Review—Implications—Conclusion
CHAPTER SIX
REVIEW—IMPLICATIONS—CONCLUSION
Elements Fused by Formative Heat
If Earth was ever igneous—and almost all scientists firmly believe it was—it seems unquestionable that all the elements and most of their compounds were fused during that igneous, incandescent, gaseous stage of evolution. It seems unquestionable that the vaporized products were repelled from the nucleous of the flaming mass to distances more or less proportional to their weights and volatilities; that they were hurled into revolutionary motion by the same agency, whatever it is, that gives such motion to all celestial bodies. It seems indubitable that, as cooling progressed, the atmospheric vapors condensed into liquids or solids, according to their natures. That water must have been a prominent constituent of those atmospheric minerals and was mixed with or contained some minerals dissolved within it, seems entirely logical. Because of its light weight and high volatility, at least some water must have been among the last of the vapors to condense and return to Earth.
Descent of Atmospheric Minerals Slow
Laws of motion and conditions visible on other planets tell us that long after formative heat of the contracting nucleus or core decreased to the point where heat no longer prevented descent, some atmospheric minerals must have continued to revolve around the core until gravity finally slowed them down to less than orbital velocities. As and when retardation progressed sufficiently, the atmospheric minerals finally descended.
That the final descent must have been very slow is demonstrated by the “sputniks,” or artificial satellites, which at this writing have been hurled to the skies. If some of these satellites, not more than a few hundred miles above the Earth, moving at an initial velocity of not more than seventeen or eighteen thousand miles per hour, can stay aloft and continue to circle the Earth for months, we can easily comprehend why the minerals in Jupiter’s shroud, traveling some twenty-seven thousand miles per hour and thousands of miles above the planet’s core, continue their revolutions, notwithstanding the fact that heat has long since ceased to repel them.
Accordingly, there would seem to be no reason whatever to doubt that Earth’s supercrust originally was merely the precipitates of atmospheric vapors fused and hurled to space above by intense heat during Earth’s formative eons. What other source can possibly be imagined? As a matter of fact, if Earth was once a flaming, incandescent, gaseous mass, every ton of matter in its core and every gallon of water in its hydrosphere, was accumulated from a former atmospheric, vaporous mass. Indubitably, accumulation must have been progressive.
It seems incredible that science has so completely failed to grasp the foregoing simple truths in spite of the fact that they are so clearly broadcasted by conditions plainly visible on several planets. With the foregoing basic principles in mind, one cannot look at Jupiter or Saturn without seeing in them perfect confirmation of those truths. Can anyone produce a logical reason to doubt that clouds which obscure the core of Jupiter today are essentially identical with those which once covered Earth’s core? Can it be doubted that minerals in Jupiter’s shroud are identical with those in Earth’s crust and will in due time descend to the Jovian core to form its layered supercrust? Can anyone doubt that water is a prominent component of Jupiter’s clouds, as we have reasoned it was also prominent in Earth’s primitive atmosphere?
Based upon spectroscopic examination alone, some observers think that the planetary shrouds are methane and ammonia, containing little if anything else. Some have asserted that the clouds of Venus contain no water. Such conclusions seem quite contrary to logic. Furthermore, conclusions based solely upon spectral analysis of planetary atmospheres cannot help but be inconclusive because the spectra are merely those of faint reflected sunlight shining on those atmospheres from distances of hundreds of millions of miles. Hence what the spectroscope reveals is not virgin light from incandescent planetary substance. Such flimsy evidence seems quite inadequate to refute the logical conclusion that minerals in the planetary shrouds are identical with those in the Sun, the Earth and every other member of the solar system.
Horizontalism
The horizontalism and parallelism with which stratified rocks obviously were originally laid down, apparently without exception over the whole surface of the globe, both on the continents and under the seas, constitute an enigma. Was the Earth as smooth and round as a bowling ball when precipitation of mineral matter from the primitive atmosphere occurred? Were there no hills and valleys then? Did the first increments of ocean waters cover the entire globe, with no land exposed? Were the first primitive atmospheric precipitates deposited in water which covered a perfectly smooth igneous shell? Was that shell only thereafter buckled and crumpled into deep ocean basins and uplifted into continental platforms? Did weathering, erosion, transport and redeposit begin only thereupon? At any rate, the mystery of horizontalism is certainly not augmented by the conception that sedimentary minerals were precipitated, at least in part, from a primitive atmosphere instead of having been derived solely from decay of plutonic rock masses and deposition of the resulting debris in the oceans.
Catastrophes
Pages of geological literature, old and new, are full of confessions of inability to discover sources and unravel mysteries of natural phenomena. As Georges Cuvier says in Essay on the Theory of the Earth:
… it is in vain that we search, among the powers which now act at the surface of the Earth, for causes sufficient to produce the revolutions and catastrophes, the traces of which are exhibited by its crust.
Scientists have long tried in vain to discover the origin of vast deposits of unconsolidated sand, gravel, clay, loess, widely scattered “erratic” boulders, the scorched stones of the “Harras” and the red sands of Arabia, of abyssal nickel, meteoric dust and boulders on ocean floors far from land, etc., etc., etc.
Evidence is conclusive that vast areas of the Near East, fertile and populous in ancient times, were devastated and made inhospitable by sudden, strange, deep deposits of dust, sand, gravel and boulders. Deserts in northern Africa, in southern Russia, in the Arabian Peninsula and elsewhere are relics of such catastrophes. Thriving cities were literally buried. Civilizations came to an abrupt end. Population in some areas was completely annihilated; elsewhere severely decimated. There is evidence that such catastrophes occurred on several occasions, some within the past few thousands of years.