EARTH’S SECRET UNDERGROUND RESERVOIR OF WATER… MAYBE.
Many of you sent this article to me, and after reading it, I can see why. Earth, it seems, may have such an abundance of water between layers of the mantle that the amount of water would exceed the world’s oceans combined:Earth Has a Secret Reservoir of Water say Scientists
Such a model of interior geophysics will, of course, be seized upon by a certain kind of fundamentalist as a confirmation of their canonical texts, which, in a loose sense, it is, for it is confirmation – albeit slight, we’ll get back to that in a moment – of their model, including “ringwoodite,” provided of course that the story is true, which we assume it to be for the sake of our high octane speculations here. But the idea of confirming an entire model on the basis of a small and essentially worthless brown diamond is…well, stretching the evidence. We have no idea if the small amount of ringwoodite comes from a local region, or is representative of a planetary wide phenomenon. What would be needed for confirmation of the model is more such finds, across a dispersed area of the planetary surface.
But the find does have certain implications for other theories, besides ancient texts or modern planetary geophysics. It gives, for example, a new perspective to Charles Hapgood – of Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings fame – and his theory of “crustal displacement,” a theory that was even endorsed by Albert Einstein(a theory to which I do not subscribe).
But there may be something significant here for exo-planetary geophysics as well, assuming the phenomenon to me proper to solid celestial bodies, particularly those that are, or were thought to be, water-bearing or oceanic at some point in their history…
…such as Mars. Geological features on Mars show evidence of flowing water, or flowing liquid of some sort, and it is known that one of the polar ice caps on Mars has frozen water-ice. Much current thinking on human expeditions and eventual settlement of that planet involve exploiting Mars’ indigenous water to support the population, raise food, and so on, a prospect greatly expanded if the technology could be developed to recover such mantle water if the phenomenon were extended to the interior of Mars, which may or may not be confirmed pending further geophysical study of that planet.
In any case, the fact remains that if further confirmation of the model can be obtained on Earth, it will ultimately stand as a confirmation of those ancient texts and legends that speak of the waters under the Earth… and another indicator that those texts should not be dismissed as the non-scientific products of a bygone age. And the danger equally lurks that the wild and radical will take them as confirmation of all that those texts says and mandate, which, of course, it is not.
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