Earth Science

EARTH'S INTERIOR

CONCEPT For the most part, this topic is concerned with geologic, geophysical, and geochemical processes that take place on or near Earth’s surface. Even the essay Plate Tectonics, which takes up one of the central ideas in modern earth sciences, discusses only the lithosphere and crust but not the depths of the mantle or the […]

ENERGY AND EARTH

CONCEPT Earth is a vast flow-through system for the input and output of energy. The overwhelming majority of the input to Earth’s energy budget comes from the Sun in the form of solar radiation, with geothermal and tidal energy rounding out the picture. Each form of energy is converted into heat and re-radiated to space, […]

CONVECTION

CONCEPT Convection is the name for a means of heat transfer, as distinguished from conduction and radiation. It is also a term that describes processes affecting the atmosphere, waters, and solid earth. In the atmosphere, hot air rises on convection currents, circulating and creating clouds and winds. Likewise, convection in the hydrosphere circulates water, keeping […]

GEOMAGNETISM

CONCEPT Scientists have long recognized a connection between electricity and magnetism, but the specifics of this connection, along with the recognition that electromagnetism is one of the fundamental interactions in the universe, were worked out only in the mid-nineteenth century. By that time, geologists had come to an understanding of Earth as a giant magnet. […]

GRAVITY AND GEODESY

CONCEPT Thanks to the force known as gravity, Earth maintains its position in orbit around the Sun, and the Moon in orbit around Earth. Likewise, everything on and around Earth holds its place— the waters of the ocean, the gases of the atmosphere, and so on—owing to gravity, which is also the force that imparts […]

ECONOMIC GEOLOGY

CONCEPT Economic geology is the study of fuels, metals, and other materials from the earth that are of interest to industry or the economy in general. It is concerned with the distribution of resources, the costs and benefits of their recovery, and the value and availability of existing materials. These materials include ore (rocks or […]

ROCKS

CONCEPT It might come as a surprise to learn that geologists regularly use an unscientific-sounding term, rocks. Yet as is almost always the case with a word used both in everyday language and within the realm of a0 scientific discipline, the meanings are not the same. For one thing, rock and stone are not interchangeable, […]

MINERALS

CONCEPT A mineral is a naturally occurring, typically inorganic substance with a specific chemical composition and structure. An unknown mineral usually can be identified according to known characteristics of specific minerals in terms of certain parameters that include its appearance, its hardness, and the ways it breaks apart when fractured. Minerals are not to be […]

PALEONTOLOGY

CONCEPT Thanks to a certain 1993 blockbuster, most people know the name of at least one period in geologic history. Jurassic Park spurred widespread interest in dinosaurs and, despite its fantastic plot, encouraged popular admiration and respect for the work of paleontologists. Paleontology is the study of life-forms from the distant past, as revealed primarily […]

STRATIGRAPHY

CONCEPT Stratigraphy is the study of rock layers (strata) deposited in the earth. It is one of the most challenging of geologic subdisciplines, comparable to an exacting form of detective work, yet it is also one of the most important branches of study in the geologic sciences. Earth’s history, quite literally, is written on the […]