E-Book Overview
From the opening and closing of oceans over millions of years to the overnight reshaping of landscapes by volcanoes, the Earth beneath our feet is constantly changing. The Rough Guide to the Earth explores all aspects of our dynamic planet, from the planet’s origins and evolution and the seasons and tides to melting ice caps, glaciers and climate change. Featuring many spectacular images and helpful diagrams, this Rough Guide provides a fascinating and accessible introduction to Earth science.
E-Book Content
HEK=>=K?:;I J^[ [ii[dj_Wb YecfWd_ed je ekh _dYh[Z_Xb[ fbWd[j J>; HEK=> =K?:; je J^[ :Vgi] BVgi^c >cXZ Five top geosights 1 The aurora interplanetary particle physics visible to the naked eye (see p.46) The Niagara Falls one of the best-loved and most accessible geosights of all (see p.75) The Lake District a landscape packed with evidence of past glaciation (see p.222) I S B N 978-1-84353-589-8 51699 9 781843 535898 3 5 2 The Icelandic Ridge 4 The Great Barrier Reef the Mid-Atlantic Ridge emerges above sea level (see p.63) the biggest living structure on Earth (see p.192) I=: GDJcigdYjXi^dc k^ ' FbWd[j ;Whj^ ' ( J^[ ;Whj^ _d ifWY[ (- ) J^[ ieb_Z ;Whj^ +- * J^[ Z[[f ;Whj^ // + J^[ W_ho ;Whj^ '(- , J^[ b_gk_Z ;Whj^ ',+ - J^[ _Yo ;Whj^ (&) . J^[ ;Whj^ WdZ ki ()+ / J^[ \kjkh[ ;Whj^ (,) H[iekhY[i (-+ E]did XgZY^ih >cYZm '-* '-, k ?djheZkYj_ed This book will tell you about the Earth, an endlessly interesting corner of the universe that we call home. Many years ago, a university handed me a degree certificate saying that I had studied geology. But I have spent the intervening period simplifying and explaining science, not doing it. So you will have no trouble understanding what follows. My aim, as Albert Einstein put it, is to provide explanations that are as simple as possible, but no simpler. And there will be some good pictures, plus some ideas about places you might want to take a look at for yourself. People have studied the Earth for thousands of years. At first many of the questions they asked involved matters of life and death. When should I plant my spring crop? When will there be a high tide to launch my fishing boat? How can this village get enough drinking water? People still worry about problems such as these. But our knowledge of the Earth as a whole has grown beyond measure in the recent past. In these pages I will say a little about how we know what we know, and who first discovered it, as well as telling you what we have found out. For most of the hundreds of thousands of years that humans have existed, they knew little about the planet they lived on. It was only in about 200 BC that the first measurement of the size of the Earth was made, the first vital step in understanding its true nature. Only much more recently, in the past few hundred years, have we learned the other key facts about it. We know how old the Earth is, what it is made of, what the inaccessible parts thousands of kilometres below our feet are like, how life has changed here over time, and how the solid, liquid and airy par