EAPS 100: Planet Earth

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 Email Mistake
I included an out of date email for TA Marie Henderson.

Email Please use this email if you need to contact her.

Mike - [email protected]

Marie - [email protected]

Lauren - [email protected]

Discussion Boards
Start here with content questions. It is a place for student to student
discussion and we will check in a few times per week to answer
common questions about content.
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Textbook Reading

Chapter 1: The Nature of Earth Science (p. 2 - 35)

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 Goals for this Module

You should be able to accomplish the following tasks at the end of this module…

• Have a general sense of how our planet formed and split into the core, mantle,
crust, and hydrosphere

• Understand that the Earth changes through time

• Link a few long-term planetary processes to events that are consequential to

you

• Contextualize why understanding your home planet is a critical component of

being a responsible planetary citizen

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General Structure of the Earth

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In the Beginning…

Stars and solar systems form

from clouds of gas and other
matter called nebulae. Later
in the course we will discuss
where this gas came from
and how this process works
in detail.

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Nebular Collapse

Gravity pulled nebular gases and dust

together to start to form a protostar
and a disc of rotating matter.

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Protoplanetary Discs

Gravity continued to act

on particles rotating in
the protoplanetary disc
to draw them together,
first to form large clumps
(100s of meters across)
and then to form larger
and larger bodies.

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Forming Planets

Finally, the most

massive objects
gravitationally collect
more and more matter,
eventually forming
planets.

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Chondritic Meteorites
We think that chondritic
meteorites coalesced to make
Earth, because these objects
have the same chemical
composition as the sun, they
contain materials that could
have solidified directly from
nebular gases, and they are
some of the oldest objects yet
discovered within the solar
system.
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Planetary Differentiation

As the planet formed kinetic

and gravitational energy was
converted to thermal energy
leading to an incredibly hot
planet. It is likely that the entire
planet was composed of
magma early in the planet’s
history.

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Core Formation

This early, hot, molten,

state was important for
planetary
differentiation. On
Earth, Fe and Ni
formed liquid metal
and sank to the center
of the planet to form a
metallic planetary core.

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Mantle Formation

Other elements went

on to form Earth’s
rocky mantle and
crust.

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A Differentiated Planet
Hydrosphere ~0.5% of Earth’s radius

Rocky Crust ~1% of Earths radius

Rocky Mantle ~48.5% of Earth’s radius

2900 km

Metallic Core ~50% of Earth’s radius

6371 km 14
Putting Earth’s radius in context

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Deep Time

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Deep Time
Today

4.5 billion years ago

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Deep Time

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Deep Time
Southern Quebec

Himalaya

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Deep Time
Cryogenian Period

717-635 million years ago

Cretaceous

145-66 million years ago

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 Deep Time

Your life is profoundly influenced by planetary processes that occur

over extremely long timescales. The causes of many of these
processes are understood and their consequences are predictable (at
some level). Yet, because humans typically live <100 years we have a
hard time connecting everyday events to the deep history of our
planet.

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Example 1: Earthquakes

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Deep Time, Big Consequences

July 2019: Series of major

earthquakes in the Mojave
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2019 Mojave Earthquake

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1906 San Francisco Earthquake

• Magnitude 7.9
• Between 400 and >3,000
people died
• 490 city blocks were
destroyed
• 200,000 were left
homeless

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1906 San Francisco Earthquake

San Francisco

San
And
reas
Fau
lt
Los Angeles

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1906 San Francisco Earthquake
“Shake Map” for the San Francisco
1906 Earthquake

• Darker reds indicate more

severe shaking

• Why isn’t the shaking

concentric about it?

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Example 2: Weather

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Tornadoes The central United States
experiences the most
tornadoes of any part of
the world.

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Tornadoes

The Rocky Mountains were

uplifted between 75 and 35
million years ago.

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A More Urgent Need

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Photograph of Earth from a distance > 4 billion km taken by Voyager I
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That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love,
everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human
being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our
joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies,
and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero
and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every
king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother
and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher
of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every
"supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our
species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a
sunbeam.

Carl Sagan in a Pale Blue Dot

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The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is
nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species
could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the
moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

Carl Sagan in a Pale Blue Dot

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 Anthropocene

Humans have recently developed into the first species in our

planet’s history that has the capability to consciously influence
planetary scale processes. We have changed the planet
significantly enough that some Earth Scientists consider that we
have entered a new period in Earth’s history called the
Anthropocene.

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Carbon Cycle

Most notably, we have disrupted

the normal carbon cycle by
burning geologically sequestered
carbon (think coal and oil) and
releasing it into the atmosphere.

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CO2 Concentrations

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Greenhouse Gas
CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas
and traps thermal energy in the
atmosphere. Increasing
atmospheric CO2 has the
potential to cause global mean
temperatures to rise leading to
changes in climate (i.e., on
average where does rain fall,
where do severe storms form,
etc.)

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So, what do we do?

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 Course Objective

We aim to provide you with the tools and

knowledge necessary to make informed
decisions about how you interact with the Earth.

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