Learn Earth Science
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Atmosphere
Main highlights of the stratosphere are: (1) The ozone layer absorbs harmful UV light (2) This causes temperature to rise (3) It contains 10% of…
Earth has experienced 5 large ice ages. During these frigid times, hefty layers of ice smothered the planet with temperatures 10°C lower than it is…
There is over 5500 tons of space junk above Earth’s surface. They mostly consist of small and medium debris within 700 – 36,000 km range…
El Niño is the warming phase of the waters in the eastern Pacific. Then, La Niña is the cooling phase. Both phases disrupt weather patterns…
Charged particles or plasma makes up about 99% of the universe. Magnetic reconnection involves how this plasma interacts with magnetic fields (like Earth’s)
The Coriolis effect is the deflection of air due to Earth’s rotation. Air veers to the right in the northern hemisphere. And vice versa south…
Biology
The earliest anatomically modern human fossil found was dated at about 200-300,000 years old in Morocco, Africa. They had modern faces and used stone tools.
Your identity is decided by 4 letters of DNA (A, T, G & C). And there’s so much Deoxyribonucleic Acid in your body that it…
In flesh and blood, you have been genetically fine-tuned as a product of natural selection. Without evolution, complex beings like humans wouldn’t exist.
The Koppen climate classification catalogues Earth’s types of environments. In the eyes of Koppen, they are tropical, dry, temperate, continental and polar.
The biosphere is the layer of Earth where life exists. You, me, plants, insects bacteria and all living things on land, air and oceans are…
Carbon is re-purposed into fossil fuels in the long-term carbon cycle. The coal that we use today was produced millions of years ago from buried…
Career
Working in ecology is seeing conservation in action. These 7 questions and answers evaluate ecologists career for salary, job duties and potential employers.
Geologists study bedrock and surface rocks. They best understand how Earth’s land forms and rock change over time (physical and chemical structure).
This list of 30 Earth Science careers has everything you need to know to carve your own career path as an Earth scientist. It’s time…
What are the branches of biology? Biology studies living things, flora and fauna. We categorize biology into botany, toxicology, ecosystem and chronology.
Meteorologists partake in weather prediction. They understand atmospheric chemistry and physics and how they relate to weather and climate patterns.
Biologist work with wildlife, marine life and vegetation. They analyze how living things, flora and fauna are composed like their structure & composition.
Geology
When you unveil a fossil, it’s like rewinding into the past. Fossils are preserved remains from past living things such as bones, shells or exoskeletons.
During the last ice age, ice pushed down on continents with immense pressure. After the ice melted, land began slowly lifting which is isostatic rebound.
Like a stack of pancakes, younger rock layers pile on top of older layers. We use the law of superposition to reveal Earth’s age and…
In the Proterozoic Eon, key highlights are: ozone layer thickened, an oxygen crisis, Snowball Earth and eukaryotes and multicellular organisms evolved.
Chemical weathering is the process of transforming a rock’s composition through chemical reactions (by dissolving or converting them into other minerals)
About 200 million years ago, all the continents were together as one giant supercontinent known as Pangaea. Over time, these continents have broken apart.
Space
The color of the moon is mostly grey. And the lunar maria are dark grey. The 4 most dominant rocks are: mare basalts, breccia, anorthosite…
At all times the sun illuminates half of the moon. Depending on your point of view, this is what causes the various phases of the…
If you stick a pencil through Earth at the point of rotation, these 2 points are the north/south poles. Geographically, it’s where longitude lines converge.
Hubble galaxy classification assigns a class to galaxies based on their visual appearance. These classes of galaxies are ellipticals, lenticulars and spirals
Alpha Centauri (Rigil Kentaurus) is the closest star system away from our sun. It’s about 4.3 light years (or 25 trillion miles) away from Earth.
Imagine sticking a pencil into the Earth’s poles and twisting your wrist 23.5°. This is the Earth tilt essential in seasonal patterns, climate and life…
Water
Coral reefs are biodiversity hotspots for ocean life. Remarkably, about 1/4 of marine species reside in them. So the spotlight is on coral reefs for…
When it rains, water zig-zags all the way through a tributary system to a river or lake. Like an upside-down umbrella, a watershed catches all…
Water is in the ground, on the surface, in the air and in our bodies. But how much global water distribution is in glaciers, groundwater,…
As temperatures surge, sea levels rise with it. This is because melting ice sheets add to total water volume. By 2100, water levels could rise…
Eutrophication occurs in water bodies when too many nutrients are introduced. Over-fertilization of water causes algae to grow blocking sunlight for plants.
Despite the popular belief that groundwater exists as a huge lake underground, water actually exists in tiny pore spaces within rock and soil beneath our…