A little rusty

I do enjoy the History Channel, though I am in the minority in my house. Some of the shows are "think pieces", others are entertaining. Some claim to present "fact", but are really just well presented guesses.

One last night was such a show. It explained how we got deposits of iron ore spread throughout the earth's crust. As it presented the facts, the show proposed that "iron is virtually under our feet wherever we stand on earth". That seemed easy enough to accept, it ought to be evident. As the show progressed, it demonstrated how iron is mixed in various concentrations in formations and is fairly well know.

Here's where it got a little off the "fact" track. As the writers explained how the iron got there, they came up with a beaut of a story. You see, the earth was once populated by a large number of solid iron mountains. That was a stage we went through. During that time, the earth had torrential rains that had high acid concentrations. This rain was so torrrential that it filled the oceans, and with the dissolved iron, the water contained high levels of iron. Remember, the iron mountains were melted into the oceans...

THEN, as many moons went by, the iron began to settle out of the water, and it settled onto the bottom and formed these layers and deposits we now know as our iron ore deposits. That probably took more time than we will take paying off our national debt.

I'm not convinced these guys cleared this whole story with the one about the oceans being formed by the icy comets bombarding the earth...and I'm surely not sure where the melting of the iron mountains fits into the movement of the continents from Pangea.

And, having owned cars built in the 80's, I'm not sure how we use acid to dissolve iron into water and then get it to settle out into iron ore...I've seen Chevy Vegas go through the melting part, but the powder that was the result would be very unlikely to recompose into iron...

Just sayin...