It’s a series of events, such as rising sea levels and volcanic eruptions: what we know about the heartbeat that comes from the center of the Earth.
Tendentially, the heartbeat increases as the size of the living thing increases. Case in point. The hummingbird. The world’s smallest bird, weighing between 2.5 and 6.5 g and between 6 and 12 cm long, has a tiny heart capable of running at 600 beats per minute. Well above the number of pulsations, every sixty seconds, of a healthy (human) individual: the interval in the latter case is represented by an average of 60-100 beats per minute. The heart of elephants, on the other hand, large mammals widespread in Asia and Africa, goes to about 30 beats per second. The horse’s heart, on the other hand, at about 44.
What if the Earth also had a heartbeat? Given its size, we should expect a far more dilated heart rate than that of the elephant. And in fact, the time range would be measured even in millions of years.
What is the Earth’s heartbeat
The definition, quite suggestive, comes from a group of geologists. In a study, the scientists suggest that every 27 million years or so there is a spike in geologic events on our planet that can be likened to the Earth’s “heartbeat.”
“Many geologists believe that some events are random in time,” said Michael Rampino, lead author of the study and a researcher at New York University. “But we were able to provide statistical evidence for a common cycle, suggesting that these geologic events are correlated and not random.”
What does that mean? Simply put, a succession of events, such as sea level rise, volcanic eruptions, and rearrangement of Earth’s plates, in a rather small time frame: that’s how the “beat” occurs.
When will the next “beat” arrive
“These events include periods of marine and non-marine extinctions, large oceanic anoxic events, continental basalt eruptions, sea level fluctuations, global pulses of intraplate magmatism, and timing of changes in seafloor spreading rates and plate rearrangements,” Rampino added. “Our results suggest that global geologic events are generally correlated and appear to arrive at pulses with an underlying cycle of about 27.5 million years.”
The next Earth pulse? For scientists, it is expected in 20 million years from now.
And this is not the only fascinating planetary phenomenon, there has been talk, for example, of the lightening of the Earth and, still on the subject of our planet, there are those who have proposed the introduction of a fifth ocean.
Giuseppe Giordano