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Thermal Evolution Models

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Hadean Earth

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Abstract

The study of Earth as an object whose history can be understood by application of physical laws dates back 200 years. This tradition is, however, rife with missteps related to as yet undiscovered physics or fundamentally incorrect assumptions. While the former is unavoidable, the latter amounts to self-inflicted wounds that may have forestalled scientific progress. Even in the absence of knowledge of initial conditions, linear mathematical relationships such as first order loss (e.g., radioactive decay) have proved useful in predicting Hadean conditions. However, more complex physical systems cannot be uniquely extrapolated back in time. For example, mantle convection, a highly non-linear, dispersive, chaotic system is, by its very nature, uninvertible. This fact has not inhibited generations of modeler’s from making ab initio predictions regarding early Earth evolution. Their results were initially limited by technological impediments and adoption of assumptions regarding the relationship between interior temperature and planetary heat loss that narrowed possible solutions. Radically new proposals regarding both the latter issue and discontinuous transitions between modes of heat loss have tempered earlier conclusions that plate-tectonic-like behavior could not arise on early Earth. Physical calculations have an important role to play in assessing the plausibility of Hadean geodynamic models, but should best be seen as “convenient fictions”.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    It is this equation, rewritten in terms of t, that permits us to calculate an age from knowledge of D/P.

  2. 2.

    heat flux = −K ∂T/∂x, where K is thermal conductivity, T is temperature, and x is depth.

  3. 3.

    Stagnant lid tectonics arises on a convecting planet with an unbroken lithosphere. Since planetary heat can only be lost by conduction through the ‘lid’, the interior warms.

  4. 4.

    Although an unorthodox view now, the idea that Earth’s interior has warmed was relatively popular in the first half of the twentieth century (e.g., Bowen 1928; Slichter 1941).

  5. 5.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law.

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  1. Department of Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    T. Mark Harrison

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Harrison, T.M. (2020). Thermal Evolution Models. In: Hadean Earth. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46687-9_2

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