Crystals II

Planet Earth-1

Planet Earth

A sudden cough hit Eurydice and forced Orpheus to offer her again another glass of water, while the surrounding scientists stirred and moved as if they had awaken from a deep stupor. Their mouth was dry but they did not want to spoil the ceremonious atmosphere of the description of the events and break the overbearing anticipation and scientific attention, as if they were scared that if they woke up, they would lose everything. The last words of Eurydice brought tears to the eyes of some. But, they got the chance to quench their thirst in any way they could. Some took a glass of water, or some juice or some coffee. Some also had something to eat. It was a sweet break and a breath of mental rest. The heads of everyone present were overheated by the excitement, their undisrupted and undivided attention and their thoughts. They were in dire need of a breathing space to rest and calm down.

The narrators took a deep breath and received a number of questions from the scientists. But questions were mainly addressed to the scientist who actually had participated in the experiment, Mr Stratos Theodosis. Their excitement and scientific enthusiasm was boundless while scientific ecstasy had reached new heights. The whole atmosphere was tense and electrifying, as if a moving nebula of electrons had installed itself permanently into the auditorium, electrifying everything that crossed it. Although Eurydice had recovered, Orpheus took over, touching her hands tenderly and softly caressing her hair. After a small pause and the obvious growing anticipation on the part of the scientific audience for the continuation of the narration, Orpheus started talking, continuing with the narrative.

‘Up until this moment, we have covered all the development from the ‘quirk’ at the beginning of time, to the creation of the galaxies, the star systems and finally, the creation of our own solar system. 4.6 billion years ago, a few hundred million years after the heart of our sun started beating for the first time, sending forth his life-giving light in all directions and the post-Jupiterian planets had almost been completed, the Titans organized a meeting at this part of our galaxy. They were preparing their revolt and were colluding about it, as they were forming and completing the already condensed matter, one hundred and fifty million kilometers away from the sun, i.e., almost at today’s average distance between the Sun and the Earth that the Earth’s elliptical defines in relation to the sun. At the same time, they were amassing small asteroid pieces, remnants of dead stars drifting in the Universe and directing them to the fiery Earth, creating explosions and huge bursting fountains of burning lava that ejected hundreds of meters in space. Sometimes, lava was ejected kilometers high to quickly return in the form of tens of small and large burning chunks of matter, creating a phantasmagoria and many waves on the moving lava, setting up new local fires of various magnitudes that were popping up everywhere like gigantic rosy-colored fiery roses. Within those stellar bodies unleashed by the Titans onto Earth, the seed of life was already residing. It was in the form of the chemical elements that were a prerequisite for sustaining life, but also contained heavier chemical elements that would have been necessary for the creation of a future civilization. But let us take things from the beginning.

So, about 13.85 billion years ago, the timepiece of our world started ticking within a newly-created, exquisitely beautiful and utterly wise Universe of huge potential. In the beginning, protostars were huge and as a result, they burned up all of their material, exploding in huge, titanic, amazingly powerful explosions, spreading their material throughout the newly-formed Universe. The titanic forces were feverishly preparing the material to build the visible, current Universe we would come to love. 13.6 to 12.7 billion years ago and based on that material, the titanic forces started accumulating matter in a particular area where a spiroid galaxy was created, at the edges of which and in the inner parts of one of its arms, under the name of Orion’s Arm, adjacent to or tributary of the Carina Arm, a humble solar system would be created where planet Earth would belong which would bear the highest expression of the Universe, life.

A few billion years passed after the creation of our galaxy when, at about 5 to 4.6 billion years ago a great Supernova explosion took place somewhere in the Universe that created a powerful wave onto a dense area in our galaxy, at a distance of about 25 to 26 thousand LY from the galactic core, flooding the area with heavy elements, which would later comprise fundamental elements for the creation of Earth and of the life on it. During that period, therefore and due to the critical impact of the supernova on that particular area of the galaxy with an already accumulated proto-solar molecular cloud, the conditions were proper for an abrupt collapse of hydrogen and the birth of a new star. That new star would be our sun that Hyperion along with his wife Euryphaessa ignited, which was programmed to last for 10 billion years. For the last 4.6 billion years, it has been tirelessly beaming forth light on the eight planets34, the five planetoids35 and the thousands of asteroids36, giving meaning and light to our whole universe.

Right after the first ignition of our sun, four inner planets were created followed later by the four gaseous planets. Just about 4.57 billion years ago, rotating around the sun and occupying the third place from it, the first planetary disc was created from which planet Earth would then be created. About 4.56 billion years ago, and at the coolest belt of the inhabitable area, a proto-earth would be created, moving around a sun that would emit about 70% of its current temperature, which, aided by the phenomenon of the greenhouse effect, would allow water to remain in liquid form on the surface of the earth. Around that time, the rotation speed of the earth would be much faster than today’s, with an estimated complete rotation being at ¼ of the current one.

Right from the start of the planet Earth, it would seem as if ‘Gaia’, mother-Earth, was trying to leave nothing to luck. It created a number of complementary elements that some future intelligent being would use in his effort to understand his environment and his origin.

About 4.5 billion years ago, the Titans created the Moon as a satellite of the Earth, thinking of aiding the intelligent being that would appear on the planet much later, in starting to wonder about the Universe, to proceed with certain measurements and calculations and to gradually discover its natural laws. At the same time, and in their effort to help even more, they decided to set up on the Earth’s surface a number of geological or radioactive chronometers, so that the future intelligent being would be able to proceed with radioactive measurements of rock minerals or fossils, thus helping him in the study of the past and the type of living organisms that preceded him. That thought of theirs was also the most important one, since it immediately solved the riddle of back-dating and measurement for the future intelligent being that would call himself ‘Homo sapiens-sapiens’. In that case, knowing how important the issue of radioactive dating would be, they left nothing to luck. They created many and different kinds of geological chronometers, so that each would function best during different time periods, thus affording the possibility of absolutely precise back-dating and cross-validation of the already made dating. Some of these geological chronometers are: Carbon (C-14), Potassium-Argon (K-Ar), Rubidium-Strontium (Rb-Sr), and others. In the case of radioactive carbon, chronometers would become unwound after some thousands of years yielding less reliable readings. The rest of the chronometers however would unwind many million years afterwards37. Thus, the titanic forces made sure they would preempt every possibility and for that reason they set up many alternative forms of back-dating. Thus, they sowed the surface of the Earth with drifting stellar bodies, after they carefully had selected them for their internal makeup, making sure they included those chemical elements necessary for the creation of radioactive back-dating.

‘Gaia’ that was impatiently waiting to bring her children to life from these titanic seeds, was welcoming every new stellar chunk of matter. It had transformed itself into a huge, magma-covered sphere that maintained all the heavy elements in a molten state, driving them slowly towards the center of that ball of fire, our current Earth’s core. In much less than a billion year, the temperatures would have gone down while an external crust would have formed. On the crust, several stellar bodies unleashed by the Titans would continue to fall that would create wounds and openings on the newly-formed crust, spurting forth new magma but also adding additional genetic material from the ashes of the older stars.

From the beginning of the formation of the Earth till about 3.85 billion years ago, the forming of the Earth’s crust would be complete. That period was particularly hostile for life and is named Hadean or Azoic or Archaean or Archaeozic megaeon38. But already it is estimated that 4.35 billion years ago the blessed phenomenon of rain and the presence of water in liquid form appeared, which would create oxidation, erosion and sedimentation that resulted in the production of the first crust of the Earth. Today, the oldest dated part of the land crust of the Earth can be traced back to that period39. At the same time, and during that whole period, the bombardment of the Earth would continue, with the last period of bombardment being from 4.1 to 3.85 billion years ago, beneficially hurting the terrestrial surface and turning it into molten lava. That would be a useful material, quite rich in water and heavy metals. But the primitive terrestrial atmosphere would still be quite hostile to supporting life.

Earth continued to rotate around its axis, bleeding and hurt from the plunging stellar chunks of matter that continued to fall on it, sending the heavier elements towards its core. It was a sweat labor pain for mother-Earth who accumulated the titanic seeds from which the Titans had been born, and later the gods, and much later, from that very same seed, the blue-green algae, the fish, the plants, the dinosaurs, the birds, the mammals, the humans and in general, the whole bacterial, fauna and flora. They were those materials that would allow the evolution and the transformation of the Earth into the beautiful blue planet in its current form. There could be no sweater pain. Life! The highest, unsurpassable, divine characteristic of the Universe! Who fails to understand its worth and supreme beauty? Regardless of what the truth is, it is worth believing that the whole Universe was created precisely so as to accommodate life. With life, the Universe acquired its self-awareness!

At about the same time, the Moon, Mars, Venus and Mercury would be subjected to the same bombardment. The terrestrial planets were filled with well-preserved marks, since the very beginnings of their creation, since there was no atmosphere similar to that of the earth, causing such weather conditions that would distort their surfaces40. Today, we are observing and studying the terrestrial planets, in our effort to fully understand our own beautiful planet, on whose surface, most of these marks have by now almost disappeared due to the slow and steady erosion caused by wind and rain but also because of the general structural rearrangements that the tectonic drift causes.

So, as Earth was gradually cooling down, it was slowly assuming its present form, whose complex structure was transforming it into a living planet. Indeed, Earth possesses many sections that differ radically amongst themselves. For example, the stable crust of the Earth with an average depth of about forty kilometers, which can be separated into the mainland crust with an average thickness of about thirty-five kilometers and the oceanic crust, with an average thickness of about seven kilometers. For about 3.8 billion years, Earth’s crust has remained stable, receiving only a few extraterrestrial interventions from stellar bodies, which however, as we shall see below, have been capable of causing large-scale destruction. But ‘life’ has always found a way to continue with its course, to adapt to the needs of the environment and to continuously evolve towards sturdier and more intelligent lifeforms.