Geological Activities of Earth - Essay Example

It is a confusing question for the scientific world to find out the relation between earth's internal activities with solar energy. If the earth’s internal activities are related to solar energy, then other planets also should have such internal activities.

“The earth grew from the accumulation of planetesimals (meteorites and asteroids), over 1-200 million years about 4.3 to about 4.5 billion years ago. All of the geological activity on the earth today is driven from this initial source of heat at the earth's formation, aided and abetted by continued radioactive decay of elements in the earth's interior” (The Heat History of Earth). The construction of earth is not homogeneous and different parts of the earth have different types of layers and even the materials are different at different locations on earth. For example, the soil structure of India and that of America are entirely different. Earth is blessed with so many radioactive elements like Uranium, Radium, and Plutonium which are decaying continuously liberating a huge amount of energy. Moreover, these elements are not distributed uniformly on the earth’s surface and even then earth’s internal activities are distributed evenly everywhere. So we can conclude that the internal activity of the earth is not because of the radioactive decay of elements alone, but it was due to the initial source of heat at the earth’s formation also.

It is an accepted fact that the earth’s internal activity has risen in the recent past. It is evident from the increased number of earthquakes and volcano eruptions. Once the earth’s internal activities are finished, there will be no more earthquakes, tidal waves, and volcano eruptions and the earth becomes cooled to alarming levels so that its biological activities will also be ended along with the geological activities.

“There is much evidence that indicates geological vitality of a planet which has played a fundamental role in the development and evolution of life” (Frias). It is evident from the fact that no other planets have biological activities reported so far and no other planets have any geological activities also just like earth. Earth’s geological activities have started at the time of its formation itself because of the huge amount of heat produced at the time of its formation. The radioactive elements presented on the earth’s surface help the earth to sustain its geological activities.