arth is a unique place, home to

El
millions of organisms, includ-
ing ourselves. No other planet
we've yet discovered has the same del-
icate balance of conditions necessary to
sustain life. Geology is the science that
studies Earth: how it was born, how it
evolved, how it works, and how we can
help preserve its habitats for life. Geol-
ogists try to answer many questions
about Earth's surface and interior. Why
do the continents expose dry land?
Why are the oceans so deep? How did
the Himalaya, Alps, and Rocky Moun-
tains reach their great heights? What
process generated island chains such as Hawaii in the middle of the
Pacific Ocean and the deep trenches near the ocean's margins? More
generally, how does the face of our planet change over time, and what
forces drive these changes? We think you will find the answers to
these questions quite fascinating—they will allow you to look at the
world around you with new eyes. Welcome to the science of geology!
We have organized the discussion of geology in this book around
three basic concepts that will appear in almost every chapter: ( 1 ) Earth
as a system of interacting components, ( 2 ) plate tectonics as a unify-
ing theory of geology, and ( 3 ) changes in the Earth system through
geologic time.
This chapter gives a broad picture of how geologists think. It
starts with the scientific method, the observational approach to
the physical universe on which all scientific inquiry is based.
Throughout the book, you will see the scientific method in action
as you discover how Earth scientists gather and interpret infor-
mation about our planet. In this first chapter, we will illustrate
how the scientific method was applied to discover some of Earth's
basic features—its shape and internal layering.
We will also introduce you to a geologist's view of time. You
may start to think about time differently as you begin to comprehend
the immense span of geologic history. Earth and the other planets in
our solar system formed about 4 . 5 billion years ago. More than
3 billion years ago, living cells developed on Earth's surface, and life
has been evolving ever since. Yet our human origins date back only a
few million years—a mere few hundredths of a percent of Earth's
existence. The scales that measure individual lives in decades and

F i r s t image o f t h e w h o l e E a r t h s h o w i n g t h e A n t a r c t i c and A f r i c a n
c o n t i n e n t s , t a k e n by t h e Apollo 17 a s t r o n a u t s on D e c e m b e r 7, 1972.
[NASA.]
mark off periods of human history in hundreds or thousands ple, or how living organisms can modify the climate system
of years are inadequate to study Earth. and, in turn, be affected by climate changes.
To explain features that are millions or even billions of
years old, we look at what is happening on Earth today. We
study our complex natural world as an Earth system involv-
ing many interacting components, some beneath its solid
surface, others in its atmosphere and oceans. Many of these The goal of all science is to explain how the universe works.
components—for example, the Los Angeles air basin, the The scientific m e t h o d , on which all scientists rely, is a gen-
Great Lakes, Hawaii's Mauna Loa volcano, and the con- eral plan based on methodical observations and experiments
tinent of North America—are themselves complex subsys- ( F i g u r e 1.1). Scientists believe that physical events have
tems or geosystems. To understand the various parts of physical explanations, even if they may be beyond our pres-
Earth, geologists often study its geosystems separately, as if ent capacity to understand them.
each existed alone. To get a complete perspective on how When scientists propose a hypothesis—a tentative
Earth works, however, scientists must learn how its geosys- explanation based on data collected through observations
tems interact with one another—how gases from volcanic and experiments—they present it to the community of sci-
systems can trigger changes in the climate system, for exam- entists for criticism and repeated testing. A hypothesis that
is confirmed by other scientists gains credibil-
ity, particularly if it explains new data or pre-
dicts the outcome of new experiments.
A set of hypotheses that has survived re-
peated challenges and accumulated a substantial
body of experimental support can be elevated to
the status of a theory. Although a theory can
explain and predict observations, it can never be
considered finally proved. The essence of science
is that no explanation, no matter how believable
or appealing, is closed to question. If convincing
new evidence indicates that a theory is wrong,
scientists may modify it or discard it. The longer
a theory holds up to all scientific challenges,
however, the more confidently it is held.
Knowledge based on many hypotheses and
theories can be used to create a scientific
model—a precise representation of how a natu-
ral system is built or should behave. Models
combine a set of related ideas to make predic-
tions, allowing scientists to test the consistency
of their knowledge. Like a good hypothesis or
theory, a good model makes predictions that
agree with observations. These days, scientific
models are often formulated as computer pro-
grams that simulate the behavior of natural sys-
tems through numerical calculations. In the vir-
tual reality of a computer, numerical simulations
can reproduce phenomena that are just too diffi-
cult to replicate in a real laboratory, including
the behavior of natural systems that operate over
long periods of time or large expanses of space.
To encourage discussion of their ideas, sci-
entists share them and the data on which they
are based. They present their findings at profes-
sional meetings, publish them in professional
journals, and explain them in informal conversa-
tions with colleagues. Scientists learn from one
another's work as well as from the discoveries of
the past. Most of the great concepts of science,
whether they emerge as a flash of insight or in the
course of painstaking analysis, result from untold numbers ever, so he badly underestimated Earth's circumference. In-
of such interactions. Albert Einstein put it this way: "In sci- stead of a shortcut, he took the long way around, finding a
ence . . . the work of the individual is so bound up with that New World instead of the Spice Islands! Had Columbus
of his scientific predecessors and contemporaries that it properly understood the ancient Greeks, he might not have
appears almost as an impersonal product of his generation." made this fortuitous mistake, because they had accurately
Because such free intellectual exchange can be subject measured Earth's size more than 17 centuries earlier.
to abuses, a code of ethics has evolved among scientists. Sci- The credit for determining Earth's size goes to Eratos-
entists must acknowledge the contributions of all others on thenes, a Greek librarian who lived in Alexandria, Egypt.
whose work they have drawn. They must not falsify data, Sometime around 250 B . C . , a traveler told him about a very
use the work of others without recognizing them, or be interesting observation. At noon on the first day of summer
otherwise deceitful in their work. They must also accept (June 21), a deep well in the city of Syene, about 800 km
responsibility for training the next generation of researchers south of Alexandria, was completely lit up by sunlight
and teachers. These principles are supported by the basic because the Sun was directly overhead. Acting on a hunch,
values of scientific cooperation, which a president of the Eratosthenes did an experiment. He set up a vertical pole in
National Academy of Sciences, Bruce Alberts, has aptly his own city, and at high noon on the summer solstice, the
described as "honesty, generosity, a respect for evidence, pole cast a shadow. By assuming the Sun was very far away
openness to all ideas and opinions." so that the light rays falling on the two cities were parallel,
Eratosthenes could demonstrate from simple geometry that
the ground surface must be curved. The most perfect curved
surface was a sphere, so he hypothesized that Earth had a
spherical shape (the Greeks admired geometrical perfection).
The scientific method has its roots in geodesy, a very old By measuring the length of the pole's shadow in Alexandria,
branch of Earth science that studies Earth's shape and sur- he calculated that if vertical lines through the two cities
face. In 1492, Columbus set a westward course for India could be extended to Earth's center, they would intersect at
because he believed in a theory of geodesy favored by Greek an angle of about 7°, which is about 1/50 of 360°, a full cir-
philosophers: we live on a sphere. His math was poor, how- cle (Figure 1.2). Multiplying 50 times the distance between
the two cities, he deduced a circumference close to its mod- and the deep ocean trenches. The elevation of the solid
ern value of 40,000 km. surface changes by nearly 20 km from the highest point in
In this powerful demonstration of the scientific method, the Himalayan Mountains (Mount Everest at 8848 m above
Eratosthenes made observations (the shadow angle), formed sea level) to the lowest point in the Pacific Ocean (Chal-
a hypothesis (spherical shape), and applied some mathemat- lenger Deep at 11,030 m below sea level). Although the
ical theory (spherical geometry) to propose a remarkably Himalaya loom large to us, their elevation is a small frac-
accurate model of Earth's physical form. His model was a tion of Earth's radius, only about one part in a thousand,
good one because it correctly predicted other types of meas- which is why the globe looks like a smooth sphere from
urements, such as the distance at which a ship's tall mast outer space.
disappears over the horizon. Moreover, it makes clear why
well-designed experiments and good measurements are cen-
tral to the scientific method: they give us new information
about the natural world.
Much more precise measurements have shown that Like many sciences, geology depends on laboratory experi-
Earth is not a perfect sphere. Owing to its daily rotation, the ments and computer simulations to describe and study
planet bulges out slightly at its equator, so that it is slightly Earth's surface and interior. Geology has its own particular
squashed at the poles. In addition, the smooth curvature of style and outlook, however. It is an outdoor science in that
Earth's surface is disturbed by changes in the ground eleva- essential data are collected by geologists in the field and
tion. This TOPOGRAPHY is measured with respect to sea level, by remote sensing devices, such as Earth-orbiting satellites.
a smooth surface that conforms closely with the squashed Specifically, geologists compare direct observations with
spherical shape expected for the rotating Earth. Many fea- what they infer from the geologic record. The geologic re-
tures of geological significance stand out in Earth's topogra- cord is the information preserved in rocks formed at various
phy (FIGURE 1.3), such as the continental mountain belts times throughout Earth's long history.
 In the eighteenth century, the Scottish physician and Nor does the principle of uniformitarianism mean that
geologist James Hutton advanced a historic principle of we have to observe geologic phenomena directly to know
geology that can be summarized as "the present is the key to that they are important in the current Earth system. In re-
the past." Hutton's concept became known as the principle corded history, humans have never witnessed a large mete-
of uniformitarianism, and it holds that the geologic pro- orite impact, but we know they have occurred many times
cesses we see in action today have worked in much the same in the geologic past and will certainly happen again. The
way throughout geologic time. same can be said for the vast volcanic outpourings that have
The principle of uniformitarianism does not mean that all covered areas bigger than Texas with lava and poisoned the
geologic phenomena are slow. Some of the most important global atmosphere with volcanic gases. The long-term evo-
processes happen as sudden events. A large meteorite that lution of Earth is punctuated by many extreme, though
impacts Earth can gouge out a vast crater in a matter of sec- infrequent, events involving rapid changes in the Earth sys-
onds. A volcano can blow its top and a fault can rupture the tem. Geology is the study of extreme events as well as pro-
ground in an earthquake almost as quickly. Other processes gressive change.
do occur much more slowly. Millions of years are required for From Hutton's day onward, geologists have observed
continents to drift apart, for mountains to be raised and nature at work and used the principle of uniformitarianism to
eroded, and for river systems to deposit thick layers of sedi- interpret features found in old rock formations. This approach
ments. Geologic processes take place over a tremendous has been very successful. However, Hutton's principle is too
range of scales in both space and time (Figure 1.4). confining for geologic science as it is now practiced. Modern
geology must deal with the entire range of Earth's history,
which began more than 4.5 billion years ago. As we will see,
the violent processes that shaped Earth's early history were
distinctly different from those that operate today. To under-
stand that history, we will need some information about
Earth's deep interior, which is layered like an onion.

Ancient thinkers divided the universe into two parts, the

Heavens above and Hades below. The sky was transparent
and full of light, and they could directly observe its stars and
track its wandering planets. In places, the ground quaked
and erupted hot lava. Surely something terrible was going on
down there! But Earth's interior was dark and closed to
human view.
So.it remained until about a century ago, when geolo-
gists began to look downward into Earth's interior, not with
waves of light but with waves produced by earthquakes. An
earthquake occurs when geologic forces cause brittle rocks
to fracture, sending out vibrations like those sent out by the
cracking of ice in a river. These seismic waves (from the
Greek word for earthquake, seismos) illuminate the interior Figure t.5 Earth's m a j o r layers, s h o w i n g t h e i r v o l u m e and mass
and can be recorded on seismometers, sensitive instruments e x p r e s s e d as a p e r c e n t a g e of Earth's t o t a l v o l u m e and mass.
that allow geologists to make pictures of Earth's inner
workings, much as doctors use ultrasound and CAT scans
to image the inside of your body. When the first networks Wiechert was puzzled. He knew that a planet made
of seismometers were installed around the world at the entirely of common rocks, which are silicates (contain S i 0 ) , 2

end of the nineteenth century, geologists began to discover could not have such a high density. Some iron-rich rocks
that Earth's interior was divided into concentric layers of dif- brought to the surface by volcanoes have densities as high as
ferent compositions, separated by sharp, nearly spherical 3.5 g/cm , but no ordinary rock approached Cavendish's
3

boundaries (Figure 1.5). value. He also knew that, going downward into Earth's inte-
rior, the pressure on rock increases from the weight of the
overlying mass. The pressure squeezes the rock into a
smaller volume, making its density higher. But Wiechert
Evidence for Earth's layering was first proposed at the end found that the pressure effect was too small to account for the
of the nineteenth century by the German physicist Emil density Cavendish had calculated.
Wiechert, before much seismic data had become available.
He wanted to understand why our planet is so heavy, or
more precisely, so dense. The density of a substance is easy
to calculate: just measure its mass on a scale and divide by In thinking about what lay beneath him, Wiechert turned
its volume. A typical rock, such as the granite used for tomb- outward to the solar system and, in particular, to meteorites,
stones, has a density of about 2.7 g/cm . Estimating the den-
3
which are pieces of the solar system that have fallen to
sity of the entire planet is a little harder, but not much. Earth. He knew that some meteorites are made of a mixture
Eratosthenes had shown how to measure Earth's volume in of two heavy metals, iron and nickel, and thus had densities
250 B . C . , and sometime around 1680, the great English sci- as high as 8 g/cm (Figure 1.6). He also knew that these
3

entist Isaac Newton figured out how to calculate its mass elements are relatively abundant throughout our solar sys-
from the force of gravity that pulls objects to its surface. tem. So, in 1896, he stated a grand hypothesis. Sometime in
The details, which involved careful laboratory experiments Earth's past, most of the iron and nickel in its interior had
to calibrate Newton's law of gravity, were worked out by dropped inward to its center under the force of gravity. This
another Englishman, Henry Cavendish. In 1798, he calcu- created a dense core, which was surrounded by a shell
lated Earth's average density to be about 5.5 g/cm , twice as
3
of silicate-rich rocks that he called the mantle (using the
dense as tombstone granite. German word for "coat"). With this hypothesis, he could
come up with a two-layer Earth model that agreed with shearing, and not through fluids such as air and water, which
Cavendish's value for the average density. Moreover, he have no resistance to this type of motion.
could also explain the existence of iron-nickel meteorites: In 1906, a British seismologist, Robert Oldham, was
they were chunks of the core from an Earthlike planet (or able to sort out the paths traveled by the various types of
planets) that had broken apart, most likely by collisions seismic waves and show that shear waves did not propagate
with other planets. through the core. The core, at least in its outer part, is liquid!
Wiechert got busy testing his hypothesis using waves This turns out to be not too surprising. Iron melts at a lower
recorded by seismometers located around the globe (he temperature than silicates, which is why metallurgists can
designed one himself). The first results showed a shadowy use containers made of ceramic (a type of silicate) to hold
inner mass that he took to be the core, but he had problems molten iron. Earth's deep interior is hot enough to melt the
identifying some of the seismic waves. These waves come in iron-nickel alloy but not silicate rock. Beno Gutenberg, one
two basic types: compressional waves, which expand and of Wiechert's students, confirmed Oldham's observations
compress as they travel through solid, liquid, or gas; and that the outer part of the core is liquid and, in 1914, deter-
shear waves, which involve side-to-side motion (shearing). mined that the depth to the core-mantle boundary is just shy
Shear waves can propagate only through solids, which resist of 2900 km (see Figure 1.5).
 gist Inge Lehmann discovered another sharp spherical sur-
The Crust
face at the much greater depth of 5150 km, indicating a cen-
Five years earlier, a Croatian scientist had detected another tral mass with a higher density than the liquid core. Later
boundary at the relatively shallow depth of 40 km beneath the studies showed that this inner core can transmit both shear
European continent. This boundary, named the Mohorovicic waves and compressional waves. The inner core is there-
discontinuity ("Mono" for short) after its discoverer, sepa- fore a solid metallic sphere with a radius of 1220 km—about
rates a crust composed of low-density silicates, which are two-thirds the size of the Moon—suspended within the liq-
rich in aluminum and potassium, from mantle silicates of uid outer core.
higher density, which contain more magnesium and iron. Geologists were puzzled by the existence of a "frozen"
Like the core-mantle boundary, the Moho boundary is inner core. From other considerations, they knew that tem-
global. However, it was found to be substantially shallower peratures inside Earth should increase with depth. Accord-
beneath the oceans than beneath the continents. On a global ing to the best current estimates, the temperature rises from
basis, the average thickness of oceanic crust is only about about 3500°C at the core-mantle boundary to almost 5000°C
7 km, compared to almost 40 km for the continents. More- at its center. If the inner core is hotter, how could it be frozen
over, rocks in the oceanic crust contain more iron and are while the outer core is molten? The mystery was eventually
therefore denser than continental rocks. Because the con- solved by laboratory experiments on iron-nickel alloys,
tinental crust is thicker but less dense than oceanic crust, which showed that the "freezing" was due to higher pres-
the continents ride high by floating like buoyant rafts on the sures rather than lower temperatures at Earth's center.
denser mantle (Figure 1.7), much as icebergs float on the
ocean. Continental buoyancy explains the most striking fea-
ture of Earth's surface: why the elevations shown in Figure
1.3 fall in two main groups, 0-1 km above sea level for much
of the land surface and 4-5 km below sea level for much of By the mid-twentieth century, geologists had discovered all
the deep oceans. of Earth's major layers—crust, mantle, outer core, and inner
Shear waves travel well through the mantle and crust, core—plus a number of more subtle features in its interior.
so we know that both are solid rock. How can continents They found, for example, that the mantle itself is layered
float on solid rock? Rocks can be solid and strong over the into an upper mantle and a lower mantle, separated by a
short term (seconds to years) but weak over the long term transition zone where the rock density increases in a series
(thousands to millions of years). Over very long intervals, of steps. These density steps are not caused by changes in
the mantle below a depth of about 100 km has little strength the rock's chemical composition but rather by changes in its
and flows when it must adjust to support the weight of con- compactness due to the increasing pressure with depth. The
tinents and mountains. two largest density jumps in the transition zone are located
at depths of about 400 km and 650 km, but they are smaller
than the density increases across the Moho discontinuity and
core-mantle boundary, which are due to changes in compo-
Because the mantle is solid and the outer part of the core is sition (see Figure 1.5).
liquid, the core-mantle boundary reflects seismic waves just Geologists were also able to show that Earth's outer core
as a mirror reflects light waves. In 1936, Danish seismolo- could not be made of a pure iron-nickel alloy, because the
densities of these metals are higher than the observed den- Only 8 elements, out of more than 100, make up 99 per-
sity of the outer core. About 10 percent of the outer core's cent of Earth's mass (Figure 1.8). In fact, about 90 percent
mass must be made of lighter elements, such as oxygen and of the Earth consists of only four elements: iron, oxygen, sil-
sulfur. On the other hand, the density of the solid inner core icon, and magnesium. The first two are the most abundant
is slightly higher than that of the outer core and is consistent elements, each accounting for nearly a third of the planet's
with a nearly pure iron-nickel alloy. overall mass, but they are distributed very differently. Iron,
By bringing together many lines of evidence, geologists the densest common element, is concentrated in the core,
have put together a model of the composition of Earth and its whereas oxygen, the lightest common element, is concen-
various layers. The data include the composition of crustal trated in the crust and mantle. These relationships show that
and mantle rocks as well as the compositions of meteorites, the different compositions of Earth's layers are primarily the
thought to be samples of the cosmic material from which work of gravity. As you can see in Figure 1.8, the crustal
planets like Earth were originally made. rocks on which we stand are almost 50 percent oxygen.
 collect information about the Earth system on a global scale,
and computers are powerful enough to calculate the mass
and energy transfers within the system. The major compo-
nents of the Earth system are depicted in Figure 1.10. We
Earth is a restless planet, continually changing through geo- have discussed some of them already; we will define the
logic activity such as earthquakes, volcanoes, and glaciation. others shortly.
This activity is powered by two heat engines: one internal, We will talk about the Earth system throughout this
the other external (Figure 1.9). A heat engine—for exam- text. Let's get started by thinking about some of its basic
ple, the gasoline engine of an automobile—transforms heat features. Earth is an open system in the sense that it ex-
into mechanical motion or work. Earth's internal engine is changes mass and energy with the rest of the cosmos. Radi-
powered by the heat energy trapped during the planet's vio- ant energy from the Sun energizes the weathering and ero-
lent origin and generated by radioactivity in its deep interior. sion of Earth's surface, as well as the growth of plants,
The internal heat drives motions in the mantle and core, sup- which feed almost all living things. Our climate is controlled
plying the energy to melt rock, move continents, and lift by the balance between the solar energy coming into the
up mountains. Earth's external engine is driven by solar Earth system and the energy Earth radiates back into space.
energy—heat supplied to Earth's surface by the Sun. Heat These days, the exchange of material between Earth and
from the Sun energizes the atmosphere and oceans and is space is relatively small—only about a million tons of mete-
responsible for our climate and weather. Rain, wind, and ice orites, equivalent to a cube 70 m on a side, fall to Earth each
erode mountains and shape the landscape, and the shape of year—but the mass transfer was much greater during the
the landscape, in turn, changes the climate. early life of the solar system.
All the parts of our planet and all their interactions, Although we think of Earth as a single system, it is a
taken together, constitute the E a r t h system. Although Earth challenge to study the whole thing all at once. Instead, we
scientists have long thought in terms of natural systems, it will focus our attention on parts of the system (subsystems)
was not until the late twentieth century that they had the we are trying to understand. For instance, in the discussion of
tools to investigate how the Earth system actually works. recent climate changes, we will primarily consider interac-
Networks of instruments and Earth-orbiting satellites now tions among the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere that
are driven by solar energy. Our coverage of how the conti- In this chapter, we will introduce three important geo-
nents are deformed to make mountains will focus on inter- systems that operate on a global scale: the climate system,
actions between the crust and the deeper mantle that are the plate tectonic system, and the geodynamo. Later in the
driven by Earth's internal energy. Specialized subsystems book, we will have occasion to discuss a number of smaller
that describe specific types of terrestrial behavior, such as cli- geosystems. Here are three examples: volcanoes that erupt
mate changes or mountain building, are called geosystems. hot lava (Chapter 12), hydrologic systems that give us our
The Earth system can be thought of as the collection of all drinking water (Chapter 17), and petroleum reservoirs that
these open, interacting (and often overlapping) geosystems. produce oil and gas (Chapter 23).
 out of Earth's interior in volcanic eruptions and the amount
I The Climate System
withdrawn during the weathering of silicate rocks. In this
Weather is the term we use to describe the temperature, pre- way, the climate system is regulated by interactions with the
cipitation, cloud cover, and winds observed at a particular solid Earth.
location and time on Earth's surface. We all know how vari- To understand these types of interactions, scientists
able the weather can be—hot and rainy one day, cool and dry build numerical models—virtual climate systems—on large
the next—depending on the movements of storm systems, computers, and they compare the results of their computer
warm and cold fronts, and other atmospheric disturbances. simulations with observed data. They hope to improve the
Because the atmosphere is so complex, even the best forecast- models by testing them against additional observations, so
ers have a hard time predicting the weather more than four or that they can accurately predict how climate will change in
five days in advance. However, we can guess in rough terms the future. A particularly urgent problem is to understand the
what our weather will be much further into the future, because global warming that might be caused by human-generated
the weather is governed primarily by the changes in solar emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
energy input on seasonal and daily cycles: summers are hot, Part of the public debate about global warming centers on
winters cold; days are warmer, nights cooler. Climate is a the accuracy of computer predictions. Skeptics argue that
description of these weather cycles obtained by averaging even the most sophisticated computer models are unreliable
temperature and other variables over many years of observa- because they lack many features of the real Earth system. In
tion. A complete description of climate also includes meas- Chapter 15, we will discuss some aspects of how the climate
ures of how variable the weather has been, such as the high- system works and, in Chapter 23, the practical problems of
est and lowest temperatures ever recorded on a given day. climate change caused by human activities.
The climate system includes all the Earth system com-
ponents that determine climate on a global scale and how
climate changes with time. In other words, the climate sys-
tem describes not only the behavior of the atmosphere but Some of Earth's more dramatic geologic events—volcanic
also how climate is influenced by the hydrosphere, cryo- eruptions and earthquakes, for example—also result from
sphere, biosphere, and lithosphere (see Figure 1.10). interactions within the Earth system. These phenomena are
When the Sun warms Earth's surface, some of the heat driven by Earth's internal heat, which escapes through the
is trapped by water vapor, carbon dioxide, and other gases in circulation of material in Earth's solid mantle.
the atmosphere, much as heat is trapped by frosted glass in We have seen that Earth is zoned by chemistry: its crust,
a greenhouse, This greenhouse effect explains why Earth has mantle, and core are chemically distinct layers. Earth is also
a pleasant climate that makes life possible. If its atmosphere zoned by strength, a property that measures how much an
contained no greenhouse gases, its surface would be frozen Earth material can resist being deformed. Material strength
solid! Therefore, greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dio- depends on chemical composition (bricks are strong, soap
xide, play an essential role in regulating climate. As we will bars are weak) and temperature (cold wax is strong, hot wax
learn in later chapters, the concentration of carbon dioxide is weak). In some ways, the outer part of the solid Earth
in the atmosphere is a balance between the amount spewed behaves like a ball of hot wax. Cooling of the surface forms
the strong outer shell or lithosphere (from the Greek lithos, at boundaries where plates converge. This general process,
meaning "stone") that encases a hot, weak asthenosphere in which hotter material rises and cooler material sinks, is
(from the Greek asthenes, meaning "weak"). The litho- called convection (Figure 1.11). We note that the flow in
sphere includes the crust and the top part of the mantle down ductile solids is usually slower than fluid flow, because even
to an average depth of about 100 km. When subjected to "weak" solids (say, wax or taffy) are more resistant to defor-
force, the lithosphere tends to behave as a nearly rigid and mation than ordinary fluids (say, water or mercury).
brittle shell, whereas the underlying asthenosphere flows as The convecting mantle and its overlying mosaic of litho-
a moldable, or ductile, solid. spheric plates constitute the plate tectonic system. As with
According to the remarkable theory of plate tectonics, the climate system (which involves a wide range of convec-
the lithosphere is not a continuous shell; it is broken into tive processes in the atmosphere and oceans), scientists use
about a dozen large plates that move over Earth's surface at computer simulations to study plate tectonics, and they revise
rates of a few centimeters per year. Each plate is a rigid unit the models when their implications disagree with actual data.
that rides on the asthenosphere, which also is in motion. The
lithosphere that forms a plate may be just a few kilometers
thick in volcanically active areas and perhaps 200 km thick
or more beneath the older, colder parts of the continents. The The third global geosystem involves interactions that pro-
discovery of plate tectonics in the 1960s led to the first uni- duce a magnetic field deep inside the Earth, in its fluid outer
fied theory that explained the worldwide distribution of core. This magnetic field reaches far into outer space, caus-
earthquakes and volcanoes, continental drift, mountain build- ing compass needles to point north and shielding the bio-
ing, and many other geologic phenomena. Chapter 2 will be sphere from the Sun's harmful radiation. When rocks form,
devoted to a detailed description of plate tectonics. they become slightly magnetized by this field, so geologists
Why do the plates move across Earth's surface instead can study how the magnetic field behaved in the past and use
of locking up into a completely rigid shell? The forces that it to help them decipher the geologic record.
push and pull the plates around the surface come from the Earth's internal magnetic field behaves as if a powerful
heat engine in Earth's solid mantle. Driven by internal heat, bar magnet were located at Earth's center and inclined about
hot mantle material rises where plates separate. The litho- 11° from its axis of rotation. The magnetic force points into
sphere cools and becomes more rigid as it moves away, Earth at the north magnetic pole and outward at the south
eventually sinking into the mantle under the pull of gravity magnetic pole (Figure 1.12). A compass needle free to
swing under the influence of the magnetic field will rotate
into a position parallel to the local line of force, approxi-
mately in the north-south direction.
Although a permanent magnet at Earth's center can ex-
plain the dipolar ("two-pole") nature of the observed mag- So far, we have discussed Earth's size and shape, its internal
netic field, this hypothesis can be easily rejected. Labora- layering and composition, and the operation of its three
tory experiments demonstrate that the field of a permanent major geosystems. How did Earth get its layered structure in
magnet is destroyed when the magnet is heated above about the first place? How have the global geosystems evolved
500°C. We know that the temperatures in Earth's deep inte- through geologic time? To begin to answer these questions,
rior are much higher than that—thousands of degrees at its we present a brief overview of geologic time from the birth of
center—so, unless the magnetism is constantly regenerated, the planet to the present. Later chapters will fill in the details.
it cannot be maintained. Comprehending the immensity of geologic time is a
Scientists theorize that heat flowing out of Earth's core challenge. The popular writer John McPhee has eloquently
causes convection that generates and maintains the magnetic noted that geologists look into the "deep time" of Earth's
field. Why is a magnetic field created by convection in the early history (measured in billions of years), just as
outer core but not by convection in the mantle? First, the astronomers look into the "deep space" of the outer universe
outer core is made primarily of iron, which is a very good (measured in billions of light-years). Figure 1.13 presents
electrical conductor, whereas the silicate rocks of the man- geologic time as a ribbon marked with some major events
tle are very poor electrical conductors. Second, the convec- and transitions.
tive motions are a million times more rapid in the liquid
outer core than in the solid mantle. These rapid motions stir
up electric currents in the iron to create a geodynamo with
a strong magnetic field.
,A dynamo is an engine that produces electricity by rotat- From meteorites, geologists have been able to show that
ing a coil of conducting wire through a magnetic field. The Earth and the other planets formed about 4.56 billion years
magnetic field can come from a permanent magnet or be ago by the rapid condensation of a dust cloud that circu-
generated by passing electricity through another coil—an lated around the young Sun. This violent process, which
electromagnet. The big dynamos in all commercial power involved the aggregation and collision of progressively
plants use electromagnets (permanent magnets are too larger clumps of matter, will be described in more detail in
weak). The energy needed to keep the magnetic field going, Chapter 9. Within just 100 million years (a relatively short
as well as the electricity sent out to customers, comes from period of time, geologically speaking), the Moon had
the mechanical work required to rotate the coil. In most formed and Earth's core had separated from its mantle.
power plants, this work is done by steam or falling water. Exactly what happened during the next several hundred
The geodynamo in Earth's outer core operates on the same million years is hard to figure out, because very little of the
basic principles, except that the work comes from convec- rock record survived the intense bombardment by the large
tion powered by the core's internal heat. Similar convective meteorites that were constantly smashing into Earth. This
dynamos are thought to generate the strong magnetic fields early period of Earth's history can be appropriately called
observed on Jupiter and the Sun. the geologic "dark ages."
For some 400 years, scientists have known that a com- The oldest rocks now found on Earth's surface are about
pass needle points to the north because of Earth's magnetic 4 billion years old. Rocks as ancient as 3.8 billion years
field. Imagine how stunned they were a few decades ago show evidence of erosion by water, indicating the existence
when they found geologic evidence that the magnetic field of a hydrosphere and the operation of a climate system not
can completely reverse itself—that is, it can flip its north too different from that of the present. Rocks only slightly
magnetic pole with its south magnetic pole. Over about half younger, 3.5 billion years old, record a magnetic field about
of geologic time, a compass needle would have pointed to as strong as the one we see today, which puts a bound on
the south! the age of the geodynamo. By 2.5 billion years ago, enough
These magnetic reversals occur at irregular intervals low-density crust had collected at Earth's surface to form
ranging from tens of thousands to millions of years. The large continental masses. The geologic processes that then
processes that cause them are not well understood, but com- modified these continents were very similar to those we see
puter models of the geodynamo show sporadic reversals in operating today in plate tectonics.
the absence of any other external factors—that is, purely
through internal interactions. As we will see in the next
chapter, geologists have found magnetic reversals to be
very useful, because they can use their imprint on the geo- Life also began very early in Earth's history, as we can tell
logic record to help them figure out the motions of the tec- from the study of fossils, traces of organisms preserved in
tonic plates. the geologic record. Fossils of primitive bacteria have been
found in rocks dated at 3.5 billion years. A key event was the nearly all animals inhabiting the Earth today. It was during
evolution of organisms such as plants that release oxygen this evolutionary explosion, sometimes called biology's Big
into the atmosphere and oceans. The buildup of oxygen in Bang, that animals with shells first left their shelly fossils.
the atmosphere was under way by 2.5 billion years ago. The Although biological evolution is often viewed as a very
increase to modern levels of atmospheric oxygen most likely slow process, it is punctuated by brief periods of rapid
occurred in a series of steps over a period perhaps as long as change. Spectacular examples are major mass extinctions,
2 billion years. during which many types of animals and plants suddenly
Life on early Earth was primitive, consisting mostly of disappeared from the geologic record. Five of these huge
small, single-celled organisms that floated near the surface turnovers are marked on the time ribbon in Figure 1.13. The
of the oceans or lived on the seafloor. Between 1 billion and last was caused by a major meteorite impact 65 million
2 billion years ago, more complex life-forms such as algae years ago. The meteorite, not much larger than about 10 km
and seaweed evolved. The first animals appeared about in diameter, caused the extinction of half of Earth's species,
600 million years ago, evolving in a series of waves. In a including all dinosaurs. This extreme event may have made
period starting 542 million years ago and probably lasting it possible for mammals to become the dominant species
less than 10 million years, eight entirely new branches of the and paved the way for humankind's emergence in the last
animal kingdom were established, including ancestors to 200,000 years.
 The causes of the other mass extinction are still being work and interact with one another. There are three major
debated. In addition to meteorite impacts, scientists have pro- global geosystems: the climate system, which mainly in-
posed other types of extreme events, such as rapid climate volves interactions among the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and
changes brought on by glaciations and massive eruptions of biosphere; the plate tectonic system, which mainly involves
volcanic material. The evidence is often ambiguous or- interactions among Earth's solid components (lithosphere,
inconsistent. For example, the largest extinction event of all asthenosphere, and deep mantle); and the geodynamo sys-
time took place about 250 million years ago, wiping out tem, which mainly involves interactions within Earth's cen-
nearly 95 percent of all species. A meteorite impact has been tral core. The climate system is driven by heat from the Sun,
proposed by some investigators, but the geologic record whereas the plate tectonic and geodynamo systems are
shows that the ice sheets expanded at this time and seawater driven by Earth's internal heat.
chemistry changed, consistent with a major climate crisis.
What are the basic elements of plate tectonics? The litho-
At the same time, an enormous volcanic eruption covered an
sphere is not a continuous shell; it is broken into about a
area in Siberia almost half the size of the United States
dozen large plates. Driven by convection in the mantle,
with 2 or 3 million cubic kilometers of lava. This mass
plates move over Earth's surface at rates of a few centi-
extinction has been dubbed "Murder on the Orient Express,"
meters per year. Each plate acts as a rigid unit, riding on the
because there are so many suspects!
asthenosphere, which also is in motion. The lithosphere
begins to form from rising hot mantle material where plates
separate, cooling and becoming more rigid as it moves away
from this divergent boundary. Eventually, it sinks into the
asthenosphere, dragging material back into the mantle at
What is geology? Geology is the science that deals with boundaries where plates converge.
Earth—its history, its composition and internal structure,
What are some major events in Earth's history? Earth
and its surface features.
formed as a planet 4.56 billion years ago. Rocks as old as
How do geologists study Earth? Geologists, like other sci- 4 billion years have survived in Earth's crust. Liquid water
entists, use the scientific method. They share the data that existed on Earth's surface by 3.8 billion years ago, and the
they develop and check one another's work. A hypothesis is geodynamo was generating a magnetic field by 3.5 billion
a tentative explanation of a body of data. A set of related years ago. The earliest evidence of life has been found in
hypotheses confirmed by other data and experiments may be rocks of this latter age. By 2.5 billion years ago, the oxygen
elevated to a theory. A theory may be abandoned or modi- content of the atmosphere was rising because of oxygen pro-
fied when subsequent observations shows it to be false. Con- duction by early plant life, and the geologic processes at
fidence grows in those theories that withstand repeated tests Earth's surface were very similar to those operating today in
and are able to predict the results of new experiments. plate tectonics. Animals appeared suddenly about 600 mil-
lion years ago, diversifying rapidly in a great evolutionary
What is Earth's size and shape? Earth's overall shape is a
explosion. The subsequent evolution of life was marked by
sphere with an average radius of 6370 km that bulges
a series of mass extinctions, the last caused by a large mete-
slightly at the equator and is slightly squashed at the poles,
orite impact 65 million years ago, which killed off the
owing to the planet's rotation. Its solid surface has topogra-
dinosaurs. Our species, Homo sapiens, first appeared about
phy that deviates from this overall shape by about 10 km.
160,000 years ago.
Elevations fall into two main groups: 0-1 km above sea level
for much of the land surface and 4-5 km below sea level for
much of the deep oceans.
What are Earth's major layers? Earth's interior is divided
into concentric layers of different compositions, separated asthenosphere (p. 13) mantle (p. 6)
by sharp, nearly spherical boundaries. The outer layer is the
climate system (p. 12) outer core (p. 8)
crust, which varies from about 40 km thick beneath conti-
nents to about 8 km thick beneath oceans. Below the crust is core (p. 6) plate tectonic system
the mantle, a thick shell of denser rock that extends to the crust (p. 8) (p. 13)
core-mantle boundary at a depth of 2900 km. The central Earth system (p. 10) principle of
core, which is composed primarily of iron and nickel, is uniformitarianism
fossil (p. 14)
divided into two layers: a liquid outer core and a solid inner (p. 5)
core, separated by a boundary at a depth of 5150 km. geodynamo (p. 14)
scientific method
geosystem (p. 11)
How do we study Earth as a system of interacting com- (p. 2)
inner core (p. 8)
ponents? When we try to understand a complex system seismic wave (p. 6)
such as Earth, we find that it is often easier to break the sys- lithosphere (p. 13)
topography (p. 4)
tem down into subsystems (geosystems) to see how they magnetic field (p. 13)
1. Illustrate the differences between a hypothesis, a the- 1. How does science differ from religion as a way to
ory, and a model with some examples drawn from this understand the world?
chapter.
2. Imagine you are a tour guide on a journey from Earth's
2. Give an example of how the model of Earth's spherical surface to its center. How would you describe the material
shape developed by Eratosthenes can be experimentally that your tour group encounters on the way down? Why is
tested. the density of the material always increasing as you go
deeper?
3. Give two reasons why Earth's shape is not a perfect
sphere. 3. How does viewing Earth as a system of interacting
components help us to understand our planet? Give an
4. If you made a model of Earth's spherical shape that was
example of an interaction between two or more geosys-
10 cm in radius, how high would Mount Everest rise above
tems that could affect the geologic record.
sea level?
4. In what general ways are the climate system, the plate
5. It is thought that a large meteorite impact 65 million
tectonic system, and the geodynamo system similar? In
years ago caused the extinction of half of Earth's living
what ways are they different?
species, including all the dinosaurs. Does this event disprove
the principle of uniformitarianism? Explain your answer. 5. Not every planet has a geodynamo. Why not? If Earth
did not have a magnetic field, what might be different
6. How does the chemical composition of Earth's crust dif-
about our planet?
fer from that of its deeper interior? From that of its core?
6. Based on the material presented in this chapter, what
7. Explain how the outer core can be a liquid while the
can we say about how long ago the three major global
deep mantle is a solid.
geosystems began to operate?
8. How do the terms weather and climate differ? Express
7. If no theory can be proved true, why do almost all geol-
the relationship between climate and weather using exam-
ogists believe strongly in Darwin's theory of evolution?
ples from your experience.

9. Earth's mantle is solid, but it convects as part of the

plate tectonic system. Explain why these statements are
not contradictory.