Elementary Geology is a Mystery
Filed Under (Tech) by Don C on 05-05-2008
This is too funny:
You know Earth’s schematic: core, mantle, crust, right? Sorry, not so simple.
About four years ago I made fun of mankind’s dismal state of the art knowledge regarding something as basic as the composition of this molten rock on which we live. It seems they are still no closer to the truth of it.
And, what surely is a runner-up in the worst analogies ever contest
Like the gooey center of a chocolate morsel harboring peanut butter and honey, inner Earth is far more nuanced than outward appearances would suggest. A new model is proposed in the May 2 issue of the journal Science.
The word “nuanced” has moved way in to the overused category don’t you think? It simply does not fit here unless you are trying to explain how global warming causes global cooling or something.
All that has really happened here is that yet another scientific institute has provided evidence that we don’t really even know the composition of the earth much less what process created hydrocarbons and how much is left.
Here is the crux:
New data reveal the mantle consists of more varying material than was thought. So convection — how heated material bubbles up — is now thought to work differently.
“Imagine a pot of water boiling,” explains researcher Allen McNamara of Arizona State University. “That would be all one kind of composition. Now dump a jar of honey into that pot of water. The honey would be convecting on its own inside the water and that’s a much more complicated system.”
Are you kidding me? So we haves piles of oil just bubbling up?
