The Earth's BeginningBall, Robert S. (Robert Stawell)
Science
The Earth's Beginning
Ball, Robert S. (Robert Stawell)
Krakatoa (Indonesia); Nebular hypothesis
The effect of this long continuance of great pressure upon the pebbles
of the conglomerate in certain parts of the country has been most
astonishing. The granite in the pebbles still retains its characteristic
crystalline structure; it has obviously not undergone anything that
could be described as fusion; yet under the influence of the two factors
of that pressure, namely, its intensity and its long continuance, the
granite pebbles have yielded. In some cases they are slightly elongated,
in others they are much elongated, while in yet others they are even
rolled out flat. At different places along the valley the various phases
of the transformation can be studied. We can find places where the
pebbles seem little altered, and then we can trace each stage until the
solid granite pebbles have, by the application of excessive pressure,
been compressed into thin sheets whose character it would not have been
easy to divine if it had not been possible to trace out their history.
These sheets lie close and parallel, so that the material thus produced
acquires some of the characteristics of slate. It splits easily along
the flattened sheets, and this rolled-out conglomerate is indeed
actually used as a substitute for slate, and in some places there are
houses roofed with the conglomerate which has been treated in this
extraordinary fashion.
This fact will illustrate a principle, already well known in the arts,
that many, if not all, solids may be made to flow like liquids if only
adequate pressure be applied. The making of lead tubes is a well-known
practical illustration of the same principle, for these tubes are simply
formed by forcing solid lead by the hydraulic press through a mould
which imparts the desired form.
If then a solid can be made to behave like a liquid, even with such
pressures as are within our control, how are we to suppose that the
solids would behave with such pressures as those to which they are
subjected in the interior of the earth? The fact is that the terms solid
and liquid, at least as we understand them, appear to have no physical
meaning with regard to bodies subjected to these stupendous pressures,
and this must be carefully borne in mind when we are discussing the
nature of the interior of the earth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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