PACIFIC OCEAN SPEAKS TO HUMANS
I want to address a very important question: how I came to be. If we are to know each other our genesis is always a good launching point. I don’t really have that beginning clearly in my awareness, and neither do your human scientists. But such a mystery doesn’t keep us from speculating, does it? And these speculations are informed by your ongoing research. As I think about it, your curiosity is a characteristic I treasure about you. It just may be part of your ticket back into the cycle of life.
Three billion years ago, I was just a large container that resulted from the collision of another planet, a process I mentioned earlier. Then, about 4.1 billion years ago, the water started arriving as a gift from outer space. Yes, water is largely an gift of outer space. There were a billion years or so when a large bombardment of meteors hit Earth, and these meteors were composed mainly of rock and frozen ice. It is difficult for me to imagine how many meteors it took to create me since I wasn’t fully awake at the time. We can assume it was a massive delivery of snow and ice since the resulting waters that compose my body cover nearly half of the globe. When the meteors delivered the ice, they soon began to melt and turn to liquid because the temperature of Earth was such that the melting could occur.
I am deeply grateful to the meteors for delivering the frozen water. Yes, I am a star child. I literally was birthed by extraterrestrial comets hurtling through our atmosphere creating a fiery friction.The snow and ice then turned to liquid water, because Earth has the right temperature to maintain water in a liquid rather than just ice form. Once in a liquid state,the water flowed to the lowest points on Earth, and I was one of those low points, in fact the largest one. I opened my whole body to hold the waters.
I have a special affinity with fire because it was fire that melted the ice meteors and made possible my being. There are other sources of my water which now roam around in my being and which have an intricate relationship with fire. For instance, volcanoes erupt with bursts of fire and outgas. Hydrogen and Oxygen are common in these eruptions and combine easily, especially when they contact lightning in storms. While my crust remained volatile and hot, water vapor remained in the atmosphere as the lager planet cooled. When I, and the rest of Earth, cooled down, the water vapor stirred into storms, and it rained.
Oh my, did it ever rain. It rained hard for thousands of years. About the time a general coherence and near equilibrium would be established, another large brace of asteroids would hit. The energy from the collisions heated me up, and almost all of my water would evaporate in the blazing heat that ensured. Then, eons passed, and it started all over as my crust cooled down. In the cooling phase prodigious storms erupted and released torrents of rain once again. This cycle repeated itself over and over until I was formed into a large body you call the Pacific Ocean. These massive hot flashes are kin to a prolonged menopause occurring over four billion years, so you will forgive me if I am a bit curt with you from time-to-time.