Earth System

Lecturer: Nguyễn Thuỳ Dương

Recommended reading:

1. Laura Neser (2025), " Introduction to Earth Science - Second Edition", Virginia Tech Department of
Geosciences in association with the Open Education Initiative and Virginia Tech Publishing.
https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/7c0aa36a-ac3a-4d16-90bd-b62b28db576c/content

2. Thomas McGuire (2004), “Glencoe Earth Science: Geology, the Environment, and the Universe,
Science Notebook, Student Edition”, McGraw-Hill Education.

Lecture note 2. Earth in the Universe

1. Formation of the Universe

The discovery that the universe is expanding also told astronomers something about how the
universe might have formed. Before this discovery, there were many ideas about the universe,
most of them thinking of the universe as constant. Once scientists learned that the universe is
expanding, the next logical thought is that at one time it had to have been smaller.

The Big Bang theory is the most widely accepted scientific explanation of how the universe
formed. To understand this theory, start by picturing the universe expanding steadily. Then,
reverse the direction of time, like pressing the “rewind” button on a video player. Now the
universe is contracting, getting smaller and smaller. If you go far enough back in time, you will
reach a point when the universe was squeezed into a very small volume. According to the Big
Bang theory, the universe began about 13.7 billion years ago, when everything in the universe
was squeezed into a very small volume, as described above. There was an enormous explosion—
a big bang—which caused the universe to start expanding rapidly. All the matter and energy in
the universe—and even space itself—came out of this explosion.

In the first few moments after the Big Bang, the universe was extremely hot and dense. As the
universe expanded, it became less dense and it cooled. After only a few seconds, the universe
had cooled enough that protons, neutrons, and electrons could form. After a few minutes,
hydrogen could form and the energy in the universe was great enough to allow for nuclear
fusion, creating helium atoms in the same way we learned that a star can make helium out of
hydrogen atoms, even though there were no stars at this point in the universe’s history. The first
neutral atoms with neutrons, protons, and electrons, did not form until about 380,000 years after
the big bang.

The matter in the early universe was not smoothly distributed across space. Some parts of the
universe were more dense than others. These clumps of matter were held close together by
gravity. Eventually, these clumps became the gas clouds, stars, galaxies, and other structures that
we see in the universe today.

The Big Bang theory is still the best scientific model we have for explaining the formation of the
universe. However, recent discoveries in astronomy have shaken up our understanding of the
universe. Astronomers and other scientists are now wrestling with some big unanswered
questions about what the universe is made of and why it is expanding like it is. Recent evidence
shows that there is a lot of matter in the universe that we cannot detect directly. This matter is
called dark matter. The rate of the expansion of the universe is increasing. The cause of this
increase is unknown; one possible explanation involves a new form of energy called dark energy.

2. Galaxies

Constellations are patterns of stars that we see in the same part of the night sky, but these stars
may not be close together at all out in space. However, some stars are actually grouped closely
together in space. These small groups of stars are called star systems and larger groups of
hundreds or thousands of stars are called star clusters. The biggest groups of stars are called
galaxies. Galaxies can contain anywhere from a few million stars to many billions of stars. Every
star you can see in the sky is part of the Milky Way Galaxy, the galaxy we live in. Other galaxies
are extremely far away, much farther away than even the most distant stars you can see. The
closest major galaxy—the Andromeda Galaxy, looks like only a dim, fuzzy spot to the naked
eye. But that fuzzy spot contains one trillion stars; that is a thousand billion, or
1,000,000,000,000 stars!

Galaxies are divided into three types according to shape: spiral galaxies, elliptical galaxies, and
irregular galaxies.

Spiral galaxies rotate or spin, so they have a rotating disk of stars and dust, a bulge in the middle,
and several arms spiraling out from the center. Spiral galaxies have lots of gas and dust and lots
of young stars. The spiral arms of a galaxy contain lots of dust. New stars form from this dust.
Because they contain lots of young stars, spiral arms tend to be blue.

Elliptical galaxies are elliptical, or egg-shaped. The smallest elliptical galaxies are as small as
some globular clusters. Giant elliptical galaxies, on the other hand, can contain over a trillion
stars. Elliptical galaxies are reddish to yellowish in color because they contain mostly old stars.
Galaxies that are not clearly elliptical galaxies or spiral galaxies are called irregular galaxies.
Most irregular galaxies were once spiral or elliptical galaxies that were then deformed either by
gravitational attraction to a larger galaxy or by a collision with another galaxy.

Dwarf galaxies are small galaxies containing “only” a few million to a few billion stars. Most
dwarf galaxies are irregular in shape. However, there are also dwarf elliptical galaxies and dwarf
spiral galaxies. Dwarf galaxies are the most common type in the universe. However, because
they are relatively small and dim, we don’t see as many dwarf galaxies as we do their full-sized
cousins.

If you look up in the sky on a very clear night, you may see a milky band of light stretching
across the sky. This band is called the Milky Way, and it consists of millions of stars along with
a lot of gas and dust. This band is the disk of a galaxy, the Milky Way Galaxy, which is our
galaxy. The Milky Way Galaxy looks different to us than other galaxies because we are actually
living inside of it!

Because we live inside the Milky Way Galaxy, it is hard to know exactly what it looks like. But
astronomers believe the Milky Way Galaxy is a typical spiral galaxy that contains about 100
billion to 400 billion stars.

3. The Solar system

Our solar system, including the Sun, Earth, and all the other planets, is within one of the spiral
arms in the disk of the Milky Way Galaxy. Most of the stars we see in the sky are relatively
nearby stars, that are also in this spiral arm. We are about 26,000 light years from the center of
the Galaxy. In other words, we live a little more than halfway out from the center of the Galaxy
to the edge. Just as Earth orbits the Sun, the Sun and solar system orbit the center of the Galaxy.
One orbit of the solar system takes about 225 to 250 million years. The solar system has orbited
20 to 25 times since it formed 4.6 billion years ago.

Today, we know that our solar system is just one tiny part of the universe as a whole. In our
modern view of the solar system, the Sun is at the center, and planets move in elliptical orbits
around the Sun. The planets do not emit their own light, but instead reflect light from the Sun.

Since the time of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, we have learned a lot more about our solar
system. We have discovered two more planets (Uranus and Neptune), four dwarf planets (Ceres,
Makemake, Pluto and Eris), over 150 moons, and many, many asteroids and other small objects.

There are eight planets in the solar system. From the Sun outward, they are: Mercury, Venus,
Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus,and Neptune. The Sun is just an average star compared to
other stars, but it is by far the largest object in the solar system. The Sun is more than 500 times
the mass of everything else in the solar system combined!
There are two key features of the solar system we have to concern when talk about formation of
the solar system. First, all the planets lie in nearly the same plane, or flat disk like region.
Second, all the planets orbit in the same direction around the Sun. These two features are clues to
how the solar system formed. The most widely accepted explanation of how the solar system
formed is called the nebular hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, the solar system formed
about 4.6 billion years ago from the collapse of a giant cloud of gas and dust, called a nebula.
The nebula was made mostly of hydrogen and helium, but there were heavier elements as well.
The nebula was drawn together by gravity. As gravity pulled matter into the center of the disk,
the density and pressure increased at the center. When the pressure in the center was high enough
that nuclear fusion reactions started in the center, a star was born—the Sun. Meanwhile, the outer
parts of the disk were cooling off. Small pieces of dust in the disk started clumping together.
These clumps collided and combined with other clumps. Larger clumps, called planetesimals,
attracted smaller clumps with their gravity. Eventually, the planetesimals formed the planets and
moons that we find in our solar system today.

The outer planets—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune—condensed farther from the Sun from
lighter materials such as hydrogen, helium, water, ammonia, and methane. Out by Jupiter and
beyond, where it’s very cold, these materials can form solid particles. But in closer to the Sun,
these same materials are gases. As a result, the inner planets—Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars
—formed from dense rock, which is solid even when close to the Sun.

3. The Earth

The Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the fifth largest of the eight planets in our Solar
System. It is located between Mars and Venus, which are also terrestrial planets. Earth has a
number of nicknames including the Blue Planet and Terra. The most remarkable thing about our
planet is the life that thrives all over our planet. Not only are there plants, but there are also
animals, sea creatures, birds, and other diverse species.

The Earth and Moon revolve around each other as they orbit the Sun. As planet Earth rotates and
revolves, we experience cycles of day and night as well as seasons.

The Sun and the other planets of our Solar System are also spheres. One of the most convincing
pieces of evidence for a spherical Earth are the pictures we have of it from Space. The picture
shows us that Earth is spherical and looks like a giant blue and white ball. Earth is the third
planet from the Sun, and its mass is approximately 6.0 x10 24 kilograms. In contrast, the volume
of planet Jupiter is about 1,000 times greater than Earth’s volume, and the Sun’s volume is about
1,000 times greater than Jupiter’s.

While the outer planets in the Solar System are giant balls of swirling gas with very low
densities, Earth is an inner planet. The inner planets are relatively small, denser, rockier planets
than the outer planets. Three-fourths of Earth’s rocky surface is covered with water. As far as we
know, Earth is also the only planet that carries liquid water, another important requirement for
life. The entire planet is also surrounded by a thin layer of air called the atmosphere. Earth’s
atmosphere is unique in the solar system in that it contains just the right amount of oxygen to
support animal life. Therefore, Earth is the only planet in the solar system on which life is found.

We know that the Earth orbits the Sun in a regular path. The Earth’s Moon also orbits the Earth
in a regular path. Gravity is the force of attraction between all objects. Gravity keeps the Earth
and Moon in their orbits. Isaac Newton was one of the first scientists to explore the idea of
gravity. He understood that the Moon can only circle the Earth because some force is pulling the
Moon toward Earth’s center. Otherwise, the Moon would continue moving in a straight line off
into space. Newton also came to understand that the same force that keeps the Moon in its orbit
is the same force that causes objects on Earth to fall to the ground. Newton defined the Universal
Law of Gravitation, which states that a force of attraction, called gravity, exists between all
objects in the universe. The strength of the gravitational force depends on how much mass the
objects have and how far apart they are from each other. The greater the objects’ mass, the
greater the force of attraction; in addition, the greater the distance between the objects, the
smaller the force of attraction.

Earth has a magnetic field. It may be helpful to imagine that the Earth has a gigantic bar magnet
inside of it. A bar magnet has a north and south pole and a magnetic field that extends around it.
Earth’s magnetic field also has a north and south pole and a magnetic field that surrounds it.
Scientists believe Earth’s magnetic field arises from the movements of molten metals deep inside
Earth’s outer liquid iron core. Iron and nickel flow within the Earth’s core, and their movement
generates Earth’s magnetic field.

Earth’s magnetic field extends several thousand kilometers into space. Earth’s magnetic field
serves an important role. It shields the planet from harmful types of radiation from the Sun. If
you have a large bar magnet, you can tie a string to it, hang it from the string, and then watch as
it aligns itself in a north-south direction, in response to Earth’s magnetic field. This concept
allows a compass to work, so that people can navigate by finding magnetic north.