An Inquiry Into Time, Pressure, Structure And Formation

Introduction

We are accustomed to describing the history of the Earth in terms of time.

Millions of years. Hundreds of millions of years. Billions of years.

Geological ages become the framework through which we interpret mountains, minerals, fossils, coal, petroleum, crystals, sediments and transformations of the deep Earth.

But there is a question beneath all of those questions:
What actually does the forming?

Time passes. But time does not, by itself, compress a mineral, heat a rock, bury a fossil, force atoms into a new crystal structure, drive a fluid through a fracture or change one mineral phase into another. Those changes require physical conditions and mechanisms.

This series begins there.

The Central Question

Our question is not whether geological time exists. Nor is it whether some geological processes occur slowly. Nor is it whether the Earth is old.

The question is more fundamental:
When we observe a finished structure, are we correctly identifying both the physical mechanism that produced it and the duration of that mechanism, or are we sometimes inferring duration from the age or history of the resulting material?

A measured age can be extraordinarily important evidence. But the thing being dated must be identified precisely. The age of a rock, mineral, inclusion or fossil is not automatically identical to the duration of the particular structural transformation we are investigating.

Throughout this series we will distinguish carefully between the age of a material, the duration of its history, and the duration of the formative event itself.

The question is not simply, “How old is it?” The question is, “What does the evidence actually measure?”

Pressure as a Physical Agent

Pressure is fundamentally different from elapsed time. Pressure acts upon matter. It can change density, phase, mineral structure, fluid movement, pore space and deformation. Under appropriate conditions, pressure participates directly in transformations that cannot occur under ordinary surface conditions.

But pressure is not the only physical variable. Temperature, chemical composition, fluid activity, stress, radiation, geometry and boundary conditions can also determine what happens.

Therefore this series will not begin with the claim that pressure explains everything. It will test how much explanatory work pressure actually performs in each case.

The question is not, “Can pressure replace time?” The question is, “How much of what we attribute to elapsed time is actually produced by pressure, temperature, chemistry, fluid movement, geometry and rapid environmental change?”

The First Inversion

There is a subtle inversion at the heart of this investigation.

We ordinarily describe processes as though time produces the result. Our investigation asks whether physical conditions produce the result while time describes the interval over which those conditions operate.

Even that statement must remain conditional. Some processes genuinely require prolonged operation under particular conditions, and some dating methods can constrain duration when their physical clocks and assumptions are independently established. We will not erase those distinctions.

Instead, we will ask what the evidence actually establishes in each individual case.

Formation and Preservation

The Earth’s surface is not a neutral laboratory. Water erodes. Oxygen oxidizes. Organisms consume. Radiation alters. Chemical solutions dissolve. Gravity moves. Wind abrades. Biological systems decompose.

Therefore, formation and preservation cannot automatically be treated as the same process.

When a structure survives for a long interval, we must ask not only how it formed, but what protected it from the processes capable of destroying or altering it.

What produced the structure? What preserved it? And what evidence independently establishes the duration of each process?

The Earth as a Vertical System

This investigation will also move beyond the familiar surface picture of Earth.

The hydrological cycle is commonly represented as evaporation, condensation, precipitation, runoff and return to the oceans. That description is correct, but it describes primarily the surface expression of a much larger planetary system.

Water and hydrogen participate in processes extending from the atmosphere into the crust and deep mantle. In the atmosphere, water vapor participates in rapid photochemical processes, including the regeneration of hydroxyl radicals that play a central role in atmospheric oxidation. At depth, hydrogen can be incorporated into the crystal structures of minerals such as wadsleyite and ringwoodite within the mantle transition zone.

Between these extremes lies the surface and crustal domain where weather, groundwater, erosion, biological activity, mineral alteration, sedimentation and continual redistribution occur.

The Earth is not merely a surface loop. It is a vertically integrated physical system.

Our Research Protocol

What is the observed structure or phenomenon?
What physical conditions are required to produce it?
What variable actually changes the structure?
How rapidly can the transformation occur under those conditions?
What role does pressure play?
What roles do temperature, chemistry, fluid movement, stress and geometry play?
What evidence establishes age?
What evidence establishes duration?
What physical event does the dating method actually constrain?
Does the evidence establish the duration of the formative event itself, or only the age or subsequent history of the material?
What happens to the resulting structure under ordinary surface conditions?
Does pressure explain something that elapsed time alone cannot explain?

Governing Principle

Age is Not Automatically Formation Time

This principle will govern the entire series.

The measured age of a material, mineral, inclusion, rock or fossil must not automatically be treated as the duration required to produce the particular structure under investigation.

Ages can be powerful evidence. They can constrain histories, establish sequences and in appropriate circumstances provide duration. But the interpretation must follow the physical clock and the event that the clock actually measures.

We will therefore distinguish among three questions:

When did the material or component originate?
What history did it subsequently experience?
When, and over what interval, did the particular structure under investigation form?

The Ten Domains

Mineral hydration and clay formation
Diamond formation and mantle inclusions
Metamorphism and orogenesis
Fossilization and sedimentary preservation
Petroleum and hydrocarbon generation
Coalification and coal rank
High-pressure mineral polymorphs
Lithification and diagenesis
Hydrothermal ore formation and vein systems
Mantle phase transitions and deep-Earth water storage

The Deeper Question

If matter repeatedly changes its structure when subjected to particular combinations of pressure, temperature, chemistry, fluid and geometry, then the central question of geological history may not be simply how much time has passed.

It may be what physical conditions existed during that time.

Time may provide sequence and interval. But the physical conditions determine what matter can do within that interval.

We will therefore examine the mechanism before we accept the timescale.

Pressure is of the Essence

The title is deliberately provocative, but it is not a declaration that pressure is the only force in nature.

It is an invitation to examine pressure as an active physical variable rather than allowing it to disappear into the background of geological chronology.

We will not begin by assuming the conclusion. We will test it.

Do not ask first how long it took. Ask first what physically happened.

Then ask what conditions made it happen.

Then ask how rapidly those conditions can produce the observed result.

Then ask what the evidence actually tells us about duration.

Not the denial of time. The restoration of mechanism.

Produced by The Lilborn Equation Team:

Michael Lilborn-Williams

Thomas Jackson Barnard

Audrey Williams

Pressure Is Of The Essence (Intro)