We are used to seasonal changes and are becoming used to climate change but these are nothing compared to the changes that happen when a frozen planet suddenly gains a hydrosphere and an atmosphere. Glaziers become torrents that become stormwinds. Such redistributions of mass cause readjustments of subterranean strata. Part of the core had remained molten under the cyrosphere. Now, thousands of volcanoes erupt and new mountains emerge. Gales whirl boulders. A glacier of solid carbon dioxide sublimes, engulfing Falkayn as he explores the surface. However, Muddlehead, cruising above, boils away the avalanche mass and hauls Falkayn up with a tractor beam.
Imagine an environment that changes continually around you as you try to walk through it.
6 comments:
Well, the months after the dinosaur-killer asteroid were probably like that. Rains of burning ash and molten glass, 1000-ft high tidal waves, mass eruptions around the Pacific...
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Which kinda begs the question: how in Tarnation did whichever creature that became the ancestor of the species leading to US even manage to SURVIVE???
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: because it was about the size of a rat, could live on carrion and/or dead vegetation, and hid in burrows.
Other creatures lived in swamps (crocodiles) and also lived on carrion.
For hundreds of thousands of years after the impact, ferns dominated the flora of the planet, because they reproduced by spores rather than vulnerable seeds. Photosynthesis shut down for years.
That one came very close to sterilizing the planet.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That alone is a good reason for us getting off this rock, so we will no longer be continuing to keep all our eggs in the only basket we have, Earth.
Ad astra! Sean
Note that while 75% of species on earth went extinct after the asteroid impact, the vast majority of individuals of the species that -survived- also died; probably over 99.99% of individual living organisms on earth in the decade or so after the hit.
When life resurged after the heat and cold/darkness surges that followed the asteroid, it was from tiny remnant pockets -- whether enough individuals of a given species of plant or animal made it through to breed again must have involved a large element of chance.
Flowering plants and trees evolved before the extinction event, but the flora of earth was dominated by other plants (ferns, mostly, as I mentioned) for an immense length of time afterwards, simply because the adult trees and so forth didn't survive the impact -- only their seeds did.
Many species of oceanic algae died out too.
It was a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree. I did have in mind that most of the INDIVIDUALS from the surviving species must have also soon died at or soon after the asteroid impact.
An unimaginably HORRIFIC catastrophe? It was!
Ad astra! Sean
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