Scientists have found that 700 million years ago our planet was a solid ball of ice. Moreover, the Earth froze very quickly and after 57 million or so years it also quickly thawed.
Why? Researchers could not understand this until recently. But on February 8th, the press service of the University of Sydney made a statement – another mystery of nature has been solved.
How did they manage to find out what happened on Earth many millions of years ago?
For 57 million years the Earth was covered in ice. At the same time, even at the equator the temperature did not rise above –70 °C. Now this can only be found in Antarctica. But then everything suddenly melted away.
The “era of glaciation” ended 660 million years ago.
The earth was still “young” at that time and did not have time to acquire either dinosaurs or complex vegetation. But a certain population still lived here, and even waited out the “difficult time.” And then they calmly continued to exist. We are talking of course about the ubiquitous microbes.
After the Earth thawed, relatively large living creatures gradually began to populate it. Scientists jokingly call this period in the life of the planet “Snowball Earth.”
Geologists were at a loss as to what froze our planet. It was believed that before the glaciation, volcanic gases entered the atmosphere in large quantities and “blocked” most of the solar radiation. Without heat, the planet simply froze.
Other geologists decided that the Earth had put on a “coat of ice” due to a lack of carbon dioxide. Geological processes that are accompanied by chemical reactions are to blame.
So CO2 “left” the atmosphere and “moved” into ocean sediments. Without carbon dioxide, the planet did not warm up and remained a block of ice. Research has even been conducted on this matter.
And an article by Professor Qing-chu Yin (University of California, USA) was published in the journal Geology. It was he who suggested that the “Snowball Earth” iced over as quickly as it thawed.
Recent studies have filled all the gaps. At least, that’s what the study authors themselves say.
Initially, Australian geologists studied glacial deposits of the Sturtian period in the Flinders Mountains (South Australia). They then used EarthByte, a program designed to interactively model plate tectonics.
A team of geologists from Sydney turned to the GPlates modeling method. They recreated the process of tectonics, the gradual formation and change of continents and ocean basins. Where the plates diverged, new oceanic crust formed. Volcanic emissions were small.
To calculate their number, we turned to artificial intelligence. It turned out that at the beginning of the Sturt period, volcanic activity was low.
Dr. Dutkevich says:
“There were no multicellular animals on the planet at that time, and CO2 was produced exclusively by volcanoes. At the same time, the process of weathering of silicate rocks was going on. It absorbed the remaining carbon dioxide.”
It turns out that the climate on the ancient Earth was determined by geology!
Scientists have concluded that global and long-term icing occurred due to changes in plate tectonics have minimized the release of carbon dioxide and erosion of volcanic massifs, absorbing already meager reserves of CO2.
The resulting model showed that just at the beginning of the Sturt glaciation, CO2 levels broke all negative records – less than 200 parts per million. By the way, now this figure is almost twice as high.
Researchers believe that we are now slowly but surely moving towards a new ice age. Tectonic movements are slowing down, and emissions of volcanic carbon dioxide are also declining.
But it’s not that simple as there is a version in which all continents “want to unite”.
Allegedly, over the course of some 250 million years, a super-large and super-hot continent will form – Pangea Ultima. Most likely, it will be a little hot for mammals here and they will simply die.
Of course, it is difficult to look that far ahead, if at all possible. It is not known which theory is more affluent. No one knows for sure whether the Earth will warm up or freeze. After all, geological climate change is a long process.
But according to NASA, anthropogenic impact has already increased the rate of change by 10 times.
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