2.0.3 How The World Began: Geology - Overview

Version 1.3 March 2013                                               (Previous Version)

We know how the solar system, including the sun, Moon and the Earth evolved.

The detailed pages of Chapter 2.3 go through the stages of the evolution of the solar system.  When our local dust cloud of hydrogen, helium and all the other kinds of atoms, coalesced into the Sun and began to shine, its light pushed away the lighter atoms.  These lighter elements, mostly hydrogen and helium, coalesced into the four outer planets, the gas giants: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, which don’t have a solid surface.  The heavier atoms, such as iron, carbon, oxygen and nitrogen, stayed closer to the Sun, and coalesced into the four inner rock planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. 

Another rock proto-planet crashed into the early Earth, bounced off and became the Moon, revolving around the Earth.  Other planets acquired their moons in a variety of ways. 

Chapter 2.3 goes through the evolution of Earth.  As the early Earth crashed together it became hot and the iron and rock melted.  Most of the heavier liquids, such as iron, sank to the middle.  Lighter material, like liquid rock, floated to the surface, radiated heat into space, slowly cooled, and the rock solidified.  Cracks appeared in the surface and molten rock burst through in volcanoes.  Gases spewed out forming the early atmosphere of methane, carbon dioxide and water vapour.  This also happened on the other rocky planets and the Moon.  On Mercury and the Moon gravity was too low to stop the atmosphere drifting off into space.  Earth and Mars cooled until the water vapour turned liquid and it rained for thousands of years, filling the seas, cutting paths through the rocks, making valleys and canyons, washing sand, salt and other minerals into the oceans.

The planets kept revolving around the sun in tune with the original dust cloud, but in ellipses, not perfect circles, giving us our annual seasons.  As the planets formed, gravity made them start rotating on their axes, giving us night and day.  The axis of Earth’s rotation is tilted, so as Earth revolves around the Sun the north and south hemispheres alternate in becoming cooler or warmer.  The Poles get less sunlight and are cooler; the Equator gets more direct sunlight and is hotter.  Compared to the seas, land gets hotter during the day and colder at night.  These temperature differences cause ocean currents and atmospheric winds.  The molten iron at the centre of the earth circulates too, causing a magnetic field around the earth that pushes away some harmful radiation from the Sun.  Molten rock under the Earth’s surface pushes around the continents on huge tectonic plates, causing ruptures at their edges that are the common sites of volcanoes and earthquakes, and earthquakes at sea cause tsunamis.

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Science has good explanations of how the Earth formed, that will only be replaced by even better ones.  Science shows that we don’t need supernatural explanations for how the Earth evolved, validating our core value of life, this natural life.