Uniformitarianism: Earth Shaped by Slow Change

The mountains you see today didn't just pop up overnight like magic. For ages,

people thought Earth was brand new and shaped by sudden, wild disasters. This was called

catastrophism. But then geologists realized the slow, boring stuff happening right now,

like rivers carving rock, is exactly what shaped the planet over billions of

years. It is called uniformitarianism. Basically, the laws of physics do not change.

We still get the occasional asteroid impact that wipes out the dinosaurs, but mostly,

Earth is just a massive, slow-motion project that has been evolving for 4.5 billion

years.