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Earth Story
Welcome to Earth Story.
This is the story of Planet Earth from its earliest days as a gathering bundle of rocks and dust forming from the debris left over from the explosion of the supernova star that gave birth to our Sun some 4.5 billion years ago right up to this very moment when you are sitting there reading this.
Its been a long journey hasn’t it? Your body and everything around you has come from and grown out of those bare rocks that were floating around in space. That’s more incredible than a miracle!! We inhabit and share an incredible and wondrous reality.
Earth Story is the story of our planet right up to modern times. We leave the detailed story of our own species to the Human Story. Of course the three stories fit into each other. The Human Story is part of the Earth Story which is part of the Universe.
So the first story we have is the embryonic scientific story of the Earth. Just trying to get the facts together in a simple and clear manner and in their right order. From this we can then create a Story that can be told.
Please feel invited to contribute any facts, details, insights, poetic insights, understandings and good sources of information. When we have the scientific story more or less in place the real fun can begin and we can start to co-create the Earth Story as a proper Story.
Start Up Scientific Story
4.6 billion years ago – a huge explosion !!
The star that preceded our Sun exploded in a supernova explosion. From this release of matter and energy our solar system formed. Most of the matter, in the form of hydrogen and helium, condensed to form our Sun and the rest of the heavier matter spun around the rotating star. As time went by this matter started to build into the nine planets of our solar system at nodal points in the Sun’s gravitational field.
Our Earth, like the other planets, would have started as a ball of dust and debris a few centimetres in diameter that attracted other dust particles and started to grow. In the first 20 million years of this process Earth would have grown from the size of a golf ball or smaller to a body of several kilometres in diameter. This was done not just by attracting dust but also by attracting other bodies of a smaller size into it.
This stage was ferocious and dramatic in the extreme. Some bodies landed and joined the embryonic Earth and others slammed into her so hard that they vaporised her leaving her to coalesce again.
As the Earth got bigger in size it attracted more and more matter and bodies. The bigger it got, the bigger it was as a target so more things bashed into it. It was a sea of chaos with huge numbers of asteroids and meteorites flying around and it is even thought that at some point that Mars might have collided with us before the planetary orbits settled down.
Impacts of course generated terrific heat and as the earth cooled down it divided into layers. The heavier elements like iron an nickel percolated down through them and occupied the centre. This took about 60 million years and created a core to the Earth of about 2400 kilometres in diameter. Because iron has a high melting point of approx 1600 degrees Centigrade this core is just liquid and spins slightly faster than the rest of the Earth.
So the Earth developed a hugely hot liquid core of iron and nickel and this was surrounded with the bulk of the planet or mantle which was made up of lighter silicaceous material.
All this time the bombardment of Earth continued which added to Earth’s mass and size. Some of these bodies were several hundred kilometres in diameter and when they hit the Earth they vaporised huge amounts of matter it is thought that this could be up to one hundred times their own mass. One particular impact was so severe that it threw such a large amount of matter into orbit around Earth that it created lots of small moons that eventually joined together into our own Moon. This impact also tilted earth on her axis to 23 degrees, which gave rise to our present day seasons!
The planets grow and their gravitational fields increase. Earth becomes massive enough and cool enough to retain the lighter gaseous compounds of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen, the star stuff from which life will spring.
At this time there was a lot of water on the Earth, just as there had been on other planets. This water was brought by comets which are largely ice so when the crashed into the Earth the solid matter added to the bulk and water created the seas.
4.4 - 4.1 billion years ago - Lightning storms rage for millions of years during the Hadeon eon. As Earth cools, water in the atmosphere condenses; torrential rains fall on, and on, and on. Great seas form. Exuberant volcanoes expel hotly agitated deep earth to the surface. Over hundreds of millions of years, Earth has grown from dust particle to a large, hot, molten rock.
4 billion years ago -- Following the end of the Great Bombardment, bacteria emerge in the Archaen eon, as the first living cells. In the boiling waters, organic chemicals, perhaps sojourners from outer space, catalyze themselves into life and the Earth comes alive. Gaia is born.
3.9 billion years ago cells invent Photosynthesis. Small creatures learn to capture the sun and store the energy chemically. These early blue green algae take hydrogen for photosynthesis directly from the seas. Since water is made of hydrogen and oxygen, this early diet breaks the atomic bond of water and leaves oxygen floating free into the air. Similarly, carbon is take from atmospheric carbon dioxide and oxygen is emitted. Today we think of oxygen as something positive, a helpful element. During the Archaen eon, it is quite the opposite.
Free floating in the environment, oxygen is a scavenger that searches everywhere for food and threatens all life. It invades the rocks and living cells. As the oxygen invades these primordial cells, they begin to slowly disintegrate from the excess heat. The majority of species are unable to adapt to the new conditions and the first great extinction spasm takes place in a mass of lifeless chemicals.
2 billion years ago, oxygen loving cells emerge. The first global environmental crisis is averted by the creativity of these tiny cellular creatures who invent a use for oxygen as they breathe it in and use its energy. Oxygen levels continue to rise until it reaches near present-day levels.
Cooperatives emerge as individual single cell organisms learn to cooperate and specialize within giant cell cooperatives. Perhaps this begins as one cell forces its way into another refusing to leave. Eventually some evolve into symbiotic relationships. Within one cell membrane, some bacteria specialize in photosynthesis, others make food, and still others move the organism here and there. Eventually, a new kind of gene pool or information center is set up as each bacteria gives up some of its DNA to a common gene pool which becomes the shared cell nucleus. The individual parts become less independent but more secure, more inseparable parts of the new wholes. In the communion of a larger, single cell. cooperation is the emergent quality of the life force.
1.5 billion years ago, crisis conditions such as food shortages, lack of moisture or extreme temperatures drive hungry ancestral cellular organisms to resort to cannibalism. Sometimes, these cellular beings cannot digest the nuclei of what they have devoured and a type of sexual union arises. Death simultaneously emerges as many perish through this enterprise. With the evolution of sex, the genetic possibilities for life increase enormously with the power of preserving the achievements of a particular lineage.
700 million years ago the first multicellular organisms emerge. Some single celled organisms begin living together in colonies and find ways to communicate with each other using chemical messages. This ability to communicate soon becomes useful in many new ways of cooperating, especially in divisions of labor among different cells: some cells specialize in making food, others break food down and digest it, and still others specialize in sexual reproduction of the organism as a whole. At this time, life on Earth discovers Community through the rise of multi-cellular organisms.
600 million years ago light sensitive eyespots evolve into eyesight. The Earth sees herself for the first time.
The first soft-bodied animals evolve in the oceans. Over the next 70 million years, previously naked animals protect themselves with shells made of minerals such as phosphorus and calcium. Jaws, beaks, and skeletons follow suit.
460 million years ago organisms seek the adventures of land. Leaving the water animals, such as worms and mollusks and crustaceans seek the adventure of weather and gravity. Algae and fungi venture ashore as well. The first plants evolve as mosses. Insects evolve with nearly weightless bodies which permit them to take to the air as the first flying animals.
439 million years, global environmental change and continental glaciation precipitate the end of the Ordovician era in the second great extinction spasm. Over half of the species world wide decline and then vanish. As with each of these spasms, this sets the stage for the explosion of great novelty into the vacuum created by the emptying out of so many niches for life. Within 25 million years, Earth recovers its rich biodiversity, much of it with new creatures.
The first amphibian animals hop and lumber onto land, trading in their gill slits for air-breathing lungs, transforming fins into stubby legs and continuing to return to the water to lay their eggs.
335 Million years ago, the first subtropical forests evolve. Over generations, these forests load themselves with carbon extracted from the atmosphere which later becomes fossilized as coal and oil. As the forests spread, amphibians transform into pre-reptilian creatures with the grand innovation of self contained eggs that allows them to move inland. The Great Age of Reptiles begins.
235 Million years ago - Following the 4th and greatest mass extinction, the end of the Permian period is followed by the emergence of dinosaurs. For 170 million years these creatures flourish. Dinosaurs, sometimes as large as 40 meters, are social animals that often travel and hunt in groups. Dinosaurs develop a behavioral novelty unknown previously in the reptilian world - parental care. Dinosaurs carefully bury their eggs and stay with the young after they hatch, nurturing them toward independence. Reptiles evolve a grand variety of sizes, shapes, and habitats, including water, deserts, and forests.
225 million years ago mammals emerge. Inhabiting small niches in a world of giants, the first mammals, small and nocturnal, jump, climb, swing, and swim through the dinosaur world. Some rodent-sized insect-eaters evolve lactation, enabling mothers to spend more time in the nest keeping their young both fed and warm.
150 million years ago Birds emerge, a direct descendant of the dinosaur as leg bones evolve into wing bones, jawbones into beaks and scales into feathers. Far larger than today’s birds, wing spans are as large as 12 metres.
114 million years ago Flowers evolve gorgeous and overt sexual organs and make themselves irresistible to insects by way of colors, perfumes, and delightful nectars. Insects, drawn to the nectar, unknowingly transport pollen from one flower to the next, fertilizing the plants on which they feed.
Whereas a conifer requires 18 months to produce its seeds, a flower can grow from seed to a mature plant capable of releasing its own seeds, all in a few weeks.
65 million years ago - Shortly after primates appear on the scene, the Cretaceous period ends with the 6th mass extinction after an asteroid 6 miles in diameter hits the Yucatan peninsula leading, in time, to a severe drop in temperature. This marks the end of the age of dinosaurs and the beginning of the age of mammals, the Cenezoic era. With the dinosaurs gone, the once dark and sheltered mammals stride into daylight moving quickly to occupy available ecological niches.
Over the course of the next 60 million years Earth greets rodents, whales, monkeys, horses, cats and dogs, antelopes, gibbons, grazing animals, orang-utans, gorillas, elephants, chimpanzees, camels, bears, pigs, baboons and the first humans.
4 million years ago Humanoids leave the forest, stand up, and walk on two legs. The savannah offers the challenges and opportunities for these early creatures to evolve into humans.
100 thousand years ago Modern Humans emerge. Language, shamanic and goddess religions, and art become integral with human life.
11,000 years ago, agriculture begins. Humans begin to shape the environment.
3,000 years ago classical religions emerge. Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam.
250 years ago scientists calculate the age of the Earth. Humans try to understand how old the Earth is through empirical observations.
68 years ago empirical evidence of an expanding Universe. For the first time humans are aware they live in a developing universe.
31 years ago scientists find Evidence of the Origin of the Universe.
28 years ago Earth is seen as Whole (from space). The Earth becomes complex enough to understand her own integral beauty.
Today, the Story of the Universe is being told as our sacred Story. The flaring forth continues as this moment, as us, as one.
So first things first
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