GEOLOGY Geology is the study of the earth and the processes that shape it.

Physical geology, in particular, is concerned with the materials and physical features of the earth, changes in those features, and the processes that bring the changes about. Intellectual curiosity about the way the earth works is one reason for the study of geology. GEOLOGY AS A DISCIPLINE In some sense, geology is a particularly broad-based discipline, for it draws on many other sciences. Knowledge of physics contributes to an understanding of rock structures and deformation, and supplies tools with which to investigate the earths deep interior indirectly. The chemistry of geologic materials provides clues to their origins and history. Modern biological principles are important in studying ancient life forms. Mathematics provides a quantitative framework within which geologic processes can be described and analyzed. Physical geographers study the earths surface features much as some geologists do. What makes geology a distinctive discipline is, in part, that it focuses all these approaches, and others, on the study of the earth. THE EARTH WITHIN THE UNIVERSE In recent decades, scientists have been able to construct a picture of the origins of the solar system and of the universe itself. From observations that the stars are all moving apart from each other came the recognition of an expanding universe. Clearly, that expansion cannot have been going on forever: if one extrapolates the stars movements backward, a point is reached at which all matter was apparently together in one place. Most astronomers now accept a cataclysmic explosion, or big bang, as the origin of the modern universe. At that time, enormous quantities of matter

were synthesized and flung violently apart across an ever-larger volume of space. The time of the so called big bang can be estimated in several ways. Perhaps the most direct is the back calculation of the universes expansion to its apparent beginning by extrapolating the present motions of the stars backward in time until they converge. Various age estimates of the modern universe overlap in the range of 15 to 20 billion years. THE SOLAR SYSTEM The sun and its system of circling planets, including the earth, are believed to have formed from a single rotating cloud of gas and dust, starting nearly 5 billion years ago. Most of the mass coalesced at the center of the cloud, or nebula, to form what would eventually become the sun. Like the rest of the universe, the early sun consisted mostly of hydrogen, the principal product of the big bang. The inner parts of this enormous ball of gas were so compressed that they became hot and dense enough to initiate nuclear reactions. The ball of gas became a star, radiating light and other forms of energy. Our sun is now a middle aged star, having consumed about half of its nuclear fuel over the past 4.5 to 5 billion years. It should continue to shine for about 5 billion years more before it has used up so much of its fuel that it collapsed to a cold dwarf and turns off the earths solar energy. While the proto-sun developed, the remaining matter settled into a rotating disk around it. Dust began to condense from the gas, and the dust gradually formed planets that continued to Gua Terico Prctica de Ingls Tcnico Profa. Sheila Navas 16 circle the sun as they formed. Modern methods of dating rock material have shown the oldest fragments of meteorites

and moon rocks to be close to 4.6 billion years old. Formation of the solar system is thus believed to have been substantially complete more than 4.5 billion years ago. THE PLANETS The composition of each planet depended strongly on how near it was to the hot young sun. Very close to the sun, temperatures were so high that, at first, nothing solid could exist at all. As cooling progressed, the solids that condensed nearest the sun contained mainly high temperature materials: metallic iron and a few others minerals with very high melting temperatures. The planets nearest to the sun, then, consist mostly of these materials. Somewhat farther out, where temperatures were lower, the developing planets incorporated much larger amounts of lower temperature materials, including some that contain water locked within their crystal structures. (This eventually made it possible for the earth to have liquid water at its surface). Still farther from the sun, temperatures were so low that nearly all of the materials in the original gas cloud condensed even materials like methane and ammonia, which are gases at normal earth surface temperatures and pressures. Each planet, then, formed from an accumulation of bits of these condensed materials drawn together by gravity. Uncondensed gases were swept out of the interplanetary spaces by streams of matter and energy radiating from the young sun. These solar system forming processes led to a series of planets with a variety of compositions, most quite different from that of earth. This is something to keep in mind when considering the possibility of someday mining other planets for needed minerals. Both the basic chemistry of these other bodies and the kinds of ore-forming or other resource-forming processes that might occur on them would differ

considerably from those on earth and might not lead to products we would find useful. In addition, principal current energy sources required living organisms to form, and so far, no life has been found on other planets or moons. THE ATMOSPHERE AND OCEANS The heating and subsequent differentiation of the early earth led to another important result: formation of the atmosphere and oceans. Many minerals that had contained water or gases locked in their crystals released them during the heating and melting. The early earth was much hotter than at present and subject to more extensive volcanic activity, with water among the gases thus released. As the earths surface cooled, the water could condense to form the oceans. Without this abundant surface water, which in the solar system is unique to earth, most life as we know it could not exist.Gua Terico Prctica de Ingls Tcnico Profa. Sheila Navas 17 INSIDE THE EARTH The size of the Earth -- about 12,750 kilometers (km) in diameter-was known by the ancient Greeks, but it was not until the turn of the 20th century that scientists determined that our planet is made up of three main layers: crust, mantle, and core. This layered structure can be compared to that of a boiled egg. The crust, the outermost layer, is rigid and very thin compared with the other two. Beneath the oceans, the crust varies little in thickness, generally extending only to about 5 km. The thickness of the crust beneath continents is much more variable but averages about 30 km; under large mountain ranges, such as the Alps or the Sierra Nevada, however, the base of the crust can be as deep as 100 km. Like the shell of an egg, the Earth's crust is brittle and can

break. Below the crust is the mantle, a dense, hot layer of semi-solid rock approximately 2,900 km thick. The mantle, which contains more iron, magnesium, and calcium than the crust, is hotter and denser because temperature and pressure inside the Earth increase with depth. As a comparison, the mantle might be thought of as the white of a boiled egg. At the center of the Earth lies the core, which is nearly twice as dense as the mantle because its composition is metallic (iron-nickel alloy) rather than stony. Unlike the yolk of an egg, however, the Earth's core is actually made up of two distinct parts: a 2,200 km-thick liquid outer core and a 1,250 km-thick solid inner core. As the Earth rotates, the liquid outer core spins, creating the Earth's magnetic field. Not surprisingly, the Earth's internal structure influences plate tectonics. The upper part of the mantle is cooler and more rigid than the deep mantle; in many ways, it behaves like the overlying crust. Together they form a rigid layer of rock called the lithosphere. The lithosphere tends to be thinnest under the oceans and in volcanically active continental areas, such as the Western United States. Averaging at least 80 km in thickness over much of the Earth, the lithosphere has been broken up into the moving plates that contain the world's continents and oceans. Scientists believe that below the lithosphere is a relatively narrow, mobile zone in the mantle called the asthenosphere. This zone is composed of hot, semi-solid material, which can soften and flow after being subjected to high temperature and pressure over geologic time. The rigid lithosphere is thought to "float" or move about on the slowly flowing asthenosphere. TECTONIC PLATES

In geologic terms, a plate is a large, rigid slab of solid rock. The word tectonics comes from the Greek root "to build." Putting these two words together, we get the term plate tectonics, which refers to how the Earth's surface is built of plates. The theory of tectonic plates states that the Earth's outermost layer is fragmented into a dozen or more large and small plates that are moving relative to one another as they ride atop hotter, more mobile material. Before the advent of plate tectonics, however, some people already believed that the present-day continents were the fragmented pieces of preexisting larger landmasses ("supercontinents").Gua Terico Prctica de Ingls Tcnico Profa. Sheila Navas 18 According to the continental drift theory, the supercontinent Pangaea began to break up about 225-200 million years ago, eventually fragmenting into the continents as we know them today. Plate tectonics is a relatively new scientific concept, introduced some 30 years ago, but it has revolutionized our understanding of the dynamic planet upon which we live. The theory has unified the study of the Earth by drawing together many branches of the earth sciences, from paleontology (the study of fossils) to seismology (the study of earthquakes). It has provided explanations to questions that scientists had speculated upon for centuries -- such as why earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur in very specific areas around the world, and how and why great mountain ranges like the Alps and Himalayas formed. THE MODERN DYNAMIC EARTH Although it has been cooling for billions of years, the earth still retains enough internal heat to drive large-scale mountain-building processes, to cause volcanic eruptions, to make continents mobile, and indirectly to trigger

earthquakes. At the same time, the continual supply of solar energy to the earths surface drives many of the surface processes: water is evaporated from the oceans to descend again as rain and snow to feed the rivers and glaciers that sculpture the surface; differential heating of the surface leads to formation of warmer and colder air masses above it, which, in turn, produces atmospheric instability and wind. DYNAMIC EQUILIBRIUM IN GEOLOGIC PROCESSES Natural systems tend toward a balance or equilibrium among opposing forces. As new dissolved minerals are washed into the sea by rivers, sediments are deposited in the ocean basins, removing dissolved chemicals from solution. Internal forces push up a mountain; gravity, wind, water, and ice collectively act to tear it down again. When one factor changes, other compensating changes occur in response. If the disruption of a system is relatively small and temporary, the system may in time return to its original condition, and evidence of the disturbance is erased. A coastal storm may wash away beach vegetation and destroy colonies of marine organisms living in a tidal flat, but when the storm has passed, new organisms start to move back into the area, new grasses begin to establish roots in the dunes. The violent eruption of a volcano like Krakatoa or Mount St. Helens may spew ash high into the atmosphere, partially blocking sunlight and causing the earth to cool, but within a few years, the ash settles back to the ground and normal temperatures are restored. This is not to say that permanent changes never occur in natural systems. The size of a rivers channel depends, in part, on the maximum amount of water it normally carries. If long-term climatic or other conditions change so that the volume of water regularly reaching the stream increases, the larger quantity

of water will, in time, carve out a correspondingly larger channel to accommodate it. The soil carried downhill by a landslide certainly does not begin moving back upslope after the landslide is over; the face of the land is irreversibly changed. Gua Terico Prctica de Ingls Tcnico