In a world where branding covers everything from sports shoes to personal pages on social networks, scientists offer a new look at one of the most poorly studied periods in the history of the Earth, a duration of a billion years. For a long time, an interval covering a period of time from 1.8 billion years ago to 720 million years ago, they called a “boring billion” due to the lack of significant changes in the carbon cycle and the monotony of the development of atmospheric oxygen.
However, in the new article The Chinese Academy of Sciences and Yale University scientists propose to change the view of this period by presenting it as a “balanced billion.” The authors indicate that the previous data on a boring billion not only retained their relevance but also revealed that the anomalies of that time extend beyond the surface of the Earth, affecting the deep processes of the planet.
Changes in the layers of the Earth during a balanced billion
The study reveals that during a boring billion, there was no evidence of glaciation, which indicates an extremely long warm period in the history of the Earth. It is also noted that the emergence of difficult life preceded the Bezhelednik period, and the diversity of the animal world began to develop only after its end, which indicates a significant period of time during which evolution, it would seem, froze in anticipation.
Additionally, the authors delved into the study of the internal layers of the Earth, including the bark, the mantle, and even the core, and found that the planet demonstrated unusual behavior during a boring billion. New data on convection in the mantle and the influence of the tidal forces of the moon and the sun on the duration of the earth’s day suggested that throughout a billion years the land has been in a state of balance.
A rethinking of a boring billion as a balanced billion opens up new prospects for research. As Nick Roberts from the British Geological Service, who did not participate in the study, noted the change in the name can stimulate further scientific works aimed at studying how this balance was achieved. Understanding the processes that supported the Earth in stability can give the key to solving modern problems, including climate change, as well as indicating the possibilities for creating solutions inspired by a long-standing period, when changes on the planet were more moderate.