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Planet Profile: History of Earth

Planet Profile Orbit: 149,600,000 km (1.00 AU) from Sun. Diameter: 12,756.3 km. Mass: 5.972e24 kg. History of Earth Earth is the only planet whose name does not derive from Greek/Roman mythology. It was not understood until Copernicus that Earth is just another planet. Plate tectonics causes the crust to separate into plates that move independently. Structure of Earth Earth is divided into layers with distinct properties - a solid inner and outer core, liquid outer core and mantle, and solid crust and mantle. Plate tectonics results in the movement of crustal plates.

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80 views

Planet Profile: History of Earth

Planet Profile Orbit: 149,600,000 km (1.00 AU) from Sun. Diameter: 12,756.3 km. Mass: 5.972e24 kg. History of Earth Earth is the only planet whose name does not derive from Greek/Roman mythology. It was not understood until Copernicus that Earth is just another planet. Plate tectonics causes the crust to separate into plates that move independently. Structure of Earth Earth is divided into layers with distinct properties - a solid inner and outer core, liquid outer core and mantle, and solid crust and mantle. Plate tectonics results in the movement of crustal plates.

Uploaded by

aliv
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as RTF, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Planet Profile

orbit: 149,600,000 km (1.00 AU) from Sun


diameter: 12,756.3 km
mass: 5.972e24 kg

History of Earth
Earth is the only planet whose English name does not derive from Greek/Roman
mythology. The name derives from Old English and Germanic. There are, of
course, hundreds of other names for the planet in other languages. In Roman
Mythology, the goddess of the Earth was Tellus - the fertile soil (Greek: Gaia, terra mater Mother Earth).
It was not until the time of Copernicus (the sixteenth century) that it was understood that the
Earth is just another planet.

Earth, of course, can be studied without the aid of spacecraft.


Nevertheless it was not until the twentieth century that we had maps of the entire
planet. Pictures of the planet taken from space are of considerable importance; for
example, they are an enormous help in weather prediction and especially in
tracking and predicting hurricanes. And they are extraordinarily beautiful.
The Earth is divided into several layers which have distinct chemical and seismic
properties (depths in km):
0- 40 Crust
40- 400 Upper mantle
400- 650 Transition region
650-2700 Lower mantle
2700-2890 D'' layer
2890-5150 Outer core
5150-6378 Inner core
The crust varies considerably in thickness, it is thinner under the oceans, thicker
under the continents. The inner core and crust are solid; the outer core and
mantle layers are plastic or semi-fluid. The various layers are separated by
discontinuities which are evident in seismic data; the best known of these is the Mohorovicic
discontinuity between the crust and upper mantle.
Most of the mass of the Earth is in the mantle, most of the rest in the core; the
part we inhabit is a tiny fraction of the whole (values below x10^24 kilograms):
atmosphere = 0.0000051
oceans = 0.0014
crust = 0.026

mantle = 4.043
outer core = 1.835
inner core = 0.09675
The core is probably composed mostly of iron (or nickel/iron) though it is possible
that some lighter elements may be present, too. Temperatures at the center of
the core may be as high as 7500 K, hotter than the surface of the Sun. The lower
mantle is probably mostly silicon, magnesium and oxygen with some iron, calcium and aluminum. The
upper mantle is mostly olivene and pyroxene (iron/magnesiumsilicates), calcium and aluminum. We
know most of this only from seismic techniques; samples from the upper mantle arrive at the surface as
lava from volcanoes but the majority of the Earth is inaccessible. The crust is primarily quartz (silicon
dioxide) and other silicates like feldspar. Taken as a whole, the Earth's chemical composition (by mass)

is
:
34.6% Iron
29.5% Oxygen
15.2% Silicon
12.7% Magnesium
2.4% Nickel
1.9% Sulfur
0.05% Titanium
The Earth is the densest major body in the solar system.
The other terrestrial planets probably have similar structures and compositions with some
differences: the Moon has at most a small core; Mercury has an extra large core (relative to its
diameter); the mantles of Mars and the Moon are much thicker; the Moon and Mercury may not have
chemically distinct crusts; Earth may be the only one with distinct inner and outer cores. Note,
however, that our knowledge of planetary interiors is mostly theoretical even for the Earth.
Unlike the other terrestrial planets, Earth's crust is divided into several separate solid plates
which float around independently on top of the hot mantle below. The theory that describes this is
known as platetectonics. It is characterized by two major processes: spreading and subduction.
Spreading occurs when two plates move away from each other and new crust is created by upwelling
magma from below. Subduction occurs when two plates collide and the edge of one dives beneath the
other and ends up being destroyed in the mantle. There is also transverse motion at some plate
boundaries (i.e. the San Andreas Fault in California) and collisions between continental plates (i.e.
India/Eurasia). There are (at present) eight major plates:


North American Plate North America, western North
Atlantic and Greenland

South American Plate - South America and western South Atlantic

Antarctic Plate - Antarctica and the "Southern Ocean"

Eurasian Plate - eastern North Atlantic, Europe and Asia except for India

African Plate - Africa, eastern South Atlantic and western Indian Ocean

Indian-Australian Plate - India, Australia, New Zealand and most of Indian


Ocean

Nazca Plate - eastern Pacific Ocean adjacent to South America

Pacific Plate - most of the Pacific Ocean (and the southern coast of
California!)
There are also twenty or more small plates such as the Arabian, Cocos, and
Philippine Plates. Earthquakes are much more common at the plate boundaries.
Plotting their locations makes it easy to see the plate boundaries.
The Earth's surface is very young. In the relatively short (by astronomical standards) period of
500,000,000 years or so erosion and tectonic processes destroy and recreate most of the Earth's surface
and thereby eliminate almost all traces of earlier geologic surface history (such as impact craters). Thus
the very early history of the Earth has mostly been erased. The Earth is 4.5 to 4.6 billion years old,
but the oldest known rocks are about 4 billion years old and rocks older than 3 billion years are rare.
The oldest fossils of living organisms are less than 3.9 billion years old. There is no record of the
critical period when life was first getting started.

71 Percent of the Earth's surface is covered with water. Earth is


the only planet on which water can exist in liquid form on the surface (though
there may be liquid ethane or methane on Titan's surface and liquid water beneath the
surface ofEuropa). Liquid water is, of course, essential for life as we know it. The heat capacity of the
oceans is also very important in keeping the Earth's temperature relatively stable. Liquid water is also
responsible for most of the erosion and weathering of the Earth's continents, a process unique in the
solar system today (though it may have occurred on Mars in the past).

The Earth's atmosphere is 77% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, with traces


of argon, carbon dioxide and water. There was probably a very much larger
amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere when the Earth was first
formed, but it has since been almost all incorporated into carbonate rocks and to a
lesser extent dissolved into the oceans and consumed by living plants. Plate tectonics and biological
processes now maintain a continual flow of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to these various
"sinks" and back again. The tiny amount of carbon dioxide resident in the atmosphere at any time is
extremely important to the maintenance of the Earth's surface temperature via thegreenhouse
effect. The greenhouse effect raises the average surface temperature about 35 degrees C above what it
would otherwise be (from a frigid -21 C to a comfortable +14 C); without it the oceans would freeze
and life as we know it would be impossible. (Water vapor is also an important greenhouse gas.)

The presence of free oxygen is quite remarkable from a chemical


point of view. Oxygen is a very reactive gas and under "normal" circumstances
would quickly combine with other elements. The oxygen in Earth's atmosphere is
produced and maintained by biological processes. Without life there would be no
free oxygen.
The interaction of the Earth and the Moon slows the Earth's rotation by about 2 milliseconds per
century. Current research indicates that about 900 million years ago there were 481 18-hour days in a
year.
Earth has a modest magnetic field produced by electric currents in the outer core.
The interaction of thesolar wind, the Earth's magnetic field and the Earth's upper atmosphere
causes the auroras (see theInterplanetary Medium). Irregularities in these factors cause the
magnetic poles to move and evenreverse relative to the surface; the geomagnetic north pole is
currently located in northern Canada. (The "geomagnetic north pole" is the position on the Earth's
surface directly above the south pole of the Earth's field.)
The Earth's magnetic field and its interaction with the solar wind also produce the
Van Allen radiation belts, a pair of doughnut shaped rings of ionized gas (or
plasma) trapped in orbit around the Earth. The outer belt stretches from 19,000
km in altitude to 41,000 km; the inner belt lies between 13,000 km and 7,600 km
in altitude.

Earth's Satellite
Earth has only one natural satellite, the Moon. But

thousands of small artificial satellites have also been placed in orbit around
the Earth.

Asteroids 3753 Cruithne and 2002 AA29 have complicated orbital relationships with
the Earth; they're not really moons, the term "companion" is being used. It is somewhat similar to the
situation with Saturn's moons Janus and Epimetheus.

Lilith doesn't exist but it's an interesting story.


Distance Radius
Mass
Satellite (000 km)
(km)
(kg)
--------- -------- ------ ------Moon
384
1738 7.35e22

Source: http://nineplanets.org/earth.html

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