The Earth

2. The Earth
2.1. Origin of the Earth
• The planet Earth is one of the eight planets
• The planets, in order of increasing distance from the Sun,
are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus,
and Neptune
• A belt of asteroids orbit the Sun in the region between the
paths of Mars and Jupiter
• This grouping of planets and asteroids around the sun
constitutes our solar system
• Our solar system together myriads of other stars, planets,
dust, and gas make up the Milky Way Galaxy
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• The bodies of our solar system formed from an
enormous cloud composed mostly of hydrogen and
helium with only small percentage of all other
heavier elements
• ~5 billion years ago this huge cloud of minute rocky
fragments and gases began to contract under its
own gravitational influences
• The contracting material is assumed to have had
some component of rotational motion
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• The greatest concentration of material was pulled
toward the center of this rotating mass and
gravitationally heated, forming the hot protosun
• Relatively short time after the formation of the
protosun, the temperature within the rotating disk
drop significantly
• This decrease in temperature caused substances
with high melting points to condense into small
particles, perhaps the size of sand grains
• Materials such as iron and nickel solidified first
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• As the fragments collided, they joined into larger objects that
in a few tens of million years accreted into the planets
• As the protoplanets accumulated more and more debris, the
solar system began to clear
• The removal of debris allowed sunlight to heat the surfaces
of newly-formed planets
• The resulting high surface temperatures of inner planets
coupled with the fact that these bodies possessed
comparatively weak gravitational fields, meant that the
Earth, and its neighbors Mercury, Venus and Mars were
unable to retain appreciable amounts of the lighter
components of the primordial cloud
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• The materials which included hydrogen, helium,
ammonia, methane, and water, vaporized from their
surfaces and were eventually whisked from the inner
solar system by the solar winds
• At the distances beyond Mars temperatures are quite low
• Consequently, the larger outer planets, Jupiter, Saturn,
Uranus, and Neptune, accumulated huge amounts of
hydrogen and other light material from the primordial
cloud
• Outer planets have comparatively large sizes and low
densities
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2.2. The Earth’s Interior
• Shortly after the Earth formed, the decay of
radioactive elements, coupled with heat released
by colliding particles, produced at least some
melting of the interior
• Melting, in turn, is thought to have allowed the
heavier elements, principally iron and nickel, to
sink, while the lighter rocky components floated
upward
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• As a result of this chemical differentiation, the Earth’s
interior is not homogeneous
• Rather, it consists of shells or spheres composed of materials
having different properties:
- The inner core; a solid iron-rich zone having radius of ~1216
km
- The outer core; a molten metallic layer some ~2270 km thick
- The mantle; a solid rocky layer having a maximum thickness
of ~2885 km
- The crust; a relatively light outer skin that ranges from ~5 to
~40 km thick
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• A very important zone exist within the mantle and
deserve special mention
• This region, called «asthenosphere», is located
between the depths of approximately 100 and 700 km
• The asthenosphere is a hot, weak zone that is capable
of gradual flow
• Situated above asthenosphere, geologists recognize a
zone called the lithosphere (sphere of rock), which
includes the crust and uppermost mantle
• The lithosphere can be considered to be cool and rigid
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2.3. The Earth’s Outer Envelopes
• An important consequences of the period of
chemical differentiation is that large quantities of
gaseous materials were allowed to escape from the
Earth’s interior as happens today during volcanic
eruptions
• By this process a primitive atmosphere gradually
evolved
• It is on this planet, with this atmosphere, that life as
we know it came into existence
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• The Earth’s physical environment is traditionally
divided into three major parts:
- The envelope of air called «atmosphere»
- The hydrosphere, or water portion of our planet
- The solid earth
The Earth is characterized by continuous interactions
as air comes in contact with rock, rock with water,
and water with air
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• The atmosphere, does not only provide the air that
we breathe, but also acts to protect us from the
sun’s intense heat and dangerous radiation
• The energy exchanges that continually occur
between the atmosphere and the Earth's surface,
and between the atmosphere and space produce
the effects we call «weather» and «climate»
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• The hydrosphere is dynamic mass of liquid that is continually on
the move, from the oceans to the atmosphere, to the land, and
back again
• The global ocean is obviously the most prominent feature of the
hydrosphere, blanketing nearly 71% of the Earth’s surface and
accounting for about 97% of the Earth’s water
• The hydrosphere also includes the fresh water found in streams,
lakes, and glaciers, as well as that found in the ground
• Although these latter sources constitute just a tiny fraction of
total, they are much more important than their meager
percentage indicates, because they are responsible for
sculpturing and creating many of our planet’s varied land forms
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• Lying beneath the atmosphere and the ocean is the
solid earth
• The study of the solid earth is largely confined to
the more accessible surface features
• These observable features represent the outward
expressions of the dynamic behavior of the
subsurface materials
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• The two principle divisions of the Earth’s surface are the
continents and the ocean basins
• Surprisingly, the present shoreline is not the boundary
between these quite distinct regions
• Rather, along most coasts a gently sloping platform of
continental material, called continental shelf, extends
seaward from the shore
• The extend of the continental shelf has varied greatly from
one period to an other; e.g. during the most recent ice age,
when more of the World’s water was stored on land in the
form of glacial ice, the level of sea was about 150 m lower
than it is today
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• The boundary between the continents and the
deep-ocean basins is best placed about halfway
down the continental slopes, which are steep drop-
offs that lead from the edge of the continental
shelves to the deep-ocean basins
• Using this as dividing line, about 60% of the Earth’s
surface is represented by the ocean basins,
whereas remaining 40% exists as continental
masses
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• The most obvious difference between the
continents and the ocean basins is their relative
levels
• The average elevation of the continents above sea
level is about 840 m, whereas the average depth of
the oceans is about 3800 m
• Thus, the continents stand on the average about
4.6 km above the level of ocean floor
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• The elevations of these crustal layers is largely a
reflection of their densities
• The continental blocks are composed of material
which has properties similar to those of granite, a
common rock with a density about 2.7 times that of
water
• The crust of ocean basins, on the other hand, is
thought to be have a composition similar to that of
basalt, a rock that is about 3 times denser than
water
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• The rocky material located below 100 km is weak
and capable of flow
• Thus, the rigid outer layer can be thought of as
floating on this weak layer, much like an ice cube
floats on water
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• Within these two diverse provinces, great variations
in elevation exist
• The most prominent features of the continents are
linear mountain belts
• When youngest mountainous terrains are
considered, we find they are located principally in
two zones
• The circum-Pacific belt includes the mountains of
the western Americas and continues into the
western Pacific in the form of volcanic island arcs
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• Island arcs are active mountainous regions
composed largely of deformed volcanic rocks;
included in this group are the Aleutian Islands,
Japan, Philippines, and New Guinea
• The other major mountain belt extends eastward
from the Alps through Turkey, Iran and the
Himalayas, and then dips southward into Indonesia
• Older mountains are also found on the continents;
i.e. the Appalachians in the eastern United States
and the Urals in Russia
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• The ocean basins are known to contain the most
prominent mountain range on the Earth; the
oceanic ridge system
• This broad elevated feature forms a continuous belt
that winds for nearly 65,000 km around the globe
• Rather than consisting of highly deformed rock,
such as most of the mountains found on the
continents, the oceanic ridge system consists of
layer upon layer of once molten rock which has
been fractured and uplifted
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• The ocean floor also contains extremely deep
grooves that are occasionally more than 11,000 m
deep
• Trenches are located to the young mountains which
flank the continents, such as the Andes of western
South America, or they are found paralleling the
volcanic island arcs