The Atacama Desert forms one of the major hyper-arid deserts of the world and it is known to be the driest place on Earth. The extreme aridity of the climate and unusual mineralogy of the regolith in the Atacama region is of considerable interest because of its value as an analogue to the Martian surface. The sedimentary succession in the Atacama Desert records deposition under an arid to semiarid climate from the late Jurassic (150Ma) to the present day (Hartley‚ 2005). Comparison with other long-lived
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Geological Time Unit 2 Test /44 Multiple choice: Choose the best answer for each question /13 According to Earth scientists‚ how old is the Earth? 4.6 million years 3.5 million years 4.6 billion years 3.5 billion years When did oxygen first form in the atmosphere according to Earth scientists? 4.6 billion years ago 3.5 billion years ago 2 billion years ago 1 billion years ago Which life form came first according to the Geological Time Scale
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The San Andreas Fault by Sandra S. Schulz and Robert E. Wallace The presence of the San Andreas fault was brought dramatically to world attention on April 18‚ 1906‚ when sudden displacement along the fault produced the great San Francisco earthquake and fire. This earthquake‚ however‚ was but one of many that have resulted from episodic displacement along the fault throughout its life of about 15-20 million years. What Is It? Scientists have learned that the Earth’s crust is fractured into a series
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1. Summarize advances over time in determining the age of the Earth‚ including the importance of the discovery or radioactivity. Herodotus counted layers of earth near the Nile River in 450 B.C.E. The Bible was used in the Middle Ages to compute the age of the Earth. The 18th and 19th centuries brought a more scientific look into determining the age of the Earth by studying the salinities of the oceans‚ the rates of sedimentation‚ and models of cooling of different materials in order to calculate
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LANDSLIDE A landslide is a geological phenomenon which includes a wide range of ground movement‚ such as rockfalls‚ deep failure of slopes and shallow debris flows‚ which can occur in offshore‚ coastal and onshore environments. Although the action of gravity is the primary driving force for a landslide to occur‚ there are other contributing factors affecting the original slope stability. Typically‚ pre-conditional factors build up specific sub-surface conditions that make the area/slope prone to
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Dynamic Earth Has the Earth been static since the beginning of time? Well‚ Earth hasn’t been moving vigorously but it is changing at a steady rate. New geological features‚ rock formations‚ and locations of plates all rise and demolish some in a lifetime and others over a span of millions of years. Earth is dynamic; it constantly progresses and doesn’t rest. Through the churns and molds‚ the twists and turns‚ Earth is active because of plate tectonics and the rock cycle. The ideas
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Explain why some places have a high level of landslide and avalanche hazard risk. Land slides and Avalanches are one of the worlds most major natural hazard types. They kill between 25 and 50 people per year and cost the United States $3.5 billion to repair per year. Landslides are caused when soil is disrupted. For example when deforestation occurs it removes the roots from the soil. The soil can then not hold it self together so when it rains the soil becomes saturated and falls. They can also
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Coal Mining Coal mining is taking coal out of the earth for use as fuel‚ and there are two types of it: surface and mountaintop mining and underground mining. Coal is one of the most important resources because of its ability to be a fuel. Surface mining is used when the coal is near the surface‚ and a process known as strip mining extracts it; this is literally tearing a strip out of the earth to expose the coal. This is a highly controversial method though because by taking so many strips
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Rubidium To start off this amazing element has just a little bit of history to it. At first when I heard about this element I thought it was some type of gas but it can turn it to a liquid at a certain type of liquid. But is actually a very shiny type of metal. Rubidium was discovered by Kirchoff and Bunsen in 1861 through the use of a spectroscope. Rubidium metal can be made by minimizing rubidium chloride with calcium with other substances. The cost of this metal in small quantities is approximately
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Continental drift The broad shape of Australia and its distinctive landforms have been influenced over long periods by earth movements that cause the breaking and bending of the Earth’s crust. Geographers call these movements tectonic processes. The Earth’s crust is made up of many individual moving pieces called tectonic plates. There are nine large plates and about a dozen smaller ones. The larger plates contain the continents and oceans. These plates ‘float’ on the dense layer of rock below
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