[beppe]

I liked it when the discussion touched the rocks and their being alive.
For a stone that one keeps on the mantel piece or Florence poole in her parents'garden or for Michelangelo's Pietà Rondanini, their "life" manifestations are mostly in the effects they have in the people that look at them, touch them, that use them as sources of stimula that belong to an high sphere of thought.

A quality of stones

Spoiler:

They have an expressive quality. They have it in themselves if they are what they were when collected, or it has been introduced by the artist vision and action with his tools and in this cases they become objects of stone, loosing some of their stone original nature. But, as a natural stone can be as expressive as Florence masterpiece (in a large sense), the expressive quality of stone can be accepted regardless of the artist intervention. I called on stage Florence and Michelangelo just as props for the argument.

Larger stones

Spoiler:

Things are different if one consider a larger stone, like our planet. The almost totally passive nature of the stones in the preceding examples, changes radically. Almost I said, thanks to that expressive quality.
Earth is very active. It is a very common point of view for us humans to consider of Earth only that tiny layer that includes the atmosphere and the surface of Earth. The atmosphere occupies just 3% of the radius of Earth, and only 3 parts over 100,0000 of its volume. More or less like the skin of a peach. In terms of mass that part of Earth that we humans consider is even smaller than that, as the density increases maybe 10 fold going down toward the core of Earth.
Earth is more or less made like the slab of granite that I use as a table in my garden, with the exception of the core that is made by heavy material, mostly dense metals. It changes, with respect of my table, the physical state, my slab is solidly solid, Earth interior can be fluid, because of the different conditions of temperature and pressure. So much for geography 1001.
Earth is very active. An enormous amount of energy is involved, that is exchanged between the various parts (organs) of Earth , its external layers and the surrounding space through amazingly articulated mechanisms and manifestations. Geoscience is a relatively new branch of knowledge, but extremely active and in continuous growth.

Purpose of the post

Spoiler:

What I want to make emerge from this introduction is that Earth could well be an alive individuality, maybe even self conscious, maybe totally indifferent to what is going on its skin, like us with our skin, just immersed in auto contemplation or in spicy exchanges, through gravity waves, with other members of the PS social group. Planetary System. Earth time scales really do not overlap with ours. Like our time scales do not overlap with the time scales of atomic and sub atomic exchanges. Toward Earth we are more on the passive end, rather than on an exchange relation.

Possibilities

Spoiler:

Earth has the technical possibility of storing immense quantity of information. Its rocks can be magnetically polarized for instance. But if we allow ourselves to consider other forms of vibrations, like sub atomically or oven sub nuclear forms, then the quantity information that Earth could be storing in its huge mass becomes quite big. Enough to contain the information of every event in the life of every living entity since the beginning, with enough for at least the same amount of time remaining. It’s not enough. Make it ten fold that.

Earth has the technical possibility of an immense computing power. We start to learn how to utilize distributed computing.It is a well known fact.

Earth has the the technical possibility to set up and maintain a dense and efficient network among its elements

Earth has the technical possibility to sense all the things around her with a space time resolution that would make the more sophisticated magnetic resonance device a puppy toy. This through her size and unlimited time bandwith of the signals that she emits.

…

What next?

Spoiler:

Does Earth have the intention? If she has it, she knows. Us ,we don’t know unless she decides to let us know. Maybe she is just waiting the few billion years necessary for us to evolve into the child that she can play with.