Extremely cold climate Once glaciers reached the equator

Jakarta –

Great glaciers once covered the entire Earth, even reaching the equator. This knowledge is also confirmed by geologists.

The discovery that this also happened in the middle of the continent, where conditions were extremely dry, deepens the mystery of where and how life came to life.

Geologists learn about recent Ice Ages by finding the remains of glaciers further away from the poles or mountains higher than they are today. But when they started to find signs of much older glaciers in more tropical areas, they became skeptical.

It is inconceivable that the planet could ever be so cold that a thick layer of ice would reach the equator. However, as more and more examples were found, the idea of ​​’Snowball Earth‘ was born.

Before that, this idea was called ‘fringe theory’. However, as mentioned from IFL Science, Friday (15/11/2024) this idea is now widely accepted. Earth has had at least two snowball periods, and possibly more.

However, although it is now accepted that the Earth was around 60 degrees Celsius colder than it is today, questions remain as to whether the interior of the continents, where very low water, also covered with ice.

Evidence of recent glaciation in Colorado will not surprise many people. Today, the area is almost halfway between the equator and the poles and is high due to the presence of the Rocky Mountains. However, 661 million years ago conditions were very different. At that time, the area was relatively flat and located on the equator. If the ice gets there, by then, it could reach a wider area.

And of course there is ice, according to Dr. Liam Courtney-Davies of the University of Colorado, Boulder and his co-authors report. The authors argue that mineral veins injected into the sandstone are a sure sign of a combination of glacial pressure and geothermal heating.

“A modern analogue is provided by Ross Bay in Antarctica, where rifting-related faults near a sediment-filled basin, high-pressure fluids circulate in a confined aquifer beneath the ice,” they wrote .

To ensure the integrity of the Snowball Earth theory, an accurate investment period is required. If there were glaciers in one place, but continental drift put them elsewhere, that might not be the proof needed.

The team used laser ablation mass spectrometry to measure heavy metals from Colorado’s Tavakaiv sandstone in locations west and south of Denver. Uranium-lead isotope dating indicated that the rocks and injection were between 696 and 663 million years old.

“This study provides the first physical evidence that a snowball reached the heart of a continent at the equator,” Courtney-Davies said in a statement.

Most of what we know about Snowball Earth comes from what were then continental margins and nearby sedimentary basins, including recent evidence of how melted when it ended. Despite this, there are still questions about whether the entire planet froze, or whether small shelters survived. If not, the question remains why life does not have to start again after the ice melts.

The interior of the continents is often dry, and they became drier during the ice age, so one explanation is that, despite the cold, the continents did not freeze. However, it is challenging to find places that are tropical, low, and far from continental margins at suitable times, but have open geology. The location of Colorado fits these criteria, and the presence of a volcano in Idaho at the same time makes it plausible that there is a geothermal area.

“Climate evolved, and life evolved with it. All of these things happened during the upheaval of Snowball Earth. We need to better celebrate this period to understand how we and the planet evolved ,” said Courtney-Davies.”

In particular, the challenge is to explain how life continued to develop when even the warmest and driest parts of the planet were covered by a layer of ice so thick that it could push sandstone deep underground and causing the formation of mineral veins in his stomach.

(rns/fay)