already in use. It may be for this reason that we find Tibetans literally paying homage to the wheel, and it must be here that the stone mill and the cart may have been invented, not to mention their prayer wheels found in every household and by the dozens in their houses of worship.

15.1.8.2 Fast Little Fingers Earlier, the changing landscape of the plateau had their inhabitants adapt to a unique cuisine; their diet now mainly consisting of meat, milk-derived products, and other high 394

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The flour is roasted and mixed with butter and butter tea, to form a stiff dough that is eaten in small balls. Revedin, A. et al. Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences advance online publication doi:10.1073/pnas/1006993107 (2010).

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protein food that helped them fight the cold. The people of the plateau do not eat horse, donkey, odd-toed mammals, or even fish,396 but they do eat a lot of yak, mutton and pork. Even the blood of the slaughtered animal is not wasted and used to make blood sausages. Hearths at home would burn all day, to keep the house warm, and a handy and practical way to cook food evolved, and the pot would be ready for the table all day, along with warm ‘butter tea’ that they would consume any time of the day. The high-fat content of their cooking pot and the grease they had trouble wiping off their hands in the cold of the plateau, got the Tibetans to start pulling out morsels of meat from the simmering pot, with two little sticks; like extended fingers. These came off a tough new grass that grew on their eastern slopes of the plateau; the bamboo, a product of tectonics, when two realms crashed into each other around where the Yunnan province of China is now. No greasy smelly hands no more. Even today, Tibetan cuisine is still traditionally served with little bamboo sticks. It would go everywhere with them. They would walk around with the pair of bamboo sticks in their pockets, and when they were marooned down river on the plains of China, they still had their ‘chopsticks’ on their person. Chopsticks are the product of tectonics.

15.2 RIVERS OF CIVILIZATION The push north by the Indian Plate, saw the land rise to heights where ice began to form on it. Summers saw the snow melt, and which saw little streams flowing down the slopes, and which, in time, would contribute to forming the 19 major rivers of Asia, as we know the big ones today as: the Yarlung Zangbo, the Yellow River, the Yangtze, the Mekong, the Salween, the Irrawaddy, the Ganges, and the Indus, among the more notable ones. 45 Ma ago, we note that the Three Gorges Dam area is part of the Yangtze River. Trapped within this river — when a block of eastern and southern China joined Eurasia — was the sturgeon. 45 Ma of separation from its original environment, it still lives in the river but now known as the anadromous Darcy’s sturgeon; though in danger of going extinct on our wake. 36.5 Ma ago, the Yangtze would finally be a river, depositing its silt onto the plains of China, having started its long journey flowing down from small beginnings from what is now the Dangqu River, which, in turn, has its source in the Tanggula Mountains, in the middle of the Tibetan Plateau. Yearly, the rivers would inundate the lowland plains with the silt they carried along with them, with the Yellow River a standout here. It may not have been one of the first rivers to flow down into China, but the yellow aeolian397 silt it brought down with it from 396

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Tibetans respect fish. Fish do not have tongues; if you do not have a tongue, you cannot speak. If you cannot speak, you do not gossip. Tibetans do not like gossip. Sediment of fine dust blown by the winds that settle on the uplands, which in all probability, was deposited there, having come in from the Gobi Desert.

318 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… the Loess Plateau, would make the land fertile, and around luxuriant rice fields that were tended there, populations would quickly grow. The Shaanxi, that live in and around Shensi province, are recognized as among the first settlers of China; having been forcibly sent down the river, from the high plateau on the west by the sudden flooding of the rivers.398 These rivers are also the cultural and economic backbone of India, China, and South Asia, supporting rich ecosystems, and irrigating millions of hectares of fields, thereby supporting some of the highest population densities in the world. In China, the rivers in the eastern half of the country are considered the ‘cradle’ of Chinese civilization, and especially the areas around the Yellow River. In India, it is in and around the Indus, the Sarasvati and the Ganges, that the ancient civilizations flourished. It is from the banks of these rivers, that Sanskrit became a written language, and would spread NW into Europe, where most languages spoken there are the derivatives of Sanskrit, and now recognized as the base language of the Indo-European Group of Languages — the most widely spoken language family in the world. On the NE of the Indian peninsula, the lithe San tribe of the African Savannah, who had moved into the highlands earlier, would return on the rivers down to their ancestral lands — only this time, suitably mutated, and with a honey-coloured and a little stockier body. Many would be unceremoniously washed away from the banks of those fast flowing rivers, only to be marooned on riverbanks along the river emptying into the seas. Such was the power of the rivers during the summer months — helped along by both the summer melts of the glaciers on the plateau and the monsoon rains — that men on the riverbanks would fight the whimsically flooding rivers, by living on wooden rafts and house boats. Today, we find in that part of the world — the Mekong Delta, e.g., a riverboat culture, brought on by the vagrancies that happened far up on the Tibetan Plateau. A highland race would populate the lowlands. Tectonics did play her part in the history and well-being of the lives of AMHs, and had a hand in their evolving to be ‘us’ today.

15.2.1 Asia’s Water Tower On the west of the Himalayan Range — and actually, part of it — is the Karakorum Range. About 500 km in length, it is the most heavily glaciated part of the world outside the polar regions and harbours the 70 km long Siachen Glacier in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, along with the 63 km long Biafo Glacier; both rank as the second and third longest glaciers in the world. The southern boundary is formed from west to east, by the Gilgit, the Indus and the Shyok rivers that separate the range from the NW end of the Himalayan 398

In a study, ‘Greenlandic Inuit show genetic signatures of diet and climate adaptation’. Science, 18 Sept. 2015 DOI: 10.1126/axuwbxw.aab2319, scientists have shown that next to the Inuit, the Han Chinese share 18% of the mutation that permits the fat eating peoples to regulate their metabolism to handle the flow of blood in their bodies to normal and acceptable levels. Where did the Han Chinese get this DNA trait into their system if not from their highland ancestors of the plateau?

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range proper. Bounded on the NE by the edge of the Taklimakan Desert, on the west by the Hindu Kush Mountains, it is an area of great seismic activity. As the Indian Plate pushes NNE, it rides the Eurasian Plate at its NW, somewhere near the Hindu Kush Mountains. Earthquakes here are regular, uplifting the area constantly.399 Fed by the ever-growing and perennial glaciers of the Himalayas, thawed by the warming climate of the Holocene that started some 12,000 ya, new rivers began flowing down the Tibetan Plateau, through the Himalayas and onto the plains of the new peninsula. Around 40% of the world’s population is found within the watersheds of the rivers originating on the Tibetan Plateau, where close to 2 G people depend on or are influenced by the abundance, quality, and/or reliability of the water supply. With the rivers of Asia originating and flowing down all around her, Tibet, a gigantic water reservoir, is now good-naturedly called “Asia’s water tower”.

Fig. 15.4: Rivers originating on the Tibetan Plateau

To understand how these rivers were formed, let us put a hand (representing the India peninsula) on a tablecloth (representing Asia) and push it away from you and slowly twist it by about 20° clockwise representing the clockwise rotation of the Indian Plate, and notice the manner the tablecloth folds around your hand. The troughs in the folds on the tablecloth that result from that action, represent the pathways of these rivers. These rivers are the backbone of the countries of East and South-East Asia, and nearly half RIWKHZRUOG·VSRSXODWLRQOLYHVRQWKHEDQNVRIWKHVHULYHUVDQGRQWKHULFHÀHOGVWKDWWKHLU waters irrigate — on the rich silt that they bring down year in and year out from the Tibetan Plateau. 399

Satellite images showed that the area was abruptly raised by about 5.5 m in a recent earthquake.

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15.2.2 Lowland Grasses Over 16,000 ya, the Tibetans were firmly established on their plateau, living the high life. However, sometime between 16,000 and 12,700 ya, things began to warm up on earth, starting the beginnings of the first rivers that would eventually pour into South East Asia.400 On the plateau, were plant species in mountain valleys which began to float and populate the downstream flatlands, leading to the dispersion and expansion of those grasses into the lowlands. Recently, marooned men from the mountains had known that they were a source of grain, though now, a waterlogged variety of plants and a new grass would thrive in the waterlogged flatlands; a swamp grass really, with the scientific name Oryza sativa. The flatlands were rich with silt that came down with the rivers that perennially overflowed; especially the Yellow River. The grass grew on the silted flat riverbanks in free abandon, and the now new lowlanders with their earlier barley cultivating skills, would cultivate the new grass to be a huge success, to the betterment of humanity. We would call it, ‘rice’. The cultivation of rice began in earnest, 12,000 ya, in the middle Yangtze plains, in China. It could have been earlier, as human activity has been recorded in the Three Gorges area, as far back as 27,000 ya. Such was the unpredictability of these rivers suddenly swelling up and carrying away whole villages on their banks, that many of the lowlanders chose to live on their boats... what we know as ‘houseboats’ that we see at the river’s end in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and the shores of China and in many other rivers and deltas of South East Asia. It was a safer alternative to drowning… go where the river takes you; you can still live on the river. From where all the rivers of their lands originated and flowed downhill, the Tibetans would find themselves in NE India, China and all the rest of South East Asia — marooned there from the joint effort of the summer melts and the new monsoons. Some of the rivers, like the Brahmaputra,401 would even maroon some of the honey coloured people of Tibet, on to the shores of the Andaman Islands, where today we see their light honey colour with the original inhabitants of Africa, looking like Afro-Tibetan tribes that they are. The Shompen are a classic example. It was tectonics that would make all these rivers flow swiftly downhill; it was tectonics that brought on the summer melts on the plateau and simultaneously the monsoon rains, combining to suddenly uproot people on the banks of the rivers and deposit them in faraway places downhill. 400

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Until the late Pliocene, the present-day Indus, Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers — except for the upper reaches, the Yarlung Tsangpo — constituted a single westward-flowing river called the Indobrahm, and even up to recent historical times, the belief is that there were sporadic faunal exchange between the Indus and the Ganges drainages, on the low-lying Indo-Gangetic plains. When the original dark skinned Indians on the plains first began to see Tibetans marooned down river, they would look at the handsome honey-coloured people as coming from up the mountain, or sent down by God on that life-giving revered river. In India, the Yarlung Zangbo would soon be called the Brahmaputra — in Hindi, literally, ‘the son of God’, named probably for the handsome people who came down with it.

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These rivers originating through orogenies, would also be responsible to send salmon smolts into the oceans and that would start the great salmon runs. Where there is no much inland tectonic activity as in Africa, the rivers move slowly and serenely; the Congo, the Nile… rivers that do not play host to houseboats and the migration of anadromous fish.

Fig. 15.5: Shompen family of the Nicobar Islands Credit: Unknown

It was the same with the Mekong too, sending a honey coloured race to land on the shores of the thousands of islands south of its delta, where they mingled with the original men — the Aeta, the Semang, etc. — of Africa that lived on those islands, to now look less coloured. So it was with the Bataak of the Philippines.Tectonics had made it all possible.

15.2.3 The Silk Route The banks of the Yellow River are full of the ochre-yellow coloured silt picked up from the Loess Plateau, and most of it in the middle reaches of the river that came down with the swift water flow. Chinese children grew up playing with it, and the Shanxi people may have been our earliest potters.402 What is of more importance to us AMHs, however, is the time the Chinese learnt to bake clay pots, and from which they would probably eat too. However, we are only now beginning to understand a little of their pioneering work and history, and where and 402

The quantity and quality of clay in the eastern reaches of China — between the Yellow and the Yangtze rivers — is such, that in 210 BC, Emperor Qin Shi Huang put 700,000 artisans to work, to create for him a mausoleum, that was complete with a life-size army of some 8000 clay soldiers (more are still being discovered), 130 chariots with 520 horses, 150 cavalry horses, fitted with metal armoury; all to accompany and protect him in the afterlife! They were discovered in Lintong district, Xi’an in Shaanxi, by chance, when in Mar. 1974, some farmers were digging a well and chanced upon the burial site. The majority of the terracotta army remains buried in the pits nearby the mausoleum. Work still goes on to uncover that part of Chinese history and the clay that would be instrumental in their terracotta and pottery works.

322 The Teardrop Theory: Earth and its Interiors… how it all came about. The oldest pottery relics that we now have, are those that come from Xianrendong Cave in Jiangxi Province,403 and which date back to 20,000 ya.404 This is the oldest pottery in the world and 2000 years older than the ones found in the Yuchanyan Cave in the Yangzi River basin, and which is dated 18,000 ya405... again in China, testifying to the fact that pottery did begin on the clay pans of China. According to the researchers, these 20,000-year specimens were crafted by huntergatherers, as the time this pottery was moulded, it was the LGM — a period of time when crops could not grow in mainland China, and we cannot yet prove that the farming of rice was on at that time. Although there is not necessarily a causal relationship between a sedentary way of life and pottery making, the introduction of pottery, generally, coincides with the adoption of an agricultural lifestyle, when durable and strong vessels and containers are needed for storing the grain after it had been harvested. These findings, refute the present conventional thinking that the invention of pottery was in the period about 10,000 ya, when humans moved from being hunter-gathers to settling down to be farmers. From the banks of the Yellow River, the potter’s skill would go all over the land, and especially to the south. So skilful did the ancient Chinese become with their craft, that their pottery was sought after far and wide, and was even covered by royal patronage; was a jealously guarded state secret, and the art was the pride of the Chinese people. A spin-off of tectonics on the plains of China where the rivers overflow and deposit their silt on the riverbanks, comes out of that land a product we call ‘China’ — the synonym for the fine tableware we call so, because it simply says that the superior porcelain crockery is from the country where it originates. With all our technical innovations handy around to use in our present times, it is hard to imitate the ancient pottery of the Chinese. What is clear is that Chinese contribution to ceramics is of uncontested brilliance! Their civilization and art were so advanced, that they would add their painting skill to their pottery; the Ming Dynasty jars and vases testify to their exquisite skills. Such has been the contribution of the Chinese to the art of pottery making that many ancient sites and centres of pottery making have been unearthed in southern China, and many have been protected by the UNESCO World Heritage Site’s programmes, to conserve them for posterity. Their art skill would then also adorn their priceless silk; the rage of Europe and that led to that famous gateway from the Orient and that would be famously named ‘The Silk Route’. These advanced peoples who were helped along their route into China by the rivers flowing down from Tibet, would also invent paper. It was tectonics that made all that possible. 403 404

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Interestingly, humans had used the cave since 29,000 ya. Wu Xiaohong, professor of archaeology and museology at Peking University, along with her archaeologist team members reported the study in June 2012 in Science. In 2009, the same team of Prof. Wu Xiaohong et al., published an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), in which they determined the pottery fragments found in south China’s Hunan province to be 18,000 yo.

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15.3 ‘OUT OF TIBET’ On the highlands, life changed, as the land began to rise. Lush jungles began to fade away and alpine grass and trees began to take root. Birds flew to warmer climes, and the animals that could not move too far from their source of food, adapted... ... and evolved. 3.7 Ma ago, we see the original rhino of the African savannah — that rode the Indian Plate and jumped off into Eurasia — now turn into a ‘woolly rhino’406 (Coelodonta thibetana); adapting to the climate changing on him and this is well before the Ice Age began, 2.8 Ma ago. He is but one of many who evolved on the plateau; the Arctic fox (Vulpes qiuzhudingi) — and a likely ancestor of the extant Artic fox — is another of several iconic Ice Age animals to have their ancestry traced back to the Tibetan Plateau; its fossilized remains excavated from rocks about 3.6 to 5.1 Ma old and predating any foxes found in the northern hemisphere. Other examples being the snow leopard (Uncia uncia). Palaeontologists have previously described a great number of extinct, cold-adapted species — a three-toed horse (Hipparion zandaense) that galloped on that highland some 4.6 Ma ago, the Tibetan bharal (Pseudois nayaur, known as blue sheep), the chiru (Pantholops hodgsonii, or Tibetan antelope), the snow leopard (Panthera uncia), the Asian badger (Meles leucurus), and at least 23 other mammals — that lived in what is now the Tibetan Plateau during the Pliocene and Pleistocene (5 Ma to 11,500 ya). These lifeforms adapted to a cold, snowy climate in Tibet, then spread to other parts of the world as their habitats expanded during ice ages. A few million years later, Bos mutus would mutate to become Bos grunniens, a domesticated bovid — which we know today as the Yak. The wintry cold, the altitude, mountainous terrain, and whatever it was... had a mutating effect on the earlier running bipedals of the lowlanders, and the clothless desert inhabitants of Africa, and who may have been off the Kalahari San tribe, would be transformed into highlanders that today live on that high plateau and the fringe of the Himalayan mountain chain. He would have moved there some 62,000 ya.407 406

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The animal ranged from the Atlantic fringes of Europe through to Beringia on the Eurasian continent. Fossils of other Coelodonta antiquitatis species show that this group originated in the Tibetan region during the Pliocene; their evolution from the rhinos of the African plains, driven by the uplift of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (Deng 2002, Deng et al., 2011). ‘This is the oldest, most primitive wholly rhino ever found’, said Yang Wang, of Florida State University, on the unearthing of Coelodonta thibetana in 2007, from the south-western Tibetan Plateau. As yet, we have no tangible evidence to confirm this date but genetic data studies by Shuhua Xu — a population geneticist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences — published his work in Sept. 2016 in the American Journal of Human Genetics and at the American Society of Human Genetics’ annual meeting in Vancouver. We do, however, have evidence that the Tibetan Plateau was inhabited by humans between 40,000 to 30,000 ya, as stone artefacts of that time, have been found in a part of the central Tibetan Plateau called Nwya Devu. We must remember though that the plateau is in a state of constant upheaval — like earth before a dozer’s blade — with crusts cracking up and evidence hard to find and piece together; the seasonal rains and the filling up of the troughs obscure the evidence that is there on that plateau.

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15.3.1 Men with the Epicanthic Folds Like the yak and the other mammals, the new bipedal highlanders — living in the central and SE of the rarefied and cold air of the ever-rising plateau — would begin to evolve to suit the conditions on the world’s highest plateau. Physically, the extremities like the nose, would get flatter and so too would the browridges recede, to avoid the freezing cold, and they would take on a ‘flat face’ like appearance, as compared to the earlier San they were. Without the browridges, eyes would appear more protuberant and comparatively, the face would appear broader. Like the Neanderthals that evolved in the cold of Europe, their bodies would take on a stockier shape, and get smaller to enable them to conserve heat, with legs getting shorter with a relatively long torso. Moreover, they needed ‘mountain climbing legs’ and not the long ‘grassland running legs’ of the old savannah days. No running and no sweating would now need and make them do with fewer sweat glands. In addition, their blood haemoglobin would mutate to carry two variants of the EGL N1 and the EPA S1 genes.408 These genes, unique to the Tibetans, aid in the better absorption and transportation of the little oxygen in the atmosphere of the plateau. This gene mutation can be traced back to the Sherpas of Nepal, and as far back as 30,000 ya409. Having lived now in the cold, rarefied air of altitudes of an average of 4000 m, where breathing and working are challenging for most humans because of the low oxygen levels, the Tibetans have adapted well. As the new highlanders lived off the yaks, their diet was now mainly of high protein beef (yak meat), milk, and its by-products — foods that helped them fight the everincreasing cold. Even until this day, Tibetans eat a lot of yak meat, pork, and mutton.410 ‘Ghee’ (clarified butter) or yak butter, was both a heating medium and a bread topping. Their new meat and fat-fuelled diet, led to even more Dihydrotestosterone (DHT)411 being introduced into their bloodstream, leading to the evolving of these hairless bipedals, further into being almost hairless primates that they now are; losing the little body hair they possessed, since the time of their scavenging ancestors. 408

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Prof. Rasmus Nielsen of Berkley and his team, came out with the explanation that the EPA S1 gene regulates the oxygen in the bloodstream, enabling them to withstand hypoxia, in low oxygen environments. On the plateau, the air contains 40% less oxygen. Ref. also to ‘Altitude adaptation in Tibetans caused by introgression of Denisovan-like DNA’ — Emilia Huerta-Sánchez, et al. Nature, 17 Dec. 2013. Interestingly, a young woman in the Denisova Cave also possessed the EPA S1 gene. No other group possess it. Scientists from the University of Chicago and Case Western Reserve University, traced back the genetic origins of high-altitude peoples. Their conclusion: ‘The Tibetan genome appears to arise from a mixture of two ancestral gene pools’, said Anna Di Rienzo, professor of human genetics at the University of Chicago. ‘One migrated early to high altitude and adapted to this environment. The other, which migrated more recently from low altitudes, acquired the advantageous alleles from the resident high-altitude population by interbreeding and forming what we refer to today as Tibetans’. (Source: Kounteya Sinha, TNN 11 Feb. 2014) A carry-off from their recent past on the African savannah, Tibetans still eat some of the yak meat raw. So dependent are they on meat that they include in their cuisine, liver, lung and blood sausages. A metabolite of male testosterone primarily, that when ingested in excesses, causes hair follicles to miniaturize, which then contributes to gradual hair loss in humans.

A Plateau’s Legacy to Humanity...

325

With their bodies covered in cloth all year round due to the cold conditions of the highlands, pheromones were held back inside the clothing and discouraged to be ‘aired’ to the opposite sex. The curly hair was now not needed to hold back the ‘scent of sex’. Hair would straighten out, and pubic hair would be down to just vellus hair. The transformation of the physique of the new highlanders — high cheekbones, lack of eyebrows, less protruding noes, thinner lips, stockier build, lighter skin, lack of body hair, and body built around the topography of the plateau, would transform the peoples of the Tibetan Plateau into a very handsome and hardy race. With his light-coloured skin, his epicanthic folds, and equipped with his recently acquired ‘bow-and-arrow’ technology, he would cross the subcontinent of India and on to the plateau, to evolve into the hardy Tibetan. His tribe would then be sent down the rivers of the rising plateau, to populate the lowlands around that huge rugged land. The Tibetan would be the ancestor to the lowlanders living all around him — from the Uyghur and Mongolia just north of him, to the distant Sami in Finland and on to the Yana River at the extreme east of Eurasia. His tribe would walk to the Americas through Beringia and then down south through the Isthmus of Panama. What would be common among them is the epicanthic folds of the San and the Tibetan that they inherited.

Fig. 15.6: A South African Credit: Public Domain

Fig. 15.7 A Tibetan Credit: Public Domain

Fig. 15.8: San Bushman Credit: CC BY-SA 2.0

These would be the Tibetans. 41,000 ya, the transformation was complete. The Tibetan412 was born; a new race would sit on top of the world, with a larger braincase harbouring a larger brain. AMH would move out from here; black no more, but a ‘honey-colour’ mix of a new, handsome, and a beautiful race of peoples. Tectonics made it all happen. 412

Erroneously called ‘Mongoloid’, the term comes from the Mongol people of East Asia, who were skilled horsemen, and who invaded much of Eurasia during the 13th century, establishing the Mongol Empire. They were of Tibetan decent.

Index

A

B

Acraman crater 67

Beaverhead crater 67 Bedout 278 Benioff, Hugo 96 Berann, Heinrich 98 Boltysh crater 236 Borneo 224 Bouvet Island 87 Boxing Day 114 Brahmaputra 139 British Columbia 154 Buenos Aires 152 Burma microplate 136 Burma Plate 94

Afar 135 Africa 88 African Plate 94 African Rift Valley 128 Alaska 114, 228 Alberta 228 Aleutians 274 Alexander, Logie du Toit 76 Alpide belt 275 Alpine fault 122 Altai mountains 275 Altyn Tagh fault 139 Alvarez, Walter L. 231

C

Anatolian Plate 146

Caledonian 183 Caledonian orogeny 238 Cameroon line 268 Caribbean Plate 94, 148 Caucasus 133 Challenger Deep 116 Chandler, Wobble 176 Chesapeake Bay 68 Chesapeake Bay crater 67 Chicxulub 67, 233 Chicxulub crater 67 Chile 114 Chile Rise 136 Christchurch 118 Cocos Plate 94

Andaman Islands 224 Andes 114 Antarctic Plate 94 Antarctica 73 Appalachians 183 Arabian Plateau 94 Arctic Circle 144 Asthenosphere 106 Atacama Trench 151 Atlantic Ocean 84 Atlas mountains 133 Australian Plate 94 Axial seamount 198

328 Index Constructive margins 110 Continental displacement 71 Continental drift 71, 78 Convergent boundaries 110 Cook Strait 142 Cosgrove volcanic track 143 Crusoe, Robinson 109 Cyana 93 Cynognathus 73

D 'DEEDKXÀVVXUH Dead Sea 90 Dead Sea Transform (DST) 133 Deccan Plateau 286 Deccan traps 236 Dietz, Robert S. 91 Differentiation 104 Divergent boundaries 110 Doc Ewing, William Maurice 85 Drakensburg Mountains 133

E Earthquakes 90 East African Rift System (EARS) 111 East of the Sindhu 289 Elastic Rebound 118 Elburz 133 Emperor Seamount 122 Epicanthic folds 324 Eurasian Plate 94 Eyjafjallajökull 146

F Faults 110 Figure axis 178

G Galileo, Galilei 7 Ganges 139 Geology 76 Glossopteris 72 Gondwana 137 Good Friday earthquake 150

Gould, Stephen Jay 242 Grasslands 68 Great Chilean Earthquake 153 Gutenberg, Beno 104

H Hawaiian Islands 122 Heezen, Bruce C. 85 Hekla 145 Hess, Hammond 83 Hildebrand, Alan R. 234 Himalayas 97 Hindu Kush 139 Hotspots 121 Hutton, James 81

I IAVCEI 196 Iceland 145 Indian Ocean 88 Indian Plate 94 Indian subcontinent 271 Indo-Australian Plate 94 Indus Valley Civilizations (IVC) 7 Iridium 231

J Jan Mayen 87 Japan 114 Japan Trench 163 Juan de Fuca Plate 94 Juan de Fuca Ridge 198

K Kamchatka 150 Kara crater 67 Karakoram-Himalaya orogeny 137 Kathmandu 138 Kermadec Trench 116 .ūODXHD Krakatoa 141 Kuril Islands 159 Kuril-Kamchatka 163

Index 329

L

P

Lake Baikal 147 Lamont-Doherty 97 Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory 85 Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB) 62 Le Pichon, Xavier 94 Lithosphere 106 Lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary (LAB) 107 Loess Plateau 299 Lombok 276 Lyell, Charles 82 Lystrosaurus 73

3DFLÀF3ODWH Pangaea 42 Panthalassa 42 3HQÀHOG Peru-Chile Trench 117 Philippine Sea Plate 94 Philippine Trench 163 Plate tectonics 54 Polar motion 176 3ROHÁHHLQJIRUFH Popigai 68 Popigai crater 67 Project FAMOUS 93 Puerto Rico Trench 148

M MAD 84 Magnetic Airborne Detector 84 Maldives 189 Manicouagan crater 67 Mariana Trench 116 Mathews, Drummond 91 Maule 152 Megathrust 114 Merry-go-round 238 Mesosaurus 72 Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR) 87 Mid-Oceanic Ridge (MOR) 89 Monsoon 299 Moon 7 Morley, Lawrence 91 Morocco 223 Morokweng crater 67 Mozambique 134 Mt Pinatubo 192

N Nazca Plate 94 Nepal 137 New Hebrides Trench 141 New Zealand 119 NOAA 89 North American Plate 94 Nubian Plate 94

R Red Sea 110 Reid, Henry Feilding 118 Ring of Fire 114, 159 Rivera 108 Romanche Trench 151, 267

S San Andreas Fault 118 San Francisco 118 Santiago 152 Sarasvati 290 Scotia Plate 94 6HDÁRRUVSUHDGLQJ Sentinelese 293 Seth Carlo Chandler 175 Shiva 243 Siberian traps 222 Sierra Nevada 149 Silverpit crater 236 Skaftarjökull 145 Snaeffelsjökell 145 Somalia Plate 94 Soup Caldron 79 South American Plate 94 Southern Ocean 228

330 Index Stone tools 7 Strait of Gibraltar 275 Striations 285 Subduction 96 Subduction zones 159 Sudbury basin 67 Sudbury crater 219 Sumatra 140 Sunda Plate 125

T Tambora 141 Teardrop 39 Tectonics 54, 77 Terranes 78 Tethys Ocean 133 Tharp, Marie 85 Tibetan Plateau 113 Toba 272 7żKRNX2NL Tom Canyon 68 Tonga Trench 116 Transform boundaries 110 Traps 286

Trench rollback 78 Tsunamis 140

V Valdivia earthquake 153 Vanuatu 188 Vine, Frederick 91 Vine-Matthews-Morley hypothesis 92 Virunga volcanic chain 135 Volcán de Colima 149 Volcanic Explosivity Index 195 Volcanoes 90, 112 Vredefort crater 67, 218

W Wadati, Kiyoo 96 Wadati-Benioff hypothesis 96 Wegener, Alfred 71, 74 WHOI 55, 85 Wilkes Land crater 227 Wilson, J. Tuzo 92

Z Zanzibar 300

TM

The A question many of us have always been asking is ‘where did we come from?’ The question is answered in this book. In this book — the first in trilogy — we try to understand tectonics; of why lands move over the Earth's surface and the consequences of these movements — be they volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, or mountain building. It is explained now for the first time. However, this subject, still in its infancy, had to bridged by three hypotheses; how did the solar system form, how did the Earth happen and, how and when did the Moon come about; all three critical in understanding ‘tectonics’. ? · It begins with a parody on our journey through science and our knowledge about the Earth and our universe. ? It puts a closure to the question that Alfred Wegener, the father of tectonics, failed to answer in 1915, and others could do no better for over a hundred years now; as to what is the ‘motive force’ that moves huge continents and little islands over the Earth's surface. ? It addresses how and why the continents and lands move over the Earth's surface. When their movements create earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, or simply involve themselves in mountain building or such, we understand how the ‘earth system’ works. ? Having figured out the workings of ‘plate tectonics’, we begin to learn why our earth is unique – neither gas nor rock like the other eight 'lifeless' planets. ? Tectonics brought a part of Africa to Eurasia to create the Indian peninsula and the Tibetan Plateau, which then gave birth to the six major rivers of Asia that then threw the humanity of the highlands into the lowlands. Having created and spread humanity on to the rice fields of the lowlands, it now helps and maintains the fields along with over half of the world’s population. Raymond Dias was born in Goa, moved to Uganda as a 2-year old, then returned to complete his secondary education here. He studied biology and zoology at university for 4 years., and then switched to mechanical engineering, and graduated with a Bachelor's degree. He worked in India, N. Yemen, and the Sultanate of Oman for over 37 years. He is also conversant in Swahili, Arabic, and Hindi. This is his first book.

978-93-91029-08-1

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TM