ENVS 1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Transpiration, Lightning, Heterotroph
1 May 2015
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Document Summary
Plants and animals (life on earth) were accidental inhabitants. A lot of scientific revolutions have taken place; theory of continental movement on plates as driving forces for earth system changes. Spectral analysis: way of determining chemical composition of things from a distance through analysis of light radiating from or reflecting off of them. Proposals raised to send probe to mars to see if life existed there in late 1960s. Had to work experiments; physical and chemical, that could be facilitated on the spaceship, interact with the martian surface and send info back from those experiments. Jim lovelock; independent scientist wanted to look at spectrum analysis of venus and mars because they are at chemical equilibrium; spectrum gives chemical composition of the plant depending on reflective properties of gases and elements involved. Medea hypothesis: earth is not as fond of life; history of earth full of extinctions and ecological disasters on planetary scale.
