Planet Earth

• Geology is the study of planet Earth and its history, also known as Earth Science or Geoscience
• Physics is the study of elemental matter and energy
• Geophysics is the application of physics to geology
• The hard rocky surface is called lithospheric plates and moves 25 cm/yr
• Tectonics means "to build" and includes plate tectonics (continents sliding above hot plastic rocks) and vertical tectonics (mantle plumes of hot rock outpouring magma)
• Divergent plate margin involves continuous addition of new magma and its cooling, resulting in continuous movement of the plate away from the spreading center
• Orogeny refers to plates colliding and joining, creating convergent plate margins
• Subduction occurs when plates collide and one is destroyed
• Pangea was a supercontinent
• Uniformitarianism is the reconstruction of ancient environments by studying rock records, with the principle that "the present is the key to the past"
• Hydrogeology is the study of underground water, while hydrology is the study of surface water
• Sir Francis Bacon first suggested that all continents were together
• Antonio Snider-Pellegrini drew pictures demonstrating continents fitting together
• The first atlas of the Earth was made by Abraham Ortelius in 1598
• In 1683, the first European saw Niagara George and estimated the age of the Earth
• James Hutton, the "father of geology," published the theory of the Earth in 1795
• Charles Lyell's uniformitarianism states that the same natural laws and processes have always operated
• Robert Mallet coined the terms seismic and epicenter
• In 1846, Robert Mallet proposed that earthquakes are generated by crystal movements
• Antonio Snider noticed similarities in fossil assemblages of plants in Europe and America in 1858
• Lord Kelvin estimated the age of the Earth to be 100 million in 1862
• In 1872, the mid-Atlantic ridge and Challenger deep were discovered
• Ernest Rutherford's nuclear decay theory in 1905 predicted the Earth's age
• Jean Brühnes indicated that the North Pole was once at the South Pole in 1906
• Hess and Dietz proposed sea floor spreading in 1961
• Arthur Holmes proposed that continental drift is explained by convection currents in the mantle
• Tuzo Wilson invented the Wilson cycle, which explains the growth and decay of supercontinents
• Carl Schuchert's permanentism and Frank Bursley Taylor's mobilism theories
• Alfred Wegener coined the term Pangea and wrote "The Origin of Continents and Oceans"
• The discovery of magnetic stripes on the ocean floor supported the theory of sea floor spreading
• Harold Hess introduced sea floor spreading, leading to the abandonment of permanentism
• Transform faults allow spreading on either side of mid-ocean ridges
• Focus is where an earthquake is generated, while the epicenter is directly above on the Earth's crust
• Seismographs detect seismic waves
• Types of tectonic plates and plate margins: divergent, convergent, and transform
• Divergent boundaries contribute to seafloor spreading, producing oceanic crust
• Convergent boundaries involve plates moving toward each other, creating subduction or obduction zones
• Transform boundaries are where plates slide sideways past each other
• Hotspot tracts lead to active volcanoes
• Plate kinematics is the study of how plates move