This phenomenon is so simple I feel like an idiot trying to describe it but I want to know the name of the process so I can search for a video to understand it better.
Observations: Geologists measure the age of the earth by studying the layers of the earth’s crust. Archeologists dig down and find remnants of the past under layers of dirt.
Assumptions: There are younger layers of dirt on top of the earth’s crust and older layers underneath. This seems like a continuous natural cycle of creation of a new top layer of crust.
Question: Where does all the dirt that becomes the next layer of sediment come from? Where is this perpetual supply of new dirt coming from?
It’s not like there is an endless supply of dirt stored in the sky and it’s constantly falling.
Do winds lift layers of dirt from one area of the earth and drop that dirt in another? That would just be a dirt exchange where one area wouldn’t have new layers of crust and another area would. That doesn’t seem correct with how ubiquitous the concept of layers of crust is.
Is it volcanoes that shoot dirt from the earth’s mantle into the sky then it slowly settles on the ground creating the next layer? If so that would mean the oldest layers of the crust at the bottom become liquified then are expelled into the air and settle as the newest layer of crust in the “dirt cycle” of crust formation. This would make crust creation continuous so it’s plausible but doesn’t feel completely correct.
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Volcanoes are part of it but the majority of new dirt comes from plants and animals decaying back into dirt/soil.
There are places in the oceans where the continental shelves move across each other with one being forced under the other and back into the mantle where it melts and becomes lava for volcanoes to spew out again to repeat the cycles. new life is always forming and taking resources out of the dirt to form and dying and turning back into dirt.
Dust you are and to dust you shall return.
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