With truly amazing modeling, researchers have managed to recreate the history of the planet, the most accurate geological model that portrays the changes experienced over the last 100 million years.
In some sense, the surface of the Earth is like the living skin of our bodies, it transforms over the years and interconnects the physical, chemical and biological systems of our wonderful planet. It experiences folds, breaks and modifications just like the appearance of a human in its evolution towards aging, but all of these interactions influence the interaction of climate, life and all regulatory systems.
That is why reconstructing geological landscapes over millions of years is a fundamental step to understanding the changing shape of the planet that profoundly influences ecosystems, life itself. In this sense, French researchers from the ENS, Grenoble and Lyon universities, together with scientists from the University of Sydney, worked to create a geological model that represents changes to the planet’s surface over the last 100 million years and the result is truly amazing.
For the titanic task, the researchers used the National Computing Infrastructure and with hundreds of processors, they generated a computer simulation to reconstruct the evolution of the Earth’s surface.
Geological model portrays the history of the planet
The main changes that the team of scientists noticed was the marked pace of erosion. Erosion is a gradual process in which wind or weather wears away the surface, carrying materials, resulting in sediment flows. The authors explain that erosion is an important part of the Earth’s carbon cycle, one of the essential elements for the existence of life.
They also found several inconsistencies in current geological models that predict how rock layers have transformed over the years. “This shows that our model could be useful for testing and refining reconstructions of past landscapes.”
The computer-generated video also shows the change in the arrangement of the continents that separated from Pangea to create the formation we know today. It also includes paleographic data and Each integrated global map is divided by intervals of five million years.
“Our simulated past landscapes are fully integrated with the various processes at play, especially the hydrological system, the movement of water, giving a more robust and detailed view of the Earth’s surface,” says from the University of Sydney .
The information contained in the most accurate geological model yet will answer long-standing questions about how crucial features of the Earth system transformed and gave rise to life as we know it today.