Inelasticity

Okay, so I left school 28 years ago. It's a long time since I studied Physics formally. But I still remember all about springs.

A spring at rest just sits there, doing nothing. Slowly put some energy into it, say by stretching it, and it gets longer. Stop putting energy into it - let go, in other words - and it releases that energy, recoiling back into its rest state. It can recoil because it has the property of elasticity - it pings back to its pre-stretched state.

Now, the more energy you put into a spring - the further you stretch it, in other words - the more energy is released when you let go and it returns to its rest state. In other words, the recoil is louder and more violent. However, it still goes back to how it was, because of its elasticity.

But (sorry, there's always a but) what if you stretch a spring too far? Eventually, it will go past its elastic limit, the point beyond which it can no longer return to its rest state. It deforms permanently, in other words. From childhood, you may remember this as the point at which you knackered your Slinky.

Here's the part where I leave established science behind and go into personal opinion. Ready? Here's a picture of a giant spring, courtesy of NASA.

And every day we're stretching it further, with carbon-fuelled climate change, pollution, overpopulation, and more. Is it any wonder then that the recoils (hurricanes, earthquakes, monsoons, landslides, and everything else) are getting more frequent and more extreme, as the spring tries to return to its rest state? What will happen, I wonder, when this spring is stretched beyond its point of inelasticity?

Apologies. I'll get back to blogging about music and television soon enough. After all, "Earth as a spring" is just a theory that I haven't described very well, cannot evidence with demonstrable science and cannot prove. Can't help but feel that 7.5 billion researchers are working on that proof every day though.