Great Unconformity as a new piece of support for Expanding Earth model

I wrote for some years ago to "Genes and Memes" a chapter entitled Expanding Earth model and Precambrian evolution of continents, climate and life . Single hypothesis - a sudden phase transition increasing the radius of Earth by a factor 2 natural in the many-sheeted space-time of TGD - explains Cambrian explosion in biology (a sudden emergence of huge number of life forms after very slow Precambrian evolution, and also provides a model for Precambrian evolution of continents, climate and life.

Already Darwin realized that the absence of fossils from Precambrian era is a deep problem for his theory and assumed that this is an artefact due to the incomplete fossil record. Fossils of Precambrian origin have been indeed found after Darwin's time but they are simple and very rare, and the conclusion is that Cambrian explosion meaning huge diversification was real. Two mysteries therefore remain. Why the development of life was so slow during Precambrian era? Why the diversification was so incredibly fast during Cambrian explosion? Various explanations have been proposed. Did the oxygen content of the atmosphere reach a critical value and lead to the diversification? Or did predation pose the evolutionary pressure making the pace of evolution dramatically faster?

In New Scientist geologists Robert Gaines and Shanan Peters describe a geological finding perhaps related to the Cambrian Explosion: the mysterious "Great Unconformity", which is a juxtaposition of two different types of rock of very different geological ages along a prominent surface of erosion. This surface represents a very long span of "missing" time. More than 1 billion years of geological record is missing in many places! From the figure of the Wikipedia article about Great Unconformity visible in Grand Canyon the thickness of the missing layer can be estimated to be about 12.6 km. Somehow before the Cambrian the uppermost rocks of the continents were stripped away exposing the underlying crystalline basement rocks. The cause of this gap remains a complete mystery so that we have three mysteries! Plus the mysteries related to the evolution of climate (problems of Snowball Earth model).

The authors suggest that the formation of Great Unconformity relates to the Cambrian explosion. Large scale erosion and chemical weathering of the the exposed crystalline rock caused mineralization of the sea water. The hypothesis is that this led to bio-mineralization: animal groups possessing mineral skeletons - such as silica shells and calcium carbonate shells - emerged. This hypothesis looks rather plausible but does not solve the three great mysteries.

The authors indeed leave open the question about the origin of Great Unconformity and of Cambrian explosion. The TGD based explanation of Cambrian explosion comes from the model realizing the old idea about Expanding Earth in terms of TGD inspired new physics. Already Wegener observed that continents can be fit together nicely and this led to the recent view about plate tectonics. Wegener's model however fits only "half" of the continent boundaries together. One could however do much better: the observation is that the continents would fit nicely to cover the entire surface of Earth if the radius of Earth were 1/2 of its recent value! Expanding Earth model postulates that the radius of Earth grows slowly. Geologists have not taken Expanding Earth model seriously: one good reason is that there is no physics allowing it.

TGD predicts this physics.

1. At given sheet of the many-sheeted space-time cosmic expansion is predicted to take place as sudden phase transitions in which the size of some space-time sheet suddenly increases. By p-adic length scale hypothesis the preferred scaling factors are powers of 2 and the most favored scaling factor is just two. The proposal is that during the Precambrian era life resided in underground seas being thus shielded from meteor bombardment and cosmic rays. This explains the scarcity of the fossil records and the simplicity of the fossils found. The sudden phase transition was a very violent process increasing the area of the Earth's surface by a factor of 4. The area of continents is 29.1 per cent from the recent area of the Earth's surface - not too far from the naively predicted fraction 1/4.
2. It is easy to imagine that the uppermost rocks of the continent covering the entire Earth were stripped away and correspond nowadays to 100 km thick continental tectonic plates consisting of mainly silicon and aluminium). This expansion created split first the topmost layer as continental plates and regions between them giving rise to oceans. The magma which was uncovered by the process cooled down and solidifed and the continued expansion gave rise to ocean plates with different composition (mainly silicon and magnesium).
3. The expansion phase corresponds to criticality so that fractality of the expansion is expected. At least for continental plates this process could have been fractal occurring in various length scales characterizing the thickness and the area of the sub-plates generated in the process. p-Adic length scale hypothesis suggests that the scales involved should appear as powers of 2^1/2 or 2. Generation of Great Unconformity as a process in which the underlying crystalline basement rocks were uncovered could correspond to a splitting of a layer of the continental plates to pieces. The length scale characterizing the thickness is 12.6 km from the above estimate and with 1 per cent accuracy by a factor 1/8 shorter than 100 km length scale for tectonic plates. This conforms with p-adic fractality. If the process of expansion involved a cascade of scalings by factor 2, one can wonder whether it proceeded from long to short length scales or vice versa. In other words: did continental and oceanic tectonic plates form first and after than the smaller structures such as the Great Unconformity or vice versa?
4. Note that the p-adic length scale L(237) corresponding p∼ 2²³⁷ is 88 km - ten per cent smaller than 100 km. Maybe thermal expansion could account the discrepancy if the original thickness was L(237). There is a nice fractal analogy with cell membrane. The p-adic length scale L(239) defined by the Gaussian Mersenne M_k,G=(1+i)^k-1 , k=239- the first one after the Gaussian Mersenne M_167,G defining the size of cell nucleus - equals 2× L(237). Remarkably, also M_241,G is Gaussian Mersenne. What it interesting that the scale L(127)=88 km would be in the same relation to L(239) associated with M_k=239,G as the thickness L(149) of the lipid layer of cell membrane to the cell membrane thickness L(151) characterized by Gaussian Mersenne M_151,G. The two kind tectonic plates (continental and oceanic) would be analogous to the lipid layers of cell membrane. Note that 88 km is rather precisely the thickness of the atmosphere above which begins ionosphere. The thickness of Kennelly–Heaviside layer inside which radiowaves used in terrestrial radio communications propagate, has thickness about 150 km which roughly corresponds to L(239). Also the fact Continental litosphere has typical thickness of 200 km (L(239)) whereas oceanic litosphere is 100 km thick (L(237)) fits nicely with the proposed formation mechanism of continental tectonic plates.
5. The rapid expansion process could have also brought in daylight the underground seas and the highly developed life in them so that Cambrian diversification would have been only apparent. Skeptic can of course ask whether it is necessary to assume that life resided in underground seas during Precambrian era. Could just the violent geological process be enough to induce extremely fast diversification? This might of course be true.
6. There is one further argument in favor of the Expanding Earth model. The fact that the solar constant was during proto Earth period only 73 per cent from its recent value, is a problem for the models of the very early evolution of life. If the radius of Earth was 1/2 of its recent value the duration of day and night was from conservation of angular momentum only 1/4:th of the recent value and thus 3 hours. This could have made the environment much more favorable for the evolution of life even at the surface of the Earth since the range for the temperature variation would have been much narrower.

This model relates also to the Snowball Earth model of Precambrian climate in an interesting manner. The reader interested in details should read the chapter Expanding Earth model and Precambrian evolution of continents, climate and life .