According to a new, Harvard-led study, geochemical calculations about the interior of the planet’s water storage capacity suggests Earth’s primordial ocean 3 to 4 billion years ago may have been one to two times larger than it is today, and possibly covered the planet’s entire surface.
“It depends on the conditions and parameters we look at in the model, such as the height and distribution of the continents, but the primordial ocean could have flooded more than 70, 80, and even 90 percent of the early continents,” said Junjie Dong, a Ph.D. student in Earth and Planetary Sciences at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, who led the study. “In the extreme scenarios, if we have an ocean that is two times larger than the amount of water we have today, that might have completely flooded the land masses we had on the surface of the early Earth.”
They’re saying that there isn’t enough water on the surface today, but that an undetermined amount of water that used to be on the surface is now below the surface, and it’s possible that that amount is sufficient that all land was at one point submerged.
And the amount of heat necessary to liberate all the water bound in minerals to flood the planet would liquify the crust again. Noah’s magic box would burst into flames and everyone would die.
I thought that the Earth was molten rock, then cooled, then rained/flooded, and then sometime later, single cell organisms/life.
Nope, at no time has there ever been enough free water to completely submerge all land.
kagis
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/04/harvard-scientists-determine-early-earth-may-have-been-a-water-world/
They’re saying that there isn’t enough water on the surface today, but that an undetermined amount of water that used to be on the surface is now below the surface, and it’s possible that that amount is sufficient that all land was at one point submerged.
And the amount of heat necessary to liberate all the water bound in minerals to flood the planet would liquify the crust again. Noah’s magic box would burst into flames and everyone would die.
The water would boil away into vapor.