Earth Mysteries When we went to school, we were told in science what the inside of the earth looked like. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, the earth has just been found to be different inside. There are huge structures down about 1800 miles. I am not talking about buildings I am talking about masses. We are not sure what the structures are made of but scientists are telling us they existed before the earth ever had a moon. Scientists are saying these structures are located between Earth’s liquid outer core and the lower mantle. Speculation is they might have formed because of a collision with an object and the earth, more than 4,000,000,000 years ago. Did the earth and the moon collide or perhaps Mars and Earth? We don’t know enough yet to figure this out. Something strange has happened to the weather in the Russian city of Sochi. When it snows, we expect to see white flakes falling from the sky and so did the people of that city but this is not what happened. The snow was orange colored. In case you are wondering how scientists would ever explain this one, here is what they said, they believe sand and dust which had been kicked up by storms in Africa had been picked up by the snowstorm because it was in the atmosphere. The orange snow also fell in other places like Bulgaria, Romania, the Ukraine and a couple of other countries. Some photos which were taken from the International Space Station of the earth show areas which are having problems. For example, when photos are taken of most countries at night there are plenty of lights, but there is at least one stark exception to this, and that is the country of North Korea which shows hardly any lights at all at night. The space station has been able to take pictures of huge storms forming on the earth. This has given us a chance to witness firsthand nature’s fury. Sometimes disasters happen on our planet that we don’t hear about. Such was a disaster that happened in 2015 when in a period of only four days, 60,000 antelope dropped dead and no one knew why. Not only that, large die offs of the creature have happen before such as one in 2014 which killed another 12,000. Because of the condition of the land where these animals grazed in, it made it very hard for veterinarians to get there and by the time they did the animals had deteriorated so much there was no longer any way to tell what killed them. The antelope were a type known as Saigas Antelope. For some reason the female antelope were hit harder than the male antelope. As hard as it is to believe, in 1988 it is said 400,000 of this type of antelope died. One has to wonder how many exist in the world. Scientists think when the earth first formed it was a dry Rocky body. So where did all the water come from? They believe bombardments of meteorites began about 4,000,000,000 years ago and some of them included icy asteroids. The scientists think that during this period earth got most of its water. This time has been called Late Heavy Bombardment. Most of this is theory however since trying to find evidence of this is almost impossible. Another problem scientists face is where did all the oxygen on earth come from? They believe they have solved this question. They say the oxygen comes from cyanobactera. They claim these tiny creatures transformed the earth’s atmosphere over time. While I am on this subject, it was suggested we could terraform Mars in the same way and eventually get it a much more earth like atmosphere. There is something strange however which is much harder to explain and that is by checking rocks we have found the oxygen level varied over 3,000,000,000 years then about 541,000,000 years ago it leveled off, why? When we talk about mysterious Exoplanets, those planets which have been discovered orbiting other solar systems we often cite the fact there is mysterious things about them, but we failed to mention the fact earth has its own mysteries. One of those mysteries involves what is known as the Cambrian period in earth’s past. This is the period of time where life exploded onto the earth. Scientists would like to know why suddenly we had this diversification of life appear. Some credit the fact to sufficient oxygen but others say it had to be a lot more than that. They give credit to the temperature in shallow ponds and streams and while this may have also contributed, it certainly didn’t explain what went on and why. This is one of the mysteries which we will have to continue to work on. Another mystery concerns plate tectonics. When and why did they form? They compose several plates on the earth’s crust and are constantly in motion. This means what the surface of the earth looks like today, continent wise, will not look the same in the future and didn’t look the same in the past. Of course, the more time we let pass, the bigger the change. So far scientists have not been able to find evidence showing how these plates formed. When we talk about the dinosaurs being wiped out, it is usually blamed on an impact when an asteroid was said to hit the earth causing everything to go dark and the death of plants and animals which were the food source for the dinosaurs and this eventually killed them. Not every scientist accepts this theory however and some say they have found evidence of microbes in fossilized dung that could have been the culprits. There is also a theory stating volcanic eruptions was so prevalent they blocked out the sun for many years causing the same affect the asteroid collision would’ve caused. There are a group of holes in Siberia which have been called craters. This in itself is not very mysterious, but what is mysterious is the fact more of them keep forming. They were discovered in 2014. The original holes keep getting larger and more holes keep appearing. One suggestion was made this was being caused by melting permafrost, but not enough evidence has been found to prove this theory true. I think I’ve shown that we don’t have to scour space to find mysteries on other worlds, we can do that right here there are plenty of mysteries on the earth to go around. I have only mentioned a few of them and notice I didn’t talk about the Bermuda Triangle.
|
