Geokinetics
= a theory of Earth as a material flow: " Geokinetics has three aspects: the flow of matter, the fold of elements, and the circulation of planetary fields". [1]
Contextual Quote
"Our metastable earth is the product of indeterminate cosmic flows. It is their regular flux and flow that continually supports and reproduces every inch of our spacetime. The geological transformation of the earth is part of the same continual alteration of the universe. We live on an earth in which the matter of the cosmos is deeply entangled. ... The enormously crucial takeaway from these indeterminate quantum fluctuations is that they change our whole conception of what the universe is. We live in one big fluctuating metastable process, without beginning or end.18 The earth is not an exception to the rest of our unstable and fluctuating universe. From this starting point of indeterminate flows, a whole new theoretical framework for thinking about the earth can emerge."
- Thomas Nail [2]
Typology
Geokinetic Epochs
Thomas Nail:
The Indeterminate Epoch
"Before the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago, when the universe was younger than 10–43 seconds old, there were only indeterminate quantum fluctuations. These fluctuations occurred at a size smaller than the smallest measurable length (1 Planck length) and at indeterminately high temperatures. There was no void; no metaphysical singularity; no stasis. There was not even movement in the traditional sense of something moving from point A to point B in space, either. There was no space or time.
Yet there was matter as energy, and there was motion as a continual transformation of the whole. There was no stable background of spacetime, no ground, and no foundation upon which the Planck Epoch could have emerged. Matter was neither this nor that, neither here nor there, neither continuous nor discontinuous, but pure indeterminate flux.
Before the Planck Epoch, the universe was neither random, determinate, nor probabilistic. The cosmos was neither one nor many because its energy was as indeterminate as its position and momentum. The laws of physics had not yet emerged, and even the conservation of energy could not be guaranteed.
In cosmological time, we can call this the “Indeterminate Epoch.” Through completely relational and nonrandom processes of its own, energy began to iterate itself into a single Planck-sized pattern called the Planck Epoch.
The Planck Epoch
This was not a singularity, “cosmic egg,” or “primeval atom,” as the 20th-century astronomer Georges Lemaître thought.4 Instead, it was the first emergent form of the universe: a fluctuating but metastable region of spacetime with the smallest size and highest temperature theoretically measurable.
This flux and flow, however, were still too small and hot for the four fundamental forces, including gravity and electromagnetism, to be divided from one another. So they remained continuous aspects of the same flow. This is what cosmologist call the “Grand Unification Epoch.”
Around 10–32 seconds after the Big Bang, a rapid inflation of spacetime occurred in which an enormous amount of spacetime unfolded from this cosmic flux. The universe expanded to 1078 times its previous volume, or the equivalent of going from 1 nanometer to 10.6 lightyears long, in a fraction of a second. Again, this movement was not a spatiotemporal movement of something across or against a fixed background of spacetime—it was an expansion of spacetime itself. In other words, the flow of the universe was not a movement from here to there but, rather, the creation of the here and there. There was no extensive movement of something, but the immanent kinetic unfolding of the universe into and out of itself.
The Inflationary Epoch
Then came the Inflationary Epoch, the production of spacetime itself—the material condition of all discrete beings. Since light moves through spacetime and not the other way around, inflation flowed faster than the speed of light.
One of the most important, although not yet experimentally demonstrated, ideas in theoretical physics today is that spacetime is an emergent feature of a moving universe. In other words, spacetime is not a substance or force but a metastable process. It is like the “bubbles” or “foam” stirred up by a more primary turbulent process of quantum matter in motion.5 What physicists call “quantum gravity theory” is the attempt to provide a quantum theory of spacetime and thus unify the main frameworks of theoretical physics: quantum physics and general relativity."
(https://syntheticzero.net/2025/04/06/geokinetics-and-the-metastable-eaarth/)