THE EARTH A SLAVE TO ENERGY

Geologic thinking has traditionally been earth-centered, and geologists intuitively have looked to the earth as the source of materials, energy, stability, and control for geologic processes and events. Geologists have investigated chiefly how the dominant processes of geology (vulcanism, diastrophism, gradation, and metamorphism) operate, but have given less consideration to the question why geologic processes have been caused to occur. An alternative, earth-detached viewpoint is taken, from which the earth is seen as a casual physical body which responds in the manner of a heat engine driven by external and internal energies that are derived mainly from nuclear reaction and are therefore entirely independent of control by the earth. Energy is the common denominator linking geologic events in the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere. Thus, geologic events, processes, and history are resurveyed from a non-geocentric viewpoint, and, although the material presented herein is not new, the diff...