Some 4.54 billion years ago there was a twinkling in the sky; a twinkle that may have been similar to the one in your father’s eye mere decades ago. This twinkle came from a young star whose nuclear furnace had only recently attained full power. He gazed through sultry clouds of smoke and dust to a stardust seed. From the seed, gravity tugged some of the smoke and debris together until it formed a pebble.
The gravitational center grew. Matter rubbed against matter as more and more accumulated. The violence of coming together released pent up heat and formed a molten sphere. Her entire surface glistened like the heart of a volcano.
At just 100 million years of age, she survived a great calamity. From the outer reaches of space, a giant object hammered into her. The concussion changed her. It was the first demonstration of the resilience that would become the flavor of her character. She clung to her attacker, determined that rather than form a lifelong scar this lunar object would become a shiny jewel that would adorn her forever.
The violence waned and as it did, she cooled. The temperature of the rocks, each fortified with iron, dipped below the Curie Point and, like water crystallizing into ice, a magnetic field took up poles at her top and bottom. The angular momentum of the smoke and dust that formed her left its mark in her spin, not quite aligned with those poles – a tiny asymmetry that lent cuteness to her beauty.
The cooling rocks sunk beneath a gas that formed her atmosphere. If she’d been born without her magnetic field the atmosphere would surely have been torn from her like a summer dress on a windy day in a cosmic meadow. With her dignity intact, the atmosphere cooled and condensed. Great pools of water formed over her still forming terrace. This land pressed inward and maintained the passionate heat in her heart.
When she was a sweet 1.6 billion years old a wonderful transition began to consume her. She had rhythm, and what a dance she put on. The daytime heat from the star above mixed with the cool of night over and over until her soils grew fertile. Her transition is now nearly a cliché, but at the time, for this clump of stardust anyway, it was the most wonderful thing that could possibly happen on a planet.
Earth gave birth to life.
(Ransom Stephens, Ph.D., continues to be amazed that he is a clump of dirt, water and sunlight)
Comments
"… torn from her like a summer dress on a windy day in a cosmic meadow"
science + poetry = future
I enjoyed this, Ransom, and appreciate the creative and informative use of links. Keep up the good work!
Your characterization of our Mother Earth is masterfully sculpted in words.
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