Last Bridge to China: The Shanghai Power Company, the Truman Administration and the Chinese Communists

A Decade of Progress in Earth's Internal Properties and Processes

“…According to this philosophy, the present is the key to the past, and in principle the early moments of the earth's creation as a planet can be reconstructed if the present state of the earth is sufficiently well understood. If the thermal regime of the deep interior is controlled by a fixed viscosity, as maintained by Tozer (3,14), then the physical properties of the planet's interior have only a "fading memory" of the initial conditions at the time of the formation of the planet. This conclusion is a setback for uniformitarianism because, in this case, the present however well understood is not reliable as a key to the distant past.…”

“…On the other hand, it is clearly not lacking in a basaltic component. The continental crust is complementary to MORB in both trace elements and isotopic ratios (2,3). Formation of the continents has presumably been at least partially responsible for the depletion of the so-called oceanic mantle.…”

“…Formation of the continents has presumably been at least partially responsible for the depletion of the so-called oceanic mantle. If the continental crust is the only enriched reservoir, then mass balance calculations indicate that only about 30 percent of the mantle has been processed, the rest remaining undifferentiated and primoridal (3,4).…”

“…They measured y directly by adiabatic decompression, using the simple formula y = T/K(aPl/aT)s (3) where KT is the isothermal bulk modulus at P and T, and S signifies constant entropy. This important experiment is very promising.…”