Note to reader: The
information put forthwith in this post are solely based on my limited
understanding of what Professor Marx told me in class today ONLY if I managed
to write down fast enough the slew of information he shared and got it right. You may, should you choose to comment on my
blog, tell me I am 100% wrong. Then you, my dear reader, will be my teacher too.
At the near end of my first Geology class, my teacher Joe
Marx explained Geology’s relatively new acceptance as a serious science by
today’s standards. The study of rocks
being more than the evidence for creation-based observations began around the
start of the 18th century, give or take a few years depending on
what country of origin you are from. The
reason being is when people stopped seeing rocks in an absolute way and allowed for singular events like meteors
hitting the earth to shake things up a bit, scientists began to take an
interest in the many stories that those little and big pieces of metamorphic,
igneous and sedimentary rocks have to tell us.
And at the very end of class today, my teacher digressed a
bit and talked about the end of the planet as we know it. Now mind you, I spent the entire time
wide-eyed and mystified by what he said because my knowledge of rocks is based
on throwing them in the water and counting the rings they make. When
he said, “the planet will end when the sun blows out and engulfs the earth,” he
lifted his hands up, cupped his fingers as if holding a ball, and moved them
outward in the air to show the sun grow the VERY SAME WAY my son Tommy did at dinner
Tuesday night when he explained how the sun’s crust will turn red, expand and
gobble up the earth.
It’s a sign I’m meant to take Geology and start looking at
the environment in a whole new way.
And I can’t wait to begin.
