GEOL 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Solar Wind, Block Diagram, Peridotite
Document Summary
No shift: take home message from last lecture. Earth is a tiny part of the universe. We know the universe is expanding because distant galaxies are moving away from us. Stellar fusion is responsible for all element up to iron (fe). Differentiation: the earth was originally fairly homogenous as a molten ball of hot stuff, over time the earth cooled and the iron solidified into the core of the earth, differentiation occurred during the first couple 100 million years. Formation of the moon: we originally thought it had been floating around and was captured by the. Earth"s gravitational pull: we now think that the moon was originally part of the earth. The earth was hit by a big rock and the little bits of rock were sent into space. These rocks eventually came together to form the moon: the moon has a similar composition to the mantle of the earth.
