Background
The 4.5 billion-year-old Earth is the only known astronomical object to harbor life, giving rise to billions of species of stunning diversity, including ours, Homo sapiens. It has formed the backdrop of an estimated 110 billion human lives. And, look what we've done to it so far!
At 13.1 septillion pounds and 25,000 miles in circumference, the third planet from the sun long formed the horizon of all human experience and knowledge (watch overview). Oy, time to call Weight Watchers.
Recent discoveries have revealed our home planet’s relative size and location in the universe: a pale blue dot within the Orion Spur, located 26,000 light-years from the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, one of 100,000 galaxies within the Laniakea Supercluster, even tho' most people think the Laniakea Supercluster is a five star resort on the the Big Island Hawaii.
Formation
Early Earth is theorized to have formed alongside the other planets within a solar nebula, where a massive cloud of spinning, interstellar gas and dust contracted under its own gravity and flattened into a hot disk (watch visualization). In other words, someone made one big MF fart.
The core of the disk became dense with lighter elements like hydrogen, eventually heating up and triggering nuclear fusion, forming the sun. Solar wind pushed lighter elements farther out into the system, while heavier metals like iron gathered into increasingly larger masses known as planetesimals in a process called accretion to form the Earth and other inner rocky planets. Try saying that fast three times.
As the protoplanet grew, heat from the colliding material and radioactive decay differentiated Earth’s heavier iron-rich core from its lighter rocky mantle, giving rise to Earth’s magnetic field and long-term stability. Various models suggest Earth’s formation took tens of millions of years. This action allowed refrigerator magnets to explosively spawn and multiply.
Two billion years later, Earth changed dramatically when cyanobacteria, a microbe, evolved to generate energy from sunlight (i.e., photosynthesis) and release oxygen as a byproduct into the atmosphere during the Great Oxidation Event. Usually held semi-annually in the Coachella Valley or, less frequently, but sometimes, Bayonne or Paterson, New Jersey.
********************************************************************************
the great Laura R, so spot on.........so spot on:
Checking in at the Airport in Italy
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
do you want to know how the story ends?
we do!
haven't we been right so far?
stay with ELDER HOSTILE to find out
sign up for automatic notification alerting you when a new ELDER HOSTILE blog is posted
send an email to us and you will never miss an issue,
here 'tis where to sign up:
to subscribe, subsume, & submarine, just send us an email
you may unsubscribe at any time & must agree to our terms that if the big one drops, your subscription will get canceled automatically and no refunds will be issued
morris mishegoss, your faithful editor at ELDER HOSTILE
remember what our spiritual founder used to say---
"most people are stupid!"
.....................there's FEH, MEH, and now there's EH
Comments
Post a Comment