Mirror Image (The Twilight Zone)
"Mirror Image" is episode 21 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It aired on February 26, 1960 on CBS. Millicent Barnes waits in a bus depot in Marathon, New York, for a bus to Cortland, en route to a new job. Looking at a wall clock she notices, she asks the ticket agent when the bus will arrive, he gruffly complains that this is her third time asking. Millicent denies this. While speaking with the ticket agent, she notices a bag just like hers in the luggage pile behind her, she mentions this to the ticket agent. She does not believe this, she washes her hands in the restroom and the cleaning lady there insists this is her second time there. Again, Millicent denies this. Upon leaving the restroom, she glances in the mirror and sees, in addition to her reflection, an exact copy of herself sitting on the bench outside, she meets a young man from Binghamton named Paul Grinstead, waiting for the same bus. Millicent tells Paul about encountering her double. Paul, attempting to calm Millicent, says it is either a joke or a misunderstanding caused by a look-alike.
When the bus arrives and the two of them prepare to board, Millicent looks in the window and sees the copy of herself seated on the bus. In shock, she faints. Millicent lies unconscious on a bench inside the depot while Paul and the cleaning lady attend to her. Paul agrees to wait for the 7:00 bus. While they wait, now coming to, insists the strange events are caused by an evil double from a parallel world - a nearby, yet distant alternative plane of existence that comes into convergence with this world by powerful forces, or unnatural, unknown events; when this happens, the impostors enter this realm. Millicent's doppelgänger can survive in this world only by replacing her. Paul says the explanation is "a little metaphysical" for him, believes that Millicent's sanity is beginning to unravel. Paul tells Millicent he will call a friend in Tully who has a car and may be able to drive them to Syracuse. Instead, he calls the police. After Millicent is taken away by two policemen, Paul begins to settle himself.
After drinking from a water fountain, Paul notices. Looking up towards the doors, Paul notices another man running out the door of the bus depot. Pursuing this individual down the street, Paul discovers that he is chasing his own copy, whose face shows excited delight, his copy disappears as Paul calls out "Where are you?" while looking around in confusion and shock. Vera Miles as Millicent Barnes Martin Milner as Paul Grinstead Joe Hamilton as Ticket agent Naomi Stevens as Washroom Attendant In a short film pitching the Twilight Zone series to a Dutch television station, creator Rod Serling claimed to have gotten the idea for "Mirror Image" following an encounter at an airport. Serling noticed a man at the other side of the terminal who wore the same clothes and carried the same suitcase as himself. However, the man turned out to be younger and "more attractive"; this is one of several episodes from season one with its opening title sequence plastered over with the opening for season two. This was done during the Summer of 1961 as to help the season one shows fit in with the new look the show had taken during the following season.
This episode inspired Jordan Peele's 2019 film Us. DeVoe, Bill.. Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0 Grams, Martin.. The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0 "Mirror Image" on IMDb
Edward Binns
Edward Binns was an American stage and television actor. He had a wide-spanning career in film and television portraying competent, hard working and purposeful characters in his various roles. Binns was born in Philadelphia, the son of Esther and Edward Thomas Binns, his family were Quakers. He graduated from the Pennsylvania State University in 1937. Binns' theatrical career began shortly after his 1937 college graduation, when he participated in a repertory theatre in Cleveland, he followed that with a year as director of the Pan-American Theatre in Mexico City. Next, he went to the University of Pennsylvania as an instructor. One of the first members of the newly formed Actors Studio, Binns began studying with Elia Kazan in late 1947, his Broadway credits include Ghosts and Command Decision. Beginning in 1942, Binns served in the Army Air Force. After graduating from Officer Candidate School, he was an armament officer in the China-Burma-India Theater. After appearing in a number of Broadway plays, Binns began appearing in films in the early 1950s.
Some of his notable roles include playing Juror No. 6 in Sidney Lumet's directorial debut 12 Angry Men and Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith in the Academy Award-winning film Patton starring George C. Scott. Binns was featured as a police detective in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest and played a key role as bomber pilot Colonel Grady in Fail-Safe, his other films include Judgment at Nuremberg, The Americanization of Emily, The Plainsman, Night Moves and The Verdict. Binns starred as Lieutenant Roy Brenner in Brenner, a crime drama on CBS, he appeared in "more than 500 television programs, live and film" including NBC's legal drama Justice, Rod Cameron's syndicated State Trooper, the syndicated adventure series Whirlybirds, the ABC/Warner Brothers western series, The Dakotas, the ABC rodeo drama, Stoney Burke, ABC's war drama 12 O'Clock High. He was cast in Private Detective, The Investigators and Thriller. Binns appeared as Colonel Robert Baldwin with June Allyson as his screen wife, Eleanor Baldwin, in the 1961 episode "Without Fear" of Allyson's CBS anthology series, The DuPont Show with June Allyson.
That year he made two guest appearances on Perry Mason, first as Lloyd Castle in "The Case of the Angry Dead Man," as Charles Griffin in "The Case of the Malicious Mariner," and in an episode of The Asphalt Jungle. He had a leading role in Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone in the 1960 episode "I Shot an Arrow into the Air", he portrayed a marine biologist obsessed with a whale in the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea episode "The Ghost of Moby Dick". Binns appeared in two episodes of ABC's The Untouchables as gunman Steve Ballard and in a episode as a doctor, he was a cast member of CBS's The Nurses from 1962 through 1964. He appeared in an episode of the ABC espionage drama Blue Light early in 1966, in ABC's It Takes a Thief with Robert Wagner. Binns appeared in one episode of the ABC series A Man Called Shenandoah, with Robert Horton, as General Korshak on CBS's M*A*S*H, in an episode of NBC's The Brian Keith Show, an episode of The Rockford Files, in three episodes of ABC's The Fugitive, his distinctive voice was heard in hundreds of radio and television commercials.
Binns married journalist Marcia Legere in December 1956. He had two daughters from a previous marriage. At the time of his death, he was married to actress Elizabeth Franz. Binns died from a heart attack at the age of 74 while traveling from New York City to his home in Connecticut, his ashes were scattered at his residence. Edward Binns on IMDb Edward Binns at AllMovie Edward Binns at the Internet Broadway Database Edward Binns at Find a Grave
The Big Tall Wish
"The Big Tall Wish" is episode twenty-seven of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone, with an original score by Jerry Goldsmith. It aired on April 8, 1960 on CBS. Bolie Jackson is a washed-up boxer, he is knocked down and just about to be counted out, when he magically switches places with the other boxer. Bolie is now standing over his vanquished opponent. Bolie celebrates his victory, he remembers being knocked down and has no memory of getting back up to win, nor can he figure out why his knuckles feel fine. His manager tells Bolie. Bolie figures. However, there is one other person. Henry Temple, the young son of Bolie's girlfriend Frances, not only remembers, he has an explanation for what happened. Henry tells Bolie that he made "the biggest, tallest wish" he could come up with for Bolie, for the two boxers to switch positions, it came true. Bolie cannot accept this. Henry warns him. If Bolie does not believe, the wish will not work, but he is unswayed. As soon as he rejects the idea that a wish could have been responsible for what happened, he is returned to the fight, on the canvas.
This time the referee finishes counting Bolie out. Neither Bolie nor Henry have any memory of the alternate outcome. Henry remembers making the biggest wish he could for Bolie, but it did not work, so he declares with resignation that he will not be making any more wishes. "There ain't no such thing as magic, is there?", he asks Bolie. "I guess Henry", Bolie replies sadly. "Or maybe...maybe there is magic. And maybe there's wishes, too. I guess the trouble is...there's not enough people around to believe..." Ivan Dixon as Bolie Jackson Stephen Perry as Henry Temple Kim Hamilton as Frances Temple Walter Burke as Joe Mizell Charles Horvath as Joey Consiglio Carl McIntire as Announcer The all-black principal cast was a novelty for television in 1960. Said Rod Serling at the time:Television, like its big sister, the motion picture, has been guilty of the sin of omission... Hungry for talent, desperate for the so-called'new face,' searching for a transfusion of new blood, it has overlooked a source of wondrous talent that resides under its nose.
This is the Negro actor. A few other Twilight Zones followed the example of this episode and cast blacks in significant roles, including the pastor in "I Am the Night—Color Me Black", with Ivan Dixon, a child in the mall in "The Night of the Meek", the electrician in "The Brain Center at Whipple's"; these inclusions, though insignificant by modern standards, were so revolutionary at the time that The Twilight Zone was awarded the Unity Award for Outstanding Contributions to Better Race Relations in 1961. Cast in the lead role was champion boxer Archie Moore, who exclaimed, "Man, I was in the Twilight Zone!" when describing the punch delivered by his opponent Yvon Durelle. This is one of several episodes from season one where some broadcast prints have the opening title sequence replaced with that of season two; this was done during the summer of 1961 to help the season one shows fit in with the new look the show had taken during the following season. They use the same hallway shown in this episode in "Mr. Bevis", episode 33, but altered.
However, the door and stair railings remain the same. The boxing match takes place at "St. Nick's Arena", the name of a boxing arena in New York City, the St. Nicholas Rink. Zircee, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 DeVoe, Bill.. Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0 Grams, Martin.. The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0 "The Big Tall Wish" on IMDb
Zabriskie Point
Zabriskie Point is a part of the Amargosa Range located east of Death Valley in Death Valley National Park in California, United States, noted for its erosional landscape. It is composed of sediments from Furnace Creek Lake, which dried up 5 million years ago—long before Death Valley came into existence; the location was named after Christian Brevoort Zabriskie, vice-president and general manager of the Pacific Coast Borax Company in the early 20th century. The company's twenty-mule teams were used to transport borax from its mining operations in Death Valley. Millions of years prior to the actual sinking and widening of Death Valley and the existence of Lake Manly, another lake covered a large portion of Death Valley including the area around Zabriskie Point; this ancient lake began forming nine million years ago. During several million years of the lake's existence, sediments were collecting at the bottom in the form of saline muds, gravels from nearby mountains, ashfalls from the then-active Black Mountain volcanic field.
These sediments combined to form. The climate along Furnace Creek Lake was dry, but not nearly as dry as in the present. Camels, horses and birds left tracks in the lakeshore muds, along with fossilized grass and reeds. Borates, which made up a large portion of Death Valley's historical past were concentrated in the lakebeds from hot spring waters and alteration of rhyolite in the nearby volcanic field. Weathering and alteration by thermal waters are responsible for the variety of colors represented there. Regional mountains building to the west influenced the climate to become more and more arid, causing the lake to dry up, creating a dry lake. Subsequent widening and sinking of Death Valley and the additional uplift of today's Black Mountains tilted the area; this provided the necessary relief to accomplish the erosion that produced the badlands we see today. The dark-colored material capping the badland ridges is lava from eruptions that occurred three to five million years ago; this hard lava cap has retarded erosion in many places and explains why Manly Beacon, the high outcrop to the right, is much higher than other portion of the badlands.
Manly Beacon was named in honor of William L. Manly, who along with John Rogers, guided members of the ill-fated Forty-niners out of Death Valley during the gold rush of 1849; the primary source of borate minerals gathered from Death Valley's playas is Furnace Creek Formation. The Formation is made up of over 5000 feet of mudstone and conglomerate; the borates were concentrated in these lakebeds from hot spring waters and altered rhyolite from nearby volcanic fields. Zabriskie Point is the name of a 1970 movie by Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni; the philosopher Michel Foucault called his 1975 acid trip at Zabriskie Point the greatest experience of his life. This location is featured prominently on the cover of U2's album The Joshua Tree; this location was used to represent the surface of Mars in the film Robinson Crusoe on Mars. Zabriskie Point is the name of Radio Massacre International's album released in 2000. Zabriskie Point is a Soviet code for a location on the surface of the Moon in Omon Ra, a dystopian thriller novel by Victor Pelevin.
Zabriskie point is a significant location in the novels Fall of Night and Decay, Fire and Ash by Jonathan Maberry. In all three novels, Zabriskie Point is the location of a top secret chemical and biological research station. Zabriskie Point was used as a film location for the Universal film "Spartacus," 1960, showing Gladiator school boss Peter Ustinov on muleback trekking to an Egyptian mine to buy slaves to put in training
Time Enough at Last
"Time Enough at Last" is the eighth episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. The episode was adapted from a short story written by Lynn Venable; the short story appeared in the January 1953 edition of the science fiction magazine If: Worlds of Science Fiction about seven years before the television episode first aired. "Time Enough at Last" became one of the most famous episodes of the original Twilight Zone and has been parodied since. It is "the story of a man who seeks salvation in the rubble of a ruined world" and tells of Henry Bemis, played by Burgess Meredith, who loves books, yet is surrounded by those who would prevent him from reading them; the episode follows Bemis through the post-apocalyptic world, touching on such social issues as anti-intellectualism, the dangers of reliance upon technology, the difference between aloneness and loneliness. Witness Mr. Henry Bemis, a charter member in the fraternity of dreamers. A bookish little man whose passion is the printed page, but, conspired against by a bank president and a wife and a world full of tongue-cluckers and the unrelenting hands of a clock.
But in just a moment, Mr. Bemis will enter a world without bank presidents or wives or clocks or anything else. He'll have a world all to himself... without anyone. Henpecked, far sighted bank teller and avid bookworm Henry Bemis works at his window in a bank, while reading David Copperfield, which causes him to shortchange an annoyed customer. Bemis's angry boss, his nagging wife, both complain to him that he wastes far too much time reading "doggerel"; as a cruel joke, his wife asks him to read poetry from one of his books to her. Seconds she destroys the book by ripping the pages from it, much to Henry's dismay; the next day, as usual, Henry takes his lunch break in the bank's vault, where his reading will not be disturbed. Moments after he sees a newspaper headline, which reads "H-Bomb Capable of Total Destruction", an enormous explosion outside the bank violently shakes the vault, knocking Bemis unconscious. After regaining consciousness and recovering the thick glasses required for him to see, Bemis emerges from the vault to find the bank demolished and everyone in it dead.
Leaving the bank, he sees that the entire city has been destroyed, realizes that a nuclear war has devastated Earth, but that his being in the vault has saved him. Seconds, hours, they crawl by on hands and knees for Mr. Henry Bemis, who looks for a spark in the ashes of a dead world. A telephone connected to nothingness. A neighborhood bar, a movie, a baseball diamond, a hardware store, the mailbox of what was once his house and is now a rubble, they lie at his feet as battered monuments to what is no more. Mr. Henry Bemis on an eight-hour tour of a graveyard. Finding himself alone in a shattered world with canned food to last him a lifetime and no means of leaving to look for other survivors, Bemis succumbs to despair; as he prepares to commit suicide using a revolver he has found, Bemis sees the ruins of the public library in the distance. Investigating, he finds that the books are still legible, his despair gone, Bemis contentedly sorts the books he looks forward to reading for years to come, with no obligations to get in the way.
Just as he bends down to pick up the first book, he stumbles, his glasses fall off and shatter. In shock, he picks up the broken remains of the glasses he is blind without, says, "That's not fair. That's not fair at all. There was time now. There was—was all the time I needed…! It's not fair! It's not fair!" and bursts into tears, surrounded by books he now can never read. The best laid plans of mice and men... and Henry Bemis... the small man in the glasses who wanted nothing but time. Henry Bemis, now just a part of a smashed landscape, just a piece of the rubble, just a fragment of what man has deeded to himself. Mr. Henry Bemis... in the Twilight Zone. "Time Enough at Last" was one of the first episodes written for The Twilight Zone. It introduced Burgess Meredith to the series, he narrated for the 1983 film Twilight Zone: The Movie, which made reference to "Time Enough at Last" during its opening sequence, with the characters discussing the episode in detail. Footage of the exterior steps of the library was filmed several months after production had been completed.
These steps can be seen on the exterior of an Eloi public building in MGM's 1960 version of The Time Machine. John Brahm was nominated for a Directors Guild award for his work on the episode; the book that Bemis was reading in the vault and that flips open when the bomb explodes is A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus by Washington Irving. Although the overriding message may seem to "be careful what you wish for, you just might get it", there are other themes throughout the episode as well. Paramount among these is the question of solitude versus loneliness, as embodied by Bemis' moment of near-suicide. Additionally, the portrayal of societal attitudes towards books speaks to the contemporary decline of traditional literature and how, given enough time, reading may become a relic of the past. At the same time, the ending "punishes Bemis for his antisocial behavior, his greatest desire is thwarted". Rod Serl
Rod Serling
Rodman Edward Serling was an American screenwriter, television producer, narrator known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his science-fiction anthology TV series, The Twilight Zone. Serling was active in politics, both on and off the screen, helped form television industry standards, he was known as the "angry young man" of Hollywood, clashing with television executives and sponsors over a wide range of issues including censorship and war. Serling was born on December 1924, in Syracuse, New York, to a Jewish family, he was the second of two sons born to Samuel Lawrence Serling. Serling's father had worked as a secretary and amateur inventor before having children, but took on his father-in-law's profession as a grocer to earn a steady income. Sam Serling became a butcher after the Great Depression forced the store to close. Rod had Robert J. Serling, their mother was a homemaker. Serling spent most of his youth 70 miles south of Syracuse in the city of Binghamton after his family moved there in 1926.
His parents encouraged his talents as a performer. Sam Serling built a small stage in the basement, where Rod put on plays, his older brother, writer Robert, recalled that, at the age of six or seven, Rod entertained himself for hours by acting out dialogue from pulp magazines or movies he had seen. Rod talked to people around him without waiting for their answers. On a two-hour trip from Binghamton to Syracuse, the rest of the family remained silent to see if Rod would notice their lack of participation, he did not. In elementary school, Serling was seen as the class clown and dismissed by many of his teachers as a lost cause. However, his seventh-grade English teacher, Helen Foley, encouraged him to enter the school's public speaking extracurriculars, he was a speaker at his high school graduation. He began writing for the school newspaper, in which, according to the journalist Gordon Sander, he "established a reputation as a social activist", he was interested in sports and excelled at tennis and table tennis.
When he attempted to join the varsity football team, he was told. Serling was interested in writing at an early age, he was an avid radio listener interested in thrillers and horror shows. Arch Oboler and Norman Corwin were two of his favorite writers, he "did some staff work at a Binghamton radio station... tried to write... but never had anything published." He was accepted into college during his senior year of high school. However, the United States was involved in World War II at the time, Serling decided to enlist rather than start college after he graduated from Binghamton Central High School in 1943; as editor of his high school newspaper, Serling encouraged his fellow students to support the war effort. He wanted to leave school before graduation to join the fight but his civics teacher talked him into graduating. "War is a temporary thing," Gus Youngstrom told him. "It ends. An education doesn't. Without your degree, where will you be after the war?" Serling enlisted in the U. S. Army the morning after high school graduation, following his brother Robert.
Serling began his military career in 1943 at Camp Toccoa, under General Joseph May "Joe" Swing and Col. Orin D. "Hard Rock" Haugen and served in the 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 11th Airborne Division. He reached the rank of Technician Fourth Grade. Over the next year of paratrooper training and others began boxing to vent aggression, he competed as a flyweight and had 17 bouts, rising to the second round of the division finals before being knocked out. He was remembered for berserker style and for "getting his nose broken in his first bout and again in last bout." He tried his hand with little success. On April 25, 1944, Serling saw that he was being sent west to California, he knew. This disappointed him. On May 5, his division headed to the Pacific, landing in New Guinea, where it would be held in reserve for a few months. In November 1944, his division first saw combat; the 11th Airborne Division would not be used as paratroopers, but as light infantry during the Battle of Leyte. It helped mop up after the five divisions.
For a variety of reasons, Serling was transferred to the 511th's demolition platoon, nicknamed "The Death Squad" for its high casualty rate. According to Sergeant Frank Lewis, leader of the demolitions squad, "He screwed up somewhere along the line, he got on someone's nerves." Lewis judged that Serling was not suited to be a field soldier: "he didn't have the wits or aggressiveness required for combat." At one point, Lewis and others were in a firefight, trapped in a foxhole. As they waited for darkness, Lewis noticed. Serling sometimes went exploring on his own, against orders, got lost. Serling's time in Leyte political views for the rest of his life, he saw death every day while in the Philippines, at the hands of his enemies and his allies, through freak accidents such as that which killed another Jewish private, Melvin Levy. Levy was delivering a comic monologue for the platoon as they rested under a palm tree when a food crate was dropped from a plane above, decapitating him. Serling placed a Star of David over his grave.
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Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. According to radiometric dating and other sources of evidence, Earth formed over 4.5 billion years ago. Earth's gravity interacts with other objects in space the Sun and the Moon, Earth's only natural satellite. Earth revolves around the Sun in a period known as an Earth year. During this time, Earth rotates about its axis about 366.26 times. Earth's axis of rotation is tilted with respect to its orbital plane; the gravitational interaction between Earth and the Moon causes ocean tides, stabilizes Earth's orientation on its axis, slows its rotation. Earth is the largest of the four terrestrial planets. Earth's lithosphere is divided into several rigid tectonic plates that migrate across the surface over periods of many millions of years. About 71% of Earth's surface is covered with water by oceans; the remaining 29% is land consisting of continents and islands that together have many lakes and other sources of water that contribute to the hydrosphere.
The majority of Earth's polar regions are covered in ice, including the Antarctic ice sheet and the sea ice of the Arctic ice pack. Earth's interior remains active with a solid iron inner core, a liquid outer core that generates the Earth's magnetic field, a convecting mantle that drives plate tectonics. Within the first billion years of Earth's history, life appeared in the oceans and began to affect the Earth's atmosphere and surface, leading to the proliferation of aerobic and anaerobic organisms; some geological evidence indicates. Since the combination of Earth's distance from the Sun, physical properties, geological history have allowed life to evolve and thrive. In the history of the Earth, biodiversity has gone through long periods of expansion punctuated by mass extinction events. Over 99% of all species that lived on Earth are extinct. Estimates of the number of species on Earth today vary widely. Over 7.6 billion humans live on Earth and depend on its biosphere and natural resources for their survival.
Humans have developed diverse cultures. The modern English word Earth developed from a wide variety of Middle English forms, which derived from an Old English noun most spelled eorðe, it has cognates in every Germanic language, their proto-Germanic root has been reconstructed as *erþō. In its earliest appearances, eorðe was being used to translate the many senses of Latin terra and Greek γῆ: the ground, its soil, dry land, the human world, the surface of the world, the globe itself; as with Terra and Gaia, Earth was a personified goddess in Germanic paganism: the Angles were listed by Tacitus as among the devotees of Nerthus, Norse mythology included Jörð, a giantess given as the mother of Thor. Earth was written in lowercase, from early Middle English, its definite sense as "the globe" was expressed as the earth. By Early Modern English, many nouns were capitalized, the earth became the Earth when referenced along with other heavenly bodies. More the name is sometimes given as Earth, by analogy with the names of the other planets.
House styles now vary: Oxford spelling recognizes the lowercase form as the most common, with the capitalized form an acceptable variant. Another convention capitalizes "Earth" when appearing as a name but writes it in lowercase when preceded by the, it always appears in lowercase in colloquial expressions such as "what on earth are you doing?" The oldest material found in the Solar System is dated to 4.5672±0.0006 billion years ago. By 4.54±0.04 Bya the primordial Earth had formed. The bodies in the Solar System evolved with the Sun. In theory, a solar nebula partitions a volume out of a molecular cloud by gravitational collapse, which begins to spin and flatten into a circumstellar disk, the planets grow out of that disk with the Sun. A nebula contains gas, ice grains, dust. According to nebular theory, planetesimals formed by accretion, with the primordial Earth taking 10–20 million years to form. A subject of research is the formation of some 4.53 Bya. A leading hypothesis is that it was formed by accretion from material loosed from Earth after a Mars-sized object, named Theia, hit Earth.
In this view, the mass of Theia was 10 percent of Earth, it hit Earth with a glancing blow and some of its mass merged with Earth. Between 4.1 and 3.8 Bya, numerous asteroid impacts during the Late Heavy Bombardment caused significant changes to the greater surface environment of the Moon and, by inference, to that of Earth. Earth's atmosphere and oceans were formed by volcanic outgassing. Water vapor from these sources condensed into the oceans, augmented by water and ice from asteroids and comets. In this model, atmospheric "greenhouse gases" kept the oceans from freezing when the newly forming Sun had only 70% of its current luminosity. By 3.5 Bya, Earth's magnetic field was established, which helped prevent the atmosphere from being stripped away by the solar wind. A crust formed; the two models that explain land mass propose either a steady growth to the present-day forms or, more a rapid growth early in Earth history followed by a long-term steady continental area. Continents formed by plate tectonics
