H-Geology-001

Earth is Unique

It’s the only planet in our solar systems able to evolve and sustain life.

Earth is our home, period, we will not survive without it.

Earth is very unique in many ways. It's close enough yet far enough from the sun to permit critical substances as water to exist in the solid, liquid and gaseous state. It’s large enough to retain gases and hold water vapor in the form of sparsely scattered clouds. The other planets do not possess these features essential to life. Earth rotates on it's own axis 365 times for every time it travels about the sun, as it travels its axes tilts toward then away from the sun. It’s rotation produces 365 day and night periods and the tilting produces winter and summer periods.

An essential characteristic of Earth is it's speed of rotation. If its rotation were slower or faster it would not create the weather patterns that swirl down from its polar regions across its temperate zones and stir the weather of its equatorial regions. This weather churns the elements vital to life.

The weather clouds float in a layer of gas reaching outward in space. This atmospheres depth and density attenuate the suns rays an amount that maintains a balance between ice, water and land on the planets surface If the suns penetration were to raise the temperature of its northern region some 8 degrees F it would melt the arctic ice and it's cold vapor would probably engulf the northern continents in ice glaciers. If the southern polar ice were melted the oceans would rise some 200 feet and inundate vast continental areas.

The outer fringe is ionized as it is bombarded by cosmic rays. This Ionization Layer was eventually discovered by man and used as a screen for bouncing short wave radio & TV waves. If not for this fine screen the waves would sail off out into space and never bounce back to a distant receiver on Earth.

The moon, earth’s satellite, reflects light and with the aid of distant stars illuminates the Earth at night. It also sustains a gravitational pull on the earth causing the oceans to alternately encroach upon and retreat from the land masses. Tides play a very important role, they expose sea creatures to land and land creatures to the sea.

Geology – Earth and it’s beginning

The Earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago of debris from an exploding star. This was a large star that burned fast as it manufactured larger atoms from little ones. Our sun is doing the same today, but on a much smaller scale, our sun is too small to manufacture the large atoms required for living cells.

During the accretion process the new earth picked up matter as it swept it’s orbital path about the sun. This was a period of frequent impacts, small and large. As the new earth grew in size it acquired the necessary mass to hold light weight molecules such as water.

For the first 2.8 billion years there was no oxygen in the atmosphere.

When 1 billion years old, earth gave birth to the first replicating molecules. These hardy critters had to fend for themselves, like determining how to extract oxygen, necessary to replication, from surrounding chemicals. By 1.8 billion years later much big cells, we call bacteria, captured these little specialists to serve their needs. Some became plants and some became animals. The plants breathed in carbon dioxide and breathed out oxygen, the animals breathed in oxygen and breathed out carbon dioxide. This symbiotic union gave earth it’s oxygen laden atmosphere.

Earths interior Continental Drift during the past 350 million years.

It is not obvious but planet Earth has a solid core, a plastic main mass and a floating crust. The solid core servers as a governor, sustaining constant rotation. The plastic mass shifts at a creeping slow speed but sufficient to create a magnetic field and cause shifting of the planets crust. The Earth's crust is shifted in huge plate sections, some parting and spreading, others converging one over and one under the other. The sections not inundated by water are floating continents in motion. The spreading edges well up minerals sometimes permitting hot lava to pour forth – examples are Hawaiian Islands and Iceland. Colliding plates push one side up and submerge the other -- India, once connected to Africa, has pushed up the Himalayan mountains to be the tallest in the world.

Current fault lines between spreading plates Earths Magnetic field.

It took about half a billion years for the material of this solar system to condense to form the star we call Sun and it's family of planets. Earth came into being by the process of accretion of materials thrown out in to space by an exploding supernova. This giant star that had burned fast and blown up, it's internal nuclear forces had become greater and greater as its internal pressures became enormous converting small atoms to bigger ones. Our sun, also a remnant of the debris from the super nova, is too small to manufacture large atoms. Sun’s nuclear fires are now “burn” small atoms making bigger ones, a process which releases radiant energy we call Sun light. Sunlight warms the Earth & provides energy for plant growth. In a few more billion years the Sun will expand as a Red Giant – it’s size reaching Earth’s orbit. Our Sun and Earth will eventually die.

As primary accretion process began to wane and the materials of the Earth began to settle into place, iron to the core and light weight materials to the surface. The accretion still continues as meteorites, which briefly illuminate as if a shooting stars. The light weight sub surface materials are still being lifted up by volcanic forces.

Distribution of Natural Resources

Humans have long used earths natural resources, but more recently the search for fossil fuels has been intense. This search as been a driving force in reconstruction of continental drift for the last 350 million years. Coal and petroleum have their origins in prior plant and animal remains which have been embedded in the earths surface and shifted by continental drift. For example Alaska and northern Canada have petroleum reserves, the remnants of plants grown in warm climate now trapped underground in a cold climate. Saudi Arabia, now a desert, has vast amounts of oil trapped below, squeezed there from what had been lush forests.

Large iron deposits have their origins in large meteorites – who’s content is mostly iron. Most of Earths early iron content has settled to it’s core – no longer available at the surface.

Shape of the Earth

Since WW II man has taken a keen interest in the shape of the earth – when firing continental ballistic missiles it was important to know the exact location of the earths surface, at launch and impact site. It had long been expected that the radius of the earth was larger at the equator than at the poles – but how much? By use of satellites it’s been determined that the earth is 13 miles less in radius to the poles than at the equator. Further refinements reveal it’s actually more pear shaped.

Surface Geology

Early interest in geology pertained to surface features. It was important to explain the process of weathering of earths surface, forming of sediments and shifting of its surface to form visible anomalies of once horizontal strata now vertical and wrinkled in complex ways. There were practical values in knowing as part of the search for many kinds of resources. These studies proved of great value in the dating of fossils and human artifacts.

Ice Age

From National Geographic 2004

From National Geographic 2004

The following is in work

Earths Energy Extracted by Man

This story is about humans, their environment & change. Man must extract energy from earths resources to survive while keeping earth’s environment compatible with man’s needs. Man is the only animal with a vote – right or wrong, man is calling the shots.

Man will of necessity solve his energy needs – the earth has an abundance of energy available. The problem is harnessing the right kind for the right job in an efficient way, and prevent doing damage to earths environment – primarily global warming. Some once believed all energy comes from the sun, either direct on indirect through fossil fuels. That’s only part of the story. Earth inherited huge amounts of energy from her parent sun – such as from magma, tides, winds, rivers and atoms.

Earths thermal balance has focused on balancing solar energy input with heat loss to the cosmos – focus until now had dealt primarily with solar energy input – as if loss of heat to space takes care of itself. The Cosmos constitutes a Black Body, which in heat transfer terms means that it’s an excellent receiver of radiant heat. The bright side of the earth is warmed by the sun, and the dark side looses heat to the cosmos. Years ago at a class by Dr Revell, of Scripts Institute of Oceanography, upon learning the average thickness of the Antarctic ice was only 4 feet, at a break I suggested we could sprinkle large areas with soot and raise the temperature that much. He smiled and said that might not be a good idea, an open artic ocean might start heavy snowfall and another ice glacier.

If we consume additional huge amounts of energy, such as using atomic power to make up for fossil fuel, the heat would accumulate unless the excess was lost to space. Looking into the future there are many questions to be answered.