GEOL 11040 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Solar Wind, Uniformitarianism, Mesozoic

• School: Kent State University
• Department: Geology
• Course: GEOL 11040
• Professor: Elizabeth Herndon

Document Summary

Protects earth from solar wind, which consists of high velocity charged particles. Charged particles interacting with the shield at the poles. Deep time - expanded of earth"s geological history. Catastrophic - geologic change taken place in short bursts over course of history. Uniformitarianism - physical processes (erosion, depositional) that operate in the modern world, did so in the past at same rate. These slow processes are responsible for the features we see today. *present is key to the past * Changes in rock composition, geological features, and fossil records can tell us a lot about earth in the past. Earth"s history is divided into eons and eras, which are separated according to major changes in the rock record. Hadeon - hell (4. 6 to 4. 0 ga) extremely hot. Archean - ancient nearly all continental crust was formed. Development of tectonic plates; first multicellular life; oxygen in. Multicellular complex life preserved as fossils in the rock record.