Earths Snowball theory?

Question

one of my friend told me that Snowball theory is based on the "fact" that the earth was once completly frozen and it would simply have a one in a million chance of defrosting and it did..

is that true or was he just trying to sound cool

i dont want any wikipedia stuff a simple yes or no would help but since i guess just about anyone can say what they want so if you have a webpage reference or how you know that answer please say so

Answer 1

There is no simple yes or no. The Snowball Earth hypothesis is controversial. In wikipedia you can read something about it. I know nothing about "a one in a million chance of defrosting ".

And there are links.

http://www.snowballearth.org/index.html

Answer 2

Never heard of any snowball theory... The real question is if the theory is true or not, not whether there is a theory. The theory sounds theoretically flawed. It assumes that the earth was a random snowball in the cosmos and all of a sudden bam it defrosted and life evolved. This generally violates the second law of thermodynamics, which states that systems are far more likely to evolve from a state of low entropy in to a state of high entropy, rather than visa versa. A completely frozen earth would mean that the mantle and core of our earth were not spinning and superheated as they are today. Far more likely would be that our planet started as a fireball of meteor impacts that progressively collected matter and cooled. I could go in to more detail, but basically whether the theory exists or not, it's false, and your friend just wants to sound cool by knowing about it.