Geology was never something I knew much about but lately I've had occasion to learn a little more and I find two things fascinating:
(1) How much of what we know now about the geologic history of the earth is fairly recently acquired. For example, I can remember reading articles about tectonics and continental drift in the 1960s. At the time, I thought, "OK, that's really interesting," but hadn't really wigged to the fact that this was entirely NEW scientific thought at the time. I assumed it had always been that way, but in fact it was new studies and techniques that brought us to general acceptance of tectonics a mere fifty years ago.
(2) The extent to which the term "solid ground" is meaningless if your time frame is billions of years. Rocks liquefy and are returned from the earth's surface to its core over time; mountain ranges rise up and are eroded away; our "solid earth" (i.e., our continents) is actually a fleet of immense floating battleships, slowly but ever-so-surely being pushed hither and yon to new locations on the planet's surface.
As a most recent evocation of our long-term transience, a recent item by Ivan Amato deserves attention, exploring how even the shape of our "sphere" is continuously being altered, and how that in turn affects time. Our days are growing imperceptibly longer.
Nothing to worry about in our own lifetimes, yet somehow, I suspect the rabid fans of daylight saving time will find some way to give us still "more daylight" well into the eons to come.
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