Quarter 1-2 Earth & Space

Organic molecules

________ could have also been brought to earth by space debris.

Law of superposition

________- The older rocks are on the bottom and the younger rocks are on top.

Sedimentary strata

________ are deposited in layers that are horizontal or nearly horizontal, parallel to or nearly parallel to the Earth's surface.

Numeric age

________ means that we can more precisely assign a number (in years, minutes, seconds, or some other units of time) to the amount of time that has passed.

Radiometric

________ dating uses the half- life of atoms to figure out the age of the rock layers the atoms are in.

Exoplanet

More than 5000 ________ have been confirmed by NASA.

The earliest evidence of life on Earth comes from fossils discovered in Western Australia that date back to about 5 billion years ago.

**stromatolites**

Small celestial bodies

________ are primarily made out of the rock and dust that orbits the Sun.

light curve

If the lensing star has planets, then the ________ can be distorted (i.e., you get spikes)

Igneous form from the solidification of magma, so they are formed by

extreme heat, pressure, and composition.

Inner planets

________ are smaller but denser.

Coma

The cloud of gasses that forms around the nucleus as the ________ is heated is known as the ________.

Kepler first law states that-

The orbits of the planets are not a circle, but an ellipse. And the Sun is located at a focus point

The abundance of _____________ found in our universe.

Light elements, hydrogen, and helium

Planetesimals

________: Condensed material from the early stages of formation of the solar system.

Radioactive substance decay

________ is called half life.

Asteroids

________ are capable of having smaller moons that orbit them.

Absolute magnitude

The brightness of a star from a standard distance

Apparent magnitude

The brightness of a star as seen from Earth

90% of stars

Are in the main sequence, the longest phase of a stars life

Supernovas takeaway

They are the death explosion of stars

Creation of a supernova

When a large star becomes unstable, it begins to develop. The core will become too heavy and collapse (implode) in itself, creating a massive explosion that results in a ______.

Steady State Theory

(Sir James Jeans) It stated that there are no beginnings or endings to the universe. The universe is still expanding but maintains a constant average density. The matter is continuously created to form new galaxies and stars at the same rate old galaxies and stars are disappearing.

Big Bang Theory

Prior to the beginning, there was nothing. The universe is estimated to exist between 15-20 billion years as a singularity. Singularities are zones that defy our current understanding of physics.

It’s believed that they exist at the center of a black hole. After the singularity’s appearance, it expands and rapidly cools down, creating our universe.

Evidence for the Big Bang

Hubble’s law: Galaxies are moving away from us at a speed proportional to their distance. 

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Cosmic microwave background radiation: Leftover heat from the Big Bang

 

The abundance of light elements, hydrogen, and helium found in our universe

Cosmic microwave background radiation

Leftover heat from the Big Bang

The ultimate fate of an open universe

The universe will continue to expand forever. All stars will eventually use up their energy and burn out. The universe will be cold and dead forever. 

The ultimate fate of a closed universe

The expansion will begin to slow until the gravitational attraction of the matter forces the universe to reverse and collapse upon itself (Big Crunch theory). This might lead to another Big Bang or universe in the future. The amount of dark matter will determine the fate of the universe. 

Redshift

Redshift observation shows that distant galaxies are moving away from Earth (caused by the Doppler effect)

How the Doppler effect applies to light

The Doppler effect changes the color spectrum of the light. If the stars are moving farther away from us it's called a redshift. If it's moving closer it's blueshift.

The Solar Nebular Disk Model theory (SNDM)

The theory is that gravity caused the nebula to collapse and eventually started spinning. The accelerating rotation combined with gravity formed a disk.

The disk's center heats up, creating our sun and the solar system. The planets are then formed by accumulating matter from rings in the disk

Planetesimals

Condensed material from the early stages of formation of the solar system

Galaxy first planet

Jupiter

Classifying stars

Size, temperature, brightness

Nucleus

the ______ of a comet is composed of ice and rocky material

Dust Tail

A comet's ______ is composed of gasses and tiny dust particles blown away from the nucleus as the comet is heated

Ion Tail

The _____ is a stream of ionized gasses that are blown directly away from the Sun due to the comets contact with the solar wind

Ga

Billion years ago

Ma

Million years ago

Ka

Thousand years ago

Volcanic Outgassing - Volcanoes emit the following gasses

Water Vapor

Carbon dioxide

Trace amounts of nitrogen

Relative age

Is to estimate the age of something through comparison/sequence without a specific number. It doesn’t tell how old something is since all we know is the sequence of events.

Radiometric dating

Allows us to figure out how old something is exactly, based on the fact that all things on Earth contain certain materials that change over time (uses half-life atoms to figure out age).

Absolute dating

Finding the exact age of an object

Correlations

Fossils, key beds, lithologic similarity

Outer planets have more ____ than inner planets due to their large size

mass

Kepler second law

The planet moves faster when close to the Sun and slower when away from the Sun (Earth moves fastest during January)

Comets

They’re small celestial body that orbits the Sun similar to asteroids, their orbits are also elliptical; Even more elongated than planets.

**Indirect** Exoplanet detection methods

Radial velocity (Doppler method)

Transits

Gravitational micro-lensing

Pulsar planets

Astrometric

**Direct** Exoplanet detection methods

Optical imaging

Infrared interferometry

**Four Exoplanet types**

Neptune

Gas giants

Super Earth

Terrestrial

Gravitational micro-lensing

A method of detecting exoplanets that stems from Einstein's theory of relativity, whereby the light from a background star can be observed being warped and bent by the mass of a planet passing in front of it .

If the *lensing star* has planets, then the light curve can be distorted (i.e., you get spikes)

**Principle of Uniformitarianism**

James Hutton concluded that the process that is currently operating on the Earth must be the same processes that operated in the past. This principle is often stated as "the present is the key to the past".

**Principle of Original Horizontality**

sedimentary strata are deposited in layers that are horizontal or nearly horizontal, parallel to or nearly parallel to the Earth's surface.

**Principle of Original Continuity**

If layers are deposited horizontally over the sea floor, then they would be expected to be laterally continuous over some distance.

**Principle of Cross-cutting Relations**

younger features truncate (cut across) older features. Faults, dikes, erosion, etc., must be younger than the material that is faulted, intruded, or eroded.

**Principle of Inclusions**

A rock fragment enclosed within another rock, the original rock is always younger.

Fossil index

some fossils were only found within a limited range of strata and these _____, because they were so characteristic of relative age, were termed ______

**Spontaneous Generation**

the hypothesis that life arises regularly from non-living things.

Who did experiments disproving the spontaneous generation theory?

**Francesco Redi & Louis Pasteur**

**The Miller/Urey Experiment**

This was the first evidence that organic molecules needed for life could be formed from inorganic components.

**The Oparin-Haldane hypothesis**

That life on Earth could have arisen step-by-step from non-living matter through a process of “gradual chemical evolution.” They thought that early Earth had a reducing atmosphere.

**How did chloroplasts originate inside the early stromatolites?**

Endosymbiosis

**How long ago did oxygen enter our atmosphere?**

2\.3 bya

Sea breeze

(During a hot day) Air above the land is heated and rises up, then replaced by cooler air from the sea.

The wind blows from the ocean towards land.

Land breeze

(During the night) The air above the sea is warmer than that above the land so it rises up to be replaced by that air above the land.

The wind blows from the land to the water

Convection currents

are the upward movement of warm air and the downward movement of cool air.

Convection

heat transfer by the movement (circulation) in fluids.

Half life

The original atom (isotope) is called the “parent.” The new form of the atom is called the “daughter.” Half of the parent atoms turn into the daughter atoms once the object has reached a certain age.

Radiometric dating uses _______ atoms to figure out the age of the rock layers the atoms are in.

**Igneous rocks**

began as magma. They form from the solidification of magma, so extreme heat, pressure, and composition.

**Sedimentary Rocks**

created at/near the Earth’s surface. Are formed through erosion, deposition, compaction, and cementation. They have lots of layers through stratification

**Metamorphic rocks**

formed by intense heat and pressure, Either deep in Earth’s crust or at plate boundaries where tectonic plates collide.

**Foliated rocks**

contain aligned grains of flat minerals

Non-foliated rocks

mineral grains are not arranged in plains or bands