LESSON 1

What was the idea contributed by Georges Louis Leclerc Comte de Buffon? Describe
it.

- Buffon realized that to interpret the world, he had to understand its history. He
proposed that a comet striking the sun had broken off debris that became the planets
of the solar system. According to him, the earth was scorching, but gradually it
cooled until molten rock turned to dry land and clouds rained down to form oceans.
Buffon estimated the entire process took over 70,000 years.

INTRODUCTION TO EARTH SCIENCE

The Solar System - Its Origin and Early Development

 Our solar system, part of the Milky Way galaxy, consists of the Sun, nine planets, 64
known moons, many asteroids, millions of comets and meteorites, as well as
interplanetary dust and gases

What are some ancient structures that people used the sun and stars to help keep
track of time and seasons?

Ancient Astronomy

 Ancient civilizations observed the skies

 Many built structures to mark astronomical events
 Summer solstice sunrise at Stonehenge:

Spokes of the Big Horn Medicine Wheel are aligned with the rising and setting of the Sun
and other stars

This temple at Caracol, in Mexico, has many windows that are aligned with astronomical
events

Classical Astronomy
Great Philosophers of ancient Greece wrote about many different subjects, including what
they saw in the sky.

Eratosthenes 276-194 BC

• First successful attempt to figure out the size of the earth

Hipparchus 2nd Century BC

• Divided stars into six groups according to brightness

• Method for predicting lunar eclipses

Golden Age 600 BC-AD 150 – Aristotle

• Greek philosopher (384-322 BC)

 • He believed that Earth is round

• Casts a curved shadow when passes between sun and moon

His belief was abandoned during the Middle Ages

Plato and Aristotle

• Plato and his student Aristotle

- Plato wrote moral responsibility. Science and its methods of investigation did not
exist in ancient Greece, they made use of the reasoning method.

• Once a principle is recognized as true, whatever can be logically derived from it must
also be true.

The Aristotelian universe

• Plato and his student Aristotle established the first widely accepted ideas about the
structure of the earth.

• They believed that the most perfect region was the starry sphere and the most
imperfect was earth’s center.

The Greeks put forth a hypothesis and developed a model, the Geocentric Model, for the
motions of planets and the structure of the universe

 Earliest models had Earth at center of solar system

 Needed lots of complications to accurately track planetary motions

Geocentric model

 may not be an accurate description of nature, but it served to make the

predictions the Greeks required and gave an excellent fit to the data they had.

Heliocentric Model

 Nicolaus Copernicus suggested a different hypothesis and developed a model, the

Heliocentric Model, that wasn’t any better at fitting the observations available at that
time.
 Sun is at the center of the solar system. Only Moon orbits around Earth;
planets orbit around Sun.

Heliocentric vs. Geocentric Model

• First heliocentric astronomer--Aristarchus (Greek 312-230 BC)

• Earth and other planets orbit the sun

Model Location of Earth Location of sun Who supports

Geocentric  Center of the Universe  Orbits the Earth  Aristotle & Ptolemy

Heliocentric  Orbits sun  Center of the universe  Aristarchus,Copernicus

• Tycho Brahe took very accurate data that allowed Johannes Kepler to make
improvements in Copernicus’ model.*

• Isaac Newton showed that the laws developed by Kepler for motion’s of planets were
controlled by physical principles that also controlled projectile motion on Earth. *

The Laws of Planetary Motion

Kepler’s laws were derived using observations made by Tycho Brahe

Newton’s laws of motion explain how objects interact with the world and with each
other.

• Aristotle’s universe, as embodied in Ptolemy’s mathematical model, dominated

ancient astronomy, but it was WRONG.

The universe is not geocentric and the planets don’t follow circles at uniform speed.

Support: King Alfonso X of Castile studied the Almagest for 10 years and published the
result The Alfonsine Tables – the last great attempt to make the Ptolemaic system of
practical use.

Nicolaus Copernicus, with his close connection to the Catholic Church, began to consider
an alternative to the Ptolemaic universe.

Belief: Christian geometry of heaven and hell

- Anyone who criticized the Ptolemaic model was not only questioning Aristotle’s
geometry but also indirectly challenging belief in heaven and hell.

Tycho Brahe found that the Alfonsine Tables were a full month in error and contradicted
Aristotle’s conception of the starry sphere as perfect and unchanging. How? He measured
the position of a star (Tycho’s supernova) accurately. He believed that a new star should
show parallax (meaning that it would appear slightly too far east as it rose and slightly
too far west as it set) but he saw none and considered this as an important evidence
against the Ptolemaic theory, published De Stella Nova (The New Star).

The Foundations of the Copernican Revolution

1. Earth is not at the center of everything.

2. Center of Earth is the center of Moon’s orbit.

3. All planets revolve around the Sun.

4. The stars are very much farther away than the Sun.

5. The apparent movement of the stars around the Earth is due to the Earth’s
rotation.

6. The apparent movement of the Sun around the Earth is due to the Earth’s
rotation.

7. Retrograde motion of planets is due to Earth’s motion around the Sun.

The Birth of Modern Astronomy

Telescope invented around 1600

Galileo built his own, made observations:

 Moon has mountains and valleys

 Sun has sunspots, and rotates
 Jupiter has moons (shown)
 Venus has phases

CONCLUSION
 First models of solar system were geocentric but couldn't easily explain
retrograde motion
 Heliocentric model does; also explains brightness variations
 Galileo's observations supported heliocentric model
 Kepler found three empirical laws of planetary motion from observations
 Laws of Newtonian mechanics explained Kepler’s observations

Early history
Early Theories: Descartes’ Vortex Theory

Rene Descartes – solar system was formed into bodies with nearly circular orbits
because of the whirlpool-like motion in the pre-solar materials.

Planets- primary whirlpool

Satellites / Moon – secondary whirlpool

Buffon’s Collision
Theory

George Louis
Leclerc, Comte de
Buffon – planets
were formed by the
collision of the sun
with a giant comet.
The resulting debris
formed into planets
that rotate in the
same direction as
they revolved
around the sun
Kant-Laplace Nebular Theory

Immanuel Kant and Pierre Simon Laplace – a great cloud of gas and dust called
nebula begins to collapse because of gravitational pull. As the cloud contracted, it spun
more rapidly. The spinning cloud flattens into a pancake-shaped object with a bulge at the
center. As the nebula collapses further, local regions contract on their own due to gravity.
These local regions became the sun and the planets.

Jeans-Jeffrey’s Tidal Theory

Sir James Hopwood Jeans and Harold Jeffreys – planets were formed from the
substance that was torn out of the sun. As a speeding massive star passed near the
sun, it pulled off material due to gravitational attraction. The torn-off material
subsequently condensed to form the planets.

Solar Nebular Theory

-main concern is to solve the original problem of Kant and Laplace about angular
momentum of the sun

-solar system was formed as a result of the condensation of H gas and dust referred
to as interstellar gas and dust cloud.

An explosion of a star (supernova) might have caused the dust and gas cloud to
collapse-due to the force of gravity, forming the sun and planets

As the cloud continues to shrink, its rotational speed increases and becomes rapidly
rotating disk. The contraction converts gravitational energy into heat energy and
causes the center to glow. When the temperature is sufficient enough, a nuclear
reaction begins at the core of the protostar, and later becomes the sun.

The remaining gas and dust clouds form disk shaped bodies called solar nebulae.

First stage – size of particles (planetisimal)

Second stage – massive objects (protoplanets)

What happened last December 21, 2012?

December 21 is the winter solstice, and in 2012 the Sun on the solstice was
almost perfectly aligned with the plane of the galaxy (the Milky Way galaxy).
Big Bang Theory
states that the universe began to expand with the explosion of concentrated
matter and energy.

The Proponents

Alexander Friedman & Georges Lamaitre

- 13.8 bya (approximate age of the solar system), there was nothing and nowhere
and due to fluctuation, there was great explosion.

Events:

Inflationary epoch – the universe expanded from the size of an atomic nucleus

Formation of the universe – universe continued to expand, became distinct,

possessing gravity, strong and weak nuclear forces, and electromagnetic force

Formation of the basic elements – protons and neutrons combined to form

hydrogen nuclei. Hydrogen nuclei began to combine in pairs to form helium nuclei –
nucleosynthesis

Radiation era – it includes wavelengths of light, X-rays, radio waves and UV rays –
cosmic microwave background radiation

Matter domination – at this stage, lithium atom began to formed. Electrons joined
with hydrogen and helium nuclei to make small neutral atoms

Birth of stars and galaxies – irregular areas of gas cloud gravitationally attracted
nearby matter and became denser. The dense gas clouds collapsed and eventually
gained enough mass to ignite and produce light. The huge clouds of gas could be
the birth for dozens of stars – galaxies

Evidence 1: The galaxies are moving away from the center of the universe.

Edwin Hubble at Mt. Wilson

Hubble’s observations at the 100 inch during the 1920’s led him to the conclusion
that the universe is expanding, and that an object’s recession velocity is proportional
to its distance from the observer.

Deep Hubble Space Telescope Image

A deep image of an “empty” portion of the sky with the Hubble Space Telescope
reveals that the universe is filled with galaxies- many just like our own. The light we
see from the most distant galaxies has traveled approx- imately 10 billion years to
reach us.
Evidence 2:Presence of cosmic microwaves background

Discovery of the Background Radiation from initial Big Bang

-Long wavelength

-came from all directions

Evidence 3:Abundance of light elements – He, H, Li and Be, checked from

the spectra of the oldest stars and gas clouds

Astronomers believed that Big Bag Theory leads to two possible futures:

Open Universe - Galaxies will continue racing outward and therefore the universe
will continue to expand until all stars die off. An open universe leads to total
emptiness.

Close Universe - The expansion of the universe will finally come to a halt.

Contradiction to the Big Bang Theory:

Too much energy

– Most of the universe is empty space: a vacuum which is defined as

a volume containing no particles, force fields, nor waves. By
definition a vacuum has no energy. However, the Big Bang theory
requires both in its early phases and in its later phases that the
vacuum must have some energy.

– The law of conservation of energy demands that energy cannot be

created nor destroyed.

Too complex, too early

– The universe has too many large structures, to be created in 10-20

billion years. We know the rate of expansion, thus we can get a
rough estimate on how long it would take for them to form. In order
for these to form, it would take about 100 billion years.

Food for thought:

“Ex nihilo” is a Latin term that translated means “out of nothing.” It was an idea
presented by St. Augustine that became Church doctrine. It is his philosophical
explanation of how God created everything out of nothing, which interestingly
enough can be applied to the big bang as well. Where did everything contained in
the big bang come from and why did it bang in the first place?
Scientists now believed in a new theory:

According to Albert Einstein, the universe is a space-time continuum. It could

take one of the three forms:

1. Closed (looks like a sphere) Travel far enough and you always come back to
the starting point. The universe will slow down, stop, then reverse direction
causing a new Big Bang.

2. Open universe (looks like a saddle) galaxies continue to expand forever.

Up until this day, most scientists agreed that this theory was correct.

3. Flat universe: When traveling in a straight line you will never return to your
starting point. This is the shape of our universe according to the latest
observations.

Misconception:

Despite the fact that it is called big bang, it is not an explosion but rather an
expansion of space…

STEADY STATE UNIVERSE

The Basics

Hermann Bondi, Thomas Gold, and Sir Fred Hoyle

Proposed the Steady State Theory as an alternative theory to the Big Bang Theory

The Theory

• The universe is always the same, all the time, always static, always
contracting or expanding.

THE LOGIC

• Based on theoretical mathematical calculations

• No sudden beginning to universe

• Decrease in density caused by expansion balanced by continuous creation of

matter condensing into galaxies

• Maintain forever present appearance of the universe

The Workings

• Reservoir of energy is negative: Expansion and creation work against each

other

• Small number of atoms needed annually to maintain steady state

The Refutation

• Distribution of Radio Sources

• 1966: Discovery of Quasars

• Cosmic Background Radiation

Red shift

• Light travels to earth from other galaxies. As the light from that galaxy gets
closer to the earth, the distance between earth and the galaxy increases,
which causes the wavelength of that light to get longer.

• Longer wavelengths of visible light are red, that is why it is called the red shift

- Gives information on the speed and direction that a star is moving. This in turn
tells scientists that stars are not only moving away from us, but they are also
moving away from each other.

The Conclusion

• The Big Bang Model prevails present day

• Steady State theory helped to prove Big Bang through its testability

Observed Features:

• Flatness – The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe revealed that the

geometry of the universe is nearly flat. However, according to the Big Bang
Theory, there should be curvature as time grows

• Monopole – The Big Bang Theory predicted the production of heavy stable
magnetic poles in the early universe. However, there were no magnetic
monopoles that have been observed.

• Horizon – Based on the Big Bang Theory, distant regions of space in opposite
directions of the sky are so far apart that they could never have been in
casual contact with each other. However, the evidence showing the uniformity
of cosmic microwave background temperature shows that these regions must
have had contact in the past.
Other theories:

• Inflation Theory, String Theory, M-Theory

Inflation Theory:

• Proposed by Alan Guth, Andrei Linde, Paul Steinhart and Andy Albrecht

• A period of exponential expansion of the universe prior to the more gradual

BBT

• As an extension of the standard BBT

• IT to BBT, there is a need to add the principles of Dark energy and Dark
matter

(dark energy – energy of the empty space, causes the expansion of the universe
to accelerate)

(dark matter – a hypothetical kind of matter that cannot be seen with telescopes)

String Theory:

• Combination between principles of Theory of Relativity by Einstein with the

principles of Quantum mechanics

• T of R – Einstein unified space, time and gravity. Waves and curves in space
and time are responsible for the force of gravity

• QM – gravity becomes insignificant because the atomic and subatomic

masses are very small.

M - Theory:

• The origin of the universe occurs as a result of the contact of two

hyperdimensional branes.

• Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow argue that the collision of M-branes
leads to a new universe
SOLAR SYSTEM HYPOTHESIS
French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes was the first to
propose a model for the origin of the Solar System in his Le Monde  (ou
Traité de lumière) which he wrote in 1632 and 1633 and for which he
delayed publication because of the Inquisition and it was published only
after his death in 1664. In his view, the Universe was filled with vortices
of swirling particles and the Sun and planets had condensed from a
particularly large vortex that had somehow contracted, which explained
the circular motion of the planets and was on the right track with
condensation and contraction. However, this was before Newton's
theory of gravity and we now know matter does not behave in this
fashion.[3]

•
• Artist's conception of a protoplanetary disc

The vortex model of 1944,[3] formulated by German physicist and

philosopher Baron Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, which harkens back to
the Cartesian model, involved a pattern of turbulence-induced eddies in
a Laplacian nebular disc. In it a suitable combination of clockwise
rotation of each vortex and anti-clockwise rotation of the whole system
can lead to individual elements moving around the central mass in
Keplerian orbits so there would be little dissipation of energy due to the
overall motion of the system but material would be colliding at high
relative velocity in the inter-vortex boundaries and in these regions small
roller-bearing eddies would coalesce to give annular condensations. It
was much criticized as turbulence is a phenomenon associated with
disorder and would not spontaneously produce the highly ordered
structure required by the hypothesis. As well, it does not provide a
solution to the angular momentum problem and does not explain lunar
formation nor other very basic characteristics of the Solar System. [4]
The Weizsäcker model was modified[3] in 1948 by Dutch theoretical
physicist Dirk Ter Haar, in that regular eddies were discarded and
replaced by random turbulence which would lead to a very thick nebula
where gravitational instability would not occur. He concluded the planets
must have formed by accretion and explained the compositional
difference (solid and liquid planets) as due to the temperature difference
between the inner and outer regions, the former being hotter and the
latter being cooler, so only refractories(non-volatiles) condensed in the
inner region. A major difficulty is that in this supposition turbulent
dissipation takes place in a time scale of only about a millennium which
does not give enough time for planets to form.
The nebular hypothesis was first proposed in 1734 by Emanuel
Swedenborg[5] and later elaborated and expanded upon by Immanuel
Kant in 1755. A similar theory was independently formulated by Pierre-
Simon Laplace in 1796.[6]
In 1749, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon conceived the idea
that the planets were formed when a comet collided with the Sun,
sending matter out to form the planets. However, Laplace refuted this
idea in 1796, showing that any planets formed in such a way would
eventually crash into the Sun. Laplace felt that the near-circular orbits of
the planets were a necessary consequence of their formation.[7] Today,
comets are known to be far too small to have created the Solar System
in this way.[7]
In 1755, Immanuel Kant speculated that observed nebulae may in fact
be regions of star and planet formation. In 1796, Laplace elaborated by
arguing that the nebula collapsed into a star, and, as it did so, the
remaining material gradually spun outward into a flat disc, which then
formed the planets.[7]

HYDROLOGIC CYCLE
There are four main stages in the water cycle. They are evaporation, condensation,
precipitation and collection. Let's look at each of these stages.

Evaporation: This is when warmth from the sun causes water from oceans, lakes,
streams, ice and soils to rise into the air and turn into water vapour (gas). Water
vapour droplets join together to make clouds!

Condensation: This is when water vapour in the air cools down and turns back into
liquid water.

Precipitation: This is when water (in the form of rain, snow, hail or sleet) falls from
clouds in the sky.

Collection: This is when water that falls from the clouds as rain, snow, hail or sleet,
collects in the oceans, rivers, lakes, streams. Most will infiltrate (soak into) the
ground and will collect as underground water.

The water cycle is powered by the sun's energy and by gravity. The sun kickstarts
the whole cycle by heating all the Earth's water and making it evaporate. Gravity
makes the moisture fall back to Earth.
EARTH’S SUBSYSTEMS

Troposphere

It is where we live & weather happens, where clouds form, air moves a lot here. it
holds nearly all of the water vapor in the Earth’s atmosphere, regulates temperature
and produces weather.

Stratosphere

OZONE is formed in this layer. O3 absorbs most UV radiation from the sun. As
ozone molecules absorb UV they get energized, move faster and produce heat

Mesosphere

Most Meteoroids burn up here … the air is very thin, but still dense enough to slow
down meteoroids because of friction

Thermosphere

Temperature can vary greatly here because of solar activity.

 Ionosphere
- Solar radiation is very strong here & is absorbed by the few oxygen &
nitrogen molecules resulting in electrically charged gas particles (ions)
that cause heat
- Am radio waves bounce off these ions and back to Earth
 Exosphere
- Satellites orbit here
- TV & Cell phone signals travel to satellites here and are bounced back

Geosphere

The solid portion of Earth that includes the interior structure, rocks and minerals,
landforms, down to the deep depths of the core, and the process that shape the
Earth’s surface.

Hydrosphere

This includes all of the water on or near the Earth’s surface

Biosphere

The regions of the surface, atmosphere, and hydrosphere of the earth occupied by
living organisms