Finally, something that science and religion can have a temporary truce. Scientists uncovered evidence that the Earth was covered by a global ocean three billion years ago, and as the Bible also stated that in Genesis 1.
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What Have They Discovered
Scientists have recently unearthed that the Earth was more of a "water world" rather than the mega continents that we have today. There are telltale chemical signatures that were seen in an old chunk of ocean crust, which leads to a planet devoid of continents. Are the most significant landmasses on Earth.
"An early Earth without emergent continents may have resembled a 'water world,' providing an important environmental constraint on the origin and evolution of life on Earth, as well as its possible existence elsewhere," the scientists have published in Nature Geoscience.
More Research Required
As this is just the initial discovery, there is still more to go on after the tests come back. This will assist researchers that can enhance, discard, or change their theories as to where and how the first-single-celled life came to be here on Earth. Also, more importantly, for our future endeavors as explorers, maybe what other worlds are habitable with the findings uncovered.
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Who Are The Masterminds
Boswell Wing, who is from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and his former student Benjamin Johnson who is not at Iowa State Univesity, strived to break ground on the project about the debate as to what ancient Earth might have been and looked like.
The work centered on a site called Panorama district in north-western Australia's outback. This is where the 3.2 billion-year-old slab of the ocean floor has been uncovered. Inside this crust are chemical clues about the composition and seawater that covered ancient Earth.
Findings Included
Seawater during that period had more oxygen-18 when that crust of seawater was initially formed, which led to the most likely explanation the pair had concocted that the Earth had NO continents at that time. Mind-blowing discovery, indeed.
"Without continents above the ocean, the oxygen value would be distinct from today, which is exactly what we found," Johnson said. "And it's different in a way that's most easily explained without land to get rained on and without soil formation."
This, however, does not mean that there were no landmasses at that time, albeit, micro-continents but not like what we have today as well as not the richness of the soil that we are used to grow crops and support civilization. Just little sprouts here and there.
"I imagine a picture kind of like what it must look like to approach the Galápagos Islands from the west: vast expanses of ocean waters to the north and south with small volcanic rocky islets barely poking above the ocean surface," said Wing.
Gondwana, the supercontinent, was discovered that it had been on our planet for just over half a billion years ago, which has a lot of missing pieces to the puzzle.
So far, the mystery is still when the first continents eventually formed, which numerous explanations are out there but no real concrete proof. More findings are to come, and for sure, it would be to humanity's benefit to understand more of what our home looked like before any living organism had the chance to populate the Earth.
