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Taking Lives, Giving Life'Nature Reborn' in Tsunamis, Quakes; It's Part of Earthly Cycle of Life.

Posted on: Monday, 17 January 2005, 18:00 CST

The tsunami that has taken 150,000 or more lives in South Asia seems to be an unmitigated disaster. But few things in nature are wholly bad or, conversely, totally good.

The tsunami was generated by a tremendous earthquake below the surface of the sea. Earthquakes result from the movement and collision of gigantic rock plates floating on the Earth's layer of molten rock. Volcanoes are part of that system.

And geologists teach that the process of plate tectonics, which has been going on for billions of years, is what built the seas, the atmosphere and the continents that exist today.

In addition, biology teaches that the Earth's first organisms, and the proliferation of life that we see today, may have arisen deep under the primordial seas, where the clashing plates and volcanic gashes occur.

From that springs the argument that planets and planet-like objects that lack plate tectonics cannot produce life.

The Earth, as far as astronomers know, is unique. It is the only object among the 70-plus planets and moons constituting the solar system that demonstrates the seething rejuvenation that comes from the slow churn of its planetary crust.

Earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis cause enormous short-term harm to the human populations living along seacoasts and on the edges of the tectonic plates. But in the long term, the geologic process enriches the soil, helps regulate the Earth's temperature and keeps the chemical soup that is the sea healthy.

"Nature is reborn" in these terrible events, one scientist suggested. As painful as such a disaster is, it's part of the natural cycle.

Source: Omaha World - Herald

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