Privileged Planet: plate tectonics earlier start (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, April 23, 2020, 00:04 (1464 days ago) @ David Turell

As early as 3.2 billion years ago:

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/earth-plate-tectonics-may-have-started-earlier-than...

"Modern plate tectonics may have gotten under way as early as 3.2 billion years ago, about 400 million years earlier than scientists thought. That, in turn, suggests that the movement of large pieces of Earth’s crust could have played a role in making the planet more hospitable to life.

"Geologist Alec Brenner of Harvard University and his colleagues measured the magnetic orientations of iron-bearing minerals in the Honeyeater Basalt, a layer of rock that formed between 3.19 billion and 3.18 billion years ago. The basalt is part of the East Pilbara Craton, an ancient bit of continent in Western Australia that includes rocks as old as 3.5 billion years.

"This craton, the researchers found, was on the move between 3.35 billion and 3.18 billion years ago, drifting around the planet at a rate of at least 2.5 centimeters per year. That’s a speed comparable to modern plate motions, the team reports April 22 in Science Advances.

***

"Plate tectonics is generally thought to have become a well-established global process on Earth no earlier than around 2.8 billion years ago. Before that, Earth’s interior was considered to be too hot for cold, rigid plates to form at the surface, or for deep subduction to occur, in which one crustal plate dives beneath another.

"An earlier start to plate tectonics would have implications for the evolution of life on Earth, Brenner told reporters. Whether the process was in operation when the first single-celled organisms emerged, currently thought to be at least 3.45 billion years ago, isn’t clear, he said.

"But it is clear that plate tectonics is currently closely tied to the biosphere, he added. It promotes chemical reactions between once-buried rocks and the atmosphere that can modulate the planet’s climate over millions to billions of years. “So if [plate tectonics] happened on the early Earth, these processes were likely playing a part in the evolution of life,” Brenner said. (my bold)

"Active, modern-style plate tectonics is the most likely explanation for the data, the researchers say. But they acknowledge other possible explanations can’t yet be ruled out, including an early, episodic, fit-and-start style of plate tectonics. "

Comment: Note my bold. It all fits into my thought that God evolved the Earth to prepare for His early start to life.