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EES 160 > What's the Earth System and How do we Study it? > Flashcards

What's the Earth System and How do we Study it? Flashcards

(80 cards)

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1
Q

How does the Earth System function?

A

Through construction & destruction

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2
Q

What’s the construction process?

A

An internal heat engine filled with energy

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3
Q

What’s the destructive process?

A

An external heat engine filled with energy

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4
Q

What are terrestrial planets?

A

Planets that have surfaces, smaller than gas planets, don’t have many moons as gas planets, and have more thermal energy

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5
Q

What are gas planets?

A

Planets that are made out of gas, bigger than terrestrial planets, more moons, and stronger gravitational pull

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6
Q

What’s CHZ?

A

A continuously Habitable Zone.

1) Water can be fluid for 4.5 Ga
2. ) Planet just large enough with enough gravity to hold an atmosphere

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7
Q

Why is CHZ important?

A

Determines whether a planet is active or not.

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8
Q

Why is Earth an active planet?

A

Because it is a CHZ planet, its large enough to keep internal heat & keep its atmosphere, life can exist, and its far from the sun to have liquid water & climate stability over 4.5 Ga

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9
Q

What single event turned the entire Earth molten?

A

Outgassing

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10
Q

Why is the size of the Earth important?

A

Because it is big enough to hold it’s own atmosphere

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11
Q

How old is the solar system?

A

4.57 Ga

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12
Q

How long ago was the formation of the Earth-moon system?

A

4.45 Ga

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13
Q

How far is the Earth from the sun?

A

93 mill. miles

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14
Q

What’s outgassing?

A

It’s where chemicals from volcano eruptions create an atmosphere

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15
Q

What are the rocky/ terrestrial planets?

A

Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars

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16
Q

Why doesn’t mercury have water?

A

It dried up

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17
Q

Why doesn’t mars have water?

A

It froze

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18
Q

How did the Earth form?

A

Through a collision

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19
Q

How did the solar system form?

A

From the gravitational collapse of a small part of a giant molecular cloud

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20
Q

What’s a primodrial/ pre-solar nebula

A

A giant nebula cloud

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21
Q

How big is comet-67 P?

A

Approx. 4 km long and approx. 3.5 km wide

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22
Q

When did the sun become the sun?

A

Nuclear fusion begins in the sun (proto-sun) and lights the sun, sent major shock waves throughout the protoplanetary disc to be concentrated in belts causing more collisions & accretions forming proplanets

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23
Q

What’s the formation of the moon?

A
  1. ) Collision with Thea

2. ) Collision helps accrete the moon with debris from the rings of Earth

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24
Q

How did the molten rock ancient Earth cool to its present form?

A

Through 3 functions of cooling

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25
What are the three forms of cooling?
1. ) Convection 2. ) Radiation 3. ) conduction
26
What happens during convection?
Hot material rises and cool material falls
27
What happens during conduction?
Energy emits heat from the core
28
What happens during radiation?
Energy is emitted to warm up material around it
29
What's Earth's energy input and output?
Input: Solar energy Output: terrestrial energy
30
What's a hypothesis?
A testable explanation of a situation that can be supported or disproved
31
Where does cool molted rock or lava form?
The lithosphere
32
How are protoplanets formed?
Through accretion of debris through gravitational attraction
33
What's a protoplanetary disk?
a rotating circumstellar disk of dense gas and dust surrounding a young newly formed star
34
What must remain in equilibrium?
Constructive and destructive process
35
What's an engine?
A device that runs on energy
36
What's a heat engine?
A device that produces energy from heat
37
What's a system?
Something that is separate from other systems
38
What's the Earth system?
The interaction of 4 subsystems
39
What does a system include?
1. ) Common characteristics 2. ) Parts that are combinations of matter and energy that interact 3. ) Interdependent parts
40
How do we study geology?
.Observation .Understanding & use of uniformitarianism .Understand & use catastrophism .Combine uniformitarianism and catastrophism and view Earth's history as slow, gradual story, punctuated by natural catastrophic events
41
What's uniformitarianism?
Present is key to past & slow change over vast times. ("same")
42
What's catastrophism?
Presence of sudden, short-lived, violent events that aren't uniformitarianism
43
What's an example of catastrophism?
A meteor that caused mass extinction of dinosaurs
44
Why do we study the Earth?
. To make a living "learn to earn" | .Understand the Earth to sustain the cultural & ecologic unity of places we live: Earth
45
What does Gaia mean?
mother; the form of complex living beings
46
What are the types of systems?
Open, closed, isolated
47
What's an open system?
Allows energy & mass across system boundary
48
What's a closed system?
Allows energy only across system boundary
49
What's isolated system?
Allows neither energy nor mass across the system boundary
50
How much meteorite mass falls to Earth each year?
37,000-78,000 tons
51
What's structure?
How parts are arranged
52
What's process?
Change(s) in a system
53
What are the major parts/ subsystems of the Earth system?
Atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere (geosphere), and biosphere
54
What are interface phenomena?
Interaction between various subsystems
55
What is an example of interface phenomena?
Wind erosion: atmosphere and lithosphere
56
What helped outgassing create the atmosphere?
Gravity & radioactivity
57
What type of rocks apply to the law of horizontality?
Sedimentary rocks
58
What type of rocks apply to the principle of inclusions?
Metamorphic rocks
59
What type of rock apply to the law of cross-cutting?
Igneous rocks
60
What's a dike?
An igneous intrusion that cuts across overlying layers
61
What's a fault?
A geological event that curves from the top to the bottom
62
What laws/ principles pertain to faults?
Original horizontality & cross-cutting relationship
63
Do stable or unstable isotopes decay?
unstable because they have too few neutrons
64
What's a fold?
A deformation of rock layers that do not bend
65
Can a fault and fold occur at the same time?
yes
66
What's the hydrosphere?
All the water on Earth and in the atmosphere
67
What % of Earth water is salt water and fresh water?
97% salt water, 3% fresh water
68
What's the cyrosphere?
The region of permanently frozen water
69
What's the atmosphere?
A blanket of gases that surrounds our planet
70
What's the biosphere?
All organisms on Earth as well as environment in which they live
71
What's the lithosphere (geosphere)?
The area from the surface of Earth down to its center
72
What's the geosphere divided into?
Crust, mantle, & core
73
What's the crust?
Rigid outer shell of Earth of two kinds
74
What are the two kinds of crust?
Continental and Oceanic
75
What's the mantle?
Temperature: 100-40000 degrees celcius
76
What's the core?
Temperature: as high as 7000 degrees celcius
77
What's degassing?
Make or become free of unwanted or excess gas
78
What's internal differentiation?
Analysis of the processes involved in the value chain in order to find out which of them make the product different
79
What's radiometric dating?
Dating an object using radioactive isotopes
80
What's gravity?
A force that attracts a body toward the center of the Earth or toward any other physical body having mass

EES 160 (15 decks)

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