1 Origin and Evolution of Earth

Origin and Evolution of Earth

Origin:
The earth is believed to have been formed from materials that broke off from the sun about 4.5
billion years ago. It is presumed that initially, earth have been in a completely gaseous state,
cooling rapidly and gathering dust and smaller pieces of material, growing in size. Remains of
pieces not coalescing initially with the planets remain as large rocky asteroids in orbits. One
estimate is that a mass of size of the Earth originally at 6000 K (temperature of the sun's outer
layer or photosphere) should have cooled to about 1500K in about 15,000 years and in about
25,000 years the temperature of the surface would have reached very nearly that of the Earth at
present.
At least sixty-six of the ninety-eight elements on Earth have been detected on the sun by means
of spectroscopy. The table below presents the most abundant elements on Earth and a
comparison of their estimated concentration in the sun.




















Element
Atomic % in
Sun's
Photosphere
Atomic %
on Earth
H 8.76 2.7
He 18.7 (10
-7
)
C 0.003 0.1
N 0.01 0.0001
O 0.03 48.7
Na 0.0003 0.7
Mg 0.02 8.2
Al 0.0002 2.4
Si 0.006 14.3
S 0.006 14.3
K 0.00001 0.1
Ca 0.0003 2.0
Fe 0.0008 17.9
Cu 0.000002 1.4
Zn 0.00003 (small)
Atomic percent = % of total # of
atoms
2 Origin and Evolution of Earth

As the Earth cooled, the lighter
atoms have moved away from the
center more rapidly than the
heavier ones, leading to a certain
degree of layering. The core is
approximately 3,500 km in radius
and the mean radius of the Earth is
6,371 km. The mantle, is therefore
about 2900 km thick. The
temperature of the core is between
2000 and 4000 K. The core
consists of molten heavy metals
such as iron (Fe), nickel (Ni), and
uranium (U), and minerals
containing these metals as well as
compounds of silicon (Si),
aluminum (Al), and magnesium
(Mg) with oxygen, carbon, and
sulfur.

In the early period, significant amounts of hydrogen and helium--the main constituents of the solar
nebula--remained on the planets. Due to volcanic eruptions, various gases like methane,
ammonia, carbon dioxide and water vapor evolved and formed the reducing atmosphere. The UV
rays acted upon water to split H
2
O into H
2
and O
2
. The lack of ability to combine is why we find
little helium on Earth while the lighter hydrogen has been captured in the form of water and other
compounds.

Evolution:
It is the coincidence of the strong Hydrogen - Oxygen bond and carbon chemistry coupled with
the abundance of these three elements, and the Earth's gravity, distance from the sun (ensuring
a particular temperature range) and speed of rotation (ensuring day and night) that gave us a
water planet that could evolve our life forms.
Evidence points to bacteria flourishing about 3.8 billion years ago so this means that life got
under way about 700 million years after the Earth was created. These primitive life forms then
took the next evolutionary step and started to PHOTOSYNTHESISE (using sunlight to convert
carbon dioxide and water to food energy and oxygen) which happened about 2 billion years ago.
This was an important turning point in Earth history because the carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere was being converted to oxygen.
As soon as the oxygen was produced by photosynthesis it was taken out again by reacting with
other elements (such as iron).This continued until about 2.1 billion years ago when the
concentration of oxygen increased markedly. Life remained microscopic until about 500 million
years ago. As oxygen levels built up and then the ozone layer was formed which started to filter
out harmful ultraviolet rays. This allowed the evolution of new living organisms.