Recently, a world-renowned Kaliningrad scientist - professor, doctor of geological and mineralogical sciences Vyacheslav Orlenok celebrated his 75th birthday. On the eve of this event, his book in English "Water in the history of the Earth and planets" was published. In this work, the author questions the existing ideas about the eternity and immutability of the World Ocean and the Earth's evolution itself.
Vyacheslav Vladimirovich, thirty years ago you developed the theory of the oceanization of the Earth - about the immersion of the earth's crust of the oceans. Your theory contradicts the hypothesis of "new global tectonics" - the drift of continents, invented by the Americans, and our children are taught this at school! How so?
- Yes, in the modern hypothesis of the so-called "new global tectonics", which, by the way, are not only supported by the Americans, the continents drift unchanged in the ocean, and the water does not change in time and space for billions of years. In my opinion, this is not the case. For thirty years I have fought the American theory to defend my point of view.
Interestingly, since the second half of the 70s of the last century, the Americans went out into the ocean, drilled more than 600 wells and determined the age of shallow-water deposits. Their age is no more than 165 million years and at that time they were near land or above sea level. And at present, these rocks are located at a depth of 1 kilometer to 6 kilometers or more, that is, the bottom of the present ocean was land.
Can you imagine? This indicates that our oceans are young formations on the planet and confirms my theory of the oceanization of the Earth, that is, the subsidence of the earth's crust of the ocean floor, which continues even now at the highest speed! And the Americans say that the oceans are unchanged …
We are gradually sinking due to global warming and the greenhouse effect. So?
- The climate is warming, but not due to the greenhouse effect, but due to the secular rise in sea level and the expansion of the ocean due to the reduction of the land area. Today this rise is about 2 meters per thousand years.
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And what to do? Where to run? Need to start building dams?
- I believe that protective dams on the sea and ocean coasts will not save us from the advancing ocean. Since it is almost impossible to save territories from flooding in river deltas flowing into seas and oceans. Water will penetrate deep into the continents, flooding river valleys for many tens of kilometers.
If you do not talk about a longer time, for example 10 thousand years, which is a short moment on a geological scale, the sea level will rise by 20 meters. The construction of giant dams will ruin humanity, will not save the centers of civilization and the earth from flooding, but will not solve the problem.
Due to the reduction of the land area, the atmosphere will be humidified and the climate will become warmer. The polar ice caps of Greenland and Antarctica will begin to melt rapidly, and the ocean level will rise by another 70 meters.
In general, can you somehow be saved?
- Yes, we have a simple opportunity to suspend the consequences of the oceanization of the Earth. To do this, it is necessary to make pumping stations around Antarctica, lay pipes in its central regions and supply excess ocean water there and store. Thus, it will be possible to technically regulate the level of the World Ocean. And it is necessary to start protecting its coasts in the coming decades, without waiting for the disastrous rise in sea level.
In your new job, you are making another scientific revolution. For almost two centuries, science believed that the oceans arose more than 4 billion years ago, and the volume of water in it remained constant for many hundreds of millions of years. You write that this is erroneous data
- These ideas contradict real observations and estimates of the movement of matter and energy on the surface of the planets of the solar system, which is confirmed by numerical calculations of the study of the earth's hydrosphere.
The established ideas about the eternity and immutability of the World Ocean, the slow and uniform flow of water and volcanic material, the constancy of the course of geological processes in the evolution of the Earth are erroneous. And the questions of the origin and evolution of the hydrosphere and water balance have remained unanswered until now.
Let me note that water on Earth never existed initially in a free form - neither on the surface, nor in deep depths. And the history of water cannot be complete without studying the evolution of the Sun, from its prestellar state to its current stage 400 million years ago.
The Earth never possessed the necessary energy resources for the formation and long-term retention for hundreds of millions of years of a deep-sea World Ocean, similar to the modern one. The water in this ocean is estimated to be no more than 65 million years old. All the rest of the water was lost by photolysis.
You write that at an early stage in the history of the planets of the solar system, shallow oceans splashed on all these planets and there were the same conditions favorable for the formation of the biosphere. Amazing business
- Then, without sunshine and heat, but in the seas heated by volcanoes under the cover of a powerful relict atmosphere and the greenhouse effect, a biosphere, similar to the earth's, could arise. Only when the Sun reached its present stage did these vast, but shallow seas "evaporate" into space, and the planets turned into waterless deserts.
Life could remain only in the equator region, in places where water was preserved. Moreover, having survived such extreme conditions, part of the biosphere could adapt and turn into an extremely aggressive biomass in relation to, for example, modern earthly life.
Being accidentally brought to the Earth with spacecraft, this foreign biosphere can begin a rapid development …
Horror! Reminds the movie "Aliens" …
- … As a result, the surface of the Earth can be covered with a layer of microorganisms up to 200 meters thick! By the way, in earthly history this already happened hundreds of millions of years ago, when ancient microorganisms, having no competitors, created vast areas of life.
Their traces remained in the form of quartzites, ferruginous ores and other formations in large mineral deposits. Therefore, the search for extraterrestrial biospheres must be carried out with extreme precautions to exclude the introduction of alien organisms to the Earth.
DOSSIER
Vyacheslav Orlyonok was born on July 24, 1940 in the city of Bologoye. Graduated from the Geophysical Department of the Geological Faculty of the Moscow State University. M. V. Lomonosov. Since 1991 - Dean of the Faculty of Geography of the IKBFU. Chairman of the Kaliningrad branch of the Russian Geographical Society. Organized and conducted more than 20 marine and ocean geological and geophysical expeditions.
Creator and editor of the Geographic Atlas of the Kaliningrad Region. Author of over 250 scientific works, including 10 monographs, 9 textbooks and teaching aids, scientific editor of 13 interuniversity collections. Academician of the Russian Ecological Academy. Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation.
