Our planet Earth (also called the World, as well as the scientific name which is Terra) is, I’m sure you’ll agree, one of the top planets in the Solar System. For a start, it is not one of the Gas Giants like Jupiter, on which there’s no place to stand, no roads, no cars. Nuts to that! We are lucky to inhabit a stable terrain without which our civilization would not have evolved.
Terra (Earth) is made of dirt, sand, rocks and other useful minerals, plus water (oceans, lakes, rivers including the Mighty Nile) and outside of that is the Atmosphere, chiefly made up of Air. The Air is especially important, not just for breathing but to protect us from meteors and other space junk, otherwise our surface would be a pockmarked hellscape - look at the Moon! Once the Atmosphere was in place, Terra (Earth) was complete, done and dusted - nothing gets in and nothing gets out (gravity), all set for Man (and Woman) to come in and take over! Should be perfect.
Well, not quite. This is related to how the planet was formed. Long ago, clumps of space dust, and whatever else was floating around at the time, attracted other clumps and eventually, when all the dust had been sucked in, it formed a huge ball. This ball was red hot, owing to the tremendous pressure at the center. Clench your fist real tight, you’ll see what I mean. Now this new planet had one job - to cool down and solidify. This has been a tremendous FAIL!
How long should it take? Well, estimates vary, but last I checked the Earth has been around four billion years and change, is that long enough for you? I know, when you take something out of the oven it can take a while to cool, but four billion years? Plenty of time! Come on! ENOUGH!
Maybe you’ve seen a drawing that shows a cross-section of the Earth. The middle is nothing but white hot molten iron, then there’s red molten iron, then a layer of gooey stuff called the Mantle, and the very outer edge is a paper-thin layer called the Crust - now there’s a word that inspires confidence! If it were ice on a pond, you wouldn’t dare set foot on it, but that’s where we live and nobody cares.
Well maybe it’s time we did care. This monkey business has gone on way too long - we need a Manhattan Project to cool down and solidify the core of the Earth (Terra) once and for all and we need it now! People talk about standing on “terra firma”, but what we have now is pretty not-so-firma!
There needs to be a plan. One thing we could try is to drill a lot of holes in the sea bed and let the cold water rush in and douse all that heat, Mantle, Magma, all of it! I admit, that probably wouldn’t work too well. What does need to happen is we get all the best Scientists together, put their heads together, spend a lot of money and make a strategy to settle this thing for good. Maybe invent a ray that stops all the atoms from slipping around and gets them to line up, which theoretically would instantly make a solid block. You could call it “Project Sim-R-Down”.
There are many good and important reasons why this needs to be done:
- No more volcanoes.
Another problem this would fix is Continental Drift. Suppose a million years from now America bumps into Russia? How do we defend ourselves? I guess we’ll just stand there and go, “Oh, too bad, we could have done something but it’s too late now”. Freezing up all that lava would put an end to it, but only if we bother to make the effort.
Laugh at me if you must, I just hope this can happen soon so I can finally get some sleep, instead of worrying about all that Hot Stuff burbling and roiling around way too close for comfort. Maybe then we can finally have an Earth we can be proud of. Aren’t you a little embarrassed to be living out your years atop something called the “Crust”? Wouldn’t you rather live on a planet that’s FINISHED , the mortgage paid off? Perhaps one or two of you can make a suggestion to get the ball rolling. But please, no stupid ideas. I just don’t have time to bother with any wacky proposals.
