A scientific novel.
The story of the evolution of the physical planet and the cell, written to challenge current thinking on the subject.
Our perception of the primeval earth is coloured by what we see now. Scientific evidence is leading towards a description of an earth that was prehistorically more liquid than we currently imagine, especially up to the time of the formation of the continents, when the dinosaurs died out. Currently the earth consists of a light crust, only tens of miles thick, sitting upon a vast semi-molten mantle. The evolution of the planet from a largely liquid orb to a liquid orb with a few miles of solid crust is the main driving force of evolution of life on the planet and what makes the earth different from other planets.
At 3-4 billion years ago the first cells formed upon a planet that was largely liquid at its surface and was a seething, bubbling broth of organic material of all kinds in a huge variety of chemical conditions, temperature and pressure. The presence of this huge quantity of organic material, an infinite range of ever changing conditions and an immense amount of time provided the statistical probability for cells to evolve through the combined processes of random selection and trial and error. The conditions were ideal. Cells did not form in one tiny cesspool on a barren land, but all over the surface of a seething, bubbling liquid foetal planet earth.
Any land that formed 3-4 billion years ago risked being blasted to bits by incoming meteorites or melting down as it sank. Only as the earth cooled could crust remain solid, and cells become organised into groups, and the sun could shine through, and higher creatures come into being. As more crust formed large bits of land bobbed about on the surface. Life evolved on them and round their shores. They floated across the globe getting bigger and bigger until they all collided about 300-500 million years ago, and were held together by friction into one supercontinent. As the earth cooled more the seabeds started to solidify, blocking off heat coming from within the earth, causing climates to cool and signaling the end of the cold blooded dinosaurs and the rise of warm-blooded mammals.
As the seabed solidified more the continents were flung apart again by centrifugal forces. No longer being able to move freely over the seabed they sought to balance their mass throughout the globe by moving apart again. In so doing they wrenched huge mountain ranges and seas out of the crust, which changed the landscape and the lives of organisms on it. The ocean floors today are only a few miles thick and behave like a very slow moving liquid rising in one place and falling away in another. This is the liquid earth.