Earth
The third planet from the Sun is Earth, the home of all known life. While it shares many characteristics with other planets, its physical properties and history allow it to support life in its near-surface environment. In fact, life itself has greatly altered the planet in ways that generally help maintain the conditions for life. Scientists have come to view Earth as a dynamic world with many interacting systems. Understanding these relationships will surely be important as human activities increasingly affect the planet's surface, oceans, and atmosphere.
Shape and Size Many ancient cultures, even sophisticated ones such as the Egyptians, pictured Earth as being flat, with the sky above being a separate abode of heavenly bodies: the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars. By 2500 BC, though, some people correctly thought Earth to be roughly spherical in shape. The Greek mathematician Pythagoras is widely credited with reaching this conclusion in the 6th century BC. Two centuries later, Aristotle gave specific reasons for thinking Earth is round: (1) matter is drawn to Earth's center and would naturally compress it into a spherical shape, (2) traveling south reveals new stars rising above the southern horizon, and (3) Earth's shadow on the Moon at lunar eclipses is circular.
After Aristotle, many people did not know about his teachings. Belief in a flat Earth could persist, and there was at least some debate on the issue. However, knowledge of the spherical shape of Earth has been widespread among astronomers for most of the last 2,000 years, at least. Greek and Indian astronomers accepted the concept, and by the 9th century AD Islamic astronomers were using it. Christian Europe had widely accepted the idea by the 13th century.
It is now known that the circumference at the Equator is 24,902 miles (40,075 kilometers). The diameter at the Equator is 7,926 miles (12,756 kilometers). Actually, Earth is not quite spherical but is an oblate spheroid—squashed in the north-south direction so that the pole-to-pole diameter is only 7,900 miles (12,714 kilometers). The distance from the Equator to the North Pole along Earth's surface is 6,214 miles (10,002 kilometers). In fact, the meter was originally defined (by the French Academy of Sciences in 1791) to be one ten-millionth of the distance from the Equator to the North Pole. This explains why this distance is almost exactly 10 million meters (10,000 kilometers).
Motions For centuries, Earth was simply “the world”—the only one known. Even most believers in a spherical Earth thought it to be a one-of-a-kind object in the center of a spherical universe. The Sun, Moon, planets, and stars were generally thought to be of a very different nature from Earth. In fact, in the 4th century BC Aristotle proposed that they were made of a heavenly fifth element (“quintessence”), in addition to his supposed earthly elements of earth, water, air, and fire. The Sun and Moon, plus Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn (all easily visible to the naked eye), were seen to gradually change position relative to the stars. This earned them the name planets, which meant “wanderers.”
Most thinkers, including Aristotle, believed that Earth was motionless in the center of the universe. This is called the geocentric (Earth-centered) theory, and it was developed in greater detail by Ptolemy of Alexandria in around AD 150. Almost all astronomers accepted the theory for the next 1,400 years. In this view, Earth was certainly not a planet, because it was obviously not a wandering light in the sky.
In the 16th century AD Nicholas Copernicus of Poland proposed that Earth rotates on an axis through the North and South poles once a day—actually once a “sidereal” day, which is measured using the distant stars as a reference frame instead of the Sun. Earth's sidereal day is 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4 seconds, which is a few minutes shorter than its “solar” day. Copernicus also said that Earth orbits, or revolves around, the Sun once a sidereal year (which is 365.256 days). He believed that the Moon orbits Earth but that the other wanderers (the planets, not including the Sun) revolve around the Sun like Earth does. In this, Earth is a planet, because it, too, is a wanderer—around the Sun.
In 1687 Isaac Newton of England published his law of universal gravitation in his major work, the Principia. This explained the planets' motions as being caused by the Sun's gravitational pull on the planets. By this point, almost all scientists accepted the heliocentric theory.
Newton showed that any two objects attract each other with this gravitational force. Its strength is proportional to the mass of each object, and it becomes weaker with increasing distance between the objects. A body's “weight” is simply the gravitational force exerted on it by Earth or whatever planet or other large body it happens to be near. Objects naturally tend to fly off through space in a straight line at a constant speed, but a gravitational pull can curve the path into a closed orbit. The Moon orbits Earth, and likewise Earth orbits the Sun.
Earth's spin axis is tilted about 23.5 degrees with respect to the axis of its revolution around the Sun. This allows the Northern Hemisphere to get the most sunlight—and therefore its summer—on about June 21, when the North Pole is tipped toward the Sun. The North Pole points almost the same direction all year, toward the North Star. On about December 21 Earth is on the opposite side of the Sun, though, so the South Pole is tipped toward the Sun and the Southern Hemisphere gets the most sunshine and its summer at that time. These dates are called the solstices. The equinoxes, when day and night are of nearly equal length worldwide, occur in between, on around March 21 and September 23. Thus the seasons are controlled much more by the tilt of Earth's axis than by the rather small variation in distance from the Sun.
The spin axis itself wobbles, much like that of a top, slowly over time. This is the main cause of the “precession of the equinoxes,” a roughly 26,000-year cycle in which the spin axis traces out a circle, 47 degrees wide, in the sky. On this circle lie several “candidates” for North Star. Polaris is the present North Star, since currently Earth's axis points almost directly at it. Some 13,000 years from now, though, the North Star will be the bright star Vega. The Greek astronomer Hipparchus recognized this subtle phenomenon in the 2nd century BC.
Even more subtle motions exist. The circle traced out in the sky by the North Pole has little wobbles on it, because of a sort of rocking motion called nutation. Over a cycle of about 41,000 years, the tilt of the spin axis actually varies from about 22 to 25 degrees. In the first part of the 20th century the Serbian mathematician Milutin Milankovitch proposed that such variations in tilt, along with slight changes in the shape of Earth's orbit, have triggered climate change in the past. Climate scientists now widely accept this theory as explaining one of the many triggers of the onset and ending of ice ages.
Earth's Place in Space
The nearest star system is about 270,000 times as far from Earth as the Sun is. Most of the stars visible to the naked eye are over a million times as far as the Sun, thus explaining why they appear so faint. Many would appear much brighter than the Sun if placed where the Sun is. All the stars one can see with the naked eye are nearby neighbors in a gigantic disklike structure called the Milky Way galaxy, which contains over a hundred billion suns. The Sun (“our” Sun) is about 25,000 light-years from the center of the Milky Way. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, almost 6 trillion miles (9.5 trillion kilometers). The Sun and its planets orbit the Milky Way's center with a period (the time it takes to complete one orbit) of about 250 million years. The Milky Way, in turn, is only one of billions of galaxies in the observable universe. The galaxies are generally flying apart from each other and are scattered across billions of light-years of space. (See also astronomy; solar system.)
All this can make Earth seem like a tiny, insignificant dot in the vastness of space. However, as our home, it is highly significant to us, and furthermore it has many very special properties and processes that are unique among the planets discovered so far. Earth is a special place indeed.
Internal Structure To know what Earth is like inside, one might imagine drilling all the way to the center. Nothing anywhere near close to this has ever been done, though. The deepest well, on the Kola Peninsula in Russia, is about 7.62 miles (12.26 kilometers) deep, reaching only about 1/500 the distance to Earth's center. The question remains, then, how can humans discover the structure of the planet?
While scientists have almost literally “barely scratched the surface” of Earth, a great deal has been learned about Earth's interior. One approach is to consider Earth's average density and the density and chemical composition of the near-surface layers, including rocks conveniently brought to the surface by volcanoes. Another method is to study the vibrations called seismic waves, which travel through the planet after being produced by natural sources such as earthquakes and by manmade events such as nuclear weapons tests.
Earth's mass is known from its gravitational effects to be 5.976 × 1024 kilograms, which if it could be weighed on another “Earth,” would amount to about 6.587 billion trillion tons. Combined with knowledge of Earth's volume, this gives a density of 5.52 grams per cubic centimeter. This is denser than the typical 2 to 3 grams per cubic centimeter for rocks but less than the densities of iron and nickel, which are about 8 and 9 grams per cubic centimeter, respectively. These metals are commonly found in meteorites and may have been much of the raw material for Earth. Therefore, one might suppose Earth to be some mixture of rock and metal. Furthermore, iron and nickel, being denser than rock, would tend to sink toward the center.
Other waves travel downward into Earth's interior. These waves are known as body waves, and they come in two basic types. P, or primary, waves have a “push-pull” motion parallel to the direction the wave is traveling. S, or secondary, waves make a side-to-side motion, perpendicular to the direction of wave motion. The P waves travel faster, hence the name primary, since they arrive first. Both types of waves generally travel faster in denser material. This not only affects arrival time but also allows the waves to bend (refract) and bounce (reflect) upon encountering changes in the density of the material. S waves have the additional property of not being able to travel through liquids.
By carefully analyzing data from thousands of earthquakes, using seismometers scattered across the globe, scientists have developed a rather detailed picture of Earth's interior. This technique is called seismic tomography. It is similar to the use of ultrasonic sound waves to produce images of unborn babies or computed tomography (CT) X-ray scans for diagnosing medical conditions.
Seismic tomography also readily yields details of the outer layers of the planet. The outermost part, the crust, has rather low density rock in which waves travel somewhat slowly. The waves partially reflect upon reaching a boundary, called the Moho. This is short for the Mohorovičić discontinuity, named after Andrija Mohorovičić, the Croatian seismologist who discovered it in 1909. The depth at which this discontinuity occurs ranges from as little as 3 miles (5 kilometers) beneath some parts of the ocean bottom to up to about 45 miles (75 kilometers) beneath some continental surfaces.
Temperatures and pressures rise with increasing depth inside the planet. At roughly 50 miles (80 kilometers) below the surface, the rock of the mantle is at about 2,500° F (1,370° C) and becomes partly molten. This is the beginning of the part of the mantle known as the asthenosphere. Below about 150 to 200 miles (250 to 300 kilometers), the mantle is under so much pressure that it becomes more rigid again, though it is still plastic enough to allow very gradual motions. The mantle extends down to about 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometers) beneath the surface. The temperature at the bottom of the mantle is believed to be roughly 6,700° F (3,700° C).
Beneath the mantle, the material becomes much denser (as indicated by faster P waves) and liquefies (as evidenced by the lack of S waves). Scientists believe that this layer, called the outer core, consists of up to 90 percent molten iron and nickel (mostly iron), with some other elements such as sulfur mixed in. It makes up about 30 percent of Earth's mass. Finally, below about 3,200 miles (5,100 kilometers) is the inner core, which extends to the very center, about 3,960 miles (6,370 kilometers) down. It contains about 2 percent of Earth's mass. Despite extremely high temperatures, estimated to be between 8,000 and 12,000° F (about 4,400 and 6,600° C), the pressure is so high that the iron and nickel become solid.
Rocks and Minerals Earth is largely a ball of rock. Rocks form on and beneath Earth's surface under a wide range of physical and chemical conditions.
All rocks are made up of minerals. The minerals in some rocks are single chemical elements such as gold or copper, but the minerals in most rocks are compounds—combinations of elements with a definite chemical composition and a precisely patterned structure. Most minerals form crystals. Each crystal has a characteristic shape and structure that is determined by the type and arrangement of its atoms.
The most common atoms present in Earth's rocks are oxygen and silicon, which combine to make silicates such as quartz (SiO2). Silicates make up about 95 percent of the planet's crust and upper mantle. Other common elements, present in lesser amounts, are aluminum, iron, calcium, sodium, potassium, and magnesium.
Igneous Rock
Magma deep beneath the surface may cool slowly. When this happens, the minerals grow slowly and may reach a relatively large size. This slow-cooling process produces coarse-grained rocks such as granite or gabbro. The type of rock produced depends on the chemicals in the magma. Each type can be distinguished by its characteristic mineral composition.
Magma closer to the surface cools more quickly, giving the minerals little chance to grow. As a result, fine-grained rocks similar in composition to the coarse-grained ones are produced. The fine-grained rhyolite is the equivalent of the coarse-grained granite, and the fine-grained basalt is the equivalent of gabbro.
Some materials ejected from volcanoes cool so quickly that they solidify before they strike the ground. Lava cools so rapidly that often gas bubbles are trapped within it. When such lava hardens, it is light and porous. Pumice is formed in this way. The natural glass obsidian is also formed from lava.
Metamorphic Rock
Limestone, a sedimentary rock, changes to marble as a result of such forces. Under stress, the mineral grains in the sedimentary rock shale grow in new directions to form slate, a metamorphic rock. Continued stress changes the slate to phyllite and then to schist, a rock that is very different in appearance, composition, and structure from the original shale. Quartzite, one of the hardest and most compact rocks, is the metamorphic form of the relatively soft, grainy sandstone, a sedimentary rock.
Sedimentary Rock
Particles of rock, eroded from exposed areas such as mountains, are transported by streams and rivers to the sea. There they slowly settle as fine silts or clays. Coarser particles, such as sands, are deposited nearer the shore, and the largest particles, such as pebbles and cobbles, settle at the shoreline. As these materials slowly accumulate over long periods of time, water is squeezed out from between the particles. Cementing agents carried in solution in the water—for example, calcium carbonate, silica, and iron oxide—may bind the particles together.
The pebbles close to shore are cemented together into a conglomerate. A little farther out shales form. In the open oceans limestones form from calcium carbonate and the shells of dead sea animals.
Crystalline rocks can form in shallow inland seas where access to open water has been restricted or cut off. In such places the seas may evaporate slowly, leaving behind compounds that form sedimentary rocks such as gypsum and rock salt.
Spheres and Cycles Earth's Spheres One approach to understanding Earth, especially the outer parts, is to divide it into interacting spheres. One such scheme considers these to be the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the lithosphere, and the biosphere.
Atmosphere
The atmosphere's mass is just over 5 × 1018 kilograms (5 million gigatons, with a gigaton equaling a billion metric tons), which weighs more than 11 × 1018 pounds. This may sound impressive, but it is less than one millionth the mass of the whole planet. Traces of the atmosphere can be found 100 miles (160 kilometers) above the surface, but most of it lies within 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers) of the ground. On the scale of a typical globe with a 12-inch (30-centimeter) diameter, this is little more than the thickness of a sheet of paper.
About 78 percent by volume of dry air consists of nitrogen (chemical formula N2). Oxygen (O2) makes up 21 percent. Most of the rest is argon (Ar), but small amounts of other gases, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and hydrogen (H2), are present as well. Notice that these figures are for dry air; water vapor (H2O) makes up varying amounts, usually between 0.1 and 4 percent.
The composition of the air is very nearly uniform across the globe and even at different heights. However, a small (a few parts per million) concentration of ozone (O3) exists in the layer called the stratosphere, mostly more than about 6 miles (10 kilometers) above the ground. This “ozone layer” is vital to life on Earth because it absorbs most of the harmful ultraviolet rays reaching Earth from the Sun. This concentration of ozone has been reduced in recent decades, at least in part because of reactions with man-made chemical compounds called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), used in commerce and industry. Since 1992, production of these gases has been greatly restricted, so it is hoped that little further damage to the ozone layer will occur.
Above that, however, temperatures stay about the same and then actually begin to rise with height. This zone is called the stratosphere. Most of its surprising warmth—up to the freezing point of water or slightly higher—results from the interception of ultraviolet solar energy by ozone. Because of this temperature structure, the air in the stratosphere is very stable, meaning very little vertical mixing can occur. For this reason, volcanic dust or man-made gases that reach the stratosphere can remain stuck there for years. This also makes the stratosphere very dry, since very little water vapor is able to mix up into it from below.
The stratopause, the top of the stratosphere, is about 30 miles (50 kilometers ) up. Above this is the mesosphere, a zone in which temperatures fall once again. After bottoming out at the mesopause, at roughly 50 miles (80 kilometers) up, temperatures become very high in the thermosphere, reaching over 2,000° F (1,100° C). This is misleading, however, because by this point the air is so thin that there is almost nothing there to feel. It simply means that the relatively few particles (mostly ions, or electrically charged atoms) present are moving quite fast. Beyond the thermosphere, one can define another region, the exosphere. This is an extremely rarified gas of mainly hydrogen and helium, which merges with the near vacuum of interplanetary space.
The atmosphere's pressure drops considerably with height, for a very simple reason. The pressure exerted by the air at any height is due to the weight of all the air above it. At great altitudes, there is little air above, so the pressure, and in turn density, becomes quite low. Pressure at sea level averages about 14.7 pounds per square inch (101,320 newtons per square meter), or one “atmosphere” (a unit of pressure). Roughly speaking, pressure is cut in half with every additional 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers) above the ground. At an altitude of 7 miles, air pressure is about one fourth that at sea level.
The atmosphere is constantly in motion, mainly because of pressure differences, which are in turn caused by differences in heating by the Sun. This solar energy is redistributed by winds, infrared radiation, and water vapor, resulting in the changing state of the atmosphere called the weather.
The circulation pattern of the atmosphere changes from day to day and from season to season. However, some definite overall patterns can be discerned. Air near the Equator is generally heated the most, which makes it less dense and causes the atmosphere in that region to expand upward. This often produces clouds and rain, making the tropics relatively wet. Air at high altitudes then flows poleward. Earth's rotation comes into play, though, via the Coriolis effect, which deflects the air to the right of the winds' direction of motion in the Northern Hemisphere and to the left in the Southern Hemisphere. This results in high altitude winds mainly from west to east in the middle latitudes.
Some of the poleward-flowing air sinks back toward the surface at about 25 or 30 degrees of latitude from the Equator in both hemispheres. This air then flows back toward the Equator near the surface but is deflected by the Coriolis effect, becoming the trade winds. The trade winds blow from the northeast in the Northern Hemisphere and from the southeast in the Southern Hemisphere. Where the air is sinking, relatively high surface pressures are produced. The sinking air is compressed and warmed, so that clouds tend to evaporate and there is little rain. Most of the world's deserts are located in these subtropical regions.
Winds in the middle latitudes tend to be from the west on average. Closer to the poles winds tend to flow from the northeast in the Northern Hemisphere and the southeast in the Southern Hemisphere, much like the trade winds. A fairly distinct boundary between the relatively warm mid-latitude westerly (blowing from west to east) winds and the cold polar easterly winds can often be found. It is along this “polar front” that low-pressure systems called cyclones frequently form. An overall effect of these storms is to send colder air toward low latitudes and warmer air toward the poles.
In addition to mid-latitude cyclones, very strong tropical cyclones such as hurricanes and typhoons (two names for the same type of storm, applied to different regions) form in summer or fall. These storms eventually carry heat to high latitudes. In fact, the weather generally has the effect of making the Equator cooler than it would otherwise be and the poles warmer than they would be.
Hydrosphere
The total mass of the hydrosphere is about 1.4 × 1021 kilograms (1.4 billion gigatons), which weighs about 3.1 × 1021 pounds. The mass of the hydrosphere is about 270 times the mass of the atmosphere. However, it is still less than 1/4,000 of Earth's total mass. The oceans make up almost 98 percent of the hydrosphere's mass. By some estimates, ice caps and glaciers constitute almost 1.7 percent, with underground reservoirs accounting for about 0.37 percent. Freshwater in lakes and streams is only a tenth as abundant as groundwater, making up some 0.036 percent of the total. About 0.001 percent of Earth's water can be found in the atmosphere as water vapor or cloud droplets and ice crystals. If all the water vapor in the atmosphere at a given time were condensed into liquid and spread over Earth's entire surface, it would form a layer about an inch (2.5 centimeters) thick.
The average depth of the oceans is about 12,400 feet, or 2.3 miles (3.8 kilometers). Even the deepest part, the Mariana Trench in the western North Pacific—6.86 miles (11.03 kilometers) deep—extends only about 1/600 of the way to Earth's center. So, like the atmosphere, the hydrosphere forms a relatively thin skin on the planet's surface.
A notable feature of the oceans is that they contain a great deal of dissolved salts, mainly sodium chloride (ordinary table salt). On average, there are about 3.5 kilograms of salt for every 100 kilograms of seawater. If the oceans were to completely evaporate, the remaining compacted salt would form deposits averaging at least 200 feet (60 meters) thick.
Since water is much denser than air, pressure changes in the vertical are much more dramatic in water than in air. Pressure in water increases by the equivalent of one atmosphere, or 14.7 pounds per square inch, for every 33 feet (10 meters) of depth. The ocean bottom has several hundred atmospheres of pressure, or several hundred times the pressure at sea level on land.
Very little light penetrates more than about 100 feet (30 meters) into the water, so the depths of the ocean are pitch black. Temperatures become cold near the bottom, even in tropical seas, dropping as low as about 36° F (2° C). This is largely due to cold, dense salty water from the polar regions settling near the bottom of the world's oceans.
Like the atmosphere, the oceans have large scale motions, or currents, which play an important role in redistributing the heat Earth receives from the Sun. Huge ocean currents, driven mainly by winds, circulate basically clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. These currents bring cold water toward the Equator on the west coasts of continents and warm water toward the poles on east coasts. In North America the cold California Current makes places such as San Francisco surprisingly cool, most notably in summer. The warm Gulf Stream flowing north near the eastern coast of the continent keeps eastern beaches warmer and also strengthens hurricanes approaching the coast.
Evaporation of water from the oceans supplies almost all the moisture for precipitation. Rain falling on the continents dissolves minerals, such as salt, which flow into and become concentrated in the oceans. On land much of the water flows visibly at the surface as rivers, but a great deal also goes underground, saturating deep layers of rock in reservoirs called aquifers. Many desert regions have aquifers deep underground holding water from rain that fell thousands of years ago. Wells that tap into these aquifers have been used for thousands of years.
Lithosphere “Lithos” means “rock,” and the lithosphere consists of the outer, rocky parts of the planet. The name generally refers to Earth's crust and some of the upper mantle. The lithosphere has been found to make gradual movements, which sometimes bring fresh material to the surface and also bury older parts of the surface. Over vast amounts of time, much of the material is therefore recycled. During this process, it affects, and is affected by, the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere.
The lithosphere is broken into several “plates” that essentially float on the denser material underneath and drift up against, alongside, over, or underneath other plates. This process, called plate tectonics, is discussed in greater detail later, in the section “Plate Tectonics.” (The rocks of the lithosphere were discussed above in the section “Rocks and Minerals.”)
Biosphere
The biosphere plays a vital role in the chemistry and geologic processes of the planet. Earth, especially the outer layers, is a very different world than it would be with no life. The biosphere is thought to have almost completely buried an ancient atmosphere of mainly carbon dioxide, replacing some of it with oxygen. It has also produced vast deposits of coal and oil and has even regulated the planet's temperature.
Most of the biosphere is based on the process of photosynthesis, by which plants and some microorganisms use sunlight to convert water, carbon dioxide (from the atmosphere), and minerals into oxygen (which then enters the atmosphere) and simple and complex sugars. Animals eat many of these plants and microorganisms, thus consuming much of their stored energy. Energy is concentrated further into a small number of carnivores, who eat other animals. Scavengers eat dead plants and animals. After all of the above creatures die, they are gradually buried in the ground or sink to the seafloor. In this way, they are eventually incorporated into Earth's lithosphere, with some gases, such as methane, being released into the atmosphere or hydrosphere. (These phenomena are discussed in more detail below in several sections, including “Carbon Cycle” and “Carboniferous Period.”)
In recent decades, scientists have found ecosystems (groups of interdependent organisms and their environment) independent of sunlight. An example is the communities of creatures thriving around hydrothermal vents in the deep ocean. These vents spew hot water, laden with sulfur dioxide gas, from the ocean floor. Bacteria called chemoautotrophs make their food (sugars, as in photosynthesis) by using these hot gases along with carbon dioxide. Other creatures, such as long, red tube worms, store the bacteria in their bodies and live off their energy. Bacteria that have been found in deep underground rocks may be using hydrogen to make their food. The hydrogen may come from water broken apart by the nuclear radiation from radioactive elements, such as uranium, trapped in the rock.
Recently, many biologists have decided that some microorganisms inhabiting extreme environments (such as those with very hot or salty conditions) are not true bacteria. A new kingdom of such creatures, called Archaea, has been proposed, with the creatures called the archaeans. Finding organisms in such surprising environments has led some scientists to speculate that life could exist beneath the surface of Mars or in the deep, ice-covered oceans of Jupiter's moon Europa.
Earth's Cycles Many of Earth's materials are recycled in various ways through Earth's spheres. Life plays an essential role in many of these cycles, in effect regulating the environment, often in a way that is beneficial for life. Two of the most important cycles are the water cycle and the carbon cycle.
Water cycle
Of course, this water is eventually returned. Precipitation falling directly on the oceans amounts to just over 90 percent of the water evaporated from them. The remainder flows back into the ocean from land, carried mainly in rivers. Precipitation also falls on land—about the same amount per square mile as the ocean receives—totaling about 26,000 cubic miles (107,000 cubic kilometers). Plants draw water from the soil and, in a process called transpiration, release water vapor into the air through tiny pores in their leaves. About 17,000 cubic miles (70,000 cubic kilometers) of water enters the atmosphere over land in this way and from evaporation off the land. This leaves about 9,000 cubic miles (37,000 cubic kilometers) traveling from land to water via rivers each year.
Much of the water that falls on land does not immediately enter streams and rivers. Instead, it filters through porous soil and rock into the ground. At varying depths under the surface, it often saturates the porous rock, forming the “water table.” Such water may remain underground for hundreds of years, but most of it eventually finds its way into streams and enters the oceans after all.
As a material—in this case water—moves among various reservoirs, any given molecule will spend a characteristic time, called the residence time, in each reservoir. Typically, a water molecule will remain in the atmosphere a bit over a week before falling to the ground as precipitation (or possibly forming dew or frost). Shallow soil moisture or seasonal snow cover may last months. Glaciers and lakes hold water for decades. Residence time in the ocean is a few thousand years.
There is one more part of the water cycle, and it is sometimes overlooked. This is the chemical combining of ocean water with rocks on the seafloor and its eventual release in volcanic gases. Such “hydrated” rocks have a lower melting point than they would otherwise. As the various plates of the lithosphere move, the seafloor on one plate is sometimes pushed against the edge of a continent on another. The denser oceanic crust is forced under the continental crust, and the “hydrated” rocks of the seafloor melt readily. This has a lubricating effect on plate motion, so that the water cycle is actually tied in with plate tectonics. Plumes of molten material and gases, including water vapor that was once part of the sea, rise to the surface in volcanoes. This water then enters the atmosphere after a residence time of tens, or even hundreds, of millions of years in the oceanic crust. (For a more detailed discussion of plate tectonics, see the section “The Changing Face of Earth” below.)
Carbon cycle
The vast majority—over 99.9 percent—of Earth's near-surface carbon (carbon in the lithosphere and above) is stored in sedimentary rock. Estimates vary, but this reservoir probably holds roughly 80 million gigatons of carbon. This carbon was deposited over billions of years, partly by the weathering of silicate rocks to form carbonate rocks, which contain carbon compounds. It also accumulated from the remains of marine organisms that had used carbon to build calcium carbonate shells or body parts.
The next most abundant storage site is the deep ocean, which holds about 38,000 gigatons of carbon. Fossil fuels--coal, oil, and natural gas—make up an estimated 5,000 gigatons. The rest of the carbon is divided roughly equally among living plants (about 600 gigatons), organic debris in soil (about 1,600 gigatons), the near-surface ocean (about 1,000 gigatons), and the atmosphere (nearly 800 gigatons and increasing).
The carbon cycle is quite complex, partly because life plays many roles in it, but also because of the huge range of residence times involved. The largest reservoir, sedimentary rock, also has the longest residence time. Carbon has been steadily buried in rock throughout Earth's history and is released a little at a time, primarily through volcanic activity. A carbon atom might spend hundreds of millions of years locked away in rock before being released in the gases of a volcano. Probably most carbon atoms ever trapped in rock have never been released and may never be. Nevertheless, this geologic carbon cycle is of great importance. Over long periods the burial and release of carbon dioxide (and also methane) largely control Earth's surface temperature (see greenhouse effect). Higher amounts of these gases in the distant past likely helped warm the planet when the Sun was less bright in its youth.
The deep ocean and the near-surface ocean were listed separately above because the two do not mix very quickly. Thousands of years may be needed for changes near the surface to work their way down to the bottom. The oceans in general have a great capacity to store carbon. However, the short-term (such as decades) storage is mainly in the upper layers, which have limited capacity.
Fossil fuels are a complicated case because they took millions of years to be formed and buried but are being released by humans rather quickly. From the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-18th century to the start of the 21st century, roughly 300 gigatons of carbon were released by humans burning these fuels—over half of that after 1970. In the early 21st century such use was releasing over 6 gigatons of carbon per year, a rate thousands of times that at which it was originally buried.
Carbon travels rather quickly—generally a matter of months, years, or decades—among the remaining reservoirs. Plants take about 120 gigatons of carbon per year from the atmosphere during photosynthesis, which releases oxygen. However, they return about half of that carbon by respiration, which uses oxygen, largely at night. Also, some of the carbon in plants is eaten by herbivores and released during the herbivores' respiration, or during the respiration of carnivores that eat the herbivores. Much of the dead plant and animal matter in the soil is consumed by bacteria and fungi, which release carbon dioxide (or methane, if deprived of oxygen).
Just over 90 gigatons of carbon enter the ocean each year, largely by being dissolved from the air. Plankton in the ocean perform photosynthesis on a scale similar to that of land plants. Some of the carbon that enters the ocean is buried in ocean sediments, but much is released, some through the respiration of creatures that eat the plankton. All but perhaps two gigatons is released back into the atmosphere per year.
While human-induced release of carbon accounts for only a few percentage of the total entering the atmosphere, it is important to understand that this disrupts an otherwise fairly delicate balance. Much, perhaps half, of it ends up as excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Besides burning fossil fuels, humans alter the balance in other ways. Deforestation, some farming practices, and the manufacture of cement also contribute to increasing the carbon content of the atmosphere. (See also global warming.)
Magnetic Field
This invisible effect is now described as due to a magnetic field, a region of influence around any magnet. Earth has north and south magnetic poles that are near, but not quite on, the actual geographic North and South poles. The planet's magnetic field can be illustrated by lines, called magnetic field lines, that connect the magnetic poles and curve out and around the edges of the field, forming closed loops.
Earth's magnetic field has far more important effects than just deflecting compass needles. It shields Earth by steering and trapping electrically charged particles, such as protons and electrons, ejected by the Sun. This stream of particles is called the solar wind. The particles in it travel about 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) per hour, reaching Earth in a few days. Once trapped, the particles travel in a corkscrew pattern and effectively bounce back and forth between the poles. Some of the particles are guided into Earth's upper atmosphere, where they strike atoms and cause them to glow. This colorful display is called an aurora, also known as the northern or southern lights.
A beneficial effect of the magnetic field is that it prevents many of the solar wind particles from striking the atmosphere. Without the field, the solar wind might gradually erode away much of the planet's atmosphere. Mars, which is almost devoid of a magnetic field, has an atmosphere only about one hundredth as dense as Earth's. Mars's weaker gravity would probably have left it with less of an atmosphere anyway, but its exposure to the solar wind very likely helped remove some of its air.
Scientists believe that Earth's magnetic field is generated by huge currents of molten metal flowing in the liquid outer core. Interestingly, the field's orientation occasionally—very roughly once every million years—reverses, so that the north and south magnetic poles more or less switch. This process is not fully understood, but it is of critical importance to geologists, who use correlations between the magnetism of rocks to document and date the drifting of the continents.
The Changing Face of Earth Plate Tectonics
For many years, most of these facts were known, but no one had a good explanation for them. In 1912 the German meteorologist Alfred Wegener proposed that in fact the continents had once been joined as a gigantic landmass, which he called Pangea (also spelled Pangaea), meaning “all land.” According to this theory, called continental drift, this supercontinent long ago broke into pieces—the present continents—which have since drifted to their current positions. Wegener was not the first to suggest that the continents might move, but he developed the theory in greater detail than before.
The idea seemed ridiculous to many geologists. How could a continent, made of rock, just get up and move? Wegener had no convincing explanation for the motion, but later researchers realized that the partly molten asthenosphere (part of the upper mantle, as described earlier) could allow motion of rock basically floating on top of it. Giant convection cells (churning motions) in Earth's hot interior might be able to drive continents or the seafloor apart where the material surfaces, such as at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. These churning motions should really be expected. Many bodies, such as a pan of boiling water, naturally exhibit them as an “effort” to rid themselves of heat. Some of the heat in Earth's interior is left over from the planet's formation, and some is released from the outer core as the iron and nickel slowly solidifies. Most of it, though, is believed to result from the decay of long-lived radioactive elements such as uranium.
Astronomers believe that these radioactive elements were formed in supernovas—catastrophic explosions of giant stars—that occurred before the solar system was formed. The uranium and other elements mixed with the clouds of gas and dust that ultimately collected together to form Earth. If correct, this theory means that continental drift, earthquakes, and volcanoes are actually powered by the dying embers of ancient suns.
As Wegener's ideas were developed more fully by others, the moving pieces of lithosphere became known as plates. Carried by convection currents from below, the plates could rub alongside each other, causing earthquakes as they grabbed and slipped. Plates striking each other head on would cause huge wrinkles in Earth's crust--mountain ranges. In some cases, a plate carrying seafloor crust, which consists of denser rock than that of continents, could be forced underneath a plate carrying continental crust—a process called subduction. Some of the subducted plate would then melt and perhaps force its way up through the other plate's edge as volcanoes. Most volcanoes and earthquakes, then, occur near the borders of plates, where they interact. The Ring of Fire, it turns out, lies along part of the edges of the Pacific Plate.
By the 1960s most geologists had accepted this idea, now known as plate tectonics. It is now thought that the crust of the ocean bottom is gradually formed as magma rising up in convection currents reaches the surface (the ocean bottom) and cools to form relatively new, dense rock. This creates undersea mountain chains called oceanic ridges, such as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which extend in an interconnected network through every ocean basin. The rock of the ocean bottom is mainly of a type called basalt, while the lighter rock of the continents is mostly granite. Continental crust is also thicker than oceanic crust, and it floats higher on the asthenosphere, so that most continental land has a higher elevation than the ocean surface. Radioactive dating of continental rocks has shown some to be about 4 billion years old. Rocks of the ocean crust are usually dated to less than 200 million years, and some are brand new, such as the freshly cooled magma in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
Continental Drift The configuration of Earth's continents has changed dramatically over hundreds of millions of years and is still changing today. The plates typically move about 2 to 4 inches (5 to 10 centimeters) per year, which is about 30 to 60 miles (50 to 100 kilometers) every million years.
Scientists believe that until about 240 million to 200 million years ago all the major landmasses were joined together in a supercontinent called Pangea. At that time, Pangea began to break apart because of gigantic convection currents rising up under it from the mantle. At first it fractured into a northern continent called Laurasia and a southern one called Gondwana, which were separated by an equatorial sea called Tethys.
Later, Gondwana broke apart to form Africa, South America, Antarctica, Australia, and India. Laurasia was torn apart to form North America and Eurasia (Europe and Asia considered as a single landmass). Open water—the young Atlantic Ocean—separated South America from Africa and North America from Eurasia. Magma rising from the interior surfaced along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and formed new seafloor, steadily widening the Atlantic and separating the continents.
Meanwhile, Australia and Antarctica drifted farther apart. India traveled north and began to collide with Asia about 40 million years ago, wrinkling the crust to form the world's highest mountain system, the Himalayas. The Tethys Sea narrowed as Africa and Eurasia approached and made contact. The Mediterranean Sea was left as a remnant. Only about 3 million years ago, North America and South America met for the first time since being part of Pangea, as the Isthmus of Panama formed a bridge between them.
As North and South America drifted westward, the Pacific Plate was subducted underneath their western coasts. As a result, the continents crumpled, helping raise the Rocky and Andes mountains. Earthquakes and volcanoes are common near these coasts.
The Pacific Plate itself drifted slowly northwestward. A plume of hot material rising from deep within the mantle burned through the oceanic crust in the North Pacific, forming a volcanic island. As the plate moved, it carried the new island to the northwest and brought a different section of the crust above the hot plume. The plume broke through the crust again to form another island, and the process repeated, forming the Hawaiian Island chain.
There is much evidence that Pangea itself formed from previous versions of the current continents colliding. As this occurred, smaller pieces of Earth's crust, called terranes, collided with and attached to the major continents. Pangea was probably fully formed by about 250 million years ago. As it formed, what would eventually become North America collided with what would later become Africa. This raised the Appalachians. These mountains are now so old (about 300 million years) that the forces of rain and wind have smoothed them and worn them down to about half their former height.
Tracing back even further, it appears that most of Earth's land was combined into an earlier supercontinent called Rodinia, which began to break up over 700 million years ago. This eventually produced an earlier version of the Atlantic Ocean, called Iapetus. By 470 million years ago, the seafloor of Iapetus had become more compacted and dense, and its edges began to be subducted under the adjacent continents. These continents began to slide toward each other, gradually narrowing Iapetus and eventually forming Pangea. Many scientists believe that other supercontinents formed and broke up even before Rodinia. Even earlier, the major continental masses themselves were likely formed by collisions of smaller pieces of crust.
Other Forces that Shape Earth's Surface
Once rocks have broken into fine pieces, water, wind, and ice can transport the material great distances—a process called erosion. Over time, rivers can carve deep canyons and carry vast amounts of debris, depositing it in valleys, on the seafloor, or in large river deltas. Ice has significant effects as well, as glaciers carve valleys and transport large boulders. In some areas, wind has a strong influence, creating large dune fields and scouring the surface with airborne dust or sand. Gravity produces landslides, packs sediment together, and causes denser rocks to slide under less dense ones, as in the case of subduction.
Wind-driven waves as well as the rising and lowering of the tides greatly erode the shoreline. Such erosion sometimes produces chains of sandy barrier islands separated from the coast by saltwater marshes. Lava from volcanoes resurfaces the land in some areas as it covers existing land and cools to form rock. Winds carry volcanic ash great distances, with the ash eventually settling to the surface.
Life also plays an enormous role in shaping Earth's surface. Plants help break rocks into soil, which can be washed away, but they also reduce erosion by holding the soil. Ancient forests and swamps were buried and eventually became coal. Shellfish and other marine organisms build shells of calcium carbonate, which continually settle to the ocean floor, forming vast deposits of chalk. Over time, these sediments—combined with various minerals—have formed layers many miles thick. In short, much of Earth's crust has been formed or at least altered by life.
Earth Through Time Formation and Age of Earth By the late 1800s, geologists and biologists had collected evidence suggesting that Earth is at least hundreds of millions of years old, much older than had earlier been thought. Geologists reasoned that vast stretches of time were needed for the slow work of erosion and sedimentation to have had the effects they apparently had. Biologists felt that a similarly long time was needed for evolution to have resulted in the great diversity of life seen today.
There were dissenting opinions, though. Physicists such as Lord Kelvin calculated that Earth, apparently still molten inside, should have cooled to a solid throughout if it were more than about 40 million years old. Similarly, astronomers figured that the Sun could not be more than a few tens of millions of years old. They believed that the Sun shone because of energy from gravitational contraction and so could not have sustained its energy output for so long without a drastic reduction in size.
The discovery of radioactivity by Henri Becquerel in 1896 led to a solution to both problems. Earth could be heated internally by radioactive decay of elements such as uranium deep inside, and this could last billions of years. The Sun, it turned out, shines by nuclear fusion, giving it a potential lifetime of at least 10 billion years.
Radioactive dating of rocks played a crucial role in calculating Earth's age. Some isotopes (forms of an element with different atomic masses) of some elements, such as uranium, decay by emitting radiation in the form of smaller particles, such as electrons and alpha particles. This leaves behind a succession of “daughter” products, such as lead. The rates of decay have been measured with great precision in laboratories. By measuring the ratios of the daughter products to the original radioactive elements, and assuming that the materials were trapped in a rock from the time it solidified, the age of the rock can be calculated.
Rocks from the seafloor are rarely found to be older than 200 million years, but those from the continents are occasionally found to date back over 3 billion years. In 2001 Australian researchers announced the discovery of a small grain of zircon (a mineral containing zirconium) that they dated to 4.4 billion years ago. Moreover, meteorites, which likely formed at about the same time as Earth, have been dated to about 4.5 billion years ago. These findings help pin down a likely age of about 4.55 billion years for Earth itself.
It is believed that Earth formed, along with the rest of the solar system, from a cloud of gas and dust called a nebula. Nebulae are seen today in other parts of the Milky Way and also in other galaxies. Astronomers have found evidence of stars and planetary systems forming in many of these nebulae, as the mutual gravitational attraction of the nebula's particles pulls them together.
According to this theory, called the nebular hypothesis, the cloud consisted mainly of hydrogen and helium, the vast majority of which ended up in the Sun. The outer planets--Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—are quite different from Earth. They were far enough from the Sun and therefore cold enough that these gases, along with other compounds such as methane, ammonia, and water, were able to gravitationally collect around small rocky or metallic cores.
The inner planets--Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars—were warmer and also exposed to a stronger solar wind. These effects drove most of the light gases out into space, leaving these planets as solid bodies. Venus and Earth, and to a lesser extent Mars, were able to retain atmospheres, but only as fairly thin envelopes surrounding the rock and metal.
The planets formed by accretion—a collecting together of smaller objects—mainly due to gravity. The late stages of accretion took the form of impacts of meteoroids and comets. Some of these impacts must have been tremendously energetic, likely melting much or all of Earth's early crust. The most widely accepted theory of the Moon's formation suggests that a “protoplanet” at least half of Earth's diameter struck, blasting material from both it and Earth into space. Some of this material then collected together to form the Moon. This event likely happened sometime during Earth's first 100 million years.
First Billion Years
Much of Earth's first billion years is shrouded in mystery, partly because so few rocks remain from that time. Most of them have been through repeated cycles of being subducted and melted, with the material eventually surfacing in the middle of oceans. The Moon bears witness to a very violent period in its own history, and surely Earth's as well. Results from the Apollo Moon exploration program show that most lunar craters (which are the results of impacts) formed prior to 3.8 billion years ago, with many of them from just before that time. Scientists believe that around 3.9 billion years ago impacts by comets and meteoroids were quite frequent. This event, called the late heavy bombardment, may have resulted from migrations of Uranus and Neptune disturbing the orbits of smaller bodies in the outer solar system and sending them sunward, so that they would then strike the inner planets.
Astronomers studying and modeling the life cycles of stars believe that at that time the Sun was only about 75 percent as bright as it is now. This should have made Earth quite cold, at least when large impacts were not occurring. Without something to trap the Sun's heat, the oceans might have completely frozen over, with the early continents covered in snow. Calculations show that the white surface would have reflected away so much of the Sun's light that even now the planet would be in a deep freeze.
In fact, it appears there was something to keep the planet warm—Earth's early atmosphere. Carbon dioxide and methane—both greenhouse gases, which let visible light in but absorb much of the outgoing infrared (“heat”) rays—are believed to have been much more abundant than now. These gases were probably released mainly through volcanic activity. This was sufficient for the planet to avoid a frozen fate. Oxygen made up only a tiny fraction of the atmosphere's present-day concentration.
Life Appears
The first organisms may have been prokaryotes—single-celled organisms with no cell nucleus. Some of them started carrying out photosynthesis, which uses sunlight as an energy source to take carbon (needed to build the organisms' bodies) from carbon dioxide in the air, releasing oxygen in the process. These bacteria are thought to have been quite similar to the cyanobacteria that are still abundant today. It is likely that cyanobacteria were not the only type, and perhaps not the first type, of organism during this period. Chemoautotrophs (discussed earlier) likely existed in the depths of the sea and even in rock. Some of these early organisms may have been archaeans, rather than true bacteria.
For hundreds of millions of years, the oxygen released by photosynthesizing organisms quickly reacted with materials in the environment. Oxygen therefore could not accumulate in the air to any great extent. Much of this oxygen likely combined with iron, essentially producing rust. The long time period, or eon, just described—from about 4 billion to 2.5 billion years ago—is called the Archean (not to be confused with the organisms called archaeans).
The Oxygen Revolution
By 1.5 billion years ago, oxygen levels had reached perhaps 10 percent of current levels. One effect of this is that “red beds” began to form. These are areas where iron in the soil has been oxidized, producing a rusty appearance. This process happens mainly in dry, hot climates, such as the present-day Australian outback, often called the “red center.”
A more important consequence of increased oxygen levels was a dramatic change in Earth's life. Oxygen is poisonous to many microorganisms (such as the tetanus bacterium, which thrives in closed wounds with little oxygen). Much of this life perished, but some of it found refuge deep in the sea or underground. A more complex type of single-celled living thing arose at about this time--eukaryotes. These organisms have a cell nucleus and many other structures not present in prokaryotes. More complex, multicellular eukaryotes also evolved later. In fact, all animals, plants, fungi, and protists are eukaryotes.
Eukaryotes require something that prokaryotes do not—oxygen at levels at least 1 percent of the present level. Once sufficient oxygen was present, eukaryotic cells became very numerous. For most of the remainder of the Proterozoic, all life on Earth consisted of single-celled organisms, including both prokaryotes and eukaryotes.
Near the end of the Proterozoic eon, the climate changed dramatically. Since the Hadean eon, temperatures had apparently been much like today's. About 750 million years ago, however, conditions became drastically colder. Rocks from that time show evidence of the action of glaciers, and some of these rocks appear to have formed near the ancient Equator. Many scientists believe that Earth froze over, even at the Equator, for millions of years—a state called “snowball Earth.” This seems to have occurred at least twice, probably about 710 million years ago and 640 million years ago. (Some evidence also points to widespread glaciation much earlier, about 2.2 billion years ago). Other scientists do not believe the glaciation was quite this extensive, so that open water and some bare land were present in the tropics. In either case, the climate was probably colder than at any time since.
The following is how this may have occurred. By this time, the supercontinent Rodinia had begun to break apart, with many of the fragments likely being in tropical regions. Carbon dioxide, dissolved in rain falling on the continent and also in water in waves smashing against the shores, weathered the rocks. This washed calcium ions into the sea, where they combined with carbon dioxide to make limestone. Photosynthesizing organisms in the ocean continued to take carbon dioxide from the air and to bury the carbon as they died and sank to the bottom. With less of this greenhouse gas present, and the Sun at only about 94 percent of its present brightness, temperatures began to drop. Once snow and ice began to form, they reflected more of the Sun's light away. This vicious circle is an example of “positive feedback,” in which an effect itself causes more of the same effect to occur, and it allowed the world's average temperature to plunge to perhaps −60° F (−50° C).
After perhaps millions of years in this state, continuing volcanic activity continued to release carbon dioxide. However, now there was little or no rain to weather rocks, and almost all rocks were covered by ice or snow anyway. This allowed carbon dioxide levels to increase in the air again, perhaps reaching hundreds of times the present-day concentration. Temperatures became warm enough for some of the ice to start to melt, exposing darker surfaces that could absorb more sunlight. A positive-feedback warming process then sent the planet into a very hot state, with Earth reaching average temperatures of perhaps 100° F (38° C). The freeze-over had reduced the amount of life available to take the carbon dioxide back out of the air. Earth may have gone through at least two such freeze-thaw cycles in the late Proterozoic.
Paleozoic Era Dramatic changes occurred on Earth around 542 million years ago, heralding the beginning of the Paleozoic (meaning “old life”) era. The glaciers of the late Proterozoic melted. This, combined with changes on the seafloor, led to a rise in sea level, which flooded the coastlines of the ancient continents. Earth became warmer—somewhat warmer than today. Oxygen had recently increased to perhaps half its present-day level (though there is considerable uncertainty regarding the amount). These changes set the stage for a rapid phase of evolution called the Cambrian explosion.
Cambrian period The Cambrian period lasted from about 542 million to 488 million years ago. Fossils are very scarce in older rock layers but suddenly quite abundant in the Cambrian. It was once thought that no life, or at least nothing other than single-celled organisms, preceded it. Some fossils from earlier times have now been found, but the dramatic increase requires an explanation.
One factor is that at about this time animals developed the ability to form hard parts, such as exoskeletons or shells. These structures are much more easily preserved than the soft parts of creatures. However, it is likely that the actual numbers of animals, and certainly the number of types of animals, increased greatly. Many scientists believe that almost all of the large groups called phyla in the animal kingdom appeared at this time. For example, the ancestors of arthropods (such as today's crabs, spiders, and insects), mollusks (snails, clams, squid), poriferans (sponges), and echinoderms (starfish, sea urchins) are present in Cambrian sediments. These creatures lived in the sea. The first fishes, which were jawless, also appeared. There is only limited evidence of any life on land during this time, and any land dwellers that did exist were probably single-celled organisms such as bacteria.
The rest of the Paleozoic era consisted of periods called the Ordovician (488 million to 444 million years ago), the Silurian (444 million to 416 million years ago), the Devonian (416 million to 359 million years ago), the Carboniferous (359 million to 299 million years ago), and the Permian (299 million to 251 million years ago). Earth, and life itself, went through many changes during this time. These periods are distinguishable by significant changes in the sediments and in the fossil records, corresponding to environmental changes and extinctions of many species.
Rodinia broke apart, with the continents becoming most widely scattered about 470 million to 450 million years ago, during the Ordovician period. Then, the increasingly compacted seafloor started to be subducted under the edges of plates carrying the continents as they turned around and began to approach each other.
Ordovician period
Silurian period
Devonian period
Carboniferous period
Another interesting effect was that high oxygen levels are thought to have allowed some insects to become larger. Insects do not have lungs but absorb oxygen through their exoskeletons. This severely limits their maximum size. If the height, length, and width of an insect are all doubled, it will have eight times the volume and mass and will need eight times the energy. However, it will have only four times the surface area through which to absorb oxygen. Such an underpowered insect might not be able to function or even survive. With twice as much oxygen in the air, though, it would have enough energy after all. Perhaps because of this, certain huge insects, such as dragonflies with wingspans of up to 30 inches (76 centimeters), were able to thrive.
Some of the largest forest belts were in what are now eastern North America and northwestern Europe. These regions were apparently in the tropics at the time. Southern Gondwana had reached the South Pole, and millions of years of snow had built an ice cap there. The planet as a whole was colder than it had been. The large temperature difference between the poles and the Equator produced strong trade winds, which brought moisture from the ocean well inland. The resulting heavy rains enabled the rapid growth of these forests.
Permian period As the Permian began, the continents reassembled to form Pangea. Much of the land was then very far from any water. Much of Pangea became desert, and plant life on land was reduced. The southern ice cap diminished or disappeared, and the world became warmer. The great carboniferous forests diminished and were largely replaced by ferns and early conifer trees. Broad-leaved deciduous trees called Glossopteris became common in the south. A drop in sea level exposed sediments containing materials such as iron, which could then take oxygen from the atmosphere.
The Great Dying Geologic periods in general are defined by fairly sharp differences in the strata, or layers, of sediment. One of the differences seen is the fossils that predominate. In other words, the periods tend to be separated by extinction events, and the major eras by especially large extinction events. The Paleozoic (“old life”) and Mesozoic (“middle life”) eras are separated by the most dramatic extinction event known—that which separates the Permian period from the Triassic period. Roughly 95 percent of all marine species and 70 percent of all land-based species became extinct. Even those species that survived probably experienced significant loss of population.
This “great dying,” known as the Permian-Triassic extinction, occurred about 251 million years ago. There were actually a series of extinctions in the middle and late Permian. The final extinction event took place over a period of less than a million years and possibly as little as several thousand years. The cause is not known with any certainty, but many ideas have been put forth. Quite possibly it was a combination of factors. A tremendous amount of volcanic activity occurred in what is now Siberia, Russia, at about that time, lasting about a million years. This released between 250,000 and 1 million cubic miles (1 million and 4 million cubic kilometers) of lava, which hardened into basalt. That would have been enough to cover the world in a layer about 6 to 25 feet (about 2 to 8 meters) deep, if the basalt had been spread out evenly. Such an event would likely cause large climate changes and acid rain, disrupting ecosystems.
Scientists also believe that oxygen was reduced at the time, to perhaps as little as half its present abundance. It has been suggested that there was a large release of methane that had been trapped underground and under the sea. Such a release of methane could have caused an intense greenhouse effect and warming and could also lower oxygen levels. Also, the assembly of Pangea may have reduced the amount of shallow seas, which were needed to sustain many marine communities.
Another possibility is that a large comet or asteroid struck Earth at that time, triggering an environmental catastrophe. Some scientists believe that a feature found under the Antarctic ice or one found on the sea bottom off the coast of Australia could be the resulting crater. It may be that all of these suggested causes played a role or were interrelated—such as the impact triggering the volcanic activity. Even though no consensus has been reached on this, scientists agree that studying such extinctions is important, since life on Earth could be similarly threatened in the future.
Mesozoic Era
The Mesozoic (“middle life”) era lasted from 251 million to about 66 million years ago. It is divided into three periods: the Triassic (251 million to 200 million years ago), the Jurassic (200 million to 146 million years ago), and the Cretaceous (146 to 66 million years ago). This era is more familiar to most people than the Paleozoic is, because the Mesozoic was the age of the dinosaurs. Each of the periods ended with some degree of extinctions, but the most dramatic event occurred at the end of the Cretaceous. While not as extensive as the Permian-Triassic event, it nonetheless put an end to the dinosaurs and paved the way for the rise of mammals.
Triassic period
The northern and southern parts of Pangea had rather different sorts of plants and animals. In the south, forests of seed-ferns replaced the Glossopteris that had dominated the Permian. In the north, cycads (looking something like a cross between a fern and a palm), ginkgos, and primitive evergreen conifers were common. In the south, the animal life featured therapsids, while in the north, primitive reptiles known as archosaurs were predominant. In the sea, fish were plentiful, but aquatic reptiles such as ichthyosaurs appeared as well. Late in the Triassic, early dinosaurs became common, apparently having evolved from the archosaurs. The small shrewlike creatures that were the first mammals also appeared late in the period. They are thought to have descended from the therapsids.
Jurassic period The Jurassic saw a continuation of the breakup of Pangea. The rifts between the splitting continents became shallow seas, and rising sea levels flooded parts of the continents. Reefs grew in the seas. The climate was generally warmer than today. Conifers and ginkgos were common plants, and cycads were very abundant. Forests grew where Australia and Antarctica began to separate, eventually becoming coal deposits.
Cretaceous period
A major revolution in plants occurred during the Cretaceous—angiosperms, or flowering plants, first appeared. The landscape, formerly probably all shades of green, may have begun to take on other hues as these plants developed attractive flowers to lure insects, which could carry pollen. In response, insects themselves rapidly diversified into new forms.
Fairly modern reptiles, such as crocodiles and turtles, are seen in Cretaceous strata. Mammals developed into all three of their current groups: placentals, marsupials, and monotremes. The dinosaurs still dominated, though, and mammals remained quite small, with many burrowing into the ground.
The End of an Era The Cretaceous ended rather suddenly 65–66 million years ago with a major extinction event that put an end to the dinosaurs (except for their apparent descendants—the birds). The rudist reefs also disappeared from the shallow seas. While not quite as severe as the Permian-Triassic event, this extinction is one of the worst known, as nearly 80 percent of all species were destroyed.
As with the end of the Permian, the causes of this environmental catastrophe are debated. A huge volcanic outpouring in what is now India formed the Deccan Traps. This may have produced climate change and acid rain. For this extinction, though, many scientists believe there is a “smoking gun” to support the theory that the impact of an extraterrestrial body, probably an asteroid, played a role. Geologist Walter Alvarez discovered an excess concentration of the element iridium in the sediment layer deposited at the boundary between the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods, known as the K-T boundary. In about 1980 he and his father, physicist Luis Alvarez, proposed an explanation. They said that, since iridium is common in meteorites, the layer could be explained as debris from the impact of a large body, perhaps 6 miles (10 kilometers) across. The devastation produced by such an impact could have easily caused mass extinctions.
The environmental consequences must have been severe. The energy of the impact is estimated to have been about 100 million megatons—the equivalent of 2 million of the most powerful nuclear bombs ever detonated. Huge tsunamis, earthquakes, and intense heat would have been almost immediate effects. Within half an hour, material ejected from the site would have reentered the atmosphere over a large fraction of the globe. The shock-heating of the air would have set off huge forest fires. Longer-term effects would have included an almost complete cutoff of sunlight reaching the ground over much of the world, lasting for months. Chemicals produced by the event could have poisoned the air and oceans. Carbon dioxide released by the vaporization of seafloor sediment could have caused a large greenhouse effect for hundreds of years afterward.
In spite of this, there is still debate regarding the main causes of the extinction. The question also remains as to why some species survived. It is likely, though, that the impact played a role. In any case, asteroid or comet impacts can and do occur over geologic time and are a threat to life on Earth.
Cenozoic Era The Cenozoic (“recent life”) era began about 66 million years ago and continues today. It has traditionally been divided into two rather unequal periods: the Tertiary and the Quaternary. Now, however, the periods are usually defined as the Paleogene (66 million to 23 million years ago) and the Neogene (23 million years ago until the present). The periods are divided into several epochs, with the current epoch being the Holocene (11,800 years ago to the present). The Cenozoic is often called the Age of Mammals, because mammals quickly replaced reptiles as the most prominent land animals.
During the Cenozoic, plate tectonics brought the continents to their modern positions. India rammed into Asia, producing the Himalaya Mountains. South America—once part of Gondwana—made contact with North America for the first time since Pangea broke apart, just in the last few million years.
The climate started out very warm, with global temperatures peaking at an average of about 77 to 86° F (25 to 30° C), compared to the present 59° F (15° C). At that time, tropical conditions extended at least 45 degrees from the Equator, and even the Arctic Ocean may have had temperatures as high as 68° F (20° C). Gradual cooling occurred after that, with ice eventually forming on Antarctica and Greenland.In just the last million years or so, Earth's climate entered a new and dramatic phase. Severe ice ages have occurred roughly every 100,000 years. These ice ages have been interrupted by relatively mild intervals called interglacials lasting roughly 20,000 years. The last major cold spell peaked about 18,000 years ago, with ice sheets over a mile thick covering much of northwestern Europe and North America (as far south as Ohio). Global temperatures averaged some 9 to 14° F (5 to 8° C) colder than at present, with high northern latitudes much more strongly affected. The ice began to melt rapidly about 14,000 years ago, and the present time is in the Holocene interglacial. For perspective, Earth is now considerably warmer than it has been for most of the last 100,000 years but still significantly cooler than the average of the last 250 million years.
Early in the Cenozoic, mammals and birds quickly filled many of the ecological niches previously occupied by dinosaurs and other reptiles. Some mammals became quite large. Indricotherium, which ate leaves and looked something like a combination of a rhinoceros and a giraffe, stood up to about 15 feet (4.5 meters) high at the shoulder and weighed up to 15 tons. Some land mammals gradually adapted to aquatic life, eventually evolving into whales and dolphins. Mammals even entered the air, as bats evolved.
Huge carnivorous and flightless birds, some up to 10 feet (3 meters) tall, took over some of the predatory roles formerly played by the dinosaurs. Actually, since most biologists now believe birds to be descended from certain types of dinosaurs, in a sense, the dinosaurs never totally died out. In fact, they diversified into the huge number of bird species alive today.
Plant life changed, too. Flowering plants became dominant over much of the planet. These include grasses, which had appeared late in the Cretaceous but now spread and started a whole new ecosystem.
Primates became more common, eventually developing into monkeys, apes, and the ancestors of humans. Modern humans appeared probably in the last 150,000 years or so, after the cycle of ice ages and interglacials began. Human civilization, including farming and cities, did not develop until the Holocene, after the great northern ice sheets had largely receded.
Earth as a System Throughout Earth's history, its spheres and cycles have interacted in various ways. The water and carbon cycles discussed above, along with others (such as the nitrogen cycle and the phosphorus cycle) can be understood as parts of a system, of which the biosphere is a crucial part. In some ways, this system seems to be self-regulating. In fact, some researchers, such as British scientist James Lovelock, think of Earth (mainly the biosphere) almost as a sort of organism, dubbed Gaia. The basic idea is that life has tended to help maintain the conditions necessary for its own continued existence. Many scientists have criticized the Gaia hypothesis for being teleological—meaning “purpose driven”—as if life somehow “meant” to act in this way. In response, Lovelock himself has pointed out that he did not intend the idea to be taken in this way.
Despite the controversy, it is clear that life has greatly shaped the planet's outer parts, at least. An important concept to use here is that of feedback, both positive and negative. Positive feedback occurs when an effect is in some way its own cause. The classic example is having a microphone too close to a speaker. The sound from the speaker is picked up by the microphone, which then produces even more sound from the speaker, in a vicious cycle. Such a system is regarded as unstable.
Negative feedback involves processes that are self-correcting. A simple example is a pendulum; the more it is displaced to one side, the greater the force trying to send it back where it was. The natural result is oscillatory behavior about an “equilibrium” state, or at least a tendency for things to “not get out of hand.” This behavior is termed stable.
Negative feedback is vital to maintaining fairly constant conditions. For example, perhaps excess carbon dioxide in the air stimulates the growth of plants, which thereby absorb more carbon dioxide from the air. This would tend to keep the amount from changing too much. An example of positive feedback is the idea that rising global temperatures will release methane—a greenhouse gas—from storage in permafrost or in sediment in the deep ocean. This would cause a “bootstrap effect,” with temperatures rising in an uncontrolled way.
In fact, Earth's climate is an excellent example of the effects of feedback loops in a system, yet it is driven by outside influences (specifically the Sun). When Earth began, the Sun was only about 70 percent its current brightness. Life did not yet exist, and there had not been time for weathering of rocks to bury much of the carbon dioxide and methane being vented from the interior. These gases trapped the Sun's heat and kept the world from freezing over.
As water and life gradually removed some of these greenhouse gases, Earth's temperature remained nearly constant in the brightening sunlight. Ice ages or hot spells sometimes occurred when the balance was disrupted, but negative feedback processes (such as the earlier-discussed thawing of snowball Earth during the Proterozoic) eventually came to the rescue, restoring a climate suitable for life.
Varying amounts of volcanic activity and changing continental positions led to a warm Mesozoic and an initially very warm but then cooling Cenozoic, until in the last million years the climate became erratic. Once ice caps formed, they became self-perpetuating because the white ice and snow reflected away sunlight, causing further cooling. Other influences, such as changes in heating due to Milankovitch cycles, eventually tipped the balance the other way, leading to the rapid warming of the interglacials.
The Earth system (regardless of whether one chooses to call it Gaia) certainly has many feedback loops, both positive and negative. Understanding these is crucial not only to understanding the planet's past, but also in predicting—or altering—its potential future.
Earth Compared to Other Planets Earth is very different from (far smaller and denser than) the gas giant planets of the outer solar system. A more interesting comparison can be made among Earth and its two closest planetary neighbors, Venus and Mars.
Venus is a near twin of Earth in terms of composition, mass, and size. One might think the two would have similar histories. However, Venus is closer to the Sun and therefore receives more heat. Early in the solar system's history, this might have been an advantage as far as the potential for life was concerned. Venus may have had comfortable temperatures, being closer to the faint early Sun.
Perhaps Venus got a bit too hot, preventing life from starting—or maybe life is a very rare event in the universe and Venus just was not “lucky.” Maybe it had less water to weather the rocks. In any case, Venus failed to bury its carbon dioxide as its volcanoes belched it out. What water it had was boiled away, and it then dissociated into oxygen and hydrogen (which largely departed into space). Chemical reactions then produced sulfuric acid for cloud droplets instead of water. With an atmosphere of mostly carbon dioxide and a surface pressure 90 times Earth's present sea-level value, an extreme greenhouse effect occurred. Temperatures are now around 870° F (465° C). With no water to hydrate the rock and lubricate the plates, its would-be tectonics ceased. It is now a hellish, dead world.
Mars, being farther from the Sun, is colder, though an early dense atmosphere may have kept it warmer than it is now. Its smaller mass and lack of a magnetic field allowed most of its atmosphere to escape. It had a reasonable amount of water, but it froze and now lies in the ice caps or as permafrost under the surface. Mars may or may not have had microbial life (some scientists think subsurface microbes could exist there even now), but it became too cold and dry to support a significant biosphere. It, too, appears to be a basically dead world.
Another difference between Earth and its neighbors is that Earth has a large moon, while Mars has two tiny ones and Venus has none. The gravitational influence of the Moon produces tides and may also help stabilize Earth's rotation axis.
One interesting object for comparison to Earth is Saturn's moon Titan. A bit smaller than Mars but much colder, it has managed to hold onto a thick atmosphere of mostly nitrogen. It is probably too cold for life, but it has a methane cycle in which this compound plays a role much like water on Earth. Methane in the air occasionally condenses as rain, which flows into scattered streams and lakes and perhaps methane “aquifers.” Water ice is frozen hard and seems to act like rock does on Earth. In other words, some Earth-like geologic processes appear to take place there but using different materials.
Some scientists believe that microbial life may be common in the universe but that conditions permitting the evolution and survival of intelligent multicellular creatures are very rare. We may be living at a truly special time and place in the history of the universe. (See also astronomy, “Does Life Exist Elsewhere?”)
The Future of Earth Taking into account all that has been learned about Earth's past and present, one can speculate in an informed way about what the future may hold for the planet. This involves exploring two basic scenarios: one in which humans have no effect or role and another in which people influence the course of events in various possible ways.
Plate tectonics should continue at least through the reassembly and breakup of one more supercontinent. However, the radioactive isotopes that help power convection currents in the mantle are decaying all the time. Eventually, the continents will assume their final positions, and volcanoes and earthquakes will largely cease.
Assuming no human (or other intelligent creature's) intervention, some forms of life might continue for a billion years or more. The recent series of ice ages and interglacials might continue for millions of years. Eventually, however, changing continental positions, plus a slowly brightening Sun, would bring warm, ice-free climates like those of the Mesozoic. Plants and animals would develop into new forms but probably with some familiar types surviving.
There will likely be asteroid and comet impacts from time to time. A few of these could trigger significant extinctions and alter the course of life's development. However, if the past is any clue, some species would almost certainly survive to populate a new and somewhat different world.
Within a few hundred million years, Earth should become very warm, perhaps with rainforests even near the poles. However, some models predict that weathering rates of silicate rocks will increase, thus reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels enough to threaten plant life. By a billion years out, conditions would become so hot that multicellular life-forms would succumb, and the oceans would begin to evaporate at an ever higher rate. Only single-celled eukaryotes and prokaryotes might find conditions tolerable. Later, even the eukaryotes would perish, leaving only prokaryotes or other hardy single-celled organisms. In other words, basic types of life-forms would become extinct in approximately the reverse order in which they appeared.
By perhaps 1.2 billion years from now, the oceans may have completely evaporated. Even the resulting water vapor will eventually be lost, as ultraviolet radiation from the Sun breaks off water's hydrogen atoms, which will then escape into space. By 7 billion years from now, the Sun will be swelling toward its red giant stage, with its outer layers eventually reaching Earth's orbit. Earth will likely recede somewhat from the Sun as the Sun loses mass into space. In any case, however, the planet will become a ball of magma, glowing at thousands of degrees. Interestingly, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn (including Titan) should melt and offer at least the chance of having biospheres of their own, though not for as long as Earth had.
If Earth survives the Sun's red giant phase, it will then become a cold, barren rock when the Sun's nuclear reactions cease and the Sun shrinks to a faint white dwarf star. Earth would continue to orbit, as it had for over 12 billion years, but with a cold, dark future.
If the above comes to pass, the biosphere will have lasted about 5 billion years—about three quarters of which is already past. This scenario is not certain, though, largely because humans or other intelligent descendents could play a vital role. In the short term, the release of buried carbon from human activities threatens to warm the planet to levels that modern civilization has not had to deal with. Among the changes such global warming could cause are the extinctions of other species—possibly on a scale rivaling the extinctions separating adjacent geologic periods discussed earlier.
In the very long term, though, the biosphere would probably adjust to the new conditions. Eventually, in the very distant future, our descendents would face the problem of the very gradual brightening of the Sun. It may be feasible to redirect an asteroid so that it swings by Earth and Jupiter every few thousand years, giving Earth a gentle tug to increase its orbital radius. Another option would be to place a large disk between Earth and the Sun to shade Earth and keep it cooler. If our descendants were actually to execute such plans, the lifetime of the biosphere might be extended by billions of years. In that case, life would have indeed helped determine its own fate.
Shape and Size Many ancient cultures, even sophisticated ones such as the Egyptians, pictured Earth as being flat, with the sky above being a separate abode of heavenly bodies: the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars. By 2500 BC, though, some people correctly thought Earth to be roughly spherical in shape. The Greek mathematician Pythagoras is widely credited with reaching this conclusion in the 6th century BC. Two centuries later, Aristotle gave specific reasons for thinking Earth is round: (1) matter is drawn to Earth's center and would naturally compress it into a spherical shape, (2) traveling south reveals new stars rising above the southern horizon, and (3) Earth's shadow on the Moon at lunar eclipses is circular.
After Aristotle, many people did not know about his teachings. Belief in a flat Earth could persist, and there was at least some debate on the issue. However, knowledge of the spherical shape of Earth has been widespread among astronomers for most of the last 2,000 years, at least. Greek and Indian astronomers accepted the concept, and by the 9th century AD Islamic astronomers were using it. Christian Europe had widely accepted the idea by the 13th century.
- Eratosthenes' measurement of Earth
It is now known that the circumference at the Equator is 24,902 miles (40,075 kilometers). The diameter at the Equator is 7,926 miles (12,756 kilometers). Actually, Earth is not quite spherical but is an oblate spheroid—squashed in the north-south direction so that the pole-to-pole diameter is only 7,900 miles (12,714 kilometers). The distance from the Equator to the North Pole along Earth's surface is 6,214 miles (10,002 kilometers). In fact, the meter was originally defined (by the French Academy of Sciences in 1791) to be one ten-millionth of the distance from the Equator to the North Pole. This explains why this distance is almost exactly 10 million meters (10,000 kilometers).
Motions For centuries, Earth was simply “the world”—the only one known. Even most believers in a spherical Earth thought it to be a one-of-a-kind object in the center of a spherical universe. The Sun, Moon, planets, and stars were generally thought to be of a very different nature from Earth. In fact, in the 4th century BC Aristotle proposed that they were made of a heavenly fifth element (“quintessence”), in addition to his supposed earthly elements of earth, water, air, and fire. The Sun and Moon, plus Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn (all easily visible to the naked eye), were seen to gradually change position relative to the stars. This earned them the name planets, which meant “wanderers.”
Most thinkers, including Aristotle, believed that Earth was motionless in the center of the universe. This is called the geocentric (Earth-centered) theory, and it was developed in greater detail by Ptolemy of Alexandria in around AD 150. Almost all astronomers accepted the theory for the next 1,400 years. In this view, Earth was certainly not a planet, because it was obviously not a wandering light in the sky.
In the 16th century AD Nicholas Copernicus of Poland proposed that Earth rotates on an axis through the North and South poles once a day—actually once a “sidereal” day, which is measured using the distant stars as a reference frame instead of the Sun. Earth's sidereal day is 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4 seconds, which is a few minutes shorter than its “solar” day. Copernicus also said that Earth orbits, or revolves around, the Sun once a sidereal year (which is 365.256 days). He believed that the Moon orbits Earth but that the other wanderers (the planets, not including the Sun) revolve around the Sun like Earth does. In this, Earth is a planet, because it, too, is a wanderer—around the Sun.
- Johannes Kepler discovered that the planets—including Earth—revolve around the Sun in …
In 1687 Isaac Newton of England published his law of universal gravitation in his major work, the Principia. This explained the planets' motions as being caused by the Sun's gravitational pull on the planets. By this point, almost all scientists accepted the heliocentric theory.
Newton showed that any two objects attract each other with this gravitational force. Its strength is proportional to the mass of each object, and it becomes weaker with increasing distance between the objects. A body's “weight” is simply the gravitational force exerted on it by Earth or whatever planet or other large body it happens to be near. Objects naturally tend to fly off through space in a straight line at a constant speed, but a gravitational pull can curve the path into a closed orbit. The Moon orbits Earth, and likewise Earth orbits the Sun.
Earth's spin axis is tilted about 23.5 degrees with respect to the axis of its revolution around the Sun. This allows the Northern Hemisphere to get the most sunlight—and therefore its summer—on about June 21, when the North Pole is tipped toward the Sun. The North Pole points almost the same direction all year, toward the North Star. On about December 21 Earth is on the opposite side of the Sun, though, so the South Pole is tipped toward the Sun and the Southern Hemisphere gets the most sunshine and its summer at that time. These dates are called the solstices. The equinoxes, when day and night are of nearly equal length worldwide, occur in between, on around March 21 and September 23. Thus the seasons are controlled much more by the tilt of Earth's axis than by the rather small variation in distance from the Sun.
The spin axis itself wobbles, much like that of a top, slowly over time. This is the main cause of the “precession of the equinoxes,” a roughly 26,000-year cycle in which the spin axis traces out a circle, 47 degrees wide, in the sky. On this circle lie several “candidates” for North Star. Polaris is the present North Star, since currently Earth's axis points almost directly at it. Some 13,000 years from now, though, the North Star will be the bright star Vega. The Greek astronomer Hipparchus recognized this subtle phenomenon in the 2nd century BC.
Even more subtle motions exist. The circle traced out in the sky by the North Pole has little wobbles on it, because of a sort of rocking motion called nutation. Over a cycle of about 41,000 years, the tilt of the spin axis actually varies from about 22 to 25 degrees. In the first part of the 20th century the Serbian mathematician Milutin Milankovitch proposed that such variations in tilt, along with slight changes in the shape of Earth's orbit, have triggered climate change in the past. Climate scientists now widely accept this theory as explaining one of the many triggers of the onset and ending of ice ages.
Earth's Place in Space
- The solar system consists of the Sun and all the objects that orbit it, including the planets, …
The nearest star system is about 270,000 times as far from Earth as the Sun is. Most of the stars visible to the naked eye are over a million times as far as the Sun, thus explaining why they appear so faint. Many would appear much brighter than the Sun if placed where the Sun is. All the stars one can see with the naked eye are nearby neighbors in a gigantic disklike structure called the Milky Way galaxy, which contains over a hundred billion suns. The Sun (“our” Sun) is about 25,000 light-years from the center of the Milky Way. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, almost 6 trillion miles (9.5 trillion kilometers). The Sun and its planets orbit the Milky Way's center with a period (the time it takes to complete one orbit) of about 250 million years. The Milky Way, in turn, is only one of billions of galaxies in the observable universe. The galaxies are generally flying apart from each other and are scattered across billions of light-years of space. (See also astronomy; solar system.)
All this can make Earth seem like a tiny, insignificant dot in the vastness of space. However, as our home, it is highly significant to us, and furthermore it has many very special properties and processes that are unique among the planets discovered so far. Earth is a special place indeed.
Internal Structure To know what Earth is like inside, one might imagine drilling all the way to the center. Nothing anywhere near close to this has ever been done, though. The deepest well, on the Kola Peninsula in Russia, is about 7.62 miles (12.26 kilometers) deep, reaching only about 1/500 the distance to Earth's center. The question remains, then, how can humans discover the structure of the planet?
While scientists have almost literally “barely scratched the surface” of Earth, a great deal has been learned about Earth's interior. One approach is to consider Earth's average density and the density and chemical composition of the near-surface layers, including rocks conveniently brought to the surface by volcanoes. Another method is to study the vibrations called seismic waves, which travel through the planet after being produced by natural sources such as earthquakes and by manmade events such as nuclear weapons tests.
Earth's mass is known from its gravitational effects to be 5.976 × 1024 kilograms, which if it could be weighed on another “Earth,” would amount to about 6.587 billion trillion tons. Combined with knowledge of Earth's volume, this gives a density of 5.52 grams per cubic centimeter. This is denser than the typical 2 to 3 grams per cubic centimeter for rocks but less than the densities of iron and nickel, which are about 8 and 9 grams per cubic centimeter, respectively. These metals are commonly found in meteorites and may have been much of the raw material for Earth. Therefore, one might suppose Earth to be some mixture of rock and metal. Furthermore, iron and nickel, being denser than rock, would tend to sink toward the center.
- The main types of seismic waves are P, S, Love, and Rayleigh. Click on each icon to …
Other waves travel downward into Earth's interior. These waves are known as body waves, and they come in two basic types. P, or primary, waves have a “push-pull” motion parallel to the direction the wave is traveling. S, or secondary, waves make a side-to-side motion, perpendicular to the direction of wave motion. The P waves travel faster, hence the name primary, since they arrive first. Both types of waves generally travel faster in denser material. This not only affects arrival time but also allows the waves to bend (refract) and bounce (reflect) upon encountering changes in the density of the material. S waves have the additional property of not being able to travel through liquids.
By carefully analyzing data from thousands of earthquakes, using seismometers scattered across the globe, scientists have developed a rather detailed picture of Earth's interior. This technique is called seismic tomography. It is similar to the use of ultrasonic sound waves to produce images of unborn babies or computed tomography (CT) X-ray scans for diagnosing medical conditions.
- Scientists learned that Earth's core has separate liquid and solid layers by studying the waves …
Seismic tomography also readily yields details of the outer layers of the planet. The outermost part, the crust, has rather low density rock in which waves travel somewhat slowly. The waves partially reflect upon reaching a boundary, called the Moho. This is short for the Mohorovičić discontinuity, named after Andrija Mohorovičić, the Croatian seismologist who discovered it in 1909. The depth at which this discontinuity occurs ranges from as little as 3 miles (5 kilometers) beneath some parts of the ocean bottom to up to about 45 miles (75 kilometers) beneath some continental surfaces.
- Earth's interior has three main layers: a thin, rocky crust; a thick, rocky mantle; and a metallic …
- A cross section shows Earth's outer layers subdivided according to their physical properties. The …
Temperatures and pressures rise with increasing depth inside the planet. At roughly 50 miles (80 kilometers) below the surface, the rock of the mantle is at about 2,500° F (1,370° C) and becomes partly molten. This is the beginning of the part of the mantle known as the asthenosphere. Below about 150 to 200 miles (250 to 300 kilometers), the mantle is under so much pressure that it becomes more rigid again, though it is still plastic enough to allow very gradual motions. The mantle extends down to about 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometers) beneath the surface. The temperature at the bottom of the mantle is believed to be roughly 6,700° F (3,700° C).
Beneath the mantle, the material becomes much denser (as indicated by faster P waves) and liquefies (as evidenced by the lack of S waves). Scientists believe that this layer, called the outer core, consists of up to 90 percent molten iron and nickel (mostly iron), with some other elements such as sulfur mixed in. It makes up about 30 percent of Earth's mass. Finally, below about 3,200 miles (5,100 kilometers) is the inner core, which extends to the very center, about 3,960 miles (6,370 kilometers) down. It contains about 2 percent of Earth's mass. Despite extremely high temperatures, estimated to be between 8,000 and 12,000° F (about 4,400 and 6,600° C), the pressure is so high that the iron and nickel become solid.
Rocks and Minerals Earth is largely a ball of rock. Rocks form on and beneath Earth's surface under a wide range of physical and chemical conditions.
All rocks are made up of minerals. The minerals in some rocks are single chemical elements such as gold or copper, but the minerals in most rocks are compounds—combinations of elements with a definite chemical composition and a precisely patterned structure. Most minerals form crystals. Each crystal has a characteristic shape and structure that is determined by the type and arrangement of its atoms.
The most common atoms present in Earth's rocks are oxygen and silicon, which combine to make silicates such as quartz (SiO2). Silicates make up about 95 percent of the planet's crust and upper mantle. Other common elements, present in lesser amounts, are aluminum, iron, calcium, sodium, potassium, and magnesium.
Igneous Rock
- Towering columns of basalt, an igneous rock, make up the unusual formation known as the Devils …
Magma deep beneath the surface may cool slowly. When this happens, the minerals grow slowly and may reach a relatively large size. This slow-cooling process produces coarse-grained rocks such as granite or gabbro. The type of rock produced depends on the chemicals in the magma. Each type can be distinguished by its characteristic mineral composition.
Magma closer to the surface cools more quickly, giving the minerals little chance to grow. As a result, fine-grained rocks similar in composition to the coarse-grained ones are produced. The fine-grained rhyolite is the equivalent of the coarse-grained granite, and the fine-grained basalt is the equivalent of gabbro.
Some materials ejected from volcanoes cool so quickly that they solidify before they strike the ground. Lava cools so rapidly that often gas bubbles are trapped within it. When such lava hardens, it is light and porous. Pumice is formed in this way. The natural glass obsidian is also formed from lava.
Metamorphic Rock
- Blocks of marble, a metamorphic rock, are cut from a quarry in Carrara, Italy. Heat, pressure, and …
Limestone, a sedimentary rock, changes to marble as a result of such forces. Under stress, the mineral grains in the sedimentary rock shale grow in new directions to form slate, a metamorphic rock. Continued stress changes the slate to phyllite and then to schist, a rock that is very different in appearance, composition, and structure from the original shale. Quartzite, one of the hardest and most compact rocks, is the metamorphic form of the relatively soft, grainy sandstone, a sedimentary rock.
Sedimentary Rock
- The erosion of sandstone created spectacular formations in Arizona. A sedimentary rock, sandstone …
Particles of rock, eroded from exposed areas such as mountains, are transported by streams and rivers to the sea. There they slowly settle as fine silts or clays. Coarser particles, such as sands, are deposited nearer the shore, and the largest particles, such as pebbles and cobbles, settle at the shoreline. As these materials slowly accumulate over long periods of time, water is squeezed out from between the particles. Cementing agents carried in solution in the water—for example, calcium carbonate, silica, and iron oxide—may bind the particles together.
The pebbles close to shore are cemented together into a conglomerate. A little farther out shales form. In the open oceans limestones form from calcium carbonate and the shells of dead sea animals.
Crystalline rocks can form in shallow inland seas where access to open water has been restricted or cut off. In such places the seas may evaporate slowly, leaving behind compounds that form sedimentary rocks such as gypsum and rock salt.
- Fossils help geologists establish the relative geologic ages of layers of rock. In this diagram, …
Spheres and Cycles Earth's Spheres One approach to understanding Earth, especially the outer parts, is to divide it into interacting spheres. One such scheme considers these to be the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the lithosphere, and the biosphere.
Atmosphere
- Luminous layers of the atmosphere appear above the dark edge of Earth, at bottom, in an image …
The atmosphere's mass is just over 5 × 1018 kilograms (5 million gigatons, with a gigaton equaling a billion metric tons), which weighs more than 11 × 1018 pounds. This may sound impressive, but it is less than one millionth the mass of the whole planet. Traces of the atmosphere can be found 100 miles (160 kilometers) above the surface, but most of it lies within 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers) of the ground. On the scale of a typical globe with a 12-inch (30-centimeter) diameter, this is little more than the thickness of a sheet of paper.
About 78 percent by volume of dry air consists of nitrogen (chemical formula N2). Oxygen (O2) makes up 21 percent. Most of the rest is argon (Ar), but small amounts of other gases, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and hydrogen (H2), are present as well. Notice that these figures are for dry air; water vapor (H2O) makes up varying amounts, usually between 0.1 and 4 percent.
The composition of the air is very nearly uniform across the globe and even at different heights. However, a small (a few parts per million) concentration of ozone (O3) exists in the layer called the stratosphere, mostly more than about 6 miles (10 kilometers) above the ground. This “ozone layer” is vital to life on Earth because it absorbs most of the harmful ultraviolet rays reaching Earth from the Sun. This concentration of ozone has been reduced in recent decades, at least in part because of reactions with man-made chemical compounds called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), used in commerce and industry. Since 1992, production of these gases has been greatly restricted, so it is hoped that little further damage to the ozone layer will occur.
- The temperature and pressure of the air vary with height. Temperatures, indicated by the yellow …
Above that, however, temperatures stay about the same and then actually begin to rise with height. This zone is called the stratosphere. Most of its surprising warmth—up to the freezing point of water or slightly higher—results from the interception of ultraviolet solar energy by ozone. Because of this temperature structure, the air in the stratosphere is very stable, meaning very little vertical mixing can occur. For this reason, volcanic dust or man-made gases that reach the stratosphere can remain stuck there for years. This also makes the stratosphere very dry, since very little water vapor is able to mix up into it from below.
The stratopause, the top of the stratosphere, is about 30 miles (50 kilometers ) up. Above this is the mesosphere, a zone in which temperatures fall once again. After bottoming out at the mesopause, at roughly 50 miles (80 kilometers) up, temperatures become very high in the thermosphere, reaching over 2,000° F (1,100° C). This is misleading, however, because by this point the air is so thin that there is almost nothing there to feel. It simply means that the relatively few particles (mostly ions, or electrically charged atoms) present are moving quite fast. Beyond the thermosphere, one can define another region, the exosphere. This is an extremely rarified gas of mainly hydrogen and helium, which merges with the near vacuum of interplanetary space.
The atmosphere's pressure drops considerably with height, for a very simple reason. The pressure exerted by the air at any height is due to the weight of all the air above it. At great altitudes, there is little air above, so the pressure, and in turn density, becomes quite low. Pressure at sea level averages about 14.7 pounds per square inch (101,320 newtons per square meter), or one “atmosphere” (a unit of pressure). Roughly speaking, pressure is cut in half with every additional 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers) above the ground. At an altitude of 7 miles, air pressure is about one fourth that at sea level.
The atmosphere is constantly in motion, mainly because of pressure differences, which are in turn caused by differences in heating by the Sun. This solar energy is redistributed by winds, infrared radiation, and water vapor, resulting in the changing state of the atmosphere called the weather.
The circulation pattern of the atmosphere changes from day to day and from season to season. However, some definite overall patterns can be discerned. Air near the Equator is generally heated the most, which makes it less dense and causes the atmosphere in that region to expand upward. This often produces clouds and rain, making the tropics relatively wet. Air at high altitudes then flows poleward. Earth's rotation comes into play, though, via the Coriolis effect, which deflects the air to the right of the winds' direction of motion in the Northern Hemisphere and to the left in the Southern Hemisphere. This results in high altitude winds mainly from west to east in the middle latitudes.
Some of the poleward-flowing air sinks back toward the surface at about 25 or 30 degrees of latitude from the Equator in both hemispheres. This air then flows back toward the Equator near the surface but is deflected by the Coriolis effect, becoming the trade winds. The trade winds blow from the northeast in the Northern Hemisphere and from the southeast in the Southern Hemisphere. Where the air is sinking, relatively high surface pressures are produced. The sinking air is compressed and warmed, so that clouds tend to evaporate and there is little rain. Most of the world's deserts are located in these subtropical regions.
Winds in the middle latitudes tend to be from the west on average. Closer to the poles winds tend to flow from the northeast in the Northern Hemisphere and the southeast in the Southern Hemisphere, much like the trade winds. A fairly distinct boundary between the relatively warm mid-latitude westerly (blowing from west to east) winds and the cold polar easterly winds can often be found. It is along this “polar front” that low-pressure systems called cyclones frequently form. An overall effect of these storms is to send colder air toward low latitudes and warmer air toward the poles.
In addition to mid-latitude cyclones, very strong tropical cyclones such as hurricanes and typhoons (two names for the same type of storm, applied to different regions) form in summer or fall. These storms eventually carry heat to high latitudes. In fact, the weather generally has the effect of making the Equator cooler than it would otherwise be and the poles warmer than they would be.
Hydrosphere
- A map shows the major features of the ocean basins. Covering about 71 percent of Earth's surface …
The total mass of the hydrosphere is about 1.4 × 1021 kilograms (1.4 billion gigatons), which weighs about 3.1 × 1021 pounds. The mass of the hydrosphere is about 270 times the mass of the atmosphere. However, it is still less than 1/4,000 of Earth's total mass. The oceans make up almost 98 percent of the hydrosphere's mass. By some estimates, ice caps and glaciers constitute almost 1.7 percent, with underground reservoirs accounting for about 0.37 percent. Freshwater in lakes and streams is only a tenth as abundant as groundwater, making up some 0.036 percent of the total. About 0.001 percent of Earth's water can be found in the atmosphere as water vapor or cloud droplets and ice crystals. If all the water vapor in the atmosphere at a given time were condensed into liquid and spread over Earth's entire surface, it would form a layer about an inch (2.5 centimeters) thick.
The average depth of the oceans is about 12,400 feet, or 2.3 miles (3.8 kilometers). Even the deepest part, the Mariana Trench in the western North Pacific—6.86 miles (11.03 kilometers) deep—extends only about 1/600 of the way to Earth's center. So, like the atmosphere, the hydrosphere forms a relatively thin skin on the planet's surface.
A notable feature of the oceans is that they contain a great deal of dissolved salts, mainly sodium chloride (ordinary table salt). On average, there are about 3.5 kilograms of salt for every 100 kilograms of seawater. If the oceans were to completely evaporate, the remaining compacted salt would form deposits averaging at least 200 feet (60 meters) thick.
Since water is much denser than air, pressure changes in the vertical are much more dramatic in water than in air. Pressure in water increases by the equivalent of one atmosphere, or 14.7 pounds per square inch, for every 33 feet (10 meters) of depth. The ocean bottom has several hundred atmospheres of pressure, or several hundred times the pressure at sea level on land.
Very little light penetrates more than about 100 feet (30 meters) into the water, so the depths of the ocean are pitch black. Temperatures become cold near the bottom, even in tropical seas, dropping as low as about 36° F (2° C). This is largely due to cold, dense salty water from the polar regions settling near the bottom of the world's oceans.
Like the atmosphere, the oceans have large scale motions, or currents, which play an important role in redistributing the heat Earth receives from the Sun. Huge ocean currents, driven mainly by winds, circulate basically clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. These currents bring cold water toward the Equator on the west coasts of continents and warm water toward the poles on east coasts. In North America the cold California Current makes places such as San Francisco surprisingly cool, most notably in summer. The warm Gulf Stream flowing north near the eastern coast of the continent keeps eastern beaches warmer and also strengthens hurricanes approaching the coast.
Evaporation of water from the oceans supplies almost all the moisture for precipitation. Rain falling on the continents dissolves minerals, such as salt, which flow into and become concentrated in the oceans. On land much of the water flows visibly at the surface as rivers, but a great deal also goes underground, saturating deep layers of rock in reservoirs called aquifers. Many desert regions have aquifers deep underground holding water from rain that fell thousands of years ago. Wells that tap into these aquifers have been used for thousands of years.
Lithosphere “Lithos” means “rock,” and the lithosphere consists of the outer, rocky parts of the planet. The name generally refers to Earth's crust and some of the upper mantle. The lithosphere has been found to make gradual movements, which sometimes bring fresh material to the surface and also bury older parts of the surface. Over vast amounts of time, much of the material is therefore recycled. During this process, it affects, and is affected by, the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere.
The lithosphere is broken into several “plates” that essentially float on the denser material underneath and drift up against, alongside, over, or underneath other plates. This process, called plate tectonics, is discussed in greater detail later, in the section “Plate Tectonics.” (The rocks of the lithosphere were discussed above in the section “Rocks and Minerals.”)
Biosphere
- Numerous kinds of green plants grow in profusion in a rainforest in Dominica. The existence of …
The biosphere plays a vital role in the chemistry and geologic processes of the planet. Earth, especially the outer layers, is a very different world than it would be with no life. The biosphere is thought to have almost completely buried an ancient atmosphere of mainly carbon dioxide, replacing some of it with oxygen. It has also produced vast deposits of coal and oil and has even regulated the planet's temperature.
Most of the biosphere is based on the process of photosynthesis, by which plants and some microorganisms use sunlight to convert water, carbon dioxide (from the atmosphere), and minerals into oxygen (which then enters the atmosphere) and simple and complex sugars. Animals eat many of these plants and microorganisms, thus consuming much of their stored energy. Energy is concentrated further into a small number of carnivores, who eat other animals. Scavengers eat dead plants and animals. After all of the above creatures die, they are gradually buried in the ground or sink to the seafloor. In this way, they are eventually incorporated into Earth's lithosphere, with some gases, such as methane, being released into the atmosphere or hydrosphere. (These phenomena are discussed in more detail below in several sections, including “Carbon Cycle” and “Carboniferous Period.”)
In recent decades, scientists have found ecosystems (groups of interdependent organisms and their environment) independent of sunlight. An example is the communities of creatures thriving around hydrothermal vents in the deep ocean. These vents spew hot water, laden with sulfur dioxide gas, from the ocean floor. Bacteria called chemoautotrophs make their food (sugars, as in photosynthesis) by using these hot gases along with carbon dioxide. Other creatures, such as long, red tube worms, store the bacteria in their bodies and live off their energy. Bacteria that have been found in deep underground rocks may be using hydrogen to make their food. The hydrogen may come from water broken apart by the nuclear radiation from radioactive elements, such as uranium, trapped in the rock.
Recently, many biologists have decided that some microorganisms inhabiting extreme environments (such as those with very hot or salty conditions) are not true bacteria. A new kingdom of such creatures, called Archaea, has been proposed, with the creatures called the archaeans. Finding organisms in such surprising environments has led some scientists to speculate that life could exist beneath the surface of Mars or in the deep, ice-covered oceans of Jupiter's moon Europa.
Earth's Cycles Many of Earth's materials are recycled in various ways through Earth's spheres. Life plays an essential role in many of these cycles, in effect regulating the environment, often in a way that is beneficial for life. Two of the most important cycles are the water cycle and the carbon cycle.
Water cycle
- The Earth's water is constantly recycled. It falls on the land as rain and snow, is carried by …
Of course, this water is eventually returned. Precipitation falling directly on the oceans amounts to just over 90 percent of the water evaporated from them. The remainder flows back into the ocean from land, carried mainly in rivers. Precipitation also falls on land—about the same amount per square mile as the ocean receives—totaling about 26,000 cubic miles (107,000 cubic kilometers). Plants draw water from the soil and, in a process called transpiration, release water vapor into the air through tiny pores in their leaves. About 17,000 cubic miles (70,000 cubic kilometers) of water enters the atmosphere over land in this way and from evaporation off the land. This leaves about 9,000 cubic miles (37,000 cubic kilometers) traveling from land to water via rivers each year.
Much of the water that falls on land does not immediately enter streams and rivers. Instead, it filters through porous soil and rock into the ground. At varying depths under the surface, it often saturates the porous rock, forming the “water table.” Such water may remain underground for hundreds of years, but most of it eventually finds its way into streams and enters the oceans after all.
As a material—in this case water—moves among various reservoirs, any given molecule will spend a characteristic time, called the residence time, in each reservoir. Typically, a water molecule will remain in the atmosphere a bit over a week before falling to the ground as precipitation (or possibly forming dew or frost). Shallow soil moisture or seasonal snow cover may last months. Glaciers and lakes hold water for decades. Residence time in the ocean is a few thousand years.
There is one more part of the water cycle, and it is sometimes overlooked. This is the chemical combining of ocean water with rocks on the seafloor and its eventual release in volcanic gases. Such “hydrated” rocks have a lower melting point than they would otherwise. As the various plates of the lithosphere move, the seafloor on one plate is sometimes pushed against the edge of a continent on another. The denser oceanic crust is forced under the continental crust, and the “hydrated” rocks of the seafloor melt readily. This has a lubricating effect on plate motion, so that the water cycle is actually tied in with plate tectonics. Plumes of molten material and gases, including water vapor that was once part of the sea, rise to the surface in volcanoes. This water then enters the atmosphere after a residence time of tens, or even hundreds, of millions of years in the oceanic crust. (For a more detailed discussion of plate tectonics, see the section “The Changing Face of Earth” below.)
Carbon cycle
- The carbon cycle is the complex path that carbon follows through the atmosphere, oceans, and soil; …
The vast majority—over 99.9 percent—of Earth's near-surface carbon (carbon in the lithosphere and above) is stored in sedimentary rock. Estimates vary, but this reservoir probably holds roughly 80 million gigatons of carbon. This carbon was deposited over billions of years, partly by the weathering of silicate rocks to form carbonate rocks, which contain carbon compounds. It also accumulated from the remains of marine organisms that had used carbon to build calcium carbonate shells or body parts.
The next most abundant storage site is the deep ocean, which holds about 38,000 gigatons of carbon. Fossil fuels--coal, oil, and natural gas—make up an estimated 5,000 gigatons. The rest of the carbon is divided roughly equally among living plants (about 600 gigatons), organic debris in soil (about 1,600 gigatons), the near-surface ocean (about 1,000 gigatons), and the atmosphere (nearly 800 gigatons and increasing).
The carbon cycle is quite complex, partly because life plays many roles in it, but also because of the huge range of residence times involved. The largest reservoir, sedimentary rock, also has the longest residence time. Carbon has been steadily buried in rock throughout Earth's history and is released a little at a time, primarily through volcanic activity. A carbon atom might spend hundreds of millions of years locked away in rock before being released in the gases of a volcano. Probably most carbon atoms ever trapped in rock have never been released and may never be. Nevertheless, this geologic carbon cycle is of great importance. Over long periods the burial and release of carbon dioxide (and also methane) largely control Earth's surface temperature (see greenhouse effect). Higher amounts of these gases in the distant past likely helped warm the planet when the Sun was less bright in its youth.
The deep ocean and the near-surface ocean were listed separately above because the two do not mix very quickly. Thousands of years may be needed for changes near the surface to work their way down to the bottom. The oceans in general have a great capacity to store carbon. However, the short-term (such as decades) storage is mainly in the upper layers, which have limited capacity.
Fossil fuels are a complicated case because they took millions of years to be formed and buried but are being released by humans rather quickly. From the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-18th century to the start of the 21st century, roughly 300 gigatons of carbon were released by humans burning these fuels—over half of that after 1970. In the early 21st century such use was releasing over 6 gigatons of carbon per year, a rate thousands of times that at which it was originally buried.
Carbon travels rather quickly—generally a matter of months, years, or decades—among the remaining reservoirs. Plants take about 120 gigatons of carbon per year from the atmosphere during photosynthesis, which releases oxygen. However, they return about half of that carbon by respiration, which uses oxygen, largely at night. Also, some of the carbon in plants is eaten by herbivores and released during the herbivores' respiration, or during the respiration of carnivores that eat the herbivores. Much of the dead plant and animal matter in the soil is consumed by bacteria and fungi, which release carbon dioxide (or methane, if deprived of oxygen).
Just over 90 gigatons of carbon enter the ocean each year, largely by being dissolved from the air. Plankton in the ocean perform photosynthesis on a scale similar to that of land plants. Some of the carbon that enters the ocean is buried in ocean sediments, but much is released, some through the respiration of creatures that eat the plankton. All but perhaps two gigatons is released back into the atmosphere per year.
While human-induced release of carbon accounts for only a few percentage of the total entering the atmosphere, it is important to understand that this disrupts an otherwise fairly delicate balance. Much, perhaps half, of it ends up as excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Besides burning fossil fuels, humans alter the balance in other ways. Deforestation, some farming practices, and the manufacture of cement also contribute to increasing the carbon content of the atmosphere. (See also global warming.)
Magnetic Field
- Like a bar magnet, Earth has a dipolar magnetic field: it has two magnetic poles, which are called …
This invisible effect is now described as due to a magnetic field, a region of influence around any magnet. Earth has north and south magnetic poles that are near, but not quite on, the actual geographic North and South poles. The planet's magnetic field can be illustrated by lines, called magnetic field lines, that connect the magnetic poles and curve out and around the edges of the field, forming closed loops.
Earth's magnetic field has far more important effects than just deflecting compass needles. It shields Earth by steering and trapping electrically charged particles, such as protons and electrons, ejected by the Sun. This stream of particles is called the solar wind. The particles in it travel about 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) per hour, reaching Earth in a few days. Once trapped, the particles travel in a corkscrew pattern and effectively bounce back and forth between the poles. Some of the particles are guided into Earth's upper atmosphere, where they strike atoms and cause them to glow. This colorful display is called an aurora, also known as the northern or southern lights.
- Within Earth's magnetosphere (shown in cross section) are the Van Allen radiation belts, regions …
A beneficial effect of the magnetic field is that it prevents many of the solar wind particles from striking the atmosphere. Without the field, the solar wind might gradually erode away much of the planet's atmosphere. Mars, which is almost devoid of a magnetic field, has an atmosphere only about one hundredth as dense as Earth's. Mars's weaker gravity would probably have left it with less of an atmosphere anyway, but its exposure to the solar wind very likely helped remove some of its air.
Scientists believe that Earth's magnetic field is generated by huge currents of molten metal flowing in the liquid outer core. Interestingly, the field's orientation occasionally—very roughly once every million years—reverses, so that the north and south magnetic poles more or less switch. This process is not fully understood, but it is of critical importance to geologists, who use correlations between the magnetism of rocks to document and date the drifting of the continents.
The Changing Face of Earth Plate Tectonics
- At the San Andreas Fault in California, which lies along the Ring of Fire, the North American Plate …
- Surtsey Island, off the coast of Iceland in the North Atlantic Ocean, was born rather suddenly from …
For many years, most of these facts were known, but no one had a good explanation for them. In 1912 the German meteorologist Alfred Wegener proposed that in fact the continents had once been joined as a gigantic landmass, which he called Pangea (also spelled Pangaea), meaning “all land.” According to this theory, called continental drift, this supercontinent long ago broke into pieces—the present continents—which have since drifted to their current positions. Wegener was not the first to suggest that the continents might move, but he developed the theory in greater detail than before.
The idea seemed ridiculous to many geologists. How could a continent, made of rock, just get up and move? Wegener had no convincing explanation for the motion, but later researchers realized that the partly molten asthenosphere (part of the upper mantle, as described earlier) could allow motion of rock basically floating on top of it. Giant convection cells (churning motions) in Earth's hot interior might be able to drive continents or the seafloor apart where the material surfaces, such as at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. These churning motions should really be expected. Many bodies, such as a pan of boiling water, naturally exhibit them as an “effort” to rid themselves of heat. Some of the heat in Earth's interior is left over from the planet's formation, and some is released from the outer core as the iron and nickel slowly solidifies. Most of it, though, is believed to result from the decay of long-lived radioactive elements such as uranium.
Astronomers believe that these radioactive elements were formed in supernovas—catastrophic explosions of giant stars—that occurred before the solar system was formed. The uranium and other elements mixed with the clouds of gas and dust that ultimately collected together to form Earth. If correct, this theory means that continental drift, earthquakes, and volcanoes are actually powered by the dying embers of ancient suns.
As Wegener's ideas were developed more fully by others, the moving pieces of lithosphere became known as plates. Carried by convection currents from below, the plates could rub alongside each other, causing earthquakes as they grabbed and slipped. Plates striking each other head on would cause huge wrinkles in Earth's crust--mountain ranges. In some cases, a plate carrying seafloor crust, which consists of denser rock than that of continents, could be forced underneath a plate carrying continental crust—a process called subduction. Some of the subducted plate would then melt and perhaps force its way up through the other plate's edge as volcanoes. Most volcanoes and earthquakes, then, occur near the borders of plates, where they interact. The Ring of Fire, it turns out, lies along part of the edges of the Pacific Plate.
By the 1960s most geologists had accepted this idea, now known as plate tectonics. It is now thought that the crust of the ocean bottom is gradually formed as magma rising up in convection currents reaches the surface (the ocean bottom) and cools to form relatively new, dense rock. This creates undersea mountain chains called oceanic ridges, such as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which extend in an interconnected network through every ocean basin. The rock of the ocean bottom is mainly of a type called basalt, while the lighter rock of the continents is mostly granite. Continental crust is also thicker than oceanic crust, and it floats higher on the asthenosphere, so that most continental land has a higher elevation than the ocean surface. Radioactive dating of continental rocks has shown some to be about 4 billion years old. Rocks of the ocean crust are usually dated to less than 200 million years, and some are brand new, such as the freshly cooled magma in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
Continental Drift The configuration of Earth's continents has changed dramatically over hundreds of millions of years and is still changing today. The plates typically move about 2 to 4 inches (5 to 10 centimeters) per year, which is about 30 to 60 miles (50 to 100 kilometers) every million years.
Scientists believe that until about 240 million to 200 million years ago all the major landmasses were joined together in a supercontinent called Pangea. At that time, Pangea began to break apart because of gigantic convection currents rising up under it from the mantle. At first it fractured into a northern continent called Laurasia and a southern one called Gondwana, which were separated by an equatorial sea called Tethys.
Later, Gondwana broke apart to form Africa, South America, Antarctica, Australia, and India. Laurasia was torn apart to form North America and Eurasia (Europe and Asia considered as a single landmass). Open water—the young Atlantic Ocean—separated South America from Africa and North America from Eurasia. Magma rising from the interior surfaced along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and formed new seafloor, steadily widening the Atlantic and separating the continents.
Meanwhile, Australia and Antarctica drifted farther apart. India traveled north and began to collide with Asia about 40 million years ago, wrinkling the crust to form the world's highest mountain system, the Himalayas. The Tethys Sea narrowed as Africa and Eurasia approached and made contact. The Mediterranean Sea was left as a remnant. Only about 3 million years ago, North America and South America met for the first time since being part of Pangea, as the Isthmus of Panama formed a bridge between them.
As North and South America drifted westward, the Pacific Plate was subducted underneath their western coasts. As a result, the continents crumpled, helping raise the Rocky and Andes mountains. Earthquakes and volcanoes are common near these coasts.
The Pacific Plate itself drifted slowly northwestward. A plume of hot material rising from deep within the mantle burned through the oceanic crust in the North Pacific, forming a volcanic island. As the plate moved, it carried the new island to the northwest and brought a different section of the crust above the hot plume. The plume broke through the crust again to form another island, and the process repeated, forming the Hawaiian Island chain.
There is much evidence that Pangea itself formed from previous versions of the current continents colliding. As this occurred, smaller pieces of Earth's crust, called terranes, collided with and attached to the major continents. Pangea was probably fully formed by about 250 million years ago. As it formed, what would eventually become North America collided with what would later become Africa. This raised the Appalachians. These mountains are now so old (about 300 million years) that the forces of rain and wind have smoothed them and worn them down to about half their former height.
Tracing back even further, it appears that most of Earth's land was combined into an earlier supercontinent called Rodinia, which began to break up over 700 million years ago. This eventually produced an earlier version of the Atlantic Ocean, called Iapetus. By 470 million years ago, the seafloor of Iapetus had become more compacted and dense, and its edges began to be subducted under the adjacent continents. These continents began to slide toward each other, gradually narrowing Iapetus and eventually forming Pangea. Many scientists believe that other supercontinents formed and broke up even before Rodinia. Even earlier, the major continental masses themselves were likely formed by collisions of smaller pieces of crust.
Other Forces that Shape Earth's Surface
- The action of water, wind, glaciers, and gravity can wear away rock and shape land surfaces in a …
Once rocks have broken into fine pieces, water, wind, and ice can transport the material great distances—a process called erosion. Over time, rivers can carve deep canyons and carry vast amounts of debris, depositing it in valleys, on the seafloor, or in large river deltas. Ice has significant effects as well, as glaciers carve valleys and transport large boulders. In some areas, wind has a strong influence, creating large dune fields and scouring the surface with airborne dust or sand. Gravity produces landslides, packs sediment together, and causes denser rocks to slide under less dense ones, as in the case of subduction.
Wind-driven waves as well as the rising and lowering of the tides greatly erode the shoreline. Such erosion sometimes produces chains of sandy barrier islands separated from the coast by saltwater marshes. Lava from volcanoes resurfaces the land in some areas as it covers existing land and cools to form rock. Winds carry volcanic ash great distances, with the ash eventually settling to the surface.
Life also plays an enormous role in shaping Earth's surface. Plants help break rocks into soil, which can be washed away, but they also reduce erosion by holding the soil. Ancient forests and swamps were buried and eventually became coal. Shellfish and other marine organisms build shells of calcium carbonate, which continually settle to the ocean floor, forming vast deposits of chalk. Over time, these sediments—combined with various minerals—have formed layers many miles thick. In short, much of Earth's crust has been formed or at least altered by life.
Earth Through Time Formation and Age of Earth By the late 1800s, geologists and biologists had collected evidence suggesting that Earth is at least hundreds of millions of years old, much older than had earlier been thought. Geologists reasoned that vast stretches of time were needed for the slow work of erosion and sedimentation to have had the effects they apparently had. Biologists felt that a similarly long time was needed for evolution to have resulted in the great diversity of life seen today.
There were dissenting opinions, though. Physicists such as Lord Kelvin calculated that Earth, apparently still molten inside, should have cooled to a solid throughout if it were more than about 40 million years old. Similarly, astronomers figured that the Sun could not be more than a few tens of millions of years old. They believed that the Sun shone because of energy from gravitational contraction and so could not have sustained its energy output for so long without a drastic reduction in size.
The discovery of radioactivity by Henri Becquerel in 1896 led to a solution to both problems. Earth could be heated internally by radioactive decay of elements such as uranium deep inside, and this could last billions of years. The Sun, it turned out, shines by nuclear fusion, giving it a potential lifetime of at least 10 billion years.
Radioactive dating of rocks played a crucial role in calculating Earth's age. Some isotopes (forms of an element with different atomic masses) of some elements, such as uranium, decay by emitting radiation in the form of smaller particles, such as electrons and alpha particles. This leaves behind a succession of “daughter” products, such as lead. The rates of decay have been measured with great precision in laboratories. By measuring the ratios of the daughter products to the original radioactive elements, and assuming that the materials were trapped in a rock from the time it solidified, the age of the rock can be calculated.
Rocks from the seafloor are rarely found to be older than 200 million years, but those from the continents are occasionally found to date back over 3 billion years. In 2001 Australian researchers announced the discovery of a small grain of zircon (a mineral containing zirconium) that they dated to 4.4 billion years ago. Moreover, meteorites, which likely formed at about the same time as Earth, have been dated to about 4.5 billion years ago. These findings help pin down a likely age of about 4.55 billion years for Earth itself.
It is believed that Earth formed, along with the rest of the solar system, from a cloud of gas and dust called a nebula. Nebulae are seen today in other parts of the Milky Way and also in other galaxies. Astronomers have found evidence of stars and planetary systems forming in many of these nebulae, as the mutual gravitational attraction of the nebula's particles pulls them together.
According to this theory, called the nebular hypothesis, the cloud consisted mainly of hydrogen and helium, the vast majority of which ended up in the Sun. The outer planets--Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—are quite different from Earth. They were far enough from the Sun and therefore cold enough that these gases, along with other compounds such as methane, ammonia, and water, were able to gravitationally collect around small rocky or metallic cores.
The inner planets--Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars—were warmer and also exposed to a stronger solar wind. These effects drove most of the light gases out into space, leaving these planets as solid bodies. Venus and Earth, and to a lesser extent Mars, were able to retain atmospheres, but only as fairly thin envelopes surrounding the rock and metal.
The planets formed by accretion—a collecting together of smaller objects—mainly due to gravity. The late stages of accretion took the form of impacts of meteoroids and comets. Some of these impacts must have been tremendously energetic, likely melting much or all of Earth's early crust. The most widely accepted theory of the Moon's formation suggests that a “protoplanet” at least half of Earth's diameter struck, blasting material from both it and Earth into space. Some of this material then collected together to form the Moon. This event likely happened sometime during Earth's first 100 million years.
First Billion Years
- A time scale indicates the names and time ranges of different eons, eras, periods, and other …
Much of Earth's first billion years is shrouded in mystery, partly because so few rocks remain from that time. Most of them have been through repeated cycles of being subducted and melted, with the material eventually surfacing in the middle of oceans. The Moon bears witness to a very violent period in its own history, and surely Earth's as well. Results from the Apollo Moon exploration program show that most lunar craters (which are the results of impacts) formed prior to 3.8 billion years ago, with many of them from just before that time. Scientists believe that around 3.9 billion years ago impacts by comets and meteoroids were quite frequent. This event, called the late heavy bombardment, may have resulted from migrations of Uranus and Neptune disturbing the orbits of smaller bodies in the outer solar system and sending them sunward, so that they would then strike the inner planets.
- Precambrian bedrock of the Canadian Shield rises out of Reindeer Lake, on the border between …
Astronomers studying and modeling the life cycles of stars believe that at that time the Sun was only about 75 percent as bright as it is now. This should have made Earth quite cold, at least when large impacts were not occurring. Without something to trap the Sun's heat, the oceans might have completely frozen over, with the early continents covered in snow. Calculations show that the white surface would have reflected away so much of the Sun's light that even now the planet would be in a deep freeze.
In fact, it appears there was something to keep the planet warm—Earth's early atmosphere. Carbon dioxide and methane—both greenhouse gases, which let visible light in but absorb much of the outgoing infrared (“heat”) rays—are believed to have been much more abundant than now. These gases were probably released mainly through volcanic activity. This was sufficient for the planet to avoid a frozen fate. Oxygen made up only a tiny fraction of the atmosphere's present-day concentration.
Life Appears
- What look like rock formations in Western Australia are actually living stromatolites—mats of …
The first organisms may have been prokaryotes—single-celled organisms with no cell nucleus. Some of them started carrying out photosynthesis, which uses sunlight as an energy source to take carbon (needed to build the organisms' bodies) from carbon dioxide in the air, releasing oxygen in the process. These bacteria are thought to have been quite similar to the cyanobacteria that are still abundant today. It is likely that cyanobacteria were not the only type, and perhaps not the first type, of organism during this period. Chemoautotrophs (discussed earlier) likely existed in the depths of the sea and even in rock. Some of these early organisms may have been archaeans, rather than true bacteria.
For hundreds of millions of years, the oxygen released by photosynthesizing organisms quickly reacted with materials in the environment. Oxygen therefore could not accumulate in the air to any great extent. Much of this oxygen likely combined with iron, essentially producing rust. The long time period, or eon, just described—from about 4 billion to 2.5 billion years ago—is called the Archean (not to be confused with the organisms called archaeans).
The Oxygen Revolution
- A banded iron formation (BIF) rock recovered from the Temagami greenstone belt in Ontario, Canada, …
By 1.5 billion years ago, oxygen levels had reached perhaps 10 percent of current levels. One effect of this is that “red beds” began to form. These are areas where iron in the soil has been oxidized, producing a rusty appearance. This process happens mainly in dry, hot climates, such as the present-day Australian outback, often called the “red center.”
A more important consequence of increased oxygen levels was a dramatic change in Earth's life. Oxygen is poisonous to many microorganisms (such as the tetanus bacterium, which thrives in closed wounds with little oxygen). Much of this life perished, but some of it found refuge deep in the sea or underground. A more complex type of single-celled living thing arose at about this time--eukaryotes. These organisms have a cell nucleus and many other structures not present in prokaryotes. More complex, multicellular eukaryotes also evolved later. In fact, all animals, plants, fungi, and protists are eukaryotes.
Eukaryotes require something that prokaryotes do not—oxygen at levels at least 1 percent of the present level. Once sufficient oxygen was present, eukaryotic cells became very numerous. For most of the remainder of the Proterozoic, all life on Earth consisted of single-celled organisms, including both prokaryotes and eukaryotes.
Near the end of the Proterozoic eon, the climate changed dramatically. Since the Hadean eon, temperatures had apparently been much like today's. About 750 million years ago, however, conditions became drastically colder. Rocks from that time show evidence of the action of glaciers, and some of these rocks appear to have formed near the ancient Equator. Many scientists believe that Earth froze over, even at the Equator, for millions of years—a state called “snowball Earth.” This seems to have occurred at least twice, probably about 710 million years ago and 640 million years ago. (Some evidence also points to widespread glaciation much earlier, about 2.2 billion years ago). Other scientists do not believe the glaciation was quite this extensive, so that open water and some bare land were present in the tropics. In either case, the climate was probably colder than at any time since.
The following is how this may have occurred. By this time, the supercontinent Rodinia had begun to break apart, with many of the fragments likely being in tropical regions. Carbon dioxide, dissolved in rain falling on the continent and also in water in waves smashing against the shores, weathered the rocks. This washed calcium ions into the sea, where they combined with carbon dioxide to make limestone. Photosynthesizing organisms in the ocean continued to take carbon dioxide from the air and to bury the carbon as they died and sank to the bottom. With less of this greenhouse gas present, and the Sun at only about 94 percent of its present brightness, temperatures began to drop. Once snow and ice began to form, they reflected more of the Sun's light away. This vicious circle is an example of “positive feedback,” in which an effect itself causes more of the same effect to occur, and it allowed the world's average temperature to plunge to perhaps −60° F (−50° C).
After perhaps millions of years in this state, continuing volcanic activity continued to release carbon dioxide. However, now there was little or no rain to weather rocks, and almost all rocks were covered by ice or snow anyway. This allowed carbon dioxide levels to increase in the air again, perhaps reaching hundreds of times the present-day concentration. Temperatures became warm enough for some of the ice to start to melt, exposing darker surfaces that could absorb more sunlight. A positive-feedback warming process then sent the planet into a very hot state, with Earth reaching average temperatures of perhaps 100° F (38° C). The freeze-over had reduced the amount of life available to take the carbon dioxide back out of the air. Earth may have gone through at least two such freeze-thaw cycles in the late Proterozoic.
- A geologic time scale shows major evolutionary events from 650 million years ago to the present.
Paleozoic Era Dramatic changes occurred on Earth around 542 million years ago, heralding the beginning of the Paleozoic (meaning “old life”) era. The glaciers of the late Proterozoic melted. This, combined with changes on the seafloor, led to a rise in sea level, which flooded the coastlines of the ancient continents. Earth became warmer—somewhat warmer than today. Oxygen had recently increased to perhaps half its present-day level (though there is considerable uncertainty regarding the amount). These changes set the stage for a rapid phase of evolution called the Cambrian explosion.
Cambrian period The Cambrian period lasted from about 542 million to 488 million years ago. Fossils are very scarce in older rock layers but suddenly quite abundant in the Cambrian. It was once thought that no life, or at least nothing other than single-celled organisms, preceded it. Some fossils from earlier times have now been found, but the dramatic increase requires an explanation.
One factor is that at about this time animals developed the ability to form hard parts, such as exoskeletons or shells. These structures are much more easily preserved than the soft parts of creatures. However, it is likely that the actual numbers of animals, and certainly the number of types of animals, increased greatly. Many scientists believe that almost all of the large groups called phyla in the animal kingdom appeared at this time. For example, the ancestors of arthropods (such as today's crabs, spiders, and insects), mollusks (snails, clams, squid), poriferans (sponges), and echinoderms (starfish, sea urchins) are present in Cambrian sediments. These creatures lived in the sea. The first fishes, which were jawless, also appeared. There is only limited evidence of any life on land during this time, and any land dwellers that did exist were probably single-celled organisms such as bacteria.
- Fossilized remains of the trilobite Elrathia kingii (order Polymerida) …
- A fossilized cluster of trilobites from the genus Agnostus, dated to …
- A sketch shows Anomalocaris canadensis. Members of the genus …
The rest of the Paleozoic era consisted of periods called the Ordovician (488 million to 444 million years ago), the Silurian (444 million to 416 million years ago), the Devonian (416 million to 359 million years ago), the Carboniferous (359 million to 299 million years ago), and the Permian (299 million to 251 million years ago). Earth, and life itself, went through many changes during this time. These periods are distinguishable by significant changes in the sediments and in the fossil records, corresponding to environmental changes and extinctions of many species.
Rodinia broke apart, with the continents becoming most widely scattered about 470 million to 450 million years ago, during the Ordovician period. Then, the increasingly compacted seafloor started to be subducted under the edges of plates carrying the continents as they turned around and began to approach each other.
Ordovician period
- A fossilized marine snail of the extinct genus Lophospira dates to the …
- A fossilized animal from the extinct genus Echinosphaerites dates to …
Silurian period
- Artwork shows several species of animals that lived in a certain type of reef community on the …
- A fossilized Halysites catenularia, an extinct type of coral, dates to …
Devonian period
- A reconstructed head of Dinichthys terrelli, a species of jawed, …
- Arctolepis was a small jawed, armored fish of the early Devonian …
Carboniferous period
- A fossil preserves the skeleton of an amphibian from the extinct genus …
Another interesting effect was that high oxygen levels are thought to have allowed some insects to become larger. Insects do not have lungs but absorb oxygen through their exoskeletons. This severely limits their maximum size. If the height, length, and width of an insect are all doubled, it will have eight times the volume and mass and will need eight times the energy. However, it will have only four times the surface area through which to absorb oxygen. Such an underpowered insect might not be able to function or even survive. With twice as much oxygen in the air, though, it would have enough energy after all. Perhaps because of this, certain huge insects, such as dragonflies with wingspans of up to 30 inches (76 centimeters), were able to thrive.
- A diorama shows what a coal forest from the late Carboniferous period would have looked like.
Some of the largest forest belts were in what are now eastern North America and northwestern Europe. These regions were apparently in the tropics at the time. Southern Gondwana had reached the South Pole, and millions of years of snow had built an ice cap there. The planet as a whole was colder than it had been. The large temperature difference between the poles and the Equator produced strong trade winds, which brought moisture from the ocean well inland. The resulting heavy rains enabled the rapid growth of these forests.
Permian period As the Permian began, the continents reassembled to form Pangea. Much of the land was then very far from any water. Much of Pangea became desert, and plant life on land was reduced. The southern ice cap diminished or disappeared, and the world became warmer. The great carboniferous forests diminished and were largely replaced by ferns and early conifer trees. Broad-leaved deciduous trees called Glossopteris became common in the south. A drop in sea level exposed sediments containing materials such as iron, which could then take oxygen from the atmosphere.
- A restored Dimetrodon skeleton shows the long spines on the back that …
- A rock contains the fossilized skeleton of a dicynodont, or “two tusker,” that was …
The Great Dying Geologic periods in general are defined by fairly sharp differences in the strata, or layers, of sediment. One of the differences seen is the fossils that predominate. In other words, the periods tend to be separated by extinction events, and the major eras by especially large extinction events. The Paleozoic (“old life”) and Mesozoic (“middle life”) eras are separated by the most dramatic extinction event known—that which separates the Permian period from the Triassic period. Roughly 95 percent of all marine species and 70 percent of all land-based species became extinct. Even those species that survived probably experienced significant loss of population.
This “great dying,” known as the Permian-Triassic extinction, occurred about 251 million years ago. There were actually a series of extinctions in the middle and late Permian. The final extinction event took place over a period of less than a million years and possibly as little as several thousand years. The cause is not known with any certainty, but many ideas have been put forth. Quite possibly it was a combination of factors. A tremendous amount of volcanic activity occurred in what is now Siberia, Russia, at about that time, lasting about a million years. This released between 250,000 and 1 million cubic miles (1 million and 4 million cubic kilometers) of lava, which hardened into basalt. That would have been enough to cover the world in a layer about 6 to 25 feet (about 2 to 8 meters) deep, if the basalt had been spread out evenly. Such an event would likely cause large climate changes and acid rain, disrupting ecosystems.
Scientists also believe that oxygen was reduced at the time, to perhaps as little as half its present abundance. It has been suggested that there was a large release of methane that had been trapped underground and under the sea. Such a release of methane could have caused an intense greenhouse effect and warming and could also lower oxygen levels. Also, the assembly of Pangea may have reduced the amount of shallow seas, which were needed to sustain many marine communities.
Another possibility is that a large comet or asteroid struck Earth at that time, triggering an environmental catastrophe. Some scientists believe that a feature found under the Antarctic ice or one found on the sea bottom off the coast of Australia could be the resulting crater. It may be that all of these suggested causes played a role or were interrelated—such as the impact triggering the volcanic activity. Even though no consensus has been reached on this, scientists agree that studying such extinctions is important, since life on Earth could be similarly threatened in the future.
Mesozoic Era
The Mesozoic (“middle life”) era lasted from 251 million to about 66 million years ago. It is divided into three periods: the Triassic (251 million to 200 million years ago), the Jurassic (200 million to 146 million years ago), and the Cretaceous (146 to 66 million years ago). This era is more familiar to most people than the Paleozoic is, because the Mesozoic was the age of the dinosaurs. Each of the periods ended with some degree of extinctions, but the most dramatic event occurred at the end of the Cretaceous. While not as extensive as the Permian-Triassic event, it nonetheless put an end to the dinosaurs and paved the way for the rise of mammals.
Triassic period
- Plateosaurus was a dinosaur of the late Triassic period. (The man and …
- Coelophysis was a dinosaur of the late Triassic period. (The animals …
The northern and southern parts of Pangea had rather different sorts of plants and animals. In the south, forests of seed-ferns replaced the Glossopteris that had dominated the Permian. In the north, cycads (looking something like a cross between a fern and a palm), ginkgos, and primitive evergreen conifers were common. In the south, the animal life featured therapsids, while in the north, primitive reptiles known as archosaurs were predominant. In the sea, fish were plentiful, but aquatic reptiles such as ichthyosaurs appeared as well. Late in the Triassic, early dinosaurs became common, apparently having evolved from the archosaurs. The small shrewlike creatures that were the first mammals also appeared late in the period. They are thought to have descended from the therapsids.
Jurassic period The Jurassic saw a continuation of the breakup of Pangea. The rifts between the splitting continents became shallow seas, and rising sea levels flooded parts of the continents. Reefs grew in the seas. The climate was generally warmer than today. Conifers and ginkgos were common plants, and cycads were very abundant. Forests grew where Australia and Antarctica began to separate, eventually becoming coal deposits.
- The enormous dinosaur Brachiosaurus lived during the late Jurassic and …
- Stegosaurus, a massive plated dinosaur, lived during the late Jurassic …
Cretaceous period
- The large, powerful predator Tyrannosaurus lived during the Cretaceous …
- The white cliffs at Beachy Head in East Sussex, England, are made of chalk formed during the …
- Fabricated wings were added to a fossilized skeleton of a Pteranodon …
- The large plant eater Triceratops, which lived during the late …
A major revolution in plants occurred during the Cretaceous—angiosperms, or flowering plants, first appeared. The landscape, formerly probably all shades of green, may have begun to take on other hues as these plants developed attractive flowers to lure insects, which could carry pollen. In response, insects themselves rapidly diversified into new forms.
Fairly modern reptiles, such as crocodiles and turtles, are seen in Cretaceous strata. Mammals developed into all three of their current groups: placentals, marsupials, and monotremes. The dinosaurs still dominated, though, and mammals remained quite small, with many burrowing into the ground.
The End of an Era The Cretaceous ended rather suddenly 65–66 million years ago with a major extinction event that put an end to the dinosaurs (except for their apparent descendants—the birds). The rudist reefs also disappeared from the shallow seas. While not quite as severe as the Permian-Triassic event, this extinction is one of the worst known, as nearly 80 percent of all species were destroyed.
As with the end of the Permian, the causes of this environmental catastrophe are debated. A huge volcanic outpouring in what is now India formed the Deccan Traps. This may have produced climate change and acid rain. For this extinction, though, many scientists believe there is a “smoking gun” to support the theory that the impact of an extraterrestrial body, probably an asteroid, played a role. Geologist Walter Alvarez discovered an excess concentration of the element iridium in the sediment layer deposited at the boundary between the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods, known as the K-T boundary. In about 1980 he and his father, physicist Luis Alvarez, proposed an explanation. They said that, since iridium is common in meteorites, the layer could be explained as debris from the impact of a large body, perhaps 6 miles (10 kilometers) across. The devastation produced by such an impact could have easily caused mass extinctions.
- An image of the Chicxulub crater, on the northern coast of the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, …
The environmental consequences must have been severe. The energy of the impact is estimated to have been about 100 million megatons—the equivalent of 2 million of the most powerful nuclear bombs ever detonated. Huge tsunamis, earthquakes, and intense heat would have been almost immediate effects. Within half an hour, material ejected from the site would have reentered the atmosphere over a large fraction of the globe. The shock-heating of the air would have set off huge forest fires. Longer-term effects would have included an almost complete cutoff of sunlight reaching the ground over much of the world, lasting for months. Chemicals produced by the event could have poisoned the air and oceans. Carbon dioxide released by the vaporization of seafloor sediment could have caused a large greenhouse effect for hundreds of years afterward.
In spite of this, there is still debate regarding the main causes of the extinction. The question also remains as to why some species survived. It is likely, though, that the impact played a role. In any case, asteroid or comet impacts can and do occur over geologic time and are a threat to life on Earth.
Cenozoic Era The Cenozoic (“recent life”) era began about 66 million years ago and continues today. It has traditionally been divided into two rather unequal periods: the Tertiary and the Quaternary. Now, however, the periods are usually defined as the Paleogene (66 million to 23 million years ago) and the Neogene (23 million years ago until the present). The periods are divided into several epochs, with the current epoch being the Holocene (11,800 years ago to the present). The Cenozoic is often called the Age of Mammals, because mammals quickly replaced reptiles as the most prominent land animals.
During the Cenozoic, plate tectonics brought the continents to their modern positions. India rammed into Asia, producing the Himalaya Mountains. South America—once part of Gondwana—made contact with North America for the first time since Pangea broke apart, just in the last few million years.
The climate started out very warm, with global temperatures peaking at an average of about 77 to 86° F (25 to 30° C), compared to the present 59° F (15° C). At that time, tropical conditions extended at least 45 degrees from the Equator, and even the Arctic Ocean may have had temperatures as high as 68° F (20° C). Gradual cooling occurred after that, with ice eventually forming on Antarctica and Greenland.In just the last million years or so, Earth's climate entered a new and dramatic phase. Severe ice ages have occurred roughly every 100,000 years. These ice ages have been interrupted by relatively mild intervals called interglacials lasting roughly 20,000 years. The last major cold spell peaked about 18,000 years ago, with ice sheets over a mile thick covering much of northwestern Europe and North America (as far south as Ohio). Global temperatures averaged some 9 to 14° F (5 to 8° C) colder than at present, with high northern latitudes much more strongly affected. The ice began to melt rapidly about 14,000 years ago, and the present time is in the Holocene interglacial. For perspective, Earth is now considerably warmer than it has been for most of the last 100,000 years but still significantly cooler than the average of the last 250 million years.
Early in the Cenozoic, mammals and birds quickly filled many of the ecological niches previously occupied by dinosaurs and other reptiles. Some mammals became quite large. Indricotherium, which ate leaves and looked something like a combination of a rhinoceros and a giraffe, stood up to about 15 feet (4.5 meters) high at the shoulder and weighed up to 15 tons. Some land mammals gradually adapted to aquatic life, eventually evolving into whales and dolphins. Mammals even entered the air, as bats evolved.
Huge carnivorous and flightless birds, some up to 10 feet (3 meters) tall, took over some of the predatory roles formerly played by the dinosaurs. Actually, since most biologists now believe birds to be descended from certain types of dinosaurs, in a sense, the dinosaurs never totally died out. In fact, they diversified into the huge number of bird species alive today.
Plant life changed, too. Flowering plants became dominant over much of the planet. These include grasses, which had appeared late in the Cretaceous but now spread and started a whole new ecosystem.
Primates became more common, eventually developing into monkeys, apes, and the ancestors of humans. Modern humans appeared probably in the last 150,000 years or so, after the cycle of ice ages and interglacials began. Human civilization, including farming and cities, did not develop until the Holocene, after the great northern ice sheets had largely receded.
Earth as a System Throughout Earth's history, its spheres and cycles have interacted in various ways. The water and carbon cycles discussed above, along with others (such as the nitrogen cycle and the phosphorus cycle) can be understood as parts of a system, of which the biosphere is a crucial part. In some ways, this system seems to be self-regulating. In fact, some researchers, such as British scientist James Lovelock, think of Earth (mainly the biosphere) almost as a sort of organism, dubbed Gaia. The basic idea is that life has tended to help maintain the conditions necessary for its own continued existence. Many scientists have criticized the Gaia hypothesis for being teleological—meaning “purpose driven”—as if life somehow “meant” to act in this way. In response, Lovelock himself has pointed out that he did not intend the idea to be taken in this way.
Despite the controversy, it is clear that life has greatly shaped the planet's outer parts, at least. An important concept to use here is that of feedback, both positive and negative. Positive feedback occurs when an effect is in some way its own cause. The classic example is having a microphone too close to a speaker. The sound from the speaker is picked up by the microphone, which then produces even more sound from the speaker, in a vicious cycle. Such a system is regarded as unstable.
Negative feedback involves processes that are self-correcting. A simple example is a pendulum; the more it is displaced to one side, the greater the force trying to send it back where it was. The natural result is oscillatory behavior about an “equilibrium” state, or at least a tendency for things to “not get out of hand.” This behavior is termed stable.
Negative feedback is vital to maintaining fairly constant conditions. For example, perhaps excess carbon dioxide in the air stimulates the growth of plants, which thereby absorb more carbon dioxide from the air. This would tend to keep the amount from changing too much. An example of positive feedback is the idea that rising global temperatures will release methane—a greenhouse gas—from storage in permafrost or in sediment in the deep ocean. This would cause a “bootstrap effect,” with temperatures rising in an uncontrolled way.
In fact, Earth's climate is an excellent example of the effects of feedback loops in a system, yet it is driven by outside influences (specifically the Sun). When Earth began, the Sun was only about 70 percent its current brightness. Life did not yet exist, and there had not been time for weathering of rocks to bury much of the carbon dioxide and methane being vented from the interior. These gases trapped the Sun's heat and kept the world from freezing over.
As water and life gradually removed some of these greenhouse gases, Earth's temperature remained nearly constant in the brightening sunlight. Ice ages or hot spells sometimes occurred when the balance was disrupted, but negative feedback processes (such as the earlier-discussed thawing of snowball Earth during the Proterozoic) eventually came to the rescue, restoring a climate suitable for life.
Varying amounts of volcanic activity and changing continental positions led to a warm Mesozoic and an initially very warm but then cooling Cenozoic, until in the last million years the climate became erratic. Once ice caps formed, they became self-perpetuating because the white ice and snow reflected away sunlight, causing further cooling. Other influences, such as changes in heating due to Milankovitch cycles, eventually tipped the balance the other way, leading to the rapid warming of the interglacials.
The Earth system (regardless of whether one chooses to call it Gaia) certainly has many feedback loops, both positive and negative. Understanding these is crucial not only to understanding the planet's past, but also in predicting—or altering—its potential future.
Earth Compared to Other Planets Earth is very different from (far smaller and denser than) the gas giant planets of the outer solar system. A more interesting comparison can be made among Earth and its two closest planetary neighbors, Venus and Mars.
Venus is a near twin of Earth in terms of composition, mass, and size. One might think the two would have similar histories. However, Venus is closer to the Sun and therefore receives more heat. Early in the solar system's history, this might have been an advantage as far as the potential for life was concerned. Venus may have had comfortable temperatures, being closer to the faint early Sun.
Perhaps Venus got a bit too hot, preventing life from starting—or maybe life is a very rare event in the universe and Venus just was not “lucky.” Maybe it had less water to weather the rocks. In any case, Venus failed to bury its carbon dioxide as its volcanoes belched it out. What water it had was boiled away, and it then dissociated into oxygen and hydrogen (which largely departed into space). Chemical reactions then produced sulfuric acid for cloud droplets instead of water. With an atmosphere of mostly carbon dioxide and a surface pressure 90 times Earth's present sea-level value, an extreme greenhouse effect occurred. Temperatures are now around 870° F (465° C). With no water to hydrate the rock and lubricate the plates, its would-be tectonics ceased. It is now a hellish, dead world.
Mars, being farther from the Sun, is colder, though an early dense atmosphere may have kept it warmer than it is now. Its smaller mass and lack of a magnetic field allowed most of its atmosphere to escape. It had a reasonable amount of water, but it froze and now lies in the ice caps or as permafrost under the surface. Mars may or may not have had microbial life (some scientists think subsurface microbes could exist there even now), but it became too cold and dry to support a significant biosphere. It, too, appears to be a basically dead world.
Another difference between Earth and its neighbors is that Earth has a large moon, while Mars has two tiny ones and Venus has none. The gravitational influence of the Moon produces tides and may also help stabilize Earth's rotation axis.
One interesting object for comparison to Earth is Saturn's moon Titan. A bit smaller than Mars but much colder, it has managed to hold onto a thick atmosphere of mostly nitrogen. It is probably too cold for life, but it has a methane cycle in which this compound plays a role much like water on Earth. Methane in the air occasionally condenses as rain, which flows into scattered streams and lakes and perhaps methane “aquifers.” Water ice is frozen hard and seems to act like rock does on Earth. In other words, some Earth-like geologic processes appear to take place there but using different materials.
Some scientists believe that microbial life may be common in the universe but that conditions permitting the evolution and survival of intelligent multicellular creatures are very rare. We may be living at a truly special time and place in the history of the universe. (See also astronomy, “Does Life Exist Elsewhere?”)
The Future of Earth Taking into account all that has been learned about Earth's past and present, one can speculate in an informed way about what the future may hold for the planet. This involves exploring two basic scenarios: one in which humans have no effect or role and another in which people influence the course of events in various possible ways.
Plate tectonics should continue at least through the reassembly and breakup of one more supercontinent. However, the radioactive isotopes that help power convection currents in the mantle are decaying all the time. Eventually, the continents will assume their final positions, and volcanoes and earthquakes will largely cease.
Assuming no human (or other intelligent creature's) intervention, some forms of life might continue for a billion years or more. The recent series of ice ages and interglacials might continue for millions of years. Eventually, however, changing continental positions, plus a slowly brightening Sun, would bring warm, ice-free climates like those of the Mesozoic. Plants and animals would develop into new forms but probably with some familiar types surviving.
There will likely be asteroid and comet impacts from time to time. A few of these could trigger significant extinctions and alter the course of life's development. However, if the past is any clue, some species would almost certainly survive to populate a new and somewhat different world.
Within a few hundred million years, Earth should become very warm, perhaps with rainforests even near the poles. However, some models predict that weathering rates of silicate rocks will increase, thus reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels enough to threaten plant life. By a billion years out, conditions would become so hot that multicellular life-forms would succumb, and the oceans would begin to evaporate at an ever higher rate. Only single-celled eukaryotes and prokaryotes might find conditions tolerable. Later, even the eukaryotes would perish, leaving only prokaryotes or other hardy single-celled organisms. In other words, basic types of life-forms would become extinct in approximately the reverse order in which they appeared.
By perhaps 1.2 billion years from now, the oceans may have completely evaporated. Even the resulting water vapor will eventually be lost, as ultraviolet radiation from the Sun breaks off water's hydrogen atoms, which will then escape into space. By 7 billion years from now, the Sun will be swelling toward its red giant stage, with its outer layers eventually reaching Earth's orbit. Earth will likely recede somewhat from the Sun as the Sun loses mass into space. In any case, however, the planet will become a ball of magma, glowing at thousands of degrees. Interestingly, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn (including Titan) should melt and offer at least the chance of having biospheres of their own, though not for as long as Earth had.
If Earth survives the Sun's red giant phase, it will then become a cold, barren rock when the Sun's nuclear reactions cease and the Sun shrinks to a faint white dwarf star. Earth would continue to orbit, as it had for over 12 billion years, but with a cold, dark future.
If the above comes to pass, the biosphere will have lasted about 5 billion years—about three quarters of which is already past. This scenario is not certain, though, largely because humans or other intelligent descendents could play a vital role. In the short term, the release of buried carbon from human activities threatens to warm the planet to levels that modern civilization has not had to deal with. Among the changes such global warming could cause are the extinctions of other species—possibly on a scale rivaling the extinctions separating adjacent geologic periods discussed earlier.
In the very long term, though, the biosphere would probably adjust to the new conditions. Eventually, in the very distant future, our descendents would face the problem of the very gradual brightening of the Sun. It may be feasible to redirect an asteroid so that it swings by Earth and Jupiter every few thousand years, giving Earth a gentle tug to increase its orbital radius. Another option would be to place a large disk between Earth and the Sun to shade Earth and keep it cooler. If our descendants were actually to execute such plans, the lifetime of the biosphere might be extended by billions of years. In that case, life would have indeed helped determine its own fate.