Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
immense force. Every cell in your body tingles with the intense magnetic energy
generated here by the rapid convection of abundant liquid iron that tumbles and
gurgles all around you.
A sudden sinking rush of molten lava carries you downwards through 2,270 kilo-
metres of these magnetically pulsing rocks of the outer core until you reach a new
boundary: the outermost part of the earth's inner core. The sunlit surface, some
5,200 kilometres above you, is now a distant memory.
Slowly, you swim into the inner core. Here, you feel no moving rock, just immense
heat, and a massive pressure that holds the rock in forced rigidity. You sense the
ancient presence of abundant iron flecked with gold that sank into this place long
ago when the earth was first formed.
You swim 1,200 kilometres further down to the centre of the inner core, which is
also the very centre of the earth, 6400 kilometres from the earth's surface.
Entering the deep peace of the sacred centre, you rest in immense repose at the
heart of the earth.
After a long while the upper world calls you back—it is time to go. With deft
strokes you swim up through 1,200 kilometres of the inner core and once again
enter the tumultuous outer core. Swimming though this for another 2,270 kilo-
metres, you re-enter the mantle and surf an upwelling plume of mantle rock until
eventually, after a journey of more than 5,000 kilometres, you swim ghost-like
through the mere 40 kilometres of the earth's thin crust. At last, a few gentle stokes
take you through a few metres of ground and back onto the surface of the earth.
Lie still, and savour the ancient healing elixir of the deep earth. Its sweetness sat-
urates every cell in your body as, slowly, you turn over and return to the two-
legged, upright world.
At the centre of the nebular cloud was a proto-sun, and around this was a flattened
disc of interstellar dust which gradually organised itself into bands, and then into small
grains of sand within each band as more and more dust particles collided. In any given
band these tiny grains of sand gradually got together by means of gravitational attrac-
tion and by simply bumping into each other to make larger and larger clumps of matter,
