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Plate tectonics on Spherus Magna. And what about the planet's core


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Hello BZPers (is that really what we call ourselves?) This is going to get a little wee bit technical and scientific, and astrophysical, geological even. Sciency. I know the world of BIONICLE doesn't really have real world physics, but I was wondering anyway, does anyone think that Spherus Magna (and by extension, Bara Magna, Bota Magna and Aqua Magna) have/had plate tectonics? Today, in astrophysics, astronomy, geography and geology, it is thought that a planet needs plate tetconics in order to have life on them, for several reasons. One is it is indicative of active core inside the planet. And without an active core, you get no atmosphere, and by no atmosphere you get no oxygen, at least in the real universe. Another reason is that with the moving plates, and the constant recycling/reformation of the plates, all the stuff of life is replenished on our Earth. Things like large amounts of water and carbonate (the mineral form of Co2) is recycled back into the Earth as the plates move as well.

 

I've gathered some text from articles on the subject. They are both a bit long, but hang in there please! I have something to say afterwards...

 

Here is a bit of text taken from the article Plate Tectonics Could be Essential for Life at Astrobio.com

Says Spohn, “plate tectonics replenishes the nutrition that primitive life could live on. Imagine a top surface that is depleted of the nutrition needed for bacterial life. It needs to be replenished, and plate tectonics is a method of achieving this.”

 

 

Spohn found that the further he delved into the issue, the more important plate tectonics seemed to be for life. For example, it is believed that life developed by moving from the ocean to the kind of strong and stable rock formations that are the result of tectonic action. Plate tectonics is also involved in the generation of a magnetic field by convection of Earth’s partially molten core. This magnetic field protects life on Earth by deflecting the solar wind. Not only would an unimpeded solar wind erode our planet’s atmosphere, but it also carries highly energetic particles that could damage DNA.

 

 

Another factor is the recycling of carbon, which is needed to stabilize the temperature here on Earth. Spohn explains, “plate tectonics is known to recycle carbon that is washed out of the atmosphere and digested by bacteria in the soil into the interior of the planet from where it can be outcast through volcanic activity. Now, if you have a planet without plate tectonics, you may have parts of this cycle, but it is broken because you do not have the recycling link.”<END OF QUOTATION>

 

 

Another article, "Does a planet need plate tectonics to develop life?" from phys.org says about the movements of plates and habitable planets:

Plate movements

 

Plate tectonics provides a mechanism for this global thermostat. Most volcanism on the Earth occurs at plate boundaries in response to plate tectonics. And the most important volcanic products by mass – by a large amount – are two greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide and water.

 

As they move over the Earth’s surface, some plates get recycled back into the mantle, at places like the Marianas Trench in the Pacific Ocean.

 

Enormous amounts of water and carbonate (the mineral form of CO2) get recycled back into the interior as they do.

Plate tectonics also form mountains, and one of the major sinks of CO2over geological time periods is weathering of mountains, where CO2dissolved in rainwater reacts with silicate minerals, forming new minerals, and drawing down atmospheric CO2 levels.

 

In concert, these mechanisms act as a thermostat. If the Earth gets too hot, high levels of rainfall and erosion start bringing CO2 levels down. If the Earth gets too cold and freezes over, the erosion mechanism stops.

 

But volcanism, due to plate tectonics, continues pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, and levels build up, eventually melting the icecaps. It was this mechanism that allowed Earth to recover from a global ice age in the Neoproterozoic, about 600 million years ago.

 

Habitable planets

 

This association between habitability, and plate tectonics, has become so entrenched that the search for habitable exosolar planets has focused on super earths. These are rocky planets larger than Earth where the odds for plate tectonics were thought to be higher.

 

But the case is not so clear cut. Over the past decade, simulations of these super earths suggested that they may not have plate tectonics, but rather be in a stagnant-lid state, where a hot interior powers high levels of volcanism, but without moving plates.

 

Our recent work has looked at the question from an evolutionary viewpoint. How do Earth-like planets evolve from their hot, violent beginnings to their eventual cool, quiescent twilights, radiating their last heat to space?

 

We found that the evolutionary track a planet takes depends not only on its size, but on how it starts. For example, two planets identical in every other way, but with different starting temperatures, may evolve down very different evolutionary paths.

 

We also found that plate tectonics may simply be a phase in the evolution of planets, and that planets may begin and end with stagnant lids.<END OF QUOTATION>

 

Now, we do know that Spherus Magna had (or maybe have?) a core, which is, or was, comprised of Energized Protodermis. But do we know it acts like planet cores do in the real world? Earth's core generates heat, some of which is done through uranium in our core (yeah there's radioactive material in there), which by warming the adjacent molten material, rises to the earth's crust. This powers continental drift creates earthquakes and volcanoes, and mountains. But the movement of the molten iron of our world's core also creates magnetism, which protects the surface of the earth from the UV radiation coming from the sun. The fact that the core is semi-liquid is what makes the tectonics possible by the way.

 

Now, the question is, does the core of Spherus Magna act like this too? Does SM even have an atmosphere? Wouldn't the 40,000,000 feet tall mechanoid the Great Beings built on there make that impossible? I mean, there is oxygen on there, or an equivalent, because beings, organic and biomechanical, have beem shown to have lungs. But an atmosphere would be needed to keep the oxygen in right? So is the atmosphere just super huge, reaching further out than Earth's? Or does the robot go through the atmosphere without any complications, like the atmosphere somehow breaking, if that's even possible to do by going through it, or being pierced constantly? And if plate tectonics does appear on Spherus Magna, what do you think the geography looked like in the past compared to the present?

 

One last bit of speculation. When Aqua Magna and Bota Magna split from Spherus Magna, did they bring some of the Energized Protodermis with them, forming smaller cores of their own? It would seem like that would be necessary right? But again, real physics don't apply to BIONICLE, but it is still fun to theorize with the mindset that there are some kind of physical and scientific rules to all of it. Most of the best speculative fiction set in different worlds have its own rules and system, and follows them after all.

 

 

I've found another article from Astrobio called "Earth’s Breathable Atmosphere Tied to Plate Tectonics?" It also has a bit about astrobiology later on, but I've only quoted the first two parts of the text below,

 

The rise of oxygen is one of the biggest puzzles in Earth’s history. Our planet’s atmosphere started out oxygen-free. Then, around 3.5 billion years ago, tiny microbes called cyanobacteria (or blue-green algae) learned how to carry out photosynthesis. They began using energy from sunlight to make their food from carbon dioxide and water, giving off oxygen as waste.

 

But it took another 3 billion years for oxygen levels to climb from trace amounts to at least 20 percent of the atmosphere, or high enough to support the emergence of complex life. And so far the mechanism behind that rise has remained unclear.

 

Now a new study by University of Exeter biogeochemist Benjamin Mills and his colleagues offers a new potential clue.

 

Using a computer model, they showed that plate tectonics may have fueled an increase in oxygen between 1.5 billion and half a billion years ago. In particular, a process tied to the way continents remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere may have increased the supply of phosphorus, a key nutrient for photosynthetic microbes in the ocean. The paper was published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

 

“This is a novel perspective for the late Proterozoic—a critical time of dramatic climate change, rising oxygen in the ocean and atmosphere, and origins and diversification of complex life,” says Timothy Lyons, a biogeochemist not involved in the study.

 

From Seafloor to Terrestrial “Weathering’

 

The chemical weathering of rocks releases calcium ions in rivers and oceans, where they react with carbonate dissolved in the water. The product of that reaction, calcium carbonate, is then deposited onto the ocean floor, where it becomes limestone. (Photograph ©2009 Greg Carley.)

 

Continents play a crucial role in the carbon cycle by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide mixes with rain water, forming a weak acid (carbonic acid) which slowly wears down or “weathers” rocks on land.

 

The process releases minerals such as calcium and magnesium from the rocks. These minerals then combine with carbonate and settle at the bottom of the ocean forming layers of calcium carbonate, or limestone.

 

In other words, the weathering process simply pulls carbon from the atmosphere and turns it into a layer of sediment on the seafloor.

 

However, continental rocks aren’t the only route by which carbon is removed from the atmosphere. Ocean ridges, the places where fresh crust is made on the seafloor, can undergo a similar “weathering” process. In fact, seafloor weathering was the main route of carbon removal in the early chapter of Earth’s history, before the formation of continents.

 

According to the new study, the rise of oxygen may have been due to a shift in balance between the two processes—between seafloor and continental weathering.

 

Also, bump ;P

Edited by Makaru

Just a geeky guy trying to learn the craft of writing stories.

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Energized Protodermis would probably act like Earth's iron core, with a solid center and high internal temperatures as a result of pressure. Given that EP also seeps to the surface, it's also probably in at least some parts of the mantle.

 

SM probably does have an atmosphere. The GSR's wouldn't effect it; they'd just be sticking out of it. This is, of course, assuming that SM's atmosphere is not extremely thick. We don't know quite how big the planet is, so for all we know, it's as big as a terrestrial planet can be, and its atmosphere follows suit.

 

Earth's moon didn't take any of the planet's iron core when it formed, so I can't imagine Bota and Aqua Magna would contain any of the EP if the substance was only at the core; however, our moon does contain materials found in Earth's mantle, and we can assume that there's EP in SM's mantle, so they might contain EP.

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Personally, I think that the EP wasn't at the core, geologically speaking, just very low in the crust, bordering on within the mantle. Think of it like oil, being contained by stone it had already transmuted to protosteel/other unaffectable substance, until it was brought to the surface and spread around. Whereupon it could affect the planet as a whole...

:r: :e: :g: :i: :t: :n: :u: :i:

Elemental Rahi in Gen2, anyone? A write-up for an initial video for a G2 plot

 

I really wish everyone would stop trying to play join the dots with Gen 1 and Gen 2 though,it seems there's a couple new threads everyday and often they're duplicates of already existing conversations! Or simply parallel them with a slightly new 'twist'! Gen 2 is NEW, it is NOT Gen 1 and it is NOT a continuation. Outside of the characters we already have I personally don't want to see ANY old characters return. I think it will cheapen the whole experience to those of us familiar with the original line...

 

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  • 1 month later...

Like Regitnui said, it is probable that EP existed relatively close to the surface of Spherus Magna. After all, we know that a lot of EP came to the surface before the Shattering and it is unlikely that it got there all the way from the core.
 
As far as I know, it has never been officially declared that Spherus Magna did/did not have plate tectonics. However, even though this image clearly shows that Bara Magna has no plate tectonics, looking at the mountains and ravines of Bara Magna, it is very possible that Spherus Magna did. In fact -- and this is just a theory -- it could be that after the Shattering, much of Spherus Magna's molten mantel could have been taken by the more habitable planets of Bota Magna and Aqua Magna while the rest cooled down and solidified into Bara Magna. Without a fluid mantel, there is no plate tectonics, and if plate tectonics are important to support life, that could explain why Spherus Magna was flourishing while Bara Magna was dying. 

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I guess the important thing to consider is that Energized Protodermis is basically magic.  Who's to say it doesn't have the ability to recycle carbon and generate magnetic fields without shifting the continents?  I mean, we're already talking about a planet that can safely split into three spheres and have all three of them support life.  Conventional Earth science basically goes out the window.

 

And as for your questions about the giant robot, I'm sure they would've just built him lying down.  Much more efficient.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Or you can go the route of John Connor of Mars, and have there be a series a atmosphere factories on what would otherwise be the dead planet/planetoids that allows life to survive  (though not thrive), they being locked by mental songs so people can't barge in a cause the end of the world(s).

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A RUDE AWAKENING - A Spherus Magna redo | Tzais-Kuluu  |  Pushing Back The Tide  |  Last Words  |  Black Coronation  | Blue Man Bound | Visions of Thasos   ن

We are all but grey specks in a dark complex before a single white light

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  • 1 month later...

EP is probably throughout all layers of SP and it is called the Core War. EP is also known to have been able to achieve sapience so that throws in a whole other factor in there. What if Energized Protodermis keeps the planet habitable and consciously split the planet apart in order to preserve itself as it freezes in space. Maybe it somehow needs life on its planet of habitation in order to survive and somehow makes sure through manipulation of the plate tectonics and running water streams that life stays on the planet. This could mean that it only creates earthquakes when it wants earthquakes.

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