Alberto Patiño Douce

My chief contribution to science, and the only one that I hope will survive me, is a book published by Cambridge University Press in 2011 with the title Thermodynamics of the Earth and Planets. My goal in writing this book was to present a rigorous and somewhat comprehensive mathematical analysis of planetary processes, beginning from general concepts and equations of physics and building up to the complexities of a messy planet. This is a reflection of my conviction that only mathematical formalism can reveal how the universe works. The leitmotif of the book could be summarized like this: there is only one objective and rigorous way of understanding our planet, and it requires that we stop thinking of geology as a discipline that stands in splendid isolation of physics. For physics is, like it or not, the queen of sciences, the one and only path to understanding nature. And physics, and by implication the universe of which Earth is a minuscule part, cannot be understood without mathematics. Words can be twisted to mean anything, which is one of the reasons why languages evolve. Mathematics is the only universal language, because equations are immutable and inflexible. 

Geology is the physics of a very complex assemblage of interacting systems. As all physics, geology should begin with objective, reproducible and quantifiable observations, which should then be placed within a formal mathematical framework. And if geology is to be considered a science, then it requires testability. Geology shares in this respect two handicaps with astrophysics. First, the subject of study, or at least most of it in the case of Earth, is not accessible. Second, the timescales of interest are many orders of magnitude greater than a human lifetime - in fact, than civilization itself. But geology has an additional burden. Whereas astrophysicists can draw from hundreds of millions of samples, for instance in the form of stars of different masses, compositions and ages, geologists have only one Earth, plus a handful of other terrestrial planets. Given this state of affairs, we should recognize that there are substantial limitations to what we can objectively learn about our planet. For every planetary system or process there is a level of detail beyond which claimed findings lack significance, because they are not testable. For instance, we have a solid understanding of the fact that the Earth’s mantle is a heat engine. This heat engine transfers heat between a deep reservoir of thermal energy and the surface of the planet. As any heat engine, the Earth's mantle converts a small fraction of that thermal energy into mechanical energy: plate motion and ultimately gravitational potential energy stored as topography. We know enough about the material properties and phase transitions of magnesium silicates to understand why present-day convection of the Earth’s mantle gives rise to a regime in which the top thermal boundary layer is fragmented into plates that move with some independence from one another, and why, in contrast, the top thermal boundary layer is largely unbroken in the other terrestrial planets. Maybe it is possible to increase the level of detail somewhat beyond this. But I wonder what future philosophers of science will make of the conjuration of ancient continents on the basis of no more than a few radiometric ages, some subjective observations, and the aesthetical inclinations of the author. This is no better than Aristotelian physics or medieval alchemy.

I have been swimming against the tide for decades, using logic to argue the point that a not insignificant portion of what we think that we know about our planet is scientifically suspect, and  explaining how we can do better. I don't expect the tide to change in my favor any time soon. But then, Jorge Luis Borges, John Wheeler, Ralph Alpher and Lise Meitner were shunned by the same Nobel Prize committees that rewarded a talentless poseur like Bob Dylan, that famous pair of grease monkeys, Penzias and Wilson, and the morally and scientifically challenged Otto Hahn. I am in excellent company.

This is a sanitized excerpt of a longer piece, that you can read here.