Tectonic Plates and other Strange Natural Phenomena
I was doing some reading for my art forgeries class today (which has quickly become a geology course), and got really weirded out by the fact that everything we know of and take for granted on Earth is really just resting on a huge slab of rocks, floating on top of molten rocks, and held together by an incredibly dense and hot solid core. I get feelings of how small and insignificant I am from time to time, especially in planetariums or when I stare at the sky too long and can almost see how it's domed. Today it was the Earth's core that freaked me out.
Think about it: this thing is so compact, that it's 5000 degrees Celsius and still solid. Holy crap. Just to put that into perspective for my fellow Americans (and because I don't feel like converting), 100 degrees C is equal to 212 F. Yes. Holy frickin' crap.
This thing is so dense that it holds the world together. Gravity originates from this thing. It's why you fall when you jump off of buildings and why airplanes have to use fuselages and speed to get and stay in the air; it's why our hearts have four muscular chambers to see to it that our heads, which are above our torso, get blood; it's why people remember Newton and Galieo and the Tower of Pisa (okay, so Galieo had some other famous theories too, but for the sake of the point, go with me here); it's why we get wrinkles as we age, why we are more comfortable sitting than standing, why everything we've even known doesn't float off into empty, vacuous space.
Another issue I have is how we know this core is solid. I mean, it makes sense that it is, but no one's ever seen it, or taken a sample of it or anything, and as far as I know we're not claiming that any of the gaseous planets have solid cores, so isn't it plausible that Earth may just be magma from here to China? What if it's just a vacuum, or a smaller, less powerful singularity, which would have the same amount of require gravetational pull. What if the Earth's core is nothing?
Okay, enough of that.
Another thing that also makes me feel rather uncanny (since mentioning planetariums made me think of it) is Jupiter's giant red spot. So yeah, it's a huge storm, so what? Uh, Jupiter itself is freakin' huge, and you can fit like so many of Earth into that red spot alone. Imagine an earth storm that big. Well, comparitively. That's like...I don't know, all of North American covered by a huge violent storm all the time. Yeah.
Okay, well now that I've babbled on about that, I need to get on with my work for tonight. Last night I had an unfortunate episode where I sat down to read Oliver Twist, and apparantly passed out from exhaustion, since the next thing I knew I woke up completely clothed, with contacts still in and book in hand, and the sun was rising. I checked the clock and found out that it was 6am...which was rather disturbing but not wholly unexpected, as I often lay down for a ten minute nap and wake up two hours later; it's just that normally I remember falling asleep first.
Yes yes. Japanese and Wife of Bath's prolouge.
Laters.
Think about it: this thing is so compact, that it's 5000 degrees Celsius and still solid. Holy crap. Just to put that into perspective for my fellow Americans (and because I don't feel like converting), 100 degrees C is equal to 212 F. Yes. Holy frickin' crap.
This thing is so dense that it holds the world together. Gravity originates from this thing. It's why you fall when you jump off of buildings and why airplanes have to use fuselages and speed to get and stay in the air; it's why our hearts have four muscular chambers to see to it that our heads, which are above our torso, get blood; it's why people remember Newton and Galieo and the Tower of Pisa (okay, so Galieo had some other famous theories too, but for the sake of the point, go with me here); it's why we get wrinkles as we age, why we are more comfortable sitting than standing, why everything we've even known doesn't float off into empty, vacuous space.
Another issue I have is how we know this core is solid. I mean, it makes sense that it is, but no one's ever seen it, or taken a sample of it or anything, and as far as I know we're not claiming that any of the gaseous planets have solid cores, so isn't it plausible that Earth may just be magma from here to China? What if it's just a vacuum, or a smaller, less powerful singularity, which would have the same amount of require gravetational pull. What if the Earth's core is nothing?
Okay, enough of that.
Another thing that also makes me feel rather uncanny (since mentioning planetariums made me think of it) is Jupiter's giant red spot. So yeah, it's a huge storm, so what? Uh, Jupiter itself is freakin' huge, and you can fit like so many of Earth into that red spot alone. Imagine an earth storm that big. Well, comparitively. That's like...I don't know, all of North American covered by a huge violent storm all the time. Yeah.
Okay, well now that I've babbled on about that, I need to get on with my work for tonight. Last night I had an unfortunate episode where I sat down to read Oliver Twist, and apparantly passed out from exhaustion, since the next thing I knew I woke up completely clothed, with contacts still in and book in hand, and the sun was rising. I checked the clock and found out that it was 6am...which was rather disturbing but not wholly unexpected, as I often lay down for a ten minute nap and wake up two hours later; it's just that normally I remember falling asleep first.
Yes yes. Japanese and Wife of Bath's prolouge.
Laters.