“Primitive peoples knew that the Earth was alive!
She has consciousness. They knew they could talk to her
and she talks to you. They knew that if you honor her,
she will honor you in return...
and that you will never take back more than you gave.
The earth is an entity, vibrating and alive...”
Kryon
Gaia theory (Gaia theory; from Gaia, the ancient Greek goddess of the Earth) is a theory based on the hypothesis of the interaction of living matter with its environment. Our planet Earth has a “mind” connected with the rest of the “living” planets.
The author of the biosphere “Gaia theory” is British ecologist James Lovelock ( James Ephraim Lovelock, 1919) argues that the Earth, striving for self-preservation, can destroy humanity, which has a negative impact on nature.
Topics discussed in Notes on Life:
Also, in addition to the degradation of the upper layers of the Earth’s shell, the entire planet is destroyed. We have significantly impacted precipitation (especially during the warmer months). For example, spraying silver oxide for heavy rains, distorting the Earth's electromagnetic field with an artificial field, etc.
The fact that the Earth is deliberately changing the climate to cause human extinction is doubtful... The fact that humanity will become extinct without the help of nature, the Earth, Gaia is a fact... We are not at all the kings of nature, we are unreasonable creatures destroying the ecology of the planet.
P.S. If there were no people, the Earth would be a luxurious planet!
November 11th, 2016
I read everything from beginning to end))) Little can be said about the article itself except that it is an unfounded self-deception not confirmed by anything... a desire to give out something revolutionary, without having the slightest reason for it.. At the same time, without having even basic school knowledge, on the basis of which a bunch of contradictions are even visible..
As for the comments, I expected to see at least a little constructive, well-founded criticism, but!!)))))) They turned out to be almost more delusional than the article itself))) starting from the first, where the allegedly changeable weather in the past is argued against global warming, advice to him: please read at least once, methods for calculating the average annual temperature of the planet.. or just type global warming into the wiki.. your conclusion was made on ignorance of the methods on the basis of which the conclusion about climate warming was made..
About the next one... more delusional than what was said that due to the fact that planes stopped flying for 3 days, which is why the average temperature increased by 2 degrees... I’m unlikely to hear anything more delusional in my life))))))) if only because all complex processes have second-order feedback... but it won’t come to that, since this is obvious self-deception, clear even to a stupid... about I’m also silent about the rest...
About the third room. I’m also silent.. In our global world, such a conspiracy theory is excluded, especially with the globalization of science, scientific consensus, etc.. 95% of scientists are confident in warming...
About com. Alexandra about the formation of planets and stars about!! Electricity is responsible for global warming.. well, excuse me.. besides the word warming itself, knowing what letters it is written in, do you know anything else about it?? The totality of your reasons is also essentially meaningless, especially the approach of the Earth to the Sun, the increase in the density of the atmosphere... where did you get such nonsense about density? Do you know the true causes of warming, and most importantly the mechanisms that are responsible for it?)) Or are you consciously promoting some of your own pseudoscientific directions... scientists have long ago determined everything, but you come up with something of your own, at least for a second think about something What you write does not even agree with what was proven a long time ago. The author also proposes to fight with reasons he himself invented)) if he had also said using geoengineering methods, I would have died of laughter)))))))
To those who talk about some kind of superpowers that they might have had in the past, about the mind in five-dimensional space, I urgently ask you to please go to school and complete at least the initial course))) and sit down every time to come up with ideas. And just invent! (Applies to everything that is written here) everyone can. Well, if you also believe... there is also no technological path of development or any other. Technology is just a tool for the survival of the species, not a path.
Another stupid lump that deserves attention (the others do not, because they are at the level of fairy tales or the knowledge of a five-year-old) is a ghoul666, who, in the form of waste that we can never recycle, produces radioactive waste, which, by the way, has a decay period, and, most importantly , do not pose even a 1% threat compared to CO2 emissions. And since when are GMOs a waste?)))))))) By the way, all independent groups of scientists have proven the safety of GMOs, because this is the same selection, only in a different accelerated way. The only truth said by this man is that the shell of the Earth is degrading)) It looks extremely funny that we have changed, significantly affected precipitation (as a result of global warming, yes, a change in the albedo of the reflective surface, which is why the heating of the surface is why the increase convective processes, yes, emissions of huge amounts of particles and dust, yes, plowing, over-weeding, destruction of vegetation in arid regions, which disrupts the metabolic balance, yes) but call the spraying of silver oxide the reason))))))))))) ))) the second reason is funnier than the other..
People with such intelligence and the belief that the cause of our troubles is that you write in comas, this is the first step towards the fact that kerdyk will come to us))) because this is a direct escape from real problems into self-deception and imaginary problems)))
Also, based on such comas and people, one can judge the extremely low level of education in our society... technology has provided opportunities, but it does not provide knowledge if you do not want to receive, accept, analyze and, most importantly, understand this knowledge.
Advice to everyone who wrote comas, at least 95% of them, I ask you to finish at least the school curriculum up to the 9th grade again in order to learn at least a little about the world and how everything around works)) Otherwise, the level of education has dropped so much, that there is nowhere else to degrade.. If those who compile statistics on the level of human potential read everything that is written here, our country could be ranked lower in terms of education than Africa))))) Well, really, at least someone would write one sentence , which has a scientific basis))))))
Dmitry: Why didn’t you write?
November 12th, 2016
For everyone who will read about the “Gaia hypothesis” and comments, we strongly request that you follow the links and read the real scientific article with real confirmed ideas and knowledge about the biosphere, and about the Gaea theory. This comprehensive scientific article will dot the i’s and reveal (show) the real problems facing humanity.) And not the self-deception that is in the comas here. Those who want to think will find the path to truth in the forest of deception...
>> elementy.ru/nauchno-populyarnaya_biblioteka/431019/Traektoriya_ekologicheskoy_mysli_Na_puti_k_sovremennomu_ponimaniyu_biosfery
January 22nd, 2017
The most despotic and cruel animal on Earth is man. He acts solely in his own selfish interests. Until the age of 16, a person is socialized and educated, but not everyone can be recognized as civilized. The rest of the animal world is much more decent. They form an equilibrium biocenosis and thus coexist. Moreover, they are sensitive to each other, communicating through subtle signals and fields. Through the same fields, animals hear the voice of nature, so they have time to hide or run away (if there is somewhere) from cataclysms. Some people also have a developed contact with nature, and thanks to this they can hear overtones (high-pitched sound signals traveling at supersonic speeds), understand their meaning and respond to nature's warnings.
The literature describes facts about how animals warn not only about natural dangers, but also about the danger posed by intruders. Animals understand people's plans! The bull's tears flow when they come to examine him before slaughter!
The whole danger comes from a cruel person (“personality”!!!) with an overdeveloped grasping instinct (incapable of mutual assistance), with national pride (and not professional!), with religious fanaticism (and not labor!), with arrogance (and not conscience). Such “personalities” are driven only by the thirst for pleasure - they destroy everyone and everything in their path. The earth trembles from their bombs and groans from the corpses of innocent people.
Let us remember the reasons for the death of the once successful Roman Empire. The elite and the people imitating it got so greedy that they wanted nothing more than “bread and circuses.” So they degenerated. And their empire is no more. Let's take a look at what is happening around us: enterprises are disappearing one after another, and shopping and entertainment complexes are growing by leaps and bounds. Doesn't this remind you of the history of the Roman Empire?! So who is behind the scenes, luring people onto the path of destruction?
To frighten a mass of people with horror stories about a living Earth that will deal a mortal blow to justice for humanity is inhumane. The earth, like all natural systems, exists according to the laws of harmony. This was proven by all the founders of physics and mathematics. The earth is not capable of meanness, of destruction. Therefore, there is no need to transfer the blame for the possible death of civilization from the sick head of the snickering elite to the healthy “head” of nature. It is necessary to reboot the capitalist (so-called liberal) economy into a socially oriented one - into consolidarism!
The Age of the Solar System and the Gaia Hypothesis Most people are aware of the unique characteristics of the Earth that make life on our planet possible. Such characteristics include the chemical composition of the planet and its atmosphere, the tilt of the Earth's axis, its relationship with the Moon, the trajectory of the Earth's orbit, and the distance to the Sun. It is known that the Sun is controlled by a thermonuclear reaction - a source of energy sufficient for the Sun to shine for a very, very long time. Calculations show that it will be enough to maintain the current brightness of the Sun for about ten billion years. Most stars are also thought to be driven by similar nuclear reactions. This state of affairs is called the main sequence, a period of stability that corresponds to most of a star's long life. Let's assume that the Sun has been a main sequence star since its formation, which is about 4.6 billion years ago. This period represents almost half of the expected life of the Sun; Thus, the Sun has currently used up about half of its energy reserve. This means that approximately half of the hydrogen in its core has been replaced by helium. A change in the chemical composition leads to a change in the structure of the nucleus. The overall structure of the Sun must also have changed, so that today the Sun should shine about 40% brighter than it did 4.6 billion years ago. This would inevitably affect the temperature of the planets. It is generally accepted that even the smallest deviations in the brightness of the Sun will lead to tragic consequences for the earth's climate. A 40% change in the Sun's brightness would thus result in a climate change comparable in scale to the current differences between Venus, Mars and Earth. According to the theory of evolution, about four billion years ago, when life on Earth is thought to have just begun, the planet's temperature was close to today's. But, in this case, the subsequent increase in the brightness of the Sun should have led to such heat that life on Earth would have become impossible. One can naively assume that initially it was much cooler on Earth, but over time it became warmer. But this is impossible. Geologists note that, according to rock studies, the average temperature of the Earth has not changed much over the past four billion years; and biologists argue that the development and evolution of life requires a roughly constant average temperature. This problem is called the “young weak Sun” paradox. The implausibility of such a process prompted Lovelock to put forward the Gaia hypothesis. According to it, the biosphere (consisting of the earth's oceans, atmosphere, crust and all living beings) is a kind of superorganism resulting from evolution. The atmosphere changed to protect developing life from the threat of the Sun's increasing brightness. Lovelock's hypothesis has not gained universal acceptance, mainly due to the fact that it is based on a spiritual principle. In fact, it does not lead to a mystical view of the world at all. The physical principles on which the young weak Sun paradox is based are solid and immutable, so astronomers are confident in the reality of this effect. Consequently, evolutionists are faced with a choice between two possible explanations for how the Earth developed an almost constant temperature instead of a steadily increasing influx of energy. One of these explanations invites us to believe that, through random changes, the atmosphere evolved to resist warming. At best, this means that the atmosphere has passed through a number of states of unstable equilibrium or even disequilibrium. Something similar happens to living organisms under the influence of complex regulatory systems encoded in DNA. Death is a process in which complex biochemical reactions cease and cells quickly reach chemical equilibrium. For the atmosphere, such a process is unthinkable - if we exclude the participation of intelligent design. Any kind of symbiosis or feedback with the Sun is completely excluded. The second explanation suggests that some vital forces carried the atmosphere through this test in an evolutionary way. Most scientists cannot even think of expressing aloud the teleological or spiritual conclusions that may follow from this; however, in physics there is a corresponding direction. Of course, there is a third way. Perhaps the Earth-Sun system is not billions of years old at all, and there was no 40% increase in solar brightness. If the Earth was created recently, if intelligent design created its atmosphere as it is now, if the brightness of the Sun did not change significantly, then the paradox of a young weak Sun can be considered resolved. Although this paradox does not indicate that the solar system is only a few thousand years old, it clearly implies that it is much less than tens of millions of centuries old. Wonders of Symbiosis In one of his “Essays on an Observational Biologist,” Professor Lewis Thomas, a major American biologist and popularizer of science, talks about an amazing microscopic creature that is the support of a large and complex organized world. This world is an Australian termite mound, the habitat of that special order of insects that build huge, up to fifteen meters high, cone-shaped nests in tropical forests. They build them from wood, which they greedily devour, destroying the surrounding forest. More precisely, wood is only the starting material for construction; Somewhere in the digestive tract of a small termite, the eaten cellulose is converted into hydrocarbons necessary for the life of the termite, and the waste is transformed into tiny, geometrically regular and amazingly hard cakes of lignin, from which, in fact, the endless walls, arches and vaults of the intricate labyrinth of the termite mound are erected. This construction activity of termites seems amazing in itself and cannot but arouse admiration. Looking at a huge termite mound cone, it is almost impossible to convince yourself that it is all built from tiny cakes ejected from millions of microscopic ventricles, which continuously, day after day, tirelessly, process cellulose into lignin. It is also difficult, perhaps, when looking at some New York skyscraper, to convince yourself that it is built from separate modules, so solid and huge does this giant seem, literally cast entirely and at once. But let's try to look even further into this well-organized world of small creatures. Let's imagine an individual termite - an insect several millimeters in size; then we will mentally enlarge it so that its microscopic digestive tract becomes visible to us; Let's enlarge it in our imagination, and then search it with our eyes. We will see tens and hundreds of even more tiny creatures living in these depths and energetically and busily busy with something there. Let’s mentally zoom in on one of them and also enlarge it to see it in all its details. In biology, this creature is called myxotrichus. It is so well studied that quite a lot can be said about it. At first glance, it appears to be an ordinary simple (single-celled) organism, distinguished only by its very fast and purposeful movements from place to place. The speed of this zigzag movement of the myxotrichus in the depths of the termite’s digestive tract makes it similar to a water spider rapidly sliding along the surface of the water. Taking a closer look, however, you can see that myxotrichus does not rush anywhere, but only to those places where pieces of wood swallowed by termites float. Here it becomes clear what this active being is actually doing. It turns out that it swallows these pieces of wood, already ground and thoroughly chewed by the jaws of the termite. And biologists today already know that it swallows them in order to add to them somewhere in ITS depths those enzymes that actually decompose wood cellulose into digestible hydrocarbons and lignin expelled by the termite. In other words, it is not the termite itself, but dozens and hundreds of these microscopic creatures living in its digestive tract that carry out that most complex biochemical process that underlies all termite life and the entire termite community. Without these tiny mixotrichs, there would be no huge termite mound with its walls, arches and vaults, nor those “mushroom farms” that cultivate termites in the forest, nor the processing of rotten wood of this forest into fertile humus, which is used by the mushrooms growing on the “farms”, nor, ultimately, the termites themselves. Therefore, the initial statement of our story was highly justified: myxotrichs really are the support of this entire large and complexly organized termite world. However, the most amazing thing is yet to come. Mentally bringing one of the microscopic myxotrichs closer to our eyes and enlarging it sufficiently, we will discover (in reality this can only be seen with the help of an electron microscope) that those graceful cilia that protrude from its sides are like oars on some galley, and so surprisingly coordinated, in tact, they rise and fall, giving the myxotrichus its rapid movement in the digestive tract of the termite, in fact, they are not its cilia at all, but completely separate creatures of even smaller size; These creatures - more precisely, cells - belong to the family of so-called spirochetes, that is, microorganisms that have the shape of winding movable flagella. Pathogenic species of spirochetes cause syphilis, relapsing fever and some other diseases, but in this case we have completely harmless representatives of this family, and their whole life goal is only to join the huge (for them) myxotrichus and take advantage of a tiny portion of those nutrients hydrocarbons that it produces with the help of its enzymes. In turn, these spirochetes, which cover the entire surface of the myxotrichus at ideally equal intervals, as we have seen, help it move in search of undigested wood. But that's not all. Having carefully examined the entire field of this seething, tireless activity going on in the digestive tract of the termite, we will see its other participants. Close to the spirochetes, on the surface of the myxotrichus there are some oval bodies, and between the flagella of the spirochetes themselves there are many of the same form of microcreatures of the same tiny - in comparison even with the myxotrichus - sizes. All of these are bacteria that also live in symbiosis, that is, in mutual cooperation with myxotricha and spirochetes, and supply into the “common pot” some of the enzymes that are needed for the processing of cellulose into hydrocarbons and lignin. Lewis Thomas concludes his story with the words: “This entire symbiotic ecosystem, stuck in an evolutionary dead end, provides a clear model of how our cells came to be.” Then he mentions the name Lynn Margulis, and from this point I can pick up the thread of the story myself and continue it in the intended direction. Some colleagues consider Lynn Margulis one of the greatest biologists of our century. Others categorically disagree with this and consider her a fanatic of dubious ideas, proclaimed with annoying arrogance and contempt for opponents. Lynn Margulis herself, now a professor of biology at Amherst University, talks about herself and her ideas like this: “I do evolutionary biology, but the object of my research is single-celled organisms and microorganisms. Biologists such as Richard Dawkins, John Maynard Smith, George Williams, Stephen Jay Gould and many others are zoologists, animal scientists, which in my opinion means that they are studying a problem that became irrelevant about three billion years ago. . They study organisms that arose on Earth some 500 million years ago. This is about the same as studying the history of mankind starting only from 1800. After all, life on our planet has existed for almost four billion years! Until the sixties of our century, all researchers systematically ignored this fundamental fact of evolution for the simple reason that, due to their ignorance, they could not explain it. Based on countless observations and experiments, it is known that evolution is based on natural selection, selecting from among all the varieties of a given organism those that, as a result of mutations, have acquired some properties promoting survival. It is not known where these beneficial properties come from. This question has not yet had a sufficiently clear answer. I argue that we owe the most important of these properties to the connections between organisms, to the phenomenon that the Russian researcher Konstantin Merezhkovsky once called “symbiogenesis.” By symbiogenesis I mean the incorporation of genetic material of microorganisms into the hereditary cells of plants or animals. The resulting new genetic systems - hybrids of bacterial and plant, or bacterial and animal cells - are something truly new, fundamentally different from the original cells that did not contain symbiont materials. More and more complex biological systems are gradually formed from such “chimeras”. I do not believe that such new systems, new biological species, can arise on the basis of random mutations alone.” Symbiosis, Lynn Margulis further says, is the physical union of different organisms, their living together in the same space and time. But true symbiosis has nothing to do with its banal understanding as “cooperation” based only on the balance of benefits and costs. Biological symbiosis cannot be compared to simple mutually beneficial cooperation between people or companies. This “economic” approach is only suitable for explaining and understanding modern symbiotic systems, which, as a rule, represent a system of several mechanically coexisting organisms, stuck halfway through evolution and no longer developing further. True symbiosis, says Lynn Margulis, is that as a result of long-term coexistence, it has always led to the organic “fusion” of heterogeneous organisms into a new whole and in this sense has always been, according to Margulis, the main factor in evolutionary renewal. This view of symbiosis may seem - and indeed seems to many biologists - extreme. Margulis herself came to him on the basis of several biological facts. Margulis drew attention to the fact that the simplest organism Paramecium aurelia has a so-called “killer” gene, the inheritance of which occurs according to different rules than the inheritance of chromosomal genes. It turned out that this gene is not contained in the cell nucleus of Paramecium, but in its cytoplasm surrounding this nucleus. Quite a lot of such cytoplasmic genes have already been discovered in protozoa. Not long ago, two American researchers, David Luck and John Hall, announced that they had found them even in the cells of rather complex algae. All these facts have prompted some scientists to put forward cautious guesses, according to which these extranuclear genes are residual genetic material of some viruses or bacteria that accidentally entered the cell and “stuck” in it. Margulis threw caution to the wind and put forward a radically bold hypothesis, claiming that all such “genes” are in fact part of separate (and very ancient) living organisms, living to this day inside cells of higher complexity in symbiotic coexistence with them. In 1966, she wrote an article outlining these ideas. It stated that complex cells arose from simpler ones through symbiosis and the combination of their substance and genetic material, that is, through symbiogenesis. The paper was rejected by fifteen scientific journals as "not suitable for publication" before being accepted by the Journal of Theoretical Biology. Margulis received 800 (!) requests from biologists interested in her ideas, but at the Department of Biology at Boston University, where she was then listed as an assistant, her success was perceived very nervously. Ten years later, when she had accumulated so much new material that the article had grown into a book, she offered the manuscript to the Academic Press publishing house and faced another refusal. It took another four years before Yale University Press decided to publish the book (The Origin of Eukaryotic Cells). It went through three more editions in subsequent years and is today considered a classic text. More than thirty years have passed, but the hypothesis of symbiogenesis, put forward and developed by Lynn Margulis, has received, if not universal, then at least very wide recognition. Discoveries that confirm the Gaia theory This was mainly due to new discoveries that confirmed its correctness. First of all, here we should note the studies of so-called chloroplasts in plant cells and mitochondria in animal cells. These extrachromosomal genes are also transmitted from a cell to its descendants according to special rules that differ in many respects from the rules for the transmission of nuclear or chromosomal genes. Thus, mitochondrial genes in complex organisms (for example, humans) are transmitted only through the maternal line. (And this is why the common ancestor of modern humans, discovered due to the similarity of their mitochondrial genes, was called “mitochondrial Eve.”) The main feature of these two organelles, apart from the presence of their own genes, is that they perform functions that are essential for the life of cells functions. Chloroplasts, with their chlorophyll, carry out the process of photosynthesis, so characteristic of plant cells and providing them with organic materials for growth. Mitochondria, which have ATP synthesis enzymes in their membranes, carry out the process of creating ATP molecules, which are accumulators of chemical energy for the cell as a whole, allowing it, in particular, to move in search of food much more energetically than protozoa, lacking mitochondria, are able to move. These features strongly suggest that eukaryotic cells in general have at least two genetic lineages, originating from at least two parents. Billions of years ago, these organelles were separate living simple organisms. Then, at some stage of evolution, they united their fate with the fate of some other similar simplest cells, entering into close symbiosis with them, and as a result of millions of years of such symbiosis, they formed the current eukaryotes. It is possible that even the main distinctive characteristic of these eukaryotes - the presence of a cell nucleus with its membrane separating this nucleus from the surrounding cytoplasm with its organelles - also arose due to or as a result of symbiosis: the appearance of the membrane could be an evolutionary step intended to protect “one’s own” genetic material from the genes of the “symbiont”. “For almost a billion years in a row,” writes Margulis, “the only forms of life existing on Earth were the so-called prokaryotes - the simplest single-celled organisms, like bacteria and blue-green algae, lacking a nucleus. They are still the dominant forms of life on our planet today - because there are monstrously many of them. However, taken separately, they are not very interesting and not very complex. They existed throughout this first billion years without changes. True evolution began with the emergence of eukaryotes. And this decisive step in evolution was caused precisely by the symbiosis of different types of prokaryotes.” Today, thanks to the work of Margulis, we know quite well how this happened. A remarkable proof of the correctness of all these ideas is the recently revealed structure of the chloroplast membrane in one of the types of plant cells: this membrane turned out to be not two-layer, like all ordinary cell membranes, but four-layer, as one would expect for a two-layer membrane of a former bacterium, enveloped in a two-layer cell membrane, which once “swallowed” this bacterium. Today it is already difficult to reproduce the first stages of this symbiotic evolution, but they were undoubtedly full of real drama. Some bacteria invaded the cytoplasm of others, causing devastation, disease and often the death of host cells along the way. At first, the coexistence of the victim and the aggressor resembled more of a life-or-death struggle. Only those few organisms that, by luck, survived during this war, managed to give rise to true symbionts - hybrid cells, inside of which former enemies, tired of multi-million-year-old squabbles, now coexisted peacefully side by side. Symbiogenesis, therefore, in its first stages was more like the invasion of any organism by foreign pathogens. He was such an invasion, only with a super-favorable outcome. Some biologists are convinced that ancient viruses lie dormant in the cells of our body, having taken refuge there from the storms and vicissitudes of the previous struggle with these same cells. Perhaps the genetic material of such viruses has become part of our DNA. Perhaps the amazing ability of so-called retroviruses (like the AIDS virus) to insert their genes into our DNA is a remnant of a once-existing and broken symbiosis. “Negative symbiosis” with pathogens also knows not such miracles. Since the early nineties, when the technology of microvideo filming the processes of interaction between cells and invading microbes and bacteria began to develop, many details of these processes became visible, and these details forced specialists to come to the conclusion that “it takes two to tango,” or, as the This is in professional language, Dr. Julia Theorio from the Institute of Biomedical Research in Cambridge, “in almost all cases of such infectious invasion, the damage it causes to the body is, to a certain extent, also the “fault” of the body itself: the damage is caused not only by the pathogen itself, but also by the provoked it is an erroneous reaction of the cell to its invasion.” Today we can distinguish several levels of such “involuntary”, if you like - symbiotic, “help” that the cell provides to the aggressor. At the simplest level, this is demonstrated by, for example, staphylococci. Some of their types are secreted as substances useful to the cell, and the cell “opens” its receptors to them. In more sophisticated cases of such “negative symbiosis”, the pathogen itself “sits” on the receptors - this is what Vibrio cholerae does, using this convenient position to release its toxins into the cell. In even more insidious cases of “cooperation”, true miracles of symbiosis occur. The protozoan E. coli, Escherichia coli, which causes the aforementioned (sometimes fatal) diarrhea, demonstrates one such miracle. First, it tricks the intestinal cell into shedding its outer hairs so that bacteria can more easily settle on its surface. And after that, it provokes the same unfortunate creature to create a protrusion in the membrane for it, a kind of “pedestal”, on which the bacterium is inaccessible to cellular defenses. However, the highest degree of intimacy is demonstrated, of course, by those pathogens that penetrate inside the cell. It turns out that not only the notorious AIDS virus can do this. Many common pathogenic bacteria are endowed with this ability. They implement it by sending a special chemical signal about their presence, which plays the role of a kind of Trojan horse - in response to this signal, the cell protrudes its membrane towards the approaching bacterium, envelops it and draws it into itself. Once inside the cell, the bacterium immediately secretes its enzymes, which perforate the cell membrane and allow the bacterium to enter the cytoplasm, where it often becomes a permanent “guest”, forming a protective vacuole around itself. In many cases, such bacteria use this vacuole as a means of moving on to a new stage of infection. They begin to move directly from cell to cell, thus bypassing the body's defense systems. Perhaps those distant initial stages of ancient symbiogenesis, which ultimately led to the emergence of the first eukaryotes, also looked like grueling battles in which symbiont opponents resorted to such sophisticated military stratagems, endlessly changing their strategy and taking advantage of each other’s unwitting services. Who knows... We can only say that the invisible wonders of symbiosis, both fruitful and negative, truly surround us on all sides and constitute one of the indispensable foundations of life - and perhaps some kind of universal essence. As the same Lewis Thomas, with whose story about Mixotrichus I began this article, said, “perhaps if we understood this essence, this underlying life tendency towards the unification and cooperation of cells, which ultimately gave rise to roses, dolphins and ourselves, we would understand that the same tendency encourages organisms to unite into groups, groups of organisms into ecological systems, and all these systems into a single biosphere. And then all our protective immune reactions and reflex responses to the aggression of the “alien” would turn out to be only means of regulating and modulating this great and universal process of symbiosis, intended not to completely stop it, but only to prevent it from getting out of control.” . Developing this point of view, we will sooner or later come to that majestic picture of the biosphere that once inspired Vernadsky, and today culminated in the so-called Gaia hypothesis, developed by James Lovelock, who argues that symbiosis (understood in the broadest sense - as self-organization based on cooperation and interaction) exists not only at the level of bodily cells and bacteria, but also at the level of such complex systems as the atmosphere, soil and even our Earth as a whole. The Gaia hypothesis says that even such planetary parameters, such as temperature and the chemical composition of the atmosphere, are the result of the joint activity of all living organisms on the planet. Lovelock, in essence, argues that the entire Earth is one huge organism. It would be more accurate to call it a single ecological system, which consists of a huge number of symbiotically interacting smaller ecosystems and, thanks to this, is capable to a large extent of “healing” its wounds and regulating its deviations from equilibrium. The ancient Greeks called the goddess of the Earth Gaia. The Gaia hypothesis, if it were true, would be the highest, ultimate miracle of symbiosis - unless, following the American astronomer Leo Smolin, we recognize the entire Universe as “alive”. This hypothesis is widely discussed, but accepted by very few. Lewis Thomas and Lynn Margulies belong to this minority, inspired by a grand vision. References Vernadsky V.I. “Scientific thought as a planetary phenomenon”, M. - 1989. Vernadsky V.I. “The beginning and eternity of life”, M. – 1989. 1. Life and Earth constitute a single superorganism http://kokshetau.online.kz/ ot/black.htm Four dimensions of deep ecology. http://baltchild.org.ru/rus/mater/dpecol.htm
The Earth is sick with a fever that could cause temperatures to rise by 8 degrees Celsius, rendering much of its surface uninhabitable and putting billions of lives at risk, a controversial climate scientist said on Tuesday. James Lovelock, who outraged climate scientists with his living planet theory - Gaia theory- and then, together with environmentalists, spoke out against nuclear energy, saying that the wounded Earth could support less than a tenth of the current 6 billion population. We are not all doomed. A terrifying number of people will die, but the species will not become extinct, he told a press conference.
- However, the hot Earth can support no more than 500 million people. Almost every system we know has positive feedback, and the effects of this will soon surpass any effects caused by industrial carbon dioxide emissions and other similar phenomena around the world.
Scientists say global warming, driven by carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels in energy and transport, could lead to a 6-degree Celsius rise in temperatures by the end of the century. This will cause floods, famine and powerful hurricanes. However, experts also say that if strict measures are taken to limit carbon dioxide emissions now, it could stop the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, leaving the level at 450 parts per million. In this case, the temperature will rise by only 2 degrees compared to the pre-industrial era and the planet will be saved. Lovelock said an 8-degree increase in temperature is already a foregone conclusion. While attempts to curb this phenomenon are morally worthy, they are ultimately futile. This can be compared to a situation where your kidneys fail and you resort to an artificial kidney. Who will refuse if the alternative is death.
What is happening should be discussed in exactly this way, the scientist believes. But we must remember that everything that is done only gives us a reprieve. The problem remains, he adds. In the 1960s, Lovelock named after the ancient Greek goddess of the Earth Gaia (Gaia), a revolutionary theory for its time that the earth functions as a single self-sustaining organism. Today his “Gaia theory” is widely accepted. At a lecture on environmental issues he gave in London at the Institute of Chemical Engineering, Lovelock said that the planet had experienced severe climate change at least seven times. During the changes after the last ice age, a surface area of land equal to the area of the African continent disappeared under water, he said. - In this century we are faced with events no less serious, or even worse. There are shelters, and there are many of them. 55 million years ago, life moved to the Arctic, where it remained for a long time, and when the situation began to improve, it returned. I'm afraid that's what we'll have to do,” he added.
Lovelock said that the United States, which refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol and reduce carbon dioxide emissions, was in vain counting on a technical solution to the problem, while China and India, experiencing economic growth, could not be controlled. China is building a new coal-fired power plant every week, fueled by rampant demand. The same thing is happening in India. If these countries decide to slow down development that produces carbon emissions but lifts billions of people out of poverty, a revolution will occur. And if the current situation continues, then rising CO2 emissions and rising temperatures will lead to the death of plants and cause famine, the scientist explains. If climate change continues, I am inclined to believe that by mid-century China will not be able to produce enough food to feed its people. The Chinese will have to move somewhere, and Siberia is sparsely populated, and by the indicated time it will become warmer there.
Assumptions about the Earth as an integral living system began to arise in scientific circles back in the 18th-19th centuries. But this concept acquired more or less clear contours only in the 70s of the last century. Its developer was the British chemist James Lovelock, and the doctrine itself became known as the Gaia theory.
J. Lovelock is not just a chemist, but also a practical engineer, researcher and inventor. For some time he worked in the United States at the space agency (NASA). He created and patented a number of instruments, mainly for studying processes in the atmosphere. A number of his theoretical assumptions were confirmed in practice over time. For example, at one time it was believed that sulfur washed into the ocean returns from the ocean to the atmosphere and land in the form of hydrogen sulfide. J. Lovelock suggested that this was not the case, and in 1971 he organized studies in which he proved that the return occurs due to another compound - dimethyl sulfide. In a word, few people question the authority of J. Lovelock as a scientist.
A good name for creative research is already half the success. This approach, perhaps, played a significant role in the popularization of this theory. J. Lovelock heeded the advice of the writer L. Golding and named his teaching in honor of the ancient Greek goddess of the Earth - Gaia. Although the author of the theory himself admits that in an emotional, and even religious context, Gaia is more likely associated with the image of the Virgin Mary. The Gaia theory is more of a hypothesis, since it is impossible to completely prove or refute it due to the extreme complexity of the very phenomenon of life on the planet.
Based on the Gaia theory, planet Earth is an integral organism. All living beings on the planet are closely connected not only with each other, but also with objects of inanimate nature, as a result of which a self-developing, inseparable and self-regulating system is formed, which in its properties resembles the physiological system of a living organism. The various ecosystems of the planet seem to represent the organs of this huge body, and the structure itself has a clear hierarchy: cells - organs - organisms - ecosystems - biosphere, which simultaneously penetrate into the air, water, soil. But since the bulk of this body still consists of inorganic substances, the image of this superorganism is similar, according to J. Lovelock, to a tree trunk: life on the planet is a very thin layer of green cambium under the bark, and its bulk is non-living wood , which is largely generated by this thin film of life. The development of such an approach to the interaction of living and nonliving matter led to the emergence of a new direction in science - geophysiology. The totality of living organisms, according to Russian researcher A. B. Kazansky, seems to adjust global environmental indicators to suit itself. J. Lovelock himself describes this picture as follows: “Thanks to the incessant activity of living organisms, conditions on the planet have been maintained in a state favorable to life over the past 3.6 billion years. Any species that adversely affects the environment, making it less suitable for posterity, will eventually be driven out..."
The high level of self-organization of Gaia makes it possible to maintain a number of its parameters in a relatively stable state, i.e., self-regulation, which is also characteristic of individual living beings. For example, warm-blooded organisms, including humans, are able to maintain a constant body temperature, unless, of course, external temperatures exceed critical values. But in the event of some internal changes, the same diseases, the body’s temperature can change and increase. Therefore, the temperature of the entire planet is relatively stable, despite the fact that solar activity may vary. However, internal processes on Earth are much more significant factors in changing the same temperature if something starts to go wrong in a giant superorganism.
The theory of Gaia has some similarities with the teachings of V.I. Vernadsky about the Biosphere. However, these two concepts have fundamental differences. Lovelock's Gaia is the planet Earth as a whole, and not just living matter, therefore in this theory the question of the spatial boundaries of the superorganism is not raised. Secondly, Lovelock’s theory categorically does not accept the idea of human control of the planet, as expressed in V.I. Vernadsky’s concept of the noosphere.
The Gaia theory has many critics. Thus, biologist P. Ward notes that many mass extinctions on the planet occurred for internal reasons, which implies that the ability for reasonable self-regulation is at least exaggerated. According to another biologist R. Dobkins, the “egoism” of Darwin’s theory contradicts the “altruism” of Gaia’s self-regulation, and therefore evolution would be impossible. In addition, he notes that since the planet is not capable of reproducing, there is no natural selection among the planets. In general, many critics approach this theory with strict straightforwardness. On the other hand, some researchers point to the fact that the ideas expressed by J. Lovelock, in general, do not go beyond the scope of traditional geophysics, in which few people question the important role of living organisms. Therefore, in their opinion, there is nothing fundamentally new in the theory of Gaia.
J. Lovelock himself and his colleague biologist L. Margulis have recently increasingly insisted that the theory of Gaia is not of a purely scientific nature. Gaia as a superorganism is not a direct fact, but a metaphor. And the structure of life processes on the planet is so complex that traditional scientific analysis is unlikely to ever be able to give a clear answer to the question of what Gaia is. It is worth adding to this the fact that existentialist philosophers did a good job in the twentieth century and now the reliability of the scientific analysis itself can be questioned in many ways. Therefore, the doctrine of Gaia is more philosophical than strictly scientific. J. Lovelock continues to call his teaching a hypothesis and “the way of life of agnostics,” i.e. those who do not believe in the possibility of absolute knowledge of the world. At the same time, the image of Gaia as the goddess of the Earth gave this teaching an emotional, one might say aesthetic, coloring, which was picked up by many environmentally concerned people. But we cannot fail to mention the fact that certain dubious individuals often speculate on such hypotheses, wishful thinking. Therefore, the original theory of Gaia should be distinguished from various kinds of mystical, mythological, esoteric and other dubious layers.
Geophysiology provides the concept of planetary medicine. The author of the theory himself considers the most dangerous inventions of mankind for the health of Gaia to be the chain saw, the automobile and animal husbandry. It is these phenomena that cause Gaia’s “disease”. Based on the Gaia theory, concern only about humans as a special biological species, with the help of technological advances and with the simultaneous deterioration of the habitat for other species, will sooner or later boomerang back to humans. Imagining himself to be a god and seduced by the fruits of scientific and technological progress, man begins to fight Gaia, forgetting that he is just one of its components. Therefore, a person faces inevitable defeat, since this is a struggle against himself.
Why do we call our planet "Earth"?
In German, our planet is called Erde (from the ancient German Erda), in Icelandic - Jurdh, in Old English - Erthe, in Gothic - Airtha. If we move east and back into time, we find that in Aramaic it was called Ereds, or Aratha, in Kurdish - Erd, or Ertz, and in Hebrew - Eretz. The sea that we now call the Arabian was in ancient times called the Erythraean, and in the Persian language even today the word ordu means a camp or settlement. Why?
The answer can be found in the Sumerian texts, which tell of the arrival of the first Anunnaki/Nephilim on Earth. There were fifty of them, and they were led by Ea (“He whose house is water”), the great scientist and eldest son of ANU, the ruler of Nibiru. They splashed down in the Arabian Sea and headed to the border of the swamps, which, after climate warming, turned into the Persian Gulf (Fig. 32). On the edge of the swamps, they founded their first settlement on the new planet, giving it the most appropriate name - the name E.RI.DU, or “Far Home”.
Over time, the entire planet began to be called the same as the first settlement - Erde, Erthe, Earth. When we pronounce this name today, we awaken the memory of the first settlement on Earth; Without realizing it, we remember Eris and pay tribute to the first group of Anunnaki who founded it.
The Sumerians called the globe and its solid surface the word KI. The drawing of the Earth was a flattened ball (Fig. 33a), intersected by vertical lines, which is somewhat reminiscent of a modern globe with meridians depicted on it (Fig. 33b). Since the Earth is actually flattened at the poles, the Sumerian concept is scientifically more accurate than the modern image of the Earth as a regular sphere...
After Ea founded the first five or seven early Anunnaki settlements, he was given the title or (epithet) EN.KI, "Lord of the Earth." However, the term “ki” as a verb root was not applied to the planet Earth by accident. It meant “to cut off, separate, deepen.” This can be illustrated by derivatives: KI.LA is translated as "excavation", KI.MAX is a grave, "KI.INDAR" is a crack or crevice. In Sumerian texts on astronomy, the term "ki" had the determinative prefix MUL ("celestial body"). Thus, when talking about “mulki”, it meant “a celestial body that was split into pieces.”
By calling the Earth "ki", the Sumerians were referring to their cosmogony - the story of the celestial battle and the shattered planet Tiamat.
Unaware of its origins, we continue to use this descriptive epithet for our planet today. It is interesting to note that over time (the Sumerian civilization existed two thousand years before Babylon was built) the pronunciation of "ki" changed to "gi" and sometimes "ge". This word passed into the Akkadian language and its linguistic branches (Babylonian, Assyrian, Hebrew), at all times retaining its geographical or topographic meaning as a cleft, gorge, deep valley. Thus, the biblical name, which as a result of the Greek translation of the Bible reads as Gehenna, comes from the Hebrew “ge Hinnom” - this is the name of a narrow gorge in the vicinity of Jerusalem, which received its name from Hinnom - the place where sinners on the Day of Judgment will be overtaken by heavenly punishment in the form fire bursting out of the ground.
At school we were taught that the root "geo", present in all scientific terms, relates to the earth sciences - geography, geometry, geology and so on, comes from the name of the ancient Greek goddess of the earth, Gaia. We were not told where the Greeks got this name and what its true meaning was. The answer lies in the meaning of the Sumerian term "ki" or "gi".
Scientists are unanimous in the opinion that the Greek ideas about the creation of the world and the gods came from the Middle East through Asia Minor (where the easternmost Greek settlements were located, for example Troy) and through the island of Crete located in the eastern Mediterranean. According to Greek beliefs, Zeus, the most important of the twelve Olympian gods, arrived on the Greek mainland from Crete, where he fled after kidnapping Europa, the beautiful daughter of the Phoenician king Tyre. Aphrodite also came from the Middle East - from the island of Cyprus. Poseidon (the Romans called him Neptune) rode on a horse from Asia Minor, and Athena brought the olive from the biblical lands to the Greeks. There is no doubt that the Greek alphabet is of Middle Eastern origin (Fig. 34). Cyrus H. Gordon (“Forgotten Scripts: Evidence for the Minoan Language” and other works) deciphered the mysterious Cretan writings, showing that they belong to a group of Semitic, Middle Eastern languages. Along with the gods and terminology, myths and legends also came to the Greeks from the Middle East.
The first Greek works that dealt with ancient events and the relationship between gods and people were Homer’s Iliad, Pindar of Thebes’ Odes and Hesiod’s Theogony (that is, Genealogy of the Gods), as well as his other poem “Works and days." In the eighth century BC, Hesiod recorded the divine history of the events that ultimately led to the primacy of Zeus - a history of passions, rivalries and struggles, and the emergence from Chaos of the celestial gods, Heaven and Earth. This story is very reminiscent of the biblical one:
First of all, Chaos arose in the universe, and then Broad-breasted Gaia, a safe haven for all, Gloomy Tartarus, lying in the deep depths of the earth, And, among the eternal gods, the most beautiful, Eros Black Night and the gloomy Ereborn from Chaos. The Night Ether gave birth to the shining Day, or Hemera...
At this stage of the birth of the “eternal gods” - the celestial gods - “heaven” did not yet exist - as in Mesopotamian sources. Accordingly, Gaia in these verses is the equivalent of Tiamat, who, according to the Enuma Elish, “gave birth to everything.” Hesiod unites the heavenly gods who followed Chaos and Gaia into three pairs (Tartarus and Eros, Erebus and Night, Day and Hemera). The parallel (now they are called Venus and Mars, Saturn and Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune) with Sumerian cosmogony is completely obvious, although for some reason it has remained unnoticed until now.
Only after the formation of the main planets of the solar system and the invasion of Nibiru into it, Hesiod's poem - like the Mesopotamian myths and the Bible - talks about the creation of Uranus, that is, “the sky”. As stated in the Book of Genesis, Shamayim is a “forged bracelet” or asteroid belt.
In the Enuma Elish, this is Tiamat's half, broken into pieces; the other half remained intact and turned into Earth. All this is reflected in the following lines of Theogony:
Gaia, first of all, gave birth to the Starry Sky, Uranus, equal in breadth, so that it would cover her everywhere and serve as a strong dwelling for the all-blessed gods -
The split Gaia ceased to be Tiamat. Separated from the half that fell apart, which turned into the firmament, the eternal abode of comets and asteroids, the untouched half (which moved to another orbit) turned into Gaia-Earth. This planet - first Tiamat, and then Earth - retained its epithets: Gaia, Gi, Ki - split.
What did the Split Planet look like after the celestial battle, when it, as the Earth, was already rotating in its own orbit around the Sun? One side of it was solid rock, which used to be the crust of Tiamat, and the second was a failure, a bottomless abyss into which the waters of the former Tiamat rushed. According to Hesiod, Gaia (now its half corresponded to the heavens), on the one hand, was “the home of... Nymphs living in the thickets of multi-ton mountain forests...”, and on the other, “gave birth” to “... a noisy, barren sea , Pontus."
The same picture of a split planet appears before us in the Book of Genesis:
And God said: let him gather
the water that is under the sky in one
place, and let dry land appear. And so it became
And God called the dry land earth,
and called the collection of waters seas.
The Earth, or new Gaia, was taking shape.
Three thousand years separate Hesiod from the heyday of the Sumerian civilization, and it is clear that during these years people, including the authors and compilers of the Book of Genesis, assimilated the Sumerian cosmogony. What we call “myths,” “legends,” and “religious beliefs” today were, in that era, science—knowledge that the Sumerians claimed was given to humanity by the Anunnaki.
According to the ideas of the ancients, the Earth was not the original component of the solar system. This is half of a broken planet called Tiamat, “which gave birth to everything.” The celestial battle that led to the formation of the Earth took place several hundred million years after the formation of the solar system and its planets. The Earth, being part of Tiamat, retained most of the water of the split planet, which was also called the “water monster.” When the Earth turned into an independent planet and, obeying the laws of gravity, took on a spherical shape, all the water collected in a huge depression formed at the site of the fault, and the land ended up on the other half of the planet.
Such, in brief, were the ideas of the ancients. What does modern science say about this?
All theories of planet formation claim that the planets originally formed as spherical clumps from a huge gaseous disk surrounding the Sun. As they cooled, heavy elements - in the case of the Earth, iron - sank towards the Center, forming a solid inner core. Lighter, more flexible and even liquid elements formed the outer layer of the core; It is believed that the Earth's outer layer consisted of molten iron. The movement of the two nuclei produced a generator effect, as a result of which the planet’s magnetic field emerged. Around the solid and liquid cores a mantle formed, consisting of rocks and minerals; The thickness of the earth's mantle is about 1,800 miles. The movement and heat (up to 12,000 degrees Fahrenheit at the very center) of the Earth's core influences the mantle and what lies above it. The surface of our planet - that is, its cooled crust - is formed by the influence of the upper 400 miles of the mantle. The processes (uniform gravitational field and rotation around its own axis), which over millions of years formed the spherical shape of the planet, also became the reason for its ordered layered structure. The solid inner core, the plastic or liquid outer core, the thick mantle of silicon compounds, the upper mantle of rocks and the surface crust all surround each other in orderly layers, like the skin of an onion. This idea is true for a ball called the Earth (Fig. 35) - but only to a certain extent. The most noticeable anomalies concern the upper layer of the planet, its crust.
Ever since the intensive study of the Moon and Mars in the 60s and 70s of the twentieth century, geophysicists have been surprised by the relatively small thickness of the earth's crust. The Martian and lunar crust accounts for approximately 10 percent of the mass of these celestial bodies, while the Earth's crust mass barely reaches half a percent of the total mass of the planet. In 1988, a group of geophysicists from the California Institute of Technology and the University of Illinois at Urbana, led by Don Anderson, made a presentation at the Geological Society of America congress held in Denver, Colorado. Scientists say they have found the “missing bark.” By analyzing the shock waves generated by earthquakes, they came to the conclusion that part of the crust sank down and was located at a depth of 250 miles from the surface of the Earth. Scientists estimate that there is so much bark material there that its total thickness increases tenfold. But even in this case, the mass of the crust is only 4 percent of the mass of the entire planet - half the expected norm (judging by the Moon and Mars). Even if the claims of this group of geophysicists are true, half of the earth's crust remains unfound. In addition, this theory leaves unanswered the question of what force caused the lighter crust compared to the mantle to “dive” - this is the term used in the report - to a depth of several hundred miles. Scientists have suggested that the subsided part of the crust consists of “huge plates” that were separated by cracks and then “drew deep into the Earth.” But what force split the earth's crust?
Another anomaly of the earth's crust is its heterogeneity. In those parts of the planet that we call continents, its thickness varies from 12 to 45 miles, and in areas occupied by oceans it ranges from 3.5 to 5 miles. The average height of the continents above sea level is 2,300 feet, while the average depth of the oceans is 12,500 feet. From this we can draw the following conclusion: the thicker continental crust extends much further into the mantle, while the oceanic crust is just a thin layer of compressed minerals and sedimentary rock (Fig. 36).
There are other differences in the crust of continents and oceans. The continental crust, consisting of granite-like rocks, is lighter than the mantle: its average density is 2.7 - 2.8 grams per cubic centimeter, while the average density of the mantle is 3.3 grams per cubic centimeter. Oceanic crust is heavier and denser than continental crust (from 3.0 to 3.1 grams per cubic centimeter); it is more like a mantle and consists mainly of basalt and other rocks denser than the continental crust. It is noteworthy that the “lost crust” that the group of geophysicists mentioned above found is presumably oceanic, not continental.
This is followed by a more important difference between the continental crust of the Earth and the oceanic one: the continental part is not only thicker and heavier, but also older than the oceanic one. By the end of the 1970s, scientists came to a consensus that most of the modern surface of the continents was formed about 2.8 billion years ago. Evidence that the thickness of the continental crust has not changed since then has been found on all continents in the area that geologists call the Archean shield; However, in these places rocks were found whose age is estimated at 3.8 billion years. In 1983, scientists from the Australian National University discovered in western Australia the remains of rocks that made up the earth's crust with an age of 4.1 - 4.2 billion years. In 1989, new methods of analyzing samples taken in northern Canada (by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and the Geological Survey of Canada) made it possible to pinpoint their age at 3.96 billion years. Samuel Bowering from the University. Washington reported that the age of other rocks from the same region is 4.1 billion years.
Scientists are still struggling to explain the 500-million-year gap between the age of the Earth (meteorite remains, such as those found in Arizona, put it at 4.6 billion years) and the age of the oldest solid rocks that have been found. However, despite this mystery, there is no longer any doubt that the age of the Earth's continental crust is at least 4 billion years. On the other hand, it was not possible to find a single piece of oceanic crust older than 200 million years.
This difference is so enormous that no theories about rising and falling continents or disappearing seas can explain it. Someone compared the earth's crust to the peel of an apple. Where the oceans are now, the peel is “fresh”, formed literally “yesterday”. It seems that in this place in prehistoric times this “peel” was torn off - along with pieces of the “apple” itself.
The difference between the continental and oceanic crust should have been even more noticeable before, since the continental crust is constantly being destroyed by natural factors, and the bulk of the remains of this process are washed into the oceanic trenches, increasing the thickness of the oceanic crust. Moreover, the oceanic crust is continuously thickening due to the upwelling of molten basalt and silicates that escape from the mantle through faults in the ocean floor. This process, which creates new layers of oceanic mantle, lasts about 200 million years, and is the result of which the oceanic crust acquired its modern form. But what was the seabed like before that? Maybe there was no crust there at all - it was an open “wound” on the surface of the Earth? Perhaps the formation of oceanic crust can be compared to the process of blood clotting in places where the skin is damaged?
Perhaps Gaia - a living planet - is trying to heal its wounds?
The most obvious place on the Earth's surface where such a "wound" existed is the Pacific Ocean. The depression of the earth's crust in the oceanic parts of the planet is about 2.5 miles, while the depth of the Pacific Ocean in some places reaches 7 miles. If we removed the layer of crust that had formed there over the last 200 million years from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, we would sink to a depth of 12 miles from the surface of the water and from 20 to almost 60 miles from the surface of the land. Wow, a depression... How big was this “wound” 500 million or 4 billion years ago? It’s impossible to even imagine - we can only say with certainty that it’s much deeper.
There is no doubt that the depression was much wider and covered a much larger part of the planet's surface. The Pacific Ocean currently covers about a third of the earth's surface, but its area has decreased over the past 200 million years. The reason is that the continents that frame the ocean - America in the east, Asia and Australia in the west - are moving closer together, slowly but inevitably compressing the Pacific Ocean by several inches per year.
The science that studies and explains this process is called plate tectonic theory.
Its basis, like the basis of the study of the solar system, is the rejection of ideas about the stability and immutability of planets in favor of the recognition of cataclysms, changes and even evolution, which concerns not only flora and fauna. The celestial bodies on which life develops are also recognized as “living” beings, capable of growing and contracting in size, prospering and suffering, as well as being born and dying.
The newly emerged theory of plate tectonics, which has now become an established science, owes its origins to the German meteorologist Alfred Wegener and his book Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane, published in 1915. The starting point for him, as for his predecessors, was the “coincidence” of the contours of the continents on both sides of the South Atlantic. However, before Wegener, this was explained by the disappearance - that is, subsidence - of continents or land bridges. Scientists were convinced that the land had been in the same place since time immemorial, only its middle part sank below sea level, as a result of which separate continents arose. Using the data available to him about the flora and fauna on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as significant geological similarities, Wegener hypothesized the existence of the supercontinent Pangea - a huge land mass that included all modern continents as parts of a mosaic. Wegener suggested that Pangea, which occupied almost half the globe, was surrounded by the prehistoric Pacific Ocean. Floating in the middle of the waters, like an ice field, a single land mass appeared and disappeared, until its final split occurred in the Mesozoic era - a geological period that began 225 million and ended 65 million years ago. Gradually, the resulting fragments began to drift in different directions. Antarctica, Australia, India and Africa separated and began to move away from each other (Fig. 37a). Then Africa and South America separated (Fig. 37b); North America began to move away from Europe, and India moved towards Asia (Fig. 37c). Thus, the continents continued to move until they ended up in the position we see them in today (Figure 37d).
The disintegration of Pangea into several separate continents was accompanied by the formation and disappearance of water spaces between the separated parts of the land. Over time, the single “panocean” (if I may coin such a term) also split into a number of interconnected oceans or closed seas (for example, the Mediterranean, Black and Caspian seas), and such vast expanses of water as the Atlantic and Indian oceans were formed. However, all these bodies of water were “pieces” of the original “panocean”, the remnant of which is the Pacific Ocean.
Wegener's view of the continents as "shards of broken ice fields" moving on the Earth's unstable surface was disparaged by geologists and paleontologists of the time. It took half a century for the theory of continental drift to be accepted in scientific circles. The scientists' point of view was helped to change by studies of the ocean floor that began in the 60s of the twentieth century, which identified objects such as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which was supposedly formed as a result of the release of molten rock (magma) to the surface from the depths of the Earth. Having risen - in the case of the Atlantic - through a chasm in the ocean floor, stretching almost across the entire ocean, the magma solidified and formed a basalt ridge. However, as ejections from the Earth's interior followed one after another, the old slopes of the ridge moved apart to make room for a new flow of magma. Significant progress in these studies was achieved after the launch of the Sisat oceanographic satellite in June 1978, which existed in Earth orbit for three months. Data from this satellite have been used to map the seafloor and have revolutionized our understanding of the oceans, with their ridges, chasms, seamounts, volcanoes and fault zones. The discovery that each frozen magma ejection preserved the position of the magnetic lines of that period was followed by the realization that a succession of such magnetic lines, nearly parallel to each other, formed a time scale as well as a pattern of directions for the continuing spreading of the ocean floor. It was the expansion of the ocean floor in the Atlantic that was the main factor in the separation of Africa and South America and the formation of the Atlantic Ocean (as well as its subsequent expansion).
It is believed that other forces contributed to the breakup of the continental crust and continental drift: the gravitational influence of the Moon, the rotation of the Earth, and even the movement of the Earth's mantle. The Pacific Ocean experienced the greatest influence of these forces - there are most of the underwater ridges, chasms, volcanoes and other objects that contributed to the expansion of the Atlantic Ocean. Then why, as all the data at our disposal shows, the land areas bordering the Pacific Ocean are not moving away from each other (like the continents on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean), but are slowly but steadily moving closer together, reducing its size?
The explanation is provided by the general theory of tectonic plates. She argues that both continents and oceans rest on moving “plates” of the earth’s crust. Continental drift, expansion of oceans (such as the Atlantic) or their contraction (such as the Pacific) are caused by the movement of the plates beneath them. Currently, scientists distinguish six main plates (some of them are divided into smaller ones): Pacific, American, Eurasian, African, Indo-Australian and Antarctic (Fig. 38).
The expanding floor of the Atlantic Ocean is gradually, inch by inch, moving America away from Europe and Africa. It is now believed that the accompanying shortening of the Pacific Ocean is due to the “subduction”, or pushing, of the Pacific plate under the Atlantic. This is the main cause of crustal shifts and earthquakes throughout the Pacific Basin, as well as the rise of mountain ranges along the borders of this region. The collision of the Indian plate with the Eurasian plate led to the formation of the Himalayas and the annexation of the Indian subcontinent to Asia. In 1985, scientists from Cornell University discovered a geological suture where the western part of the African Plate remained attached to the American Plate when they separated about half a billion years ago, sacrificing Florida and Georgia to North America.
Today, almost all scientists have accepted - with one or another addition - Wegener's hypothesis that the Earth originally consisted of a single land mass surrounded by an ocean. Despite the small - by geological standards - age of the ocean floor (200 million years), scientists recognize the existence of a primeval ocean on Earth, traces of which are found on the ocean floor covered with new layers, but not on the continents. Zones of the Archean Shield, whose youngest rocks are 2.8 billion years old, contain two types of rocks: green igneous rocks, as well as granites and gneisses. Stephen Moorbutt, in his article “The Oldest Rocks and the Growth of Continents,” published in the March 1977 issue of Scientific American, wrote: “Geologists are convinced that green igneous rocks erupted into the waters of the primordial ocean and that they are representatives ancient oceans, and plains of granite and gneiss may be remnants of ancient oceans." Intensive study of rocks on all continents has revealed that they have been in contact with ocean water for at least three billion years. In some places, such as Zimbabwe, sedimentary rocks have been found that formed under a thick layer of water about 3.5 billion years ago. New, more advanced techniques have increased the age estimate for the Archean zones—including the rocks that erupted into the primordial ocean—to 3.8 billion years (Scientific American, September 1983, special issue “The Dynamic Earth”).
How long does continental drift last? Did Pangea really exist?
Stephen Moorbutt, in the study mentioned above, suggested that the separation of the continents began about 600 million years ago: “Before this, they may have represented one huge supercontinent, Pangea, or perhaps two supercontinents, Laurasia in the north and Gondwana in the south.”
Other scientists, using computer modeling in their work, have suggested that 550 million years ago, the land areas that eventually formed Pangea or its two connecting parts were no more separated than they are now, and that the processes of moving tectonic plates of one or another genera began at least four million years ago.
However, according to Murbat, the question of whether there was first a single supercontinent or separate continents that then connected, whether one superocean surrounded the entire landmass or water spaces separated several continents, is reminiscent of the debate about which came first, the chicken or the egg. “Which came first: continents or oceans?”
Thus, modern science confirms the ideas reflected in ancient texts, but it is not able to look into the distant past to solve the problem of continents and oceans. If almost every new scientific discovery is consistent with one aspect of ancient knowledge or another, why not accept the answer of the ancients: the surface of the Earth was covered with water, which - on the "third day", or at the third stage - was "collected" on one side of the planet to free up the land. What was the newly discovered landmass: several isolated continents or one supercontinent, Pangea? And although this is of interest only from the point of view of coincidence with ancient knowledge, the Greeks, although they considered the Earth more like a disk than a ball, they depicted it as land standing on a solid foundation and surrounded by water. These views were based on more ancient and accurate knowledge - like all Greek science. You can see that the “foundation” of the Earth is constantly mentioned in the Old Testament. Ancient knowledge concerning the shape of the earth is reflected in the following lines glorifying the Creator:
The earth is the Lord's and what fills it,
the universe and everything living in it;
For he founded it on the seas and established it on the rivers.
In addition to the term “erets,” which refers to both the planet Earth and the dry land, the Book of Genesis also uses the word “yabasha” - literally “drained land” - when God ordered the water to gather “into one place.” However, another term often appears in the Old Testament - “tebel”, denoting the inhabited, cultivated and useful for humanity (including as a source of ores) part of the Earth. The term “tebel” - usually translated as “world”, “universe” - is most often used to indicate that part of the Earth that is different from the waters; The “foundations” of “tebels” are contrasted with sea basins. This is most clearly expressed in the words of David’s song (Book of Psalms, 18:16):
And springs of water appeared, and the foundations of the universe were revealed at Thy terrible voice, O Lord, at the breath of the spirit of Thy wrath.
Given what we know today about the "foundations of the universe", the word "tebel" clearly conveys the idea of continents whose foundations - tectonic plates - lie in the middle of the waters. It's amazing how recent geological discoveries resonate with a 3,000-year-old Psalm!
The Book of Genesis states with certainty that the waters were gathered “in one place” on one side of the Earth so that the dry land could “appear.” This suggests the presence of a depression in which all the water could have collected. The depression that once covered half the planet's surface still exists - the shrinking Pacific Ocean.
Why can't we find crustal rocks older than 4 billion years, even though the estimated age of the Earth and solar system is 4.6 billion years? The first conference on the origins of life on Earth, held in 1967 in Princeton under the auspices of NASA and the Smithsonian Institution, devoted a lot of time to discussing this problem. The only hypothesis that its participants were able to put forward was that during the period to which the most ancient rock samples belong, the Earth experienced some kind of “cataclysm.” In discussing the origins of the earth's atmosphere, scientists agreed that it was not the result of "continuous outgassing" from volcanic activity, but was formed (according to Raymond Seaver of Harvard University) by "... an early... violent eruption gases that determined the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere and sedimentary rocks.” This “powerful eruption” dates back to the same time as the disaster recorded in the rock.
Thus, it becomes obvious that the data of modern science in all its details - the splitting of the earth's crust, processes with tectonic plates, the difference between the continental and oceanic crust, the emergence of Pangea from under the surface of the water, the primary ocean surrounding the land - are consistent with ancient knowledge. In addition, experts from various fields of science have come to the conclusion that the only acceptable explanation for the formation of the Earth's land, oceans and atmosphere can be a catastrophe that occurred about four billion years ago - approximately half a billion years after the formation of the Earth as one of the components of the solar system.
What kind of disaster was this? For six thousand years, humanity has known the Sumerian answer to this question: the celestial battle between Nibiru/Marduk and Tiamat.
In Sumerian cosmogony, the planets of the solar system were depicted in the form of celestial gods, men and women, whose emergence was compared to birth, and existence to the life of living beings. In the Enuma Elish text, Tiamat is described as a woman, a mother, who gave birth to eleven companions - her “army,” led by Kingu, whom she “raised above all.” When Nibiru/Marduk and his companions approached her, “Tiamat roared, soaring upward,
her body shook from the bottom to the top: she threw spells, muttered spells.” When “the Lord spread the net, entangled it in the net,” and then launched the “evil Whirlwind” in front of him, “Tiamat’s mouth opened - she wants to devour him.” But other "violent winds" of Nibiru/Marduk "filled the womb" of Tiamat, and "her body swelled." Ultimately, Nibiru/Marduk “cut her insides, took possession of her heart,” “he overpowered her, he ended her life.”
For a long time, this view of the planets, and especially Tiamat, as living beings that can be born and die, was rejected by scientists as primitive paganism. However, studies of the planetary system carried out in recent decades have revealed to us a world in which the word “living” was constantly heard. The idea that the Earth itself is a “living” planet loudly declared itself in the Gaia hypothesis, which was put forward in the 70s of the twentieth century by James E. Lovelock (“Gaia - A New Look at Life on Earth”). , and was further developed in his latest work, The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living Earth. This theory views the Earth and the life that has evolved on it as a single organism; The Earth is not just an inanimate ball on which life exists, but a single organism that can be called alive. The life of the Earth lies in its mass, in the surface of its continents and oceans, in the atmosphere, in the flora and fauna that it supports and which in turn support it. “The largest living thing on Earth,” wrote Lovelock, “is the Earth itself.” In this regard, the scientist admitted, he was repeating the ancient “idea of mother earth, or, as the Greeks called her, Gaia.”
However, in fact, he was returning to the era of the Sumerian civilization, to their ideas about a planet split in two.
CHAPTER SIX