The man who discovered the 'abyss of time' - BBC News

In 1788, three men set out to search a stretch of coast in Scotland. They were looking for a very special arrangement of rocks that would reveal that the Earth was much older than anyone thought. What they

discovered

would transform science, challenge long-held beliefs and, as one eminent scientist later said, break the boundaries of

time

. My name is Richard Fisher and over the last few years I have been researching and writing about what it takes to take a long-term view. That's why I was drawn to James Hutton's story. Hutton, the 18th-century father of geology, and two companions scoured the east coast of Scotland in search of a unique rock formation with gigantic

time

scales visibly written into its layers.

I decided to retrace Hunt's steps to the place he found called Sicker Point, but also maybe there are ways to learn from nature to build cities that are better for all living things. I was accompanied by David Farrier from the University of Edinburgh, a deep time expert and author of the book Footprints on Our Walk. I would learn why Sicker Point is one of the best places in the world to understand the deep geological past, but to my surprise, I would also discover a coastline that harbors signatures of the deep future, so we are looking towards Cove Harbor, where I believe James Hutton he could have left and then I came to the One S nuclear power station in the distance, it's quite a contrast in the late 18th century James Hutton, a farmer and geologist from Keen, noticed something curious about the rocks near his house;

It was simply impossible for them to have formed if the biblical account of time was true and the remarkable thing about the hunt is that I think he came to understand Eternity through the evidence, through what he could point out, particularly on his farm, Of course, it was these first clues that led him to observe rock formations and try to connect what he saw on his farm with what he saw in places like the second point. Hutton had seen an arrangement of rocks called an unconformity, a line separating two radically different rock formations within which tens of millions of years had passed.

In 1788 he brought two other researchers, John Play Fair and James Hall, to show them what had found at this point. I think Hudson had already established many of his theories. but it was actually meant to show people to take people out into the landscape and say, look, look at these rocks here, this makes my point seem eager to understand that David, you're moving forward like a rocket, oh no, yeah, just I'm thinking. about my picnic yes, yes, you can, you can't just watch him staring into the

abyss

, here we are going down, so David we made it after a two and three hour walk and a very steep slope, clinging to a rope, we are finally here. one of the most important places, if not the most important, for geologists.

Second point, I said an extraordinarily charismatic place. I mean, you look at it and you know if you walk up there you can point out the gap where you know 60 million years ago. or so past that you know, without any trace being recorded, you know where the two rock formations meet and it's an amazing thought and there's definitely that sense of the sublime there or something that overwhelms and far exceeds you know the human scale, so, how did it get hotter? knows that his disagreement was special, he realized that there is only one way this particular arrangement of rocks could exist more than 400 million years ago, the region was covered by an ancient ocean in these waters, over time they were deposited alternating layers of shale and extravagant grays.

Then the rocks were buried, crushed and folded into vertical layers, which is the bottom of the formation, then there was an epic pause. Tens of millions of years passed when little happened other than slow, steady erosion, finally about 370 million years ago, after the ocean had already disappeared. The environment was much drier, it was only then that the red sandstone from the upper layers began to settle along the line that separated these two types of rocks, that is hot and conforming to the zone 65 million years ago. Gap where it's not recorded, it just disappeared like all the creatures and and all the processes that you know, the many times around the Sun, everything that happened and that's not recorded in the rocks, it's a huge gap.

What I love about geology is that every rock tells a story about an ancient environment and process in a calm ocean punctuated by sudden waves of sediment, a desert with dry grains blown by the wind, a rainforest teeming with green life, but what nonconformity represents is an absence, there is no environment or process to describe it, however, there is a story and it was a story. that would change humanity's place in time Hudson's discovery would prove to be more than a geological oddity before the 18th century the biblical explanation of time was dominant according to Christine's calculation the Earth was only a few thousand years old Hutton transformed that view That that wasn't an easy idea to swallow, right?

It was a radical challenge, um, to some of the fundamentals of how many people would have seen the world, the entire history of humanity is just scratching the surface of planetary history. , writing about visiting Sickest Point after Playfair. He wrote that the mines seemed dizzy looking so far back into the

abyss

of time. Hutton's words that time had no vestiges of a beginning or prospects of an end and, although Hutton did not give a complete description of the processes it had, he had an understanding of it opened the door. Darwin would not have been able to formulate his theory of selection. natural without the deep time that Hutton allowed James and James and John wrote east along the coast from Dunlasbarn to Sicker Point, as well as geologists and scientists.

Like Charles Darwin Hutton's deep time Discovery, it has also inspired many artists, writers and musicians over the years. I think what I do in my work is connect things that seem disparate. I can see the reasons and the threads that connect things and I'm trying. To make a really difficult specialized thing connect to something that is really tangible and completely accessible, I then traveled west, to the home of Karine, the poet, a singer and songwriter who joined the pandemic lockdowns, was inspired to compose a song about Hutton and his long-time nonconformity that I wrote. a piece called "sticker point" with my friend and neighbor Dave Milligan, he lives just five minutes down the street, actually on the other side of the football park, so the pieces are part spoken word and part song and in a way imagines James Hutton and, um, James Hall and John Playfair goes out in his boat to see the point and that in that moment of epiphany the three men find no trace of a beginning and no prospect of an end just one thing It's safe everything dissolves and disappears pairs and diatoms walls and bones and oceans the Earth is never still it's never still and this line even smells like a rock under the sun and that's a reference to Robert Burns because one of his most beloved songs is " um my love's like a red red rose" How do you say it to all the seas? dry, dear, and the rocks melt the sun, oh, I will still love you, dear, although the children of time have run and it is like a little bee, part of one of the verses, because my love is like a red rose, but almost certainly. um linked to the fact that he was aware that Fort Hutton was being developed at the time, if he were still alive, what would Hudson have to say about deep time today?

Well, if he returns to the sickest spot, he may as well comment on the surprising changes on the coast. There is a lookout that you come to and then you can see the North Berwick law, which is an ancient volcanic plug. You can see the cement factories in Dunbar. You can see the Tornes nuclear power plant and you can see the ground floor in the room or bedroom. everything essentially from where the sickest point is and there's something on that horizon line that I just found is really a huge story because you get a clear idea of ​​the deep time geology of everything, it's really palpable the two most obvious. landmarks on that flat landscape and then these two massive human medicines and industry landmarks that have such consequences for, you know, a large number of generations into the future.

The last line of the piece is until this moment for El Éter, tell him this time. For those yet to come, this part of Scotland is famous for its deep coastline, but as I

discovered

, there are also signs of our long-term present and future problems, carbon-intensive cement factories and a power station producing nuclear waste that will remain. radioactive for thousands of years the farrier calls it an anthropocene coast. It's amazing to think that you know that the world we inhabit has not always been the same that there have been many different versions, it has used many different forms, which inevitably makes me at least think about it. the world to come the one we are creating through climate change by 2030 2040 there will be more concrete on Earth than all the fish trees and all the human beings if you add them up and put them on the scale yes, yes, I think it is extraordinary Statistics , It is not like this?

It's extraordinary and sobering, I think, and all the cement that we've produced in the past and spread across the landscape creates another kind of nonconformity, we have so many, you know, you know, human generations, but species. You have not left any trace in the book of Earth, but we have begun to write our names in the densest and most durable Inc in this book? um and I think that's what sets us apart in our relationship with time. that we are part of it in a way that no other generation has ever been, only one thing is certain