How did Earth's continents form? The leading theory may now be in doubt

[Admin]

Geologists and planetary scientists are rethinking how Earth's continents may have formed after discovering that the leading theory may not be possible after all.

How did Earth's continents form? The leading theory may now be in doubt : Read more

 

[Lara]

No no. Skip all of this. Why is the ocean floor all the same age if subduction is happening which is like necessary for the current model that they're building off of? If these major events are not happening then play tectonics doesn't work how we think it does and you have to start considering stuff like the Earth expands and contracts, stuff that sounds crazy but there's evidence for it here and there's evidence for it on several moons in our own solar system.

 

[billslugg]

The ocean floor is not all the same age. It is youngest at the mid-ocean ridges, where new ocean floor is being created, and oldest where it is being subducted.

 

[magnoflux]

Grand Canyon Formation in a Coronation Revelation.

Not only the seabed but what about the grand canyon
Just visited the south side and was amazed to see the layers of our planet’s historic topology staring at me. See pictures courtesy of US national parks. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/nature/grca-geology.htm

Geologists believe that this 250 km long 25 km wide canyon was formed around 2 to 4 million years ago but cannot explain how. Well, neither could I as if a huge asteroid collided with earth in the east west direction then the crater would be huge with smashed out rocky matter blasted forward of which there is no evidence.

But if the meteor was made of positron enclosed anti-matter then what we see makes sense as a 25 km wide chunk of anti-matter coming in at a low angle would hit the surface of the planet and bouncing slightly as it moved forward leaving a ragged path as it annihilated kilogram for kilogram of planetary electron enclosed matter magnoflux stuff could leave behind a canyon deep enough to expose the earth’s mantle that formed over 2 thousand million years ago.

Asteroids or meteors can attain velocities of 50 km/second which means the Grand Canyon could have been formed in just 5 seconds but the annihilation of the adjacent atmosphere would have certainly sucked all trees and vegetation out of the ground tens of kilometres around the site and the Colorado river later forced to find a new way inside the canyon.

If the asteroid were a 25 km cube then around 5x10^14 tons of planetary matter would have been annihilated by the star sourced anti-matter meteor resulting in what we see now.

 

[billslugg]

Except if you look at the Grand Canyon from high above, it has that same shape as every canyon in the world, a dendritic tree shape. Can't have been made by any form of energetic impactor. That dirt went to the ocean. In the 60 years since I first visited the Grand Canyon, it has eroded an additional half inch.

How about all the energy created by annihiliation of 5x10^14 tons of matter? There would be 5x10^17 kilograms converted to energy at the rate of 9x10^16 joules per kilogram. This is 4.5X10^34 joules.
The Earth has a mass of 6x10^24 kilograms, made mostly (99%) by silicates, atomic weight 60. Heat of fusion 50 joules per mole. This is 833 joules per kilogram. Earth total is 5x10^27 joules.

The "antimatter option" would melt the Earth 9 million times over.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

If a mass of 5 x 10^14 tons of antimatter hit the Earth, it would annihilate an equivalet amount of normal matter, so twice Bill's estimate of energy released (unless he already doubled that in his calc).

Never mind melting the planet. Rapidly releasing that much energy on one side of the planet would shatter it, and propel the fragments well out of the current orbit.

So, no, it was clearly not created by an antimatter impact.

As Bill said, it looks like a regular erosion product, just much bigger. It cuts through a highland because the land bulged upward at a slow enough rate that the river was able to keep cutting its path through the area at a faster rate, instead of getting dammed up behind the bulge and needing to flow around it.

 

[bolide]

Grand Canyon Formation in a Coronation Revelation.

Not only the seabed but what about the grand canyon
Just visited the south side and was amazed to see the layers of our planet’s historic topology staring at me. See pictures courtesy of US national parks. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/nature/grca-geology.htm

Geologists believe that this 250 km long 25 km wide canyon was formed around 2 to 4 million years ago but cannot explain how. Well, neither could I as if a huge asteroid collided with earth in the east west direction then the crater would be huge with smashed out rocky matter blasted forward of which there is no evidence.

But if the meteor was made of positron enclosed anti-matter then what we see makes sense as a 25 km wide chunk of anti-matter coming in at a low angle would hit the surface of the planet and bouncing slightly as it moved forward leaving a ragged path as it annihilated kilogram for kilogram of planetary electron enclosed matter magnoflux stuff could leave behind a canyon deep enough to expose the earth’s mantle that formed over 2 thousand million years ago.

Asteroids or meteors can attain velocities of 50 km/second which means the Grand Canyon could have been formed in just 5 seconds but the annihilation of the adjacent atmosphere would have certainly sucked all trees and vegetation out of the ground tens of kilometres around the site and the Colorado river later forced to find a new way inside the canyon.

If the asteroid were a 25 km cube then around 5x10^14 tons of planetary matter would have been annihilated by the star sourced anti-matter meteor resulting in what we see now.

The Grand Canyon was cut by the Colorado River. Whatever gave you the idea that "Geologists ... cannot explain how" it formed?

 

[magnoflux]

When matter is annihilated the kg for kg's deletion leaves nothing behind. The only energy released is the magnoflux spin inertia which is similar to the electromagnetic energy of a light beam which can travel through space with no external energy loss as it tumbles forward. It is totally magnetically and charge balanced and nothing remains just a vacuum.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

When matter is annihilated the kg for kg's deletion leaves nothing behind. The only energy released is the magnoflux spin inertia which is similar to the electromagnetic energy of a light beam which can travel through space with no external energy loss as it tumbles forward. It is totally magnetically and charge balanced and nothing remains just a vacuum.

That is not correct. When a positron and an electron annihilate each other, energy is released in the form of 2 photons, which I have used to detect the positrons. Similarly, when protons and anti-protons annihilate, they also release their mass-equivalent energy as photons. Those photons get absorbed by surrounding matter, heating that matter.

If a large amout of anti-matter was annihilated, it would make an "atomic bomb" seem like a fire cracker by comparison. In atomic bombs and nuclear reactors, whether fission or fusion, only a small fraction of the rest mass of the fuel is liberated by the fission and fusion processes, leaving a lot of matter at a much higher temperature due to the energy released.

 

[billslugg]

Yes, Unclear is correct. When a positron and an electron annihiliate, two photons at .511 MV are emitted. However, most of the energy in an antimatter explosion comes from protons and antiprotons, of which about 75% is emitted as neutrinos, not gamma rays.

"Magnoflux spin inertia" is not a recognized term in the standard model. I only study the standard model. Once I understand it, and find it lacking, then I'll look elsewhere. Until then, I'll just ignore the term.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Bill, Do you have a reference for the neutrino energy derived from proton-anitproton annihilation?

Because protons are composed fo 3 quarks, it isn't a simple two-particle annihilation. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annihilation . That link says that a lot of mesons are produced that are at significant fractions of the speed of light, and either interact with other matter or decay on their own. That suggests to me a lof of energy transfer to regular matter. On the other hand, neutrinos do not interact much with regular matter, so I would not expect them to locally heat the site of the annihilation.

Still, 25% of the rest-mass energy is a lot of energy for local heating when the rest mass is double 5 x 10^14 tons!

 

[billslugg]

I researched the byproducts of antimatter annihiliation when calculating whether a person could travel to the nearest star and back, discussed elsewhere in this forum a year or so ago. Here is paragraph from Wiki article on antimatter.

"Charged pions ultimately decay into a combination of neutrinos (carrying about 22% of the energy of the charged pions) and unstable charged muons (carrying about 78% of the charged pion energy), with the muons then decaying into a combination of electrons, positrons and neutrinos (cf. muon decay; the neutrinos from this decay carry about 2/3 of the energy of the muons, meaning that from the original charged pions, the total fraction of their energy converted to neutrinos by one route or another would be about 0.22 + (2/3)⋅0.78 = 0.74)"

Borowski, S. K. (1987). "Comparison of Fusion/Antiproton Propulsion systems" (PDF). NASA Technical Memorandum 107030. NASA. pp. 5–6 (pp. 6–7 of pdf). AIAA–87–1814.

 

[magnoflux]

It is not the positrons and electrons that are annihilated but the magnoflux inertia inside them after that the positron and electron charges just cancel out.
Please consider what happened in the Tunguska event but notice that no crater or burning rocks were ever reported the material just simply vanished. Impossible!!
If it was an anti-matter meteors that hit us this would immediately annihilate the atmospheric gases and cause a huge vacuum that of course causes an air blast that destroys forests and dwellings by sucking then out of the ground as in the case of the Tunguska event but there was no evidence of scorched trees so little or no energy creation.

Further, where is the meteorite matter gone? Simply vanished impossible; no it was annihilated kg for kg by our atmospheric gases.

 

[bolide]

There is no Tunguska crater because the meteor (or comet) exploded in the air.

It left 100km² of scorched forest.

The trees that were knocked down all pointed away from the epicenter, indicating a blast from there outwards, not "sucking them out of the ground."

Why is this conversation still continuing?

 

[magnoflux]

It is continuing because the WMAP results show that the universe cannot be balanced by gravity force alone.
The expansion of the universe could be due to the electrostatic repulsion of stars from each other which is a 95% stronger force than gravity and referred to as dark energy in many text books.

 

[joff david]

The formation of Earth's continents is a complex process that has been studied and theorized for many years. The prevailing scientific theory regarding the formation of continents is known as plate tectonics. According to this theory, Earth's outer shell, called the lithosphere, is divided into several large and small plates that float on the semi-fluid asthenosphere beneath.
Plate tectonics suggests that continents are part of these plates and that they have been shaped through a combination of processes such as continental drift, subduction, and seafloor spreading. Continental drift refers to the slow movement of continents over geological timescales, while subduction involves the oceanic plates sliding beneath the continental plates. Seafloor spreading occurs at mid-oceanic ridges, where new crust is formed and pushes the existing plates apart.

 

[Shawn Mendes]

The formation of Earth's continents is a topic that has been extensively studied by geologists, and the prevailing theory remains plate tectonics. Plate tectonics explains the movement of Earth's lithospheric plates, including the continents, and their interactions at plate boundaries.
According to the plate tectonics theory, continents are part of larger plates that are constantly in motion. The continents have undergone a process called continental accretion, where smaller land masses, known as terranes, collided and merged over billions of years to form the larger continents we see today. This process involved various geological mechanisms such as subduction, collision, and orogeny (mountain building).
While there may be ongoing research and refinements to specific details, the fundamental principles of plate tectonics and continental accretion are well-supported by evidence from geology, seismology, paleomagnetism, and other scientific fields. However, scientific understanding is subject to revision and improvement as new data and research emerge. It's always important to consider the most current scientific literature and consult with experts for the most up-to-date understanding of Earth's continent formation.

 

[murgatroyd]

Can we please NOT reprint answers from ChatGPT here.

Mods?

 

[COLGeek]

Can we please NOT reprint answers from ChatGPT here.

Mods?

We are aware of this trend. As long as relevant to threads, or not grossly incorrect, we are allowing.

It is a means for non-English speakers to better participate, but can certainly stray far off course easily.

It is something we are keeping an eye on.

 

[bolide]

"a means for non-English speakers to better participate" So does this mean we'd have people posting AI comments that they themselves can't even read? Then who is the participant?

 

[COLGeek]

"a means for non-English speakers to better participate" So does this mean we'd have people posting AI comments that they themselves can't even read? Then who is the participant?

Translating a post is a trivial matter. Google Translate can certainly make this easier.

We have a global membership after all.

 

[bolide]

"Translating a post is a trivial matter." Yes, that's my point. NES should write in their native language and have it translated, not use ChatGPT to write for them.