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What Is Earth Science?
Article by: hobart m. king , phd, rpg.
| The Science of Earth and its Neighbors in Space |
Earth Science is the study of Earth and its neighbors in space. The image above is the first full-hemisphere view of Earth captured in the 21st Century. It was acquired by NOAA's GOES-8 satellite on January 1, 2000 at 12:45 AM Eastern Standard Time. Image by the GOES project.
Introduction
Earth Science is the study of the Earth and its neighbors in space. It is an exciting science with many interesting and practical applications. Some Earth scientists use their knowledge of the Earth to locate and develop energy and mineral resources. Others study the impact of human activity on Earth's environment, and design methods to protect the planet. Some use their knowledge about Earth processes such as volcanoes, earthquakes, and hurricanes to plan communities that will not expose people to these dangerous events.
The Four Earth Sciences
Many different sciences are used to learn about the Earth; however, the four basic areas of Earth science study are: geology, meteorology, oceanography, and astronomy. A brief explanation of these sciences is provided below.
| Earth Scientists Study the Subsurface |
Mapping the inside of a volcano: Dr. Catherine Snelson, Assistant Professor of Geophysics at New Mexico Tech, sets off small explosions on the flank of Mount Erebus (a volcano in Antarctica). Vibrations from the explosions travel into the Earth and reflect off of structures below. Her instruments record the vibrations. She uses the data to prepare maps of the volcano's interior. Photo courtesy of Martin Reed, the National Science Foundation and the United States Antarctic Program . Learn more about what Dr. Snelson and others are doing to learn about Mount Erebus .
Geology: Science of the Earth
Geology is the primary Earth science. The word means "study of the Earth." Geology deals with the composition of Earth materials, Earth structures, and Earth processes. It is also concerned with the organisms of the planet and how the planet has changed over time. Geologists search for fuels and minerals, study natural hazards, and work to protect Earth's environment.
| Earth Scientists Map the Surface |
Mapping lava flows: Charlie Bacon, a USGS volcanologist, draws the boundaries of prehistoric lava flows from Mount Veniaminof, Alaska, onto a map. This map will show the areas covered by past lava eruptions and can be used to estimate the potential impact of future eruptions. Scientists in Alaska often carry firearms (foreground) and pepper spray as protection against grizzly bears. The backpack contains food and survival gear, and a two-way radio to call his helicopter pilot. Charlie's orange overalls help the pilot find him on pick-up day. Image by Charlie Bacon, USGS / Alaska Volcano Observatory.
Meteorology: Science of the Atmosphere
Meteorology is the study of the atmosphere and how processes in the atmosphere determine Earth's weather and climate. Meteorology is a very practical science because everyone is concerned about the weather. How climate changes over time in response to the actions of people is a topic of urgent worldwide concern. The study of meteorology is of critical importance in protecting Earth's environment.
| The Hydrologic Cycle - An Earth Science System |
Hydrologic Cycle: Earth Science involves the study of systems such as the hydrologic cycle. This type of system can only be understood by using a knowledge of geology (groundwater), meteorology (weather and climate), oceanography (ocean systems) and astronomy (energy input from the sun). The hydrologic cycle is always in balance - inputs and withdrawals must be equal. Earth scientists would determine the impact of any human input or withdraw from the system. NOAA image created by Peter Corrigan.
Oceanography: Science of the Oceans
Oceanography is the study of Earth's oceans - their composition, movement, organisms and processes. The oceans cover most of our planet and are important resources for food and other commodities. They are increasingly being used as an energy source. The oceans also have a major influence on the weather, and changes in the oceans can drive or moderate climate change. Oceanographers work to develop the ocean as a resource and protect it from human impact. The goal is to utilize the oceans while minimizing the effects of our actions.
Astronomy: Science of the Universe
Astronomy is the study of the universe. Here are some examples of why studying space beyond Earth is important: the moon drives the ocean's tidal system, asteroid impacts have repeatedly devastated Earth's inhabitants, and energy from the sun drives our weather and climates. A knowledge of astronomy is essential to understanding the Earth. Astronomers can also use a knowledge of Earth materials, processes and history to understand other planets - even those outside of our own solar system.
The Importance of Earth Science
Today we live in a time when the Earth and its inhabitants face many challenges. Our climate is changing, and that change is being caused by human activity. Earth scientists recognized this problem and will play a key role in efforts to resolve it. We are also challenged to: develop new sources of energy that will have minimal impact on climate; locate new sources of metals and other mineral resources as known sources are depleted; and, determine how Earth's increasing population can live and avoid serious threats such as volcanic activity, earthquakes, landslides, floods and more. These are just a few of the problems where solutions depend upon a deep understanding of Earth science.
Earth Science Careers
If you are a pre-college student, you can start preparing for a career in Earth science by enrolling in the college preparation program and doing well in all of your courses. Science courses are especially important, but math, writing, and other disciplines are also used by Earth scientists during every working day.
Some universities have Earth Science programs but most offer more specific training in programs such as geology, meteorology, oceanography or astronomy. In these programs you will be required to take some challenging courses such as chemistry, physics, biology and math. Earth science is an integrated science, and professionals in that field must solve problems that require a knowledge of several fields of science.
If you already have a degree in another discipline such as biology, chemistry, geography, or physics, you might be able to go to graduate school and obtain a Master's degree in one of the Earth sciences. That will most likely require taking some undergraduate courses to meet program entry requirements. However, if you have a strong interest in Earth science it is probably worth doing.
At present, job opportunities in many areas of the Earth sciences are better than average. Opportunities in geology are especially good.
Visit the website of a school that offers a geology degree, get in touch with the geology department, let them know you are interested, and make arrangements to visit the campus. Don't be hesitant. Good schools and professors want to be contacted by interested students.
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Essay on Earth500 words essay on earth. The earth is the planet that we live on and it is the fifth-largest planet. It is positioned in third place from the Sun. This essay on earth will help you learn all about it in detail. Our earth is the only planet that can sustain humans and other living species. The vital substances such as air, water, and land make it possible.  All About Essay on EarthThe rocks make up the earth that has been around for billions of years. Similarly, water also makes up the earth. In fact, water covers 70% of the surface. It includes the oceans that you see, the rivers, the sea and more. Thus, the remaining 30% is covered with land. The earth moves around the sun in an orbit and takes around 364 days plus 6 hours to complete one round around it. Thus, we refer to it as a year. Just like revolution, the earth also rotates on its axis within 24 hours that we refer to as a solar day. When rotation is happening, some of the places on the planet face the sun while the others hide from it. As a result, we get day and night. There are three layers on the earth which we know as the core, mantle and crust. The core is the centre of the earth that is usually very hot. Further, we have the crust that is the outer layer. Finally, between the core and crust, we have the mantle i.e. the middle part. The layer that we live on is the outer one with the rocks. Earth is home to not just humans but millions of other plants and species. The water and air on the earth make it possible for life to sustain. As the earth is the only livable planet, we must protect it at all costs. Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas There is No Planet BThe human impact on the planet earth is very dangerous. Through this essay on earth, we wish to make people aware of protecting the earth. There is no balance with nature as human activities are hampering the earth. Needless to say, we are responsible for the climate crisis that is happening right now. Climate change is getting worse and we need to start getting serious about it. It has a direct impact on our food, air, education, water, and more. The rising temperature and natural disasters are clear warning signs. Therefore, we need to come together to save the earth and leave a better planet for our future generations. Being ignorant is not an option anymore. We must spread awareness about the crisis and take preventive measures to protect the earth. We must all plant more trees and avoid using non-biodegradable products. Further, it is vital to choose sustainable options and use reusable alternatives. We must save the earth to save our future. There is no Planet B and we must start acting like it accordingly. Conclusion of Essay on EarthAll in all, we must work together to plant more trees and avoid using plastic. It is also important to limit the use of non-renewable resources to give our future generations a better planet. FAQ on Essay on EarthQuestion 1: What is the earth for kids? Answer 1: Earth is the third farthest planet from the sun. It is bright and bluish in appearance when we see it from outer space. Water covers 70% of the earth while land covers 30%. Moreover, the earth is the only planet that can sustain life. Question 2: How can we protect the earth? Answer 2: We can protect the earth by limiting the use of non-renewable resources. Further, we must not waste water and avoid using plastic. Customize your course in 30 secondsWhich class are you in. 
Leave a Reply Cancel replyYour email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * Download the App What is Earth science?Earth Science includes geology, meteorology , oceanography and astronomy.  MeteorologyOceanography. "Earth science" is a broad term that encompasses four main branches of study, each of which is further broken down into more specialized fields. Geology is the study of the substances that make up the Earth , the processes that shape it, and of how these materials and processes have changed the Earth over time. Geology is very important as everything we do depends on our relationship to the planet we live on. Two important subfields of geology are vulcanology (the study of volcanoes ), and seismology (the study of earthquakes ). Understanding these processes can help enable us to predict and mitigate the effects of natural disasters such as volcanic eruptions, major quakes, tsunamis and landslides. Geologists are also at the forefront of the quest for natural resources such as oil, natural gas, and other raw materials. Hydrologists study the availability and distribution of the Earth’s freshwater resources including both surface water and aquifers. Physical geography is the study of the Earth’s landforms. Paleontologists are interested in Earth’s history. Geologists may work for industry, government agencies, universities or other settings. Most geologists do field work at least part of the time. Meteorology is the study of Earth’s atmosphere and how changes in temperature , air pressure, humidity and winds affect the weather. Perhaps more than any other science, meteorology is concerned with using data to make predictions of future events. Broadcast meteorologists are probably the most familiar; men and women who interpret and report weather data on television or radio to inform the public and protect us when severe weather threatens. Forensic meteorologists often work for lawyers or insurance agencies. Their job is to determine how weather conditions may have contributed to accidents or caused damage to property. Climatologists study the large-scale weather patterns for a given region over long periods of time. Meteorologists and climatologists work closely with other scientists to determine the possible effects of global climate change and whether human activities are affecting global temperatures. Oceanography , or marine science, is the interdisciplinary study of the sea. Oceanographers may study currents, storms or waves. Oceanographers may use sophisticated technology to map the ocean floor or evaluate whether movement of subsea tectonic plates might cause rifting and tsunami waves. Oceanographers are frequently biologists who seek to understand and protect marine ecosystems. It is said that we know more about the surface of the moon than we do about the oceans of our own world. Earth has more oceans than land environments, and the seas may hold the keys to energy and food resources. We desperately need more information to protect the oceans while we are using them for our own survival. Oceanographers may work for governments, for the fishing or energy industries, or shipping concerns. Most oceanographers travel a lot and should enjoy working on the water. Related: Photos: Hawaii's New Underwater Volcano Astronomy is the study of Earth’s neighbors in the solar system and beyond. Optical astronomy is direct observation of the visible universe using a variety of telescopes and visual probes such as the Hubble Space Telescope . Radio astronomy can detect radiation from wavelengths well beyond the visible spectrum , but they must also have enormous "dishes" to collect the radio waves . In the past these size limitations made the enormous radio telescopes cumbersome and difficult to aim. Today with the modern ability to link radio telescopes almost instantly by using computer technology, there are many more applications for this science. Astronomers are making discoveries about the size, composition, energy and evolution of distant stars and galaxies. Planetologists study the planets of our solar system and beyond. Space probes send photos and data from distant systems. In our own solar system the robot probe Curiosity crawls the surface of Mars to analyze soil samples and transmit data to Earth. Cosmologists seek to understand the origin of the universe. Most astronomers work for government space agencies or universities. The Earth sciences, studying the impact that humans have on the Earth and how natural processes affect us, provide vital information for our future as a species. Our future depends on understanding how the Earth can provide food, water and energy for our growing population. Perhaps one day we will be able to apply these lessons to inhabit another planet as well. Originally published on Live Science. Sign up for the Live Science daily newsletter nowGet the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. Argyle mine: Earth's treasure trove of pink diamonds born during a supercontinent's break up Boiling rocks from Earth's crust tore an ocean into Mongolia 410 million years ago Tasselled wobbegong: The master of disguise that can eat a shark almost as big as itself Most Popular
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About Earth SciencesThe Division of Earth Sciences supports proposals for research geared toward improving the understanding of the structure, composition, and evolution of the Earth, the life it supports, and the processes that govern the formation and behavior of the Earth's materials. The results of this research will create a better understanding of the Earth's changing environments, and the natural distribution of its mineral, water, biota, and energy resources and provide methods for predicting and mitigating the effects of geologic hazards such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, landslides. Earth science is the study of the Earth's structure, properties, processes, and four and a half billion years of biotic evolution. Understanding these phenomena is essential to maintenance of life on the planet. The expanding world population demands more resources; faces increasing losses from natural hazards; and releases more pollutants to the air, water, and land. Sustaining our existence requires scientific understanding of the natural materials and processes linking the geosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere. Life prospers or fails at the surface of the Earth where these environments intersect. The knowledge gained and the services provided by earth scientists help society cope with its environment in many ways. Their knowledge about the structure, stratigraphy, and chemical composition of the earth's crust helps us locate resources that sustain and advance our quality of life. Understanding the forces in the crust, and the natural processes on the surface allows us to anticipate natural disasters such as volcanoes and earthquakes, and geologic environments, such as damaging mining practices or improper waste disposal, gives us information to correct such practices and design more benign procedures for the future. Finally, a comprehensive perception of planetary physics will allow us to anticipate major changes in global environmental conditions and control or acclimate to those changes. In general use, the term "earth science" often includes the study of the earth's atmosphere (meteorology or atmospheric science), the water flowing on and beneath the surface of continents (hydrology), and the earth's seas and oceans (oceanography or ocean sciences). The NSF organizational taxonomy defines earth science as including the fields of "solid-earth" science (geology, geochemistry, and geophysics (plus continental hydrology. It excludes the "fluid-earth" sciences of oceanography and atmospheric science, which have their own respective divisions in the organization, and are covered in other reports in this series. The NSF Division of Earth Sciences is part of the Geosciences Directorate that also includes the divisions of Atmospheric Sciences and Ocean Sciences. The term "geosciences" is similarly used to represent only the "solid-earth" sciences or solid and fluid sciences depending on the context, so care must be always exercised when interpreting data regarding the earth science fields from various sources. Banner Photo Credit: Volcanic Eruption. ©Tom Pfeiffer ( www.decadevolcano.net/VolcanoDiscovery.com )  Essay on Earth ScienceStudents are often asked to write an essay on Earth Science in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic. Let’s take a look… 100 Words Essay on Earth ScienceWhat is earth science. Earth Science is the study of our planet. This includes the land, oceans, atmosphere, and even what is beneath the ground. Scientists in this field want to understand how Earth works and how it has changed over time. Inside the EarthThe Earth is made of different layers. Starting from the outside, we have the crust, then the mantle, and the core at the center. These layers are made of rocks and metals, and they can move and change. Above the EarthAbove the surface, we have the atmosphere. This is a mix of gases that protects us and gives us air to breathe. It also helps control the climate. Oceans and LandEarth Science also looks at the oceans and land. Oceans cover most of our planet and are home to many creatures. The land has mountains, valleys, and plains, and is where we live and grow food. Why Earth Science Matters250 words essay on earth science. Earth Science is the study of our planet, Earth. It’s about understanding how Earth works and how it supports life. Scientists in this field look at the air, oceans, land, and life on our planet. They also study the stars and planets to see how they affect Earth. The Layers of EarthOur Earth is made up of different layers, like an onion. There’s a solid inner core at the center, a liquid outer core around it, a thick layer called the mantle, and a thin crust on the outside. The crust is where we live, and it includes continents and ocean floors. Weather and ClimateWeather is what’s happening in the sky at any moment, like rain or sunshine. Climate is what the weather is like over a long time in a certain place. Earth Scientists look at patterns to predict the weather and to understand changes in climate. Earth’s ResourcesThe Earth gives us many things we need, like water, air, minerals, and fuels. Scientists help find these resources and figure out how to use them without harming our planet. Protecting Our PlanetEarth Science also helps us know how human activities change our planet. By understanding these changes, we can take better care of Earth. We can learn to use our resources wisely and protect the environment for all living things. 500 Words Essay on Earth ScienceEarth Science is the study of our planet. This includes everything from the ground we walk on to the air we breathe. It looks at how the Earth was made, how it changes, and how it might look in the future. Earth Science helps us understand the world around us so we can take care of it better. Our planet is like a big ball made of different layers. The outer layer, where we live, is called the crust. Below that is the mantle, which is very hot and has rocks that move slowly. Then comes the outer core, made of liquid metal, and the inner core, which is solid metal. These layers work together to make the Earth’s surface move and change. Rocks and MineralsWater on earth. Water is very important because all living things need it to survive. Most of the Earth’s water is in the oceans, but it is also found in rivers, lakes, ice caps, and underground. The water cycle describes how water moves from the Earth’s surface to the air and back again. It rains, snows, and the sun makes water evaporate. This cycle is important for weather and climate. Weather is what the air outside is like each day. It can be sunny, rainy, or snowy. Climate is what the weather is like over a long time in a certain place. Scientists study weather and climate to predict how they will change and how this affects us and the Earth. Natural DisastersEarth Science also teaches us how to take care of our planet. We learn about pollution, how to use resources wisely, and how to protect plants and animals. By understanding the Earth, we can make good choices to keep it healthy for a long time. In conclusion, Earth Science is all about learning how our planet works. It covers everything from rocks and water to weather and natural disasters. By studying Earth Science, we can appreciate our world more and work to protect it. It’s a big subject that helps us in many ways, and it’s exciting to learn about the place we call home. That’s it! I hope the essay helped you. Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here . Happy studying! Leave a Reply Cancel reply  In order to continue enjoying our site, we ask that you confirm your identity as a human. Thank you very much for your cooperation.  Planet Earth, explainedOur home planet provides us with life and protects us from space. Earth, our home planet, is a world unlike any other. The third planet from the sun, Earth is the only place in the known universe confirmed to host life. With a radius of 3,959 miles, Earth is the fifth largest planet in our solar system, and it's the only one known for sure to have liquid water on its surface. Earth is also unique in terms of monikers. Every other solar system planet was named for a Greek or Roman deity, but for at least a thousand years, some cultures have described our world using the Germanic word “earth,” which means simply “the ground.” Our dance around the sunEarth orbits the sun once every 365.25 days. Since our calendar years have only 365 days, we add an extra leap day every four years to account for the difference. Though we can't feel it, Earth zooms through its orbit at an average velocity of 18.5 miles a second. During this circuit, our planet is an average of 93 million miles away from the sun, a distance that takes light about eight minutes to traverse. Astronomers define this distance as one astronomical unit (AU), a measure that serves as a handy cosmic yardstick. Earth rotates on its axis every 23.9 hours, defining day and night for surface dwellers. This axis of rotation is tilted 23.4 degrees away from the plane of Earth's orbit around the sun, giving us seasons. Whichever hemisphere is tilted closer to the sun experiences summer, while the hemisphere tilted away gets winter. In the spring and fall, each hemisphere receives similar amounts of light. On two specific dates each year—called the equinoxes—both hemispheres get illuminated equally. Many layers, many featuresAbout 4.5 billion years ago, gravity coaxed Earth to form from the gaseous, dusty disk that surrounded our young sun. Over time, Earth's interior—which is made mostly of silicate rocks and metals—differentiated into four layers. At the planet's heart lies the inner core, a solid sphere of iron and nickel that's 759 miles wide and as hot as 9,800 degrees Fahrenheit. The inner core is surrounded by the outer core, a 1,400-mile-thick band of iron and nickel fluids. Beyond the outer core lies the mantle, a 1,800-mile-thick layer of viscous molten rock on which Earth's outermost layer, the crust, rests. On land, the continental crust is an average of 19 miles thick, but the oceanic crust that forms the seafloor is thinner—about three miles thick—and denser. Like Venus and Mars, Earth has mountains, valleys, and volcanoes. But unlike its rocky siblings, almost 70 percent of Earth's surface is covered in oceans of liquid water that average 2.5 miles deep. These bodies of water contain 97 percent of Earth's volcanoes and the mid-ocean ridge , a massive mountain range more than 40,000 miles long. You May Also Like 4.5 billion years ago, another planet crashed into Earth. We may have found its leftovers. The moon is even older than we thought 9 spectacular night sky events to see in 2024Earth's crust and upper mantle are divided into massive plates that grind against each other in slow motion. As these plates collide, tear apart, or slide past each other, they give rise to our very active geology. Earthquakes rumble as these plates snag and slip past each other. Many volcanoes form as seafloor crust smashes into and slides beneath continental crust. When plates of continental crust collide, mountain ranges such as the Himalaya are pushed toward the skies. Protective fields and gasesEarth's atmosphere is 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen, and one percent other gases such as carbon dioxide, water vapor, and argon. Much like a greenhouse, this blanket of gases absorbs and retains heat. On average, Earth's surface temperature is about 57 degrees Fahrenheit; without our atmosphere, it'd be zero degrees . In the last two centuries, humans have added enough greenhouse gases to the atmosphere to raise Earth's average temperature by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit . This extra heat has altered Earth's weather patterns in many ways . The atmosphere not only nourishes life on Earth, but it also protects it: It's thick enough that many meteorites burn up before impact from friction, and its gases—such as ozone—block DNA-damaging ultraviolet light from reaching the surface. But for all that our atmosphere does, it's surprisingly thin. Ninety percent of Earth's atmosphere lies within just 10 miles of the planet's surface .  The silhouette of a woman is seen on a Norwegian island beneath the Northern Lights ( aurora borealis ). We also enjoy protection from Earth's magnetic field, generated by our planet's rotation and its iron-nickel core. This teardrop-shaped field shields Earth from high-energy particles launched at us from the sun and elsewhere in the cosmos. But due to the field's structure, some particles get funneled to Earth's Poles and collide with our atmosphere, yielding aurorae, the natural fireworks show known by some as the northern lights. Spaceship EarthEarth is the planet we have the best opportunity to understand in detail—helping us see how other rocky planets behave, even those orbiting distant stars. As a result, scientists are increasingly monitoring Earth from space. NASA alone has dozens of missions dedicated to solving our planet's mysteries. At the same time, telescopes are gazing outward to find other Earths. Thanks to instruments such as NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, astronomers have found more than 3,800 planets orbiting other stars, some of which are about the size of Earth , and a handful of which orbit in the zones around their stars that are just the right temperature to be potentially habitable. Other missions, such as the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, are poised to find even more. Related Topics
 Is there a 9th planet out there? We may soon find out. Earth is a geological oddball in our solar system. This is why. Did Pluto ever actually stop being a planet? Experts debate. How did life on Earth begin? Here are 3 popular theories. 800,000 years ago, a huge meteorite hit Earth. Scientists may have just found where.
History & Culture
Copyright © 1996-2015 National Geographic Society Copyright © 2015-2024 National Geographic Partners, LLC. All rights reserved Earth ScienceAn overview of the discipline. Earth science reconstructs the history of the earth through an exploration of natural interactions in the environment. This is the only discipline that provides a 4D representation of data. For example, geologists’ topological maps show not only the length, width, and height of an area, but also changes to that area over time. Writing by earth scientists may also include systematic descriptions of earth systems, geological maps, or an explanation of the history revealed by earth’s physical conditions. Penn has three different tracks within the earth science major: environmental science, geology, and paleobiology. While each focuses on different elements of the natural earth systems, the three tracks use similar approaches to writing. Writing in the DisciplineProblem definition and solution. Papers that aim to define problems and provide solutions are most common. These papers tend to generate new data and formulate conclusions based on that data. For example, a geologist may ask, “what is the geological significance of this area?” and then pursue an answer through field research or an examination of studies done by other scientists. Positional Affirmation and CritiqueOther papers review scholarly work by summarizing existing literature or criticizing past research. Although these papers do not generate new data, they validate past data. Through this process, geological analyses change as additional data is collected or past data is re-evaluated. Because variables cannot be controlled when collecting field data, nothing can ever be fully proven in the earth sciences. Instead, papers should try to disprove through explanation. In an earth science paper, data should be presented as objectively as possible. The data itself should hold the most weight in the paper’s reasoning. The author’s interpretation and alternative interpretations of the data should be logically and clearly described. Bias should be noted and explained. However, bias is unavoidable. Be aware that when interpreting data, authors will often incorporate their own political, religious, or environmental objectives. In contrast to research done in lab sciences, earth scienists primarily reserach in the field and cannot control for all variables. Instead, the researcher must focus only on the activity of interest. Because this is difficult to do, data is more important than analysis in earth science writing. When using previously published sources, it is important to distinguish between data and interpretation. Work published by others in the field may also be used as evidence. For example, work by other scientists may provide a baseline or different data to compare. Most earth scientists agree that to be legitimate, data should be replicable. For this reason, clarity is extremely important in a paper. Authors must provide a clear description of data so that others can try to replicate their work. Earth science is similar to law in that the weight of the evidence is what carries the argument. Attempts at straightforward persuasion should be limited as well-collected data itself should be strong enough to convince readers of the analysis being done. Individual vs. CollaborativeEarth science is a collaborative field, and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) exemplifies this collaboration. By employing many different scientists working in different areas, the USGS can create books about or maps for an area. Additionally, while one scientist can collect and analyze data, this data may be used to reach different conclusions over time as additional data is collected. Scientists will also research previously collected data in order to validate it. Whether papers are written individually or co-authored depends on a scientist's personality and the history of the department he or she works in. While Dr. Steven Phipps explained that he plans to publish a series of single-authored papers, many scientists work with a team to produce papers that have multiple co-authors. Writing TipsThe writing process, general tips. Dr. Robert Giegengack explains that earth science writing "should be simple. If you truly understand what you're writing about, you should be able to explain it to a twelve year old." Below are some tips from both Dr. Giegengack and Dr. Phipps:
Important Criteria for Student WritingReviewers should check for proper structure, substantial evidence, and minimal bias within the paper. If deemed necessary, more data may be required to strengthen the paper’s argument or explanation. Common MistakesAccording to Dr. Giegengack, students typically overcomplicate their writing and use too much jargon or "fluff." Students should make sure that each sentence has a purpose and conveys important information. Student Writing AssignmentsWhile Dr. Giegengack's 100-level students do not often have writing assignments. Students in his 500-level courses are expected to write term papers that mimic professional writing in the field. Additional ResourcesHelpful books and articles. This conservative guide teaches the appropriate language and style for writing U.S. Geological Survey technical reports and maps. This classic writing style guide contains rules of usage as well as helpful tips such as a list of commonly misused words and expressions. Meet the ProfessorsDr. Phipps teaches both 100 and upper level classes in the geology department. Through his research, he has analyzed geologic structures, specifically on the west coast of the United States. No longer actively teaching in the department, Dr. Giegengack currently helps students with their senior theses. His past research includes studies of the geology of the Middle East as well as measuring and analyzing variations in natural cycles. Dr. Giegengack's favorite writers include Grove Karl Gilbert as well as "Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth" author John Playfair for their crisp, clear, and precise writing style.
Earth Science
Harvard’s researchers are exploring Earth’s past, predicting its future, and working to understand the hidden mysteries of our home. The bedrock of Earth scienceExplore how the slow, powerful forces within the Earth continue to create and alter the places we call home. Tectonic platesResearchers studying when tectonic plates began to shift found that it began much earlier than previously thought, launching the creation of continents, oceans, and other landforms. Learn more about tectonic plates How do we predict earthquakes?A team of Harvard scientists created numerical models to predict an earthquake’s final magnitude 10 to 15 seconds faster than the current best algorithms. What’s in a volcanic eruption?Volcanic eruptions include lava and “smoke,” which is actually a mix of water vapor, carbon dioxide, sulfur gases, and ash. Are all faults dangerous?To understand which faults may be the most dangerous, researchers have developed large-scale models of the fault systems in the western United States, Japan, Turkey, and other locations across the globe. In real timeEarth continues to shift and change, which means we must develop creative solutions for the complex problems that emerge.  The melting of polar ice is shifting Earth itselfAs glacial ice from Greenland, Antarctica, and the Arctic Islands melts, Earth’s crust warps, an impact that can be measured thousands of miles away. A 2022 volcano eruption altered the chemistry of the stratosphere, reducing ozone levels Catastrophic floods are exposing the cracks in the flood insurance market Experts are rethinking design and infrastructure in the wake of major earthquakes A deadly tsunami in Japan forced people to think more critically about unexpected natural disasters Polish up on your rock knowledge Earth rocks!Explore the gallery Better understanding our homeHarvard experts are using everything from science to religion to gain a deeper awareness of the world around us. Correcting ocean warming information New research corrects decades of sea surface temperature data, solving a long-standing mystery about global climate change. Detecting earthquakes Researchers created an algorithm that can separate small disturbances from seismic noise. Investigating Earth’s fractures A team of researchers found that hydraulic fractures play a major role in the generation of tectonic tremors. Exploring an Earth-centric religious philosophy The philosophy centers on the idea that we are part of and utterly dependent on the living Earth. Spinning back the globeExploring the events and changes in Earth’s past may help us understand what we can except in the future. Double dinosaur disasterAlong with an asteroid impact, evidence points to volcanoes having a role in the extinction of the dinosaurs, especially the Deccan Traps eruption, which lasted a million years and produced lava formations 6,000 feet thick. Creating conditions to cultivate lifeResearch on early tectonic plate movement and a protective magnetic field offer a glimpse of when the Earth was conducive to the development of life on the planet. Super storms the size of statesDuring ancient periods of extreme heat, Earth may have experienced cycles of dryness followed by massive rainstorms hundreds of miles wide that could dump more than a foot of rain in a matter of hours. Terrible tremors around TennesseeThe New Madrid earthquakes of 1811 and 1812 reshaped the landscape and the lives of the people who settled there. So why were they forgotten by the time of the Civil War? You may also like Related In Focus topics
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Essay on Earth: Check Samples for 100, 300 Words
 Essay on Earth: Earth, our cherished celestial abode, is a marvel of the cosmos. It teems with life, boasts breathtaking landscapes, and endures the test of time. In this blog, we embark on a journey to explore the myriad facets of our planet, from its geological mysteries to the pressing challenges of preserving its ecological harmony.  Table of Contents
Earth’s Geological HistoryEarth’s geological history spans eons, an epic tale told through rocks, fossils, and continents. It begins with the formation of our planet over 4.5 billion years ago, a violent birth amidst cosmic chaos. For billions of years, Earth underwent tumultuous transformations, from the fiery hell of its early years to the emergence of oceans and continents. Over time, life took root, evolving from simple organisms into the diverse array we know today. Plate tectonics, volcanic eruptions, and meteor impacts further shaped our world. Understanding Earth’s geological history not only unveils its past but also offers insights into its future and the importance of conservation. Must Read: Essay On Waste Management Earth’s ClimateEarth’s climate is a complex interplay of atmospheric and oceanic dynamics that determine its weather patterns and long-term conditions. It encompasses a delicate balance of temperature, precipitation, and atmospheric composition, shaping the environments where life thrives. However, this equilibrium is now disrupted by human-induced climate change. Human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation, release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, trapping heat and causing global temperatures to rise. This shift is causing extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and disrupting ecosystems worldwide. Addressing this climate crisis is one of the most pressing challenges of our time, requiring collective action to mitigate its impacts. Preserving Earth’s SustainabilitySustainability on Earth is the pivotal concept guiding our actions toward a harmonious coexistence with the planet. It revolves around responsible resource management, reducing waste, and respecting ecological limits. Sustainable practices encompass clean energy, conservation of biodiversity, and equitable access to resources, ensuring a resilient future. Achieving sustainability is paramount in mitigating environmental crises, such as climate change and habitat loss. It demands global cooperation, conscious consumer choices, and innovative solutions. By embracing sustainability, we safeguard Earth’s precious ecosystems, secure resources for future generations, and preserve the beauty and diversity of our irreplaceable home. Sample Essay On Earth In 100 WordsEarth, our celestial home, is a testament to the grandeur of the cosmos. For over 4.5 billion years, it has nurtured life, from the simplest organisms to the diverse tapestry we witness today. Earth’s geological history reveals eons of transformation, while its climate sustains ecosystems across continents. However, our planet faces unprecedented challenges. Human actions, from pollution to deforestation, imperil the delicate balance of nature. The climate crisis threatens ecosystems and communities. Yet, Earth’s resilience offers hope. Through conservation, sustainable practices, and global cooperation, we can safeguard this precious orb, ensuring its enduring beauty for generations to come. Must Read: Essay On Save Water Sample Essay On Earth In 300 WordsEarth, our celestial abode, stands as a testament to the sublime beauty and intricate complexity of the cosmos. One of Earth’s most captivating aspects is its geological history, a narrative etched in the layers of rock, sediment, and fossils. From its tumultuous birth in a maelstrom of cosmic debris, our planet has evolved through epochs of geological transformation. Continents have shifted, mountain ranges have risen and eroded, and life has thrived and adapted. Exploring Earth’s geological history is like reading a captivating story, revealing the secrets of its past and the forces that have shaped its present landscapes. Yet, Earth’s allure extends far beyond its geological marvels. Its climate, a symphony of atmospheric and oceanic interactions, creates diverse ecosystems that span the globe. From the lush rainforests of the Amazon to the stark beauty of polar ice caps, Earth’s climate has sculpted environments that support a dazzling array of life forms. The rhythm of seasons, the dance of wind and water, and the harmony of predator and prey are all part of this intricate tapestry. However, as we celebrate Earth’s wonders, we must also confront the pressing challenges it faces today. Human activities, driven by industry and consumption, have led to environmental degradation on an unprecedented scale. Pollution chokes our air and water, while deforestation and habitat loss threaten countless species. Perhaps the most urgent challenge is the spectre of climate change, driven by the relentless emission of greenhouse gases. Rising temperatures, extreme weather events, and melting ice caps are stark reminders of the consequences. Yet, in the face of these challenges, Earth displays its resilience. It offers hope that, through collective effort, we can restore the balance that sustains life. Conservation, sustainable practices, and international cooperation are the tools we possess to safeguard our cherished home. In conclusion, Earth is a treasure trove of geological wonders and ecological diversity. Earth is called a “blue planet” because its surface is 70% water, giving it a predominantly blue appearance when seen from space. Earth’s resources are depleting due to overexploitation, pollution, and unsustainable practices, threatening ecosystems, freshwater, minerals, and fossil fuels. Write about Earth’s beauty, biodiversity, ecological balance, human impact, and the urgent need for conservation and sustainable practices. We hope this blog gave you an idea about how to write and present an essay on Earth that puts forth your opinions. The skill of writing an essay comes in handy when appearing for standardized language tests. Thinking of taking one soon? Leverage Edu provides the best online test prep for the same via Leverage Live . Register today to know more!  Amisha KhusharaHey there! I'm a content writer who turns complex ideas into clear, engaging stories. Think of me as your translator, taking expert knowledge and making it interesting and relatable for everyone. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Contact no. *  Connect With Us45,000+ students realised their study abroad dream with us. take the first step today..  Resend OTP in  Need help with?Study abroad. UK, Canada, US & More IELTS, GRE, GMAT & More Scholarship, Loans & Forex Country PreferenceNew Zealand Which English test are you planning to take?Which academic test are you planning to take. Not Sure yet When are you planning to take the exam?Already booked my exam slot Within 2 Months Want to learn about the test Which Degree do you wish to pursue?When do you want to start studying abroad. January 2024 September 2024 What is your budget to study abroad? How would you describe this article ? Please rate this article We would like to hear more. Have something on your mind?  Make your study abroad dream a reality in January 2022 with India's Biggest Virtual University Fair  Essex Direct Admission DayWhy attend .  Don't Miss Out Formation of EarthOur planet began as part of a cloud of dust and gas. It has evolved into our home, which has an abundance of rocky landscapes, an atmosphere that supports life, and oceans filled with mysteries. Chemistry, Earth Science, Astronomy, Geology Manicouagan CraterAsteroids were not only important in Earth's early formation, but have continued to shape our planet. A five-kilometer (three-mile) diameter asteroid is theorized to have formed the Manicouagan Crater about 215.5 million years ago.  We live on Earth’s hard, rocky surface, breathe the air that surrounds the planet , drink the water that falls from the sky, and eat the food that grows in the soil. But Earth did not always exist within this expansive universe, and it was not always a hospitable haven for life. Billions of years ago, Earth, along with the rest of our solar system, was entirely unrecognizable, existing only as an enormous cloud of dust and gas. Eventually, a mysterious occurrence—one that even the world’s foremost scientists have yet been unable to determine—created a disturbance in that dust cloud, setting forth a string of events that would lead to the formation of life as we know it. One common belief among scientists is that a distant star collapsed, creating a supernova explosion, which disrupted the dust cloud and caused it to pull together. This formed a spinning disc of gas and dust, known as a solar nebula . The faster the cloud spun, the more the dust and gas became concentrated at the center, further fueling the speed of the nebula . Over time, the gravity at the center of the cloud became so intense that hydrogen atoms began to move more rapidly and violently. The hydrogen protons began fusing, forming helium and releasing massive amounts of energy. This led to the formation of the star that is the center point of our solar system—the sun—roughly 4.6 billion years ago. Planet Formation The formation of the sun consumed more than 99 percent of the matter in the nebula . The remaining material began to coalesce into various masses. The cloud was still spinning, and clumps of matter continued to collide with others. Eventually, some of those clusters of matter grew large enough to maintain their own gravitational pull, which shaped them into the planets and dwarf planets that make up our solar system today. Earth is one of the four inner, terrestrial planets in our solar system. Just like the other inner planets —Mercury, Venus, and Mars—it is relatively small and rocky. Early in the history of the solar system, rocky material was the only substance that could exist so close to the Sun and withstand its heat. In Earth's Beginning At its beginning, Earth was unrecognizable from its modern form. At first, it was extremely hot, to the point that the planet likely consisted almost entirely of molten magma . Over the course of a few hundred million years, the planet began to cool and oceans of liquid water formed. Heavy elements began sinking past the oceans and magma toward the center of the planet . As this occurred, Earth became differentiated into layers, with the outermost layer being a solid covering of relatively lighter material while the denser, molten material sunk to the center. Scientists believe that Earth, like the other inner planets , came to its current state in three different stages. The first stage, described above, is known as accretion, or the formation of a planet from the existing particles within the solar system as they collided with each other to form larger and larger bodies. Scientists believe the next stage involved the collision of a proto planet with a very young planet Earth. This is thought to have occurred more than 4.5 billion years ago and may have resulted in the formation of Earth’s moon. The final stage of development saw the bombardment of the planet with asteroids . Earth’s early atmosphere was most likely composed of hydrogen and helium . As the planet changed, and the crust began to form, volcanic eruptions occurred frequently. These volcanoes pumped water vapor, ammonia, and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere around Earth. Slowly, the oceans began to take shape, and eventually, primitive life evolved in those oceans. Contributions from Asteroids Other events were occurring on our young planet at this time as well. It is believed that during the early formation of Earth, asteroids were continuously bombarding the planet , and could have been carrying with them an important source of water. Scientists believe the asteroids that slammed into Earth, the moon, and other inner planets contained a significant amount of water in their minerals, needed for the creation of life. It seems the asteroids , when they hit the surface of Earth at a great speed, shattered, leaving behind fragments of rock. Some suggest that nearly 30 percent of the water contained initially in the asteroids would have remained in the fragmented sections of rock on Earth, even after impact. A few hundred million years after this process—around 2.2 billion to 2.7 billion years ago—photosynthesizing bacteria evolved . They released oxygen into the atmosphere via photosynthesis and, in a few hundred million years, were able to change the composition of the atmosphere into what we have today. Our modern atmosphere is comprised of 78 percent nitrogen and 21 percent oxygen, among other gases, which enables it to support the many lives residing within it. Media CreditsThe audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit. The Rights Holder for media is the person or group credited. Production ManagersProgram specialists, last updated. October 19, 2023 User PermissionsFor information on user permissions, please read our Terms of Service. If you have questions about how to cite anything on our website in your project or classroom presentation, please contact your teacher. They will best know the preferred format. When you reach out to them, you will need the page title, URL, and the date you accessed the resource. If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer. If no button appears, you cannot download or save the media. Text on this page is printable and can be used according to our Terms of Service . InteractivesAny interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. You cannot download interactives. Related Resources American Geosciences InstituteEarth science benefits everyone.  Our lives and civilization depend upon how we understand and manage our planet—Earth processes affect us all. Weather patterns influence the availability of water resources and the potential for forest fires; Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, and floods can kill large numbers of people and cause millions or even billions of dollars in property damage. Just as Earth systems directly affect each of us, we – as individuals, communities and nations—affect our planet. Expanding technologies and growing populations increase demand on natural resources. As we extract and use these resources, we have an impact on Earth today, which will in turn affect those who come after us. To enhance our stewardship of the environment, we must proceed into the future with a sound understanding of Earth systems. Earth science knowledge enables us to think globally and act locally— to make sound decisions about issues important in our lives as individuals and citizens. People who understand how Earth systems work can make informed decisions about where to buy or build a home out of harm’s way. They can debate and resolve issues surrounding clean water, urban planning and development, national security, global climate change, and the use and management of natural resources. An informed society, conscious of our complex relationships with our planet, recognizes the importance of and insists on Earth science education at all grade levels— elementary, secondary, and adult education. When we emphasize Earth science education, everyone benefits.
217 Awesome Earth Science Topics For All Your Essay Needs Are you ready to embark on an exciting journey into the captivating realm of Earth science? Whether you’re a student seeking inspiration or striving to improve your essay writing skills, this blog post is your ultimate guide. We’ve curated a list of 217 free Earth science topics that will spark your curiosity. Additionally, we’ll share valuable tips to help you craft stellar essays and research papers that impress your professors. So, grab your pen and let’s dive into the fascinating world of Earth science exploration and effective academic writing! Let’s Talk About Earth Science PapersEarth science is a broad scientific discipline that focuses on understanding the Earth’s physical processes, its history and its place within the larger universe. It encompasses various fields of study, including geology, meteorology, oceanography, and astronomy, among others. A good Earth science essay should effectively convey knowledge and understanding of the subject matter while engaging the reader. Here are some key elements that can contribute to a strong Earth science essay:
However, one of the key elements of a great Earth science paper is its topic. A great topic can earn you bonus points from your professor. The good news is that you don’t have to waste any time searching for original topic ideas because we have a comprehensive Earth science topics list for you right here: Interesting Earth Science TopicsExplore captivating subjects like plate tectonics, volcanoes, and the effects of climate change on ecosystems in our curated list of interesting Earth science topics:
Earth Science Essay TopicsCraft an engaging essay by choosing from a variety of Earth science essay topics such as the formation of mountains, the impact of erosion or the role of water in shaping Earth’s surface:
Earth Science Persuasive Essay TopicsMake a compelling argument in your essay by selecting one of our awesome Earth science persuasive essay topics. Take your pick now:
Meteorology Topic IdeasDive into captivating meteorology topics such as the causes and consequences of severe weather events with our unique meteorology topic ideas:
Easy Topics In Earth ScienceExplore the basics of Earth science with easy topics covering rock types, the water cycle, or different soil characteristics with our list of easy topics in Earth science:
Soil Science Topic IdeasInvestigate the role of soil in agriculture, the effects of erosion on ecosystems, or the impact of soil pollution on human health with our original soil science topic ideas:
 Controversial Topics About EarthEngage in debates surrounding controversial Earth science topics like fracking or genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Choose one of these exceptional controversial topics about Earth:
Environmental Science Research TopicsConduct impactful research on environmental science by choosing one of our brand new environmental science research topics. Get bonus points on your paper:
Earth Science Topics For High SchoolImpress your teachers and peers by writing a paper on one of our Earth science topics for high school. Yes, all of these are tailored specifically for high school learners:
Astronomy Topic IdeasEmbark on a cosmic journey with captivating astronomy topics, exploring the formation of stars and galaxies, exoplanets or the history of space exploration with one of these awesome astronomy topic ideas:
Earth And Space Science TopicsUncover the interconnections between Earth and the cosmos with one of our interesting Earth and space science topics. All of these topics are 100% free for your use:
Geology Topic IdeasUnEarth the wonders of geology with topics covering mountain formation, erosion processes, or the geological history of specific regions. Choose one of our geology topic ideas:
Earth And Environmental Science TopicsExplore the intersection of Earth science and environmental issues with one of these unique Earth and environmental science topics. All our topics should be perfect for 2023:
Fun Earth Science TopicsPick one of our fun Earth science topics and start writing your essay in minutes. All of these topic ideas are 100% original and are guaranteed to get you a top grade:
Earth Science Topics To Write About In 2023Stay up to date with current advancements in Earth science by focusing on topics relevant to 2023. In fact, we have a whole list of Earth science topics to write about in 2023:
Oceanography Topic IdeasDive into the depths of oceanography with captivating topics exploring marine ecosystems, climate change impacts on coral reefs, or ocean currents and tides. Here are some great oceanography topic ideas:
Engaging Earth Science Topic IdeasCapture your readers’ attention with engaging topics and write the best essay in your class. Here is a list of brand new and engaging Earth science topic ideas:
Informative Earth Topics For An EssayEducate and inform your readers with topics focusing on biodiversity conservation, pollution impacts on ecosystems, or the benefits of renewable energy sources. Pick one of these informative Earth topics for an essay:
An Essay Writing Service You Can TrustAn online essay writing service offers students a range of benefits when it comes to crafting Earth science papers. With access to a team of seasoned writers, students always receive high quality, custom written papers from our experts when they buy essay online here. Our service ensures fast turnaround times, providing timely assistance to meet strict deadlines. Reliable customer support is available to address any inquiries or concerns along the way. By utilizing our secure online platform, students can confidently collaborate with professional writers to create papers that meet the expectations of their professors and teachers in university, college or high school. What are you waiting for? Get an A+ on your next Earth science paper! What are key steps for writing an Earth science essay? Research, organize your ideas, create a clear thesis, and provide evidence-based arguments. There are other steps involved, of course. Our expert English essay writing services can help you with your paper if you need assistance. How to choose a compelling and relevant topic for an Earth science essay? You should consider current issues, recent discoveries or ongoing research in the field. Or you can just choose one of our topics. We’re updating the list regularly. How important is proper citation in an Earth science essay? It is extremely important. Proper citation adds credibility, acknowledges sources and allows verification. Without it, you will get penalized. What are some strategies for presenting complex concepts in an Earth science essay? Use clear language, provide examples, make effective use of visuals, and structure your essay logically. Also, don’t forget to take into account the expertise of your audience. Leave a Reply Cancel replyYour email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Have a team of vetted experts take you to the top, with professionally written papers in every area of study. 
 How does global warming work?Where does global warming occur in the atmosphere, why is global warming a social problem, where does global warming affect polar bears.
 global warmingOur editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.
 Human activity affects global surface temperatures by changing Earth ’s radiative balance—the “give and take” between what comes in during the day and what Earth emits at night. Increases in greenhouse gases —i.e., trace gases such as carbon dioxide and methane that absorb heat energy emitted from Earth’s surface and reradiate it back—generated by industry and transportation cause the atmosphere to retain more heat, which increases temperatures and alters precipitation patterns. Global warming, the phenomenon of increasing average air temperatures near Earth’s surface over the past one to two centuries, happens mostly in the troposphere , the lowest level of the atmosphere, which extends from Earth’s surface up to a height of 6–11 miles. This layer contains most of Earth’s clouds and is where living things and their habitats and weather primarily occur. Continued global warming is expected to impact everything from energy use to water availability to crop productivity throughout the world. Poor countries and communities with limited abilities to adapt to these changes are expected to suffer disproportionately. Global warming is already being associated with increases in the incidence of severe and extreme weather, heavy flooding , and wildfires —phenomena that threaten homes, dams, transportation networks, and other facets of human infrastructure. Learn more about how the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, released in 2021, describes the social impacts of global warming. Polar bears live in the Arctic , where they use the region’s ice floes as they hunt seals and other marine mammals . Temperature increases related to global warming have been the most pronounced at the poles, where they often make the difference between frozen and melted ice. Polar bears rely on small gaps in the ice to hunt their prey. As these gaps widen because of continued melting, prey capture has become more challenging for these animals. Recent Newsglobal warming , the phenomenon of increasing average air temperatures near the surface of Earth over the past one to two centuries. Climate scientists have since the mid-20th century gathered detailed observations of various weather phenomena (such as temperatures, precipitation , and storms) and of related influences on climate (such as ocean currents and the atmosphere’s chemical composition). These data indicate that Earth’s climate has changed over almost every conceivable timescale since the beginning of geologic time and that human activities since at least the beginning of the Industrial Revolution have a growing influence over the pace and extent of present-day climate change . Giving voice to a growing conviction of most of the scientific community , the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), published in 2021, noted that the best estimate of the increase in global average surface temperature between 1850 and 2019 was 1.07 °C (1.9 °F). An IPCC special report produced in 2018 noted that human beings and their activities have been responsible for a worldwide average temperature increase between 0.8 and 1.2 °C (1.4 and 2.2 °F) since preindustrial times, and most of the warming over the second half of the 20th century could be attributed to human activities. AR6 produced a series of global climate predictions based on modeling five greenhouse gas emission scenarios that accounted for future emissions, mitigation (severity reduction) measures, and uncertainties in the model projections. Some of the main uncertainties include the precise role of feedback processes and the impacts of industrial pollutants known as aerosols , which may offset some warming. The lowest-emissions scenario, which assumed steep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions beginning in 2015, predicted that the global mean surface temperature would increase between 1.0 and 1.8 °C (1.8 and 3.2 °F) by 2100 relative to the 1850–1900 average. This range stood in stark contrast to the highest-emissions scenario, which predicted that the mean surface temperature would rise between 3.3 and 5.7 °C (5.9 and 10.2 °F) by 2100 based on the assumption that greenhouse gas emissions would continue to increase throughout the 21st century. The intermediate-emissions scenario, which assumed that emissions would stabilize by 2050 before declining gradually, projected an increase of between 2.1 and 3.5 °C (3.8 and 6.3 °F) by 2100. Many climate scientists agree that significant societal, economic, and ecological damage would result if the global average temperature rose by more than 2 °C (3.6 °F) in such a short time. Such damage would include increased extinction of many plant and animal species, shifts in patterns of agriculture , and rising sea levels. By 2015 all but a few national governments had begun the process of instituting carbon reduction plans as part of the Paris Agreement , a treaty designed to help countries keep global warming to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) above preindustrial levels in order to avoid the worst of the predicted effects. Whereas authors of the 2018 special report noted that should carbon emissions continue at their present rate, the increase in average near-surface air temperature would reach 1.5 °C sometime between 2030 and 2052, authors of the AR6 report suggested that this threshold would be reached by 2041 at the latest.  The AR6 report also noted that the global average sea level had risen by some 20 cm (7.9 inches) between 1901 and 2018 and that sea level rose faster in the second half of the 20th century than in the first half. It also predicted, again depending on a wide range of scenarios, that the global average sea level would rise by different amounts by 2100 relative to the 1995–2014 average. Under the report’s lowest-emission scenario, sea level would rise by 28–55 cm (11–21.7 inches), whereas, under the intermediate emissions scenario, sea level would rise by 44–76 cm (17.3–29.9 inches). The highest-emissions scenario suggested that sea level would rise by 63–101 cm (24.8–39.8 inches) by 2100.  The scenarios referred to above depend mainly on future concentrations of certain trace gases, called greenhouse gases , that have been injected into the lower atmosphere in increasing amounts through the burning of fossil fuels for industry, transportation , and residential uses. Modern global warming is the result of an increase in magnitude of the so-called greenhouse effect , a warming of Earth’s surface and lower atmosphere caused by the presence of water vapour , carbon dioxide , methane , nitrous oxides , and other greenhouse gases. In 2014 the IPCC first reported that concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxides in the atmosphere surpassed those found in ice cores dating back 800,000 years. Of all these gases, carbon dioxide is the most important, both for its role in the greenhouse effect and for its role in the human economy. It has been estimated that, at the beginning of the industrial age in the mid-18th century, carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere were roughly 280 parts per million (ppm). By the end of 2022 they had risen to 419 ppm, and, if fossil fuels continue to be burned at current rates, they are projected to reach 550 ppm by the mid-21st century—essentially, a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations in 300 years.  A vigorous debate is in progress over the extent and seriousness of rising surface temperatures, the effects of past and future warming on human life, and the need for action to reduce future warming and deal with its consequences. This article provides an overview of the scientific background related to the subject of global warming. It considers the causes of rising near-surface air temperatures, the influencing factors, the process of climate research and forecasting, and the possible ecological and social impacts of rising temperatures. For an overview of the public policy developments related to global warming occurring since the mid-20th century, see global warming policy . For a detailed description of Earth’s climate, its processes, and the responses of living things to its changing nature, see climate . For additional background on how Earth’s climate has changed throughout geologic time , see climatic variation and change . For a full description of Earth’s gaseous envelope, within which climate change and global warming occur, see atmosphere . Home — Essay Samples — Science — Earth Science  Essays on Earth ScienceImportance of science in everyday life, the intricacies of the rock cycle: an in-depth analysis, made-to-order essay as fast as you need it. Each essay is customized to cater to your unique preferences + experts online Similarities Between Natural Sciences and HistoryThe science of earthquakes, the structure of rocks which our earth stands on, the layers of the earth and their function, let us write you an essay from scratch.
Earth’s Magnetic FieldThe earthquakes all around the world, the concept of island or insular biogeography, an understanding of how science progresses, get a personalized essay in under 3 hours. Expert-written essays crafted with your exact needs in mind The Ecological Importance of Turtles in The WorldTypes of drainage pattern, overview of tectonic structure of montejunto area, the scientific applications of solar eclipse, the characteristics of a magnetic field, all you want to know about magma, the versatile nature of carbon, a short porosity of ethiopian opal, a report on the geology of tennessee, an overview of geological features of lebanon, conventional and unconventional systems in petroleum geology, the beauty of earth: an essay on the magnificence of our planet, relevant topics.
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 Earth Science Week Essay Contest Share your thoughts and insights on Earth sciences in our engaging essay competition. Celebrate Earth Science Week 2024 with the essay contest theme: “ How Earth Science Affects Us All ”. Contest GuidelinesWho can enter. The essay contest is open to any interested person in grades 6-9. You must also be a resident of the United States to enter. Your essay should focus on the topic “How Earth Science Affects Us All.”Earth science involves studying Earth’s structure and processes, including many challenges like natural hazards, climate change, locating safe water, maintaining soil for agriculture, and sourcing clean energy. Knowledge of earth science can be used to understand and address these challenges. Write an essay that describes an example of how understanding a specific earth science concept can help address a challenge currently faced around the world. The essay must be in English and contain no more than 300 words. Longer essays will be rejected unread. Must be original, unpublished workEntries must be previously unpublished, original content and must be the sole property of the entrants, not previously submitted to any other contest. Published material includes that which has been posted on the Internet. In adherence to our commitment to promoting originality and creativity, the Earth Science Week essay contest strictly prohibits the use of Artificial intelligence (AI) powered resources to ensure that each submission reflects the genuine thoughts and expressions of its author. What do I need to submit?The essay contest is limited to one submission per entrant. A valid submission will contain the following information:
When is the deadline?All eligible submissions must be received electronically by 8 p.m. ET, Friday, October 18, 2024 . Your essay submission is considered incomplete until we receive all of these items. If you have any problems submitting your entry, please e-mail the Earth Science Week staff at [email protected] .
Your support helps make our show possible and unlocks access to our sponsor-free feed. Earth is more than a planet with life on it. It's a "living planet" Regina G. Barber  Berly McCoy  Rebecca Ramirez  Ferris Jabr's book Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life examines the ways life and Earth have shaped each other. Lucas Heinrich/Random House hide caption Ferris Jabr's book Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life examines the ways life and Earth have shaped each other. About ten years ago, science writer Ferris Jabr started contemplating Earth as a living planet rather than a planet with life on it . It began when he learned that the Amazon rainforest doesn't simply receive the rain that gives it its namesake; rather, it helps generate that rain. The Amazon does that by launching bits of biological confetti into the atmosphere that, in turn, seed clouds. He began looking for other ways life changes its environment, which led to his new book Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life . He talks to host Regina G. Barber about examples of how life transformed the planet — from changing the color of our sky to altering the weather. Have a story about the environment you'd like us to cover? Email us at [email protected]. Listen to Short Wave on Spotify and Apple Podcasts . Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave . This episode was produced and fact checked by Berly McCoy and edited by Rebecca Ramirez. The audio engineer was Kwesi Lee. Advertisement What would happen if Earth was the centre of the solar system?Geocentrism, the idea that everything in the universe revolves around Earth, has long been disproven, but this episode of Dead Planets Society is bringing it back with cataclysmic consequences By Leah Crane and Chelsea Whyte 25 June 2024 Dead Planets Society is a podcast that takes outlandish ideas about how to tinker with the cosmos – from snapping the moon in half to causing a gravitational wave apocalypse – and subjects them to the laws of physics to see how they fare. Listen on Apple , Spotify or on our podcast page . By the end of the 16th century, pretty much everyone knew that Earth revolved around the sun, and not the other way around. This was a major blow to those who thought Earth was the centre of the universe, but the Dead Planets Society is here to relieve their dismay. That’s right, we’re bringing back geocentrism. Truly making Earth the centre of our solar system is going to take more than just fudging the maths. The sun is so much more massive than our puny planet that it is nearly impossible to force the former to orbit the latter, so our hosts Chelsea Whyte and Leah Crane are going to have to make some major changes to the solar system as we know it. They are joined for this episode by Andy Rivkin at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, who says that the only way to create a geocentric solar system is to make Earth the most massive thing around. Assuming that doesn’t force the planet to collapse into a black hole, this would lead to some strange effects. For one, the moon is going to have to speed up to remain in orbit, circling Earth every hour or so until it simply shatters. The rest of the planets would speed up, too, or else they will all smash into the new enormous Earth within a decade or two. All that extra mass in our planet could even disturb other nearby stars and start to pull them towards us. The triumphant geocentric solar system might not last long, but it would certainly have a dramatic end.
Sign up to our weekly newsletterReceive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox! We'll also keep you up to date with New Scientist events and special offers. More from New ScientistExplore the latest news, articles and features  Mercury may have a layer of diamond beneath its grey surfaceSubscriber-only  Jupiter’s Great Red Spot may have disappeared and reformed Is an old NASA probe about to redraw the frontier of the solar system? Pluto and the largest moon of Neptune might be siblingsPopular articles. Trending New Scientist articles  NASA’s Earth Science Technology Office Celebrates 25 Years Introduction Many Earth science missions, both airborne and on orbit, can trace their origins to the early technology developments that produced the groundbreaking instruments, instrument components (the parts or subsystems that make up an instrument), and information systems that enabled these missions. To give one recent example, NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem mission (PACE) mission, launched on February 8, includes two instruments – the Ocean Color Instrument and the Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter #2 – that were directly derived from technology development efforts. Since 1998, NASA’s Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO) has been the entity that fulfills this technology testing and development function within NASA’s Earth Science Division. March 15, 2023, marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of ESTO. As with many organizations, the quarter-century milestone is a natural time to reflect on the past and look toward the future. Following an opening historical overview of ESTO, the majority of this article summarizes a 2023 analysis of the ESTO portfolio of investments, taking a retrospective look at the accomplishments from the first 25 years. Overview of ESTO History By the 1990s, NASA Earth Science recognized that untested and underdeveloped technologies had the potential to stall the progress of mission implementation, occasionally idling large mission teams while bugs were worked out. (For context, this would be around the time the first missions of the Earth Observing System (EOS) were preparing to launch.) ESTO was formed to help manage and nurture technologies outside of the framework of flight missions, to allow new ideas to incubate and mature fully before being picked up for operational use. Since its inception, ESTO has employed an open, flexible, science-driven strategy that relies on competition and peer review to select promising technologies for Earth science. While early efforts focused on remote sensing instruments and data systems, solicitation topic areas gradually expanded to span the diversity of needs and requirements, from lidar and sensor webs to efforts that focus on a particular science theme, e.g., wildfire science and mitigation. Over the last 25 years, ESTO has awarded and managed more than 1100 technology projects for future science measurements. This forward-looking portfolio has enabled new Earth-observing capabilities, informed Earth Science Decadal Surveys and strategic planning, and generated numerous infusions and spinoffs. While every technology project has a story to tell, ESTO has assembled a series of 30 highlights focusing on some of the more notable impacts. Visit the dedicated 25th Anniversary Project webpage to learn about some of the most notable ESTO technologies that have been infused into Earth science missions, science campaigns, or other operational or commercial activities over the past quarter century. Twenty-fifth Anniversary Analysis In 2023, ESTO undertook a review of its portfolio to catalog past achievements. The results compiled to date are summarized in the subsections that follow. Taken together, they clearly show the remarkable impact of ESTO’s 25 years of early, deliberate technology development to Earth science as well as other space science and commercialization activities. A Diversified Portfolio ESTO technology projects find their origins in a wide range of people and institutions across the country. Principal Investigators (PIs) hail from more than 200 different organizations – from colleges and universities to corporations and non-profits to NASA field centers and Federal labs – in 42 states. More than 2000 collaborators, co-investigators, and other partners also contribute their expertise, from over 400 organizations in 44 states – see Figure 1 .  In response to the 44 solicitations ESTO has released since 1998, this community of technologists, engineers, and scientists has supplied an abundance of new ideas and methods for NASA Earth science endeavors. The ESTO portfolio addresses the full breadth of Earth science measurements, from remote sensing instruments and instrument subsystems to advanced information systems, machine learning, and modeling to highly targeted areas such as quantum sensing, wildfire technologies, and Earth digital twins. New technologies on orbit, in the air, and on the ground are helping to improve Earth System science measurement processes, from predictions to observations and initial data collection to analysis and information access. Measuring Advancements ESTO makes regular assessments of Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) for most projects in the portfolio, including at the outset of the project, at the final review, and at least annually during the period of funding. (Some projects, particularly studies and operational transition efforts, are not assigned TRLs). The TRL scales – see Figure 2 – provide a useful framework to evaluate the current state of a technology as well as track development progress over time.  In 1998, the NASA Earth Science Division set a goal for ESTO to annually advance 25% of currently funded technology projects at least one TRL. This metric has been surpassed every year since. For example, in Fiscal Year 2023 (FY23), 31% of active ESTO projects advanced at least one TRL. An analysis of all the TRL-reportable projects that have graduated from ESTO funding yields a more complete and impressive picture of advancement – see Figure 3 and Figure 4 . In short, these Figures show that most projects that go to ESTO with the goal of maturing technology do in fact do so.  ESTO PIs have reported at least 269 infusions of their technologies into Earth science missions, science campaigns, and other operational or commercial activities. The breakdown of verified infusions since 1998 includes:
The transition of ESTO technologies to other sources of funding for further development also occurs regularly. Several hundred projects have transitioned to other NASA programs, other Federal agencies, Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) awards, or internal funding through the originating organization. ESTO initiated a study in 2023 to further codify these transitions to better understand the paths taken by technology efforts, both before and after ESTO investment. Publications and Presentations Just as with basic science research, the sharing of ideas and findings is crucial to the advancement of technology. To date, more than 600 articles on ESTO technologies have appeared in peer-reviewed journals, including in Science , Nature , the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , Environmental Science and Technology , and various journals from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). These numbers are even more impressive, considering that in the early years of the office, many projects were not documented in journal articles. Conference papers and presentations by ESTO projects – at meetings convened by the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society, the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE), IEEE, and others – number well above 2500 and, as with journal citations, are undercounted historically. Since 2001, ESTO has also hosted a nearly annual conference. Now known as the Earth Science Technology Forum (ESTF), the meeting presents an opportunity for PIs to further showcase their work. There have been 19 iterations of this event held during the last 23 years, generating some 1300 presentations to more than 5000 attendees. The 2024 ESTF has been scheduled for June 11–12, 2024, in Crystal City, VA. At least 23 patents have been issued for ESTO technologies. An example from 2023 is Integrated Multiwavelength Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) Lidar Transmitter from Guangning Yang and Jeffrey Chen [both at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center] ( Patent Number: US 11,493,602 B1; Issued: 11/08/2022 ). As with many research and development activities, students are integral to the work and success of technology development teams. Since ESTO’s founding, at least 1180 students from 171 institutions have worked on various ESTO-funded projects. Aided by their experiences, students who take part in these projects have often gone on to work in the aerospace industry and in related fields. As an example, the Photo below shows students involved in the 2019 ESTO–Amazon Web Services (AWS) DeepRacer Challenge .  In Fiscal Year 2023 alone, at least 157 students from 48 institutions were involved with active technology development projects. Typically, these students are pursuing undergraduate and graduate degrees, but occasionally high school students also have had the opportunity to participate. Although often separated by years or decades from the missions and science they enable, technology developments remain a critical first step in NASA’s Earth Science endeavors. Many of the projects being awarded today will lead to new capabilities in the 2030s and beyond; some in revolutionary ways and others as incremental steps in a continuum of observations. Still others will “fail” or be overcome by alternative approaches, imparting lessons about feasibility and informing alternative paths forward. ESTO is committed to continuing its careful approach to technology development for the next quarter century and looks forward to facilitating the next generation of Earth science measurements. Philip Larkin Earth Science Technology Office [email protected]  The Deep Connection Between Life and FireHow wildfire defines the world  Listen to this article Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration. P erched on a densely forested hill crisscrossed with narrow, winding, often unsigned roads, Frank Lake’s house in Orleans, California, is not easy to find. On my way there one afternoon in late October, I got lost and inadvertently trespassed on two of his neighbors’ properties before I found the right place. When Lake, a research ecologist for the United States Forest Service, and his wife, Luna, bought their home in 2008, it was essentially a small cabin with a few amenities. They expanded it into a long and handsome red house with a gabled entrance and a wooden porch. A maze of Douglas firs, maples, and oaks, undergrown with ferns, blackberries, and manzanitas, covers much of the surrounding area. “This is a feral orchard,” Lake said as he showed me around, weaving among slender-trunked trees and sprawling shrubs. He was wearing cargo pants, thick black boots, and a camo-print beanie. “This is an old place that Karuk managed.” Lake, who is of mixed Indigenous, European, and Mexican heritage, is a descendant of the Karuk, a native people of northwestern California and one of the largest tribes in the state today. Some of his family members are also part of the Yurok Tribe, which is indigenous to the same region. Lake grew up learning the history and culture of both peoples. A little ways ahead, we reached a grove of moderately large oak trees. Here, the forest floor was mostly free of vegetation, charred black in places, and littered with acorns. Since 2009, Lake, who is a certified firefighter, has used chain saws, propane torches, and drip torches to strategically thin and burn this particular half acre. Over the years, the controlled burns, or prescribed burns as they are often called, have removed the smothering underbrush, reduced the number of trees, and provided the remaining oaks with much more light and space, creating an orchard similar to those Lake’s ancestors would have managed. Fire has also kept pests in check. Every year, weevils and moths lay eggs on or within acorns, which their larvae proceed to devour. Periodic low-level fires spare the trees but kill a portion of the pests’ pupae buried in leaf litter and soil, preventing them from ruining the following year’s crop. Like many Indigenous peoples in the area, Lake’s family and friends continue to use acorns to make flour, bread, and soup. “How do you know which ones are best?” I said, scanning the hundreds of fallen acorns around our feet. “Look for silvery-white ones,” Lake said. He rummaged through the leaf litter, his fingers moving too quickly for me to follow. “Okay, here we go. Brown top bad. White top good.” He showed me several large acorns with neat white circles on their rounded ends. “A stain on top usually represents that there’s a bug hole or injury. When it’s clear, then the inside is usually good too.” Lake cracked open an acorn and split it in half lengthwise. The flesh was smooth and creamy white with a tinge of yellow, like French vanilla. He turned it this way and that, as if he were inspecting a jewel. “That is a perfect acorn,” he said. We explored more areas of the grove as he continued: “This is what traditional management and food security looks like … And this is climate adaptation. If someone tosses a cigarette on a hot summer day and a wildfire comes through here, this clearing will be a barrier between the fire and my home.” Fire had created what he called “a place of safety.” Wildfires in many parts of the world are becoming more frequent, intense, and disastrous. In the context of anthropogenic global warming, the concept of a discrete “fire season” is unraveling because devastating blazes can now happen at any time of the year. Yet the horrors of the current wildfire crisis all too easily obscure an essential truth: that fire is not always destructive. Fire can be beneficial. Fire can be life-giving. In fact, fire is a product of life. Over the past 400 million years, wildfire has become a vital component of the vast living system we call Earth. Without it, forests and grasslands as we know them would not be possible, the level of atmospheric oxygen might be far less stable, and much of human history would never have happened. F or the first few billion years of Earth’s history, wildfires did not exist. Fire requires three ingredients: fuel, oxygen, and heat. In Earth’s youth, there were many sources of intense heat and plenty of sparks—lightning, volcanoes, rockfalls—but hardly any free oxygen or dry and combustible matter. By 600 million years ago, photosynthetic cyanobacteria and algae had raised the amount of oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere to somewhere between 10 percent and half of its current level—a monumental change but not quite sufficient for fire. The creation of a more familiar atmosphere required a second revolution: the greening of a new Earthly domain. About 425 million to 500 million years ago, the first land plants evolved. Cooksonia was a tiny, moisture-loving plant with spore-bearing structures that resembled the toe pads of a tree frog. Baragwanathia longifolia ’s undulating branches, densely packed with slender leaves, gave it a hirsute, tarantula-like appearance. And the 23-inch-high Psilophyton dawsonii , with a rather sophisticated vascular system for its time, looked like a primordial cousin of dill. Over the next several hundred million years, terrestrial plants of all kinds profoundly altered the planet, accelerating the water cycle, turning obdurate crust into supple soil—and pushing the level of atmospheric oxygen to new heights. The process by which this happened was not as simple as plants exhaling oxygen into the air. The great majority of oxygen that plants breathe out is used up by other organisms in a perpetual cycle. In order to grow, plants absorb carbon dioxide, use it to build their tissues, and release oxygen as a waste product. Animals, fungi, and microbes eat and decompose plants, using oxygen in the process and exhaling carbon dioxide. Not all plant material is consumed or decomposed, however. A fraction is buried relatively intact in lakes, swamps, landslides, and seafloor sediments. The oxygen that animals and decomposers would have used to break down those absentee plants remains in the atmosphere, having escaped the usual cycle. This leakage began in the ocean about 2.5 billion years ago with photosynthetic cyanobacteria, but it accelerated when plants evolved on land. Bit by bit, across the Paleozoic era, excess oxygen accumulated. Along the way, fire became routine. The charred remains of 430-million-year-old plant fragments are the earliest evidence of wildfire. Charcoal has been present in the fossil record ever since. From the late Devonian onward, many plants adapted to fire’s recurring presence. They evolved thick, flame-resistant bark, succulent leaves, and resilient tubers that resurrected themselves in charred soil. Some plants even came to depend on fire to reproduce: Certain pine trees have cones sealed by resin that melts in the heat of a wildfire, releasing seeds into fertile ash; smoke seems to stimulate germination in some plant species; and a few flowering plants burst into bloom only after a blaze. In tandem, fire adapted to life. “Fire cannot exist without the living world,” the fire historian Stephen J. Pyne writes in Fire: A Brief History . “The chemistry of combustion has progressively embedded itself within a biology of burning.” Wildfires coevolved with the very ecosystems that made their existence possible. The outcome is known as a fire regime: the typical frequency, intensity, and duration of wildfires in a given region. If fire is itself a kind of music that results from the interplay of life and environment, then a fire regime is a tune or theme that recurring wildfires and their particular habitat compose together. Once fire became a frequent occurrence in the Earth system, an entirely novel evolutionary path emerged: the chance that one or more creatures might learn to control it. At some point, possibly 1 million to 2 million years ago, our ancestors began to do just this. Archaeological evidence suggests that humans were routinely maintaining fires by about 400,000 years ago. Fire was warmth when there was no sun and light when it was not day. An evening campfire became a focal point of conversation and storytelling. A torch or an oil lamp turned the formerly dark contours of a cave into a canvas for myth and memory. A combination of hunting and cooking with fire allowed our species to evolve and nourish much bigger, denser, and hungrier brains with nearly three times as many neurons. Fire is arguably the single most important catalyst of human evolution—the furnace behind our intelligence, technology, and culture. Strategically burning the environment is undoubtedly an ancient practice, but its exact origins are lost to unrecorded history. What is certain, however, is that whenever Indigenous peoples began to experiment with controlled burns—not just in North America but in Africa, Australia, and Asia too—they did so within the context of existing fire regimes that had developed over many millions of years. Over millennia, humans became co-conductors of fire’s ecological rhythms. Eventually, we would alter them more drastically than any creature before us—sometimes to marvelous effect, sometimes with dreadful consequences.  T he day after meeting Frank Lake at his property, I ventured northeast of Orleans, past Somes Bar, and into Klamath National Forest, near an area known as Rogers Creek. Moss pillowed every rock, trunk, and stump. Wisps of pale lichen hung along the length of every branch, as though the trees were antique chandeliers caked in melted wax. The stout smell of wet soil and rotting leaves flavored the air, muddled with their near opposites: the scent of woodsmoke and ash. Dozens of people dressed in flame-resistant clothing—mustard-yellow shirts and pine-green pants—paused along a forest service road to adjust their hard hats, strap propane tanks onto their backs, and test the torches connected to them: long, thin metal rods with a stream of flaming gas at one end. Although they were all firefighters, they were not there to extinguish anything. They had come to burn. A diverse group of conservationists, paramedics, members of local Indigenous communities, and pyrophiles, they had traveled from near and far to participate in a program known as TREX: prescribed fire training exchanges. Founded in 2008 by the U.S. Forest Service and the Nature Conservancy, TREX teaches people how to use controlled burns to benefit ecosystems and reduce the chance of severe wildfires. The firefighters—some of whom prefer to be called fire lighters —moved carefully down steep slopes into the midst of the forest, searching for large piles of branches and brush, which crews of foresters had cut and stacked in the preceding months, covering their centers with wax paper to keep them dry. When a firelighter found a brush pile, they would push their torch into its heart and squeeze a lever or turn a knob to increase the flow of gas, scorching the pile’s interior with a fierce orange flame. At first, some of the piles seemed too wet to burn properly. Although they spewed plumes of smoke like volcanoes stirring from slumber, they did not erupt in flame. A little rain is beneficial for pile burning, as it prevents fires from becoming too big and hot, but too much moisture defeats the purpose. The forest ecologist and firefighter Michael Hentz explained that the piles needed time to burn and dry from the inside out before catching fire in their entirety. As the day progressed, more and more piles began to burn, sometimes so vigorously that they lofted ash and embers high above us. Soon the whole forest seemed to glow and crackle within shifting layers of fog and smoke. Although I knew that these fires were intentional, the sight of them still provoked some deeply embedded survival instinct—a stubborn feeling that something was wrong. It was strange to see the forest on fire. It was beautiful too. Surveying the many heaps and rings of wood with flames leaping from their centers, I felt like we had stumbled into a colony of phoenix nests. “This is one of the most important steps in reintroducing fire back to this mountainside,” Zack Taylor, the burn boss and one of the key organizers of the day’s events, told me. The 50 acres on which they were burning, he explained, were populated with a mix of tan oak, black oak, canyon live oak, big-leaf maple, madrone, and a surfeit of spindly Douglas firs. “The ecological trajectory we want is one in which we have less conifers and more healthy hardwoods,” he continued. “They’re an important cultural food source, and they have a lot of value for wildlife, but they’re lacking on the landscape because of a hundred years of fire exclusion.” When Frank Lake was a boy, TREX was many decades away from existing, Indigenous burning traditions were still sometimes prohibited by law, and prescribed burns in the West were uncommon. After earning a Ph.D. in environmental science from Oregon State University, Lake became a key figure in collaborations between the Forest Service and Indigenous tribes, as well as a champion of the growing movement to return fire to western North America. Thanks in large part to advocacy by Indigenous leaders, both federal and state government agencies are more and more open to using prescribed fire to reinvigorate ecosystems and reduce the likelihood of disastrous megafires. I asked Lake what he envisions for the future. “I want to scale up,” he said with typical fervor. “If my gold standard is my half-acre orchard, we should have 50,000 acres of it. I have learned this Western system of sound, credible science. I’ve been able to use that to demonstrate that Indigenous practices can fulfill desired objectives for carbon sequestration, climate resilience, and the mitigation of severe wildfires. What I do is no longer questioned the way it was before. You serve by example.” W hen fire first became part of the Earth system, it was highly volatile. The rhythms that characterize modern fire-adapted ecosystems took hundreds of millions of years to form. Earth’s earliest wildfires may have been fitful and erratic, flickering among the amphibious flora of fens and bogs. In contrast, during the Carboniferous, between 275 million and 375 million years ago—when atmospheric oxygen levels were at their peak and giant dragonflies soared through the air—fires were frequent and rampant, incinerating even lush vegetation. For a long time, oxygen levels, and the frequency and intensity of wildfires, fluctuated widely. About 200 million years ago, however, something appears to have changed: The amount of oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere began to stabilize, remaining within a relatively narrow window around 18 percent. Fires cannot sustain themselves if the atmosphere contains less than 16 percent oxygen; conversely, if oxygen exceeds about 23 percent, wildfires are much more likely to blaze out of control, and essentially anything that isn’t drenched or submersed in water becomes flammable. In the past 55 million years, atmospheric oxygen has been more stable than ever, hovering around 21 percent, which is high enough to support occasional wildfires and an incredible diversity of complex, fire-adapted life, yet not so high that any stray spark will ignite an unstoppable inferno. Scientists have long struggled to explain this remarkable equilibrium. In the past couple of decades, they have begun converging on a possible answer: the coevolution of fire and life. The geoscientist Lee Kump was one of the first scientists to formally publish a theory of this particular planetary balancing act, which was further developed by the Earth-system scientist Tim Lenton. The gist of their idea is that the level of oxygen in the atmosphere is regulated by the overall productivity of terrestrial plants. When land plants thrive, there is an abundance of plant tissue on the planet, and an even higher-than-usual amount of that carbon-rich organic matter is buried before it is eaten or decomposed, strengthening the mechanism by which oxygen accumulates in the atmosphere. If oxygen levels rise too high, however, wildfires become more intense and frequent, destroying immense tracts of vegetation, hindering the process of oxygen accumulation, and bringing the oxygen level down again. Although this feedback loop is not yet textbook science, a growing cadre of scientists think that it has stabilized the amount of oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere for 50 million years. Such feedback invokes one of the most provocative ideas in the history of Western science: the Gaia hypothesis. Developed by the British scientist James Lovelock and the American biologist Lynn Margulis, the Gaia hypothesis characterizes Earth as a giant, living, self-regulating entity. When the original version of Gaia rose to prominence in the late 1970s, some of its most controversial tenets were that life controls the global climate in order to benefit itself and that the Earth system as a whole actively “seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet,” as Lovelock initially phrased it . As Earth history shows us, that is not quite true. To the contrary, many forms of life—as varied as microbes, trees, and bipedal apes—have caused or exacerbated some of the worst crises in Earth history. And there is no single “optimal” state of the planet that would suit all of the manifold and wildly diverse types of life that have existed in the past 4 billion years. In general, though, given enough time and opportunity, life and environment seem to coevolve relationships and rhythms that ensure their mutual persistence. There is nothing teleological about this. Such persistence is not designed or planned. It is the outcome of ineluctable physical processes that are distinct from, but related to, the processes that govern the evolution of species. All complex multicellular organisms have evolved numerous ways to maintain homeostasis—to preserve a steady state of physical and chemical conditions essential to their continued existence. All complex organisms are also chimeras: Their genomes are patchworks stitched with genes introduced by viruses and pilfered from other species; some of the organelles in their cells were once free-living bacteria subsumed in the emergence of multicellular life; their bark, fur, or skin teems with trillions of microbes, competing, cooperating, and multiplying in secret societies. Any individual plant, fungus, or animal is, in effect, an ecosystem. If such composite creatures can evolve homeostasis—a point about which there is absolutely no disagreement—then perhaps an analogous phenomenon, which science does not yet fully understand, occurs at the scale of forests, grasslands, coral reefs, and other ecosystems. Ecosystems might not compete and reproduce the way organisms and species do, but some scholars have proposed that they should be regarded as living entities capable of self-regulation and evolution. The coevolution of the organisms and habitats that compose a given ecosystem influences how that system changes over time. An ecosystem, then, does not evolve passively; it effectively changes itself through inevitable feedback loops—at least to an extent. Although the particular species and habitats within these systems shift dramatically over time, the fundamental relationships that define them, the cycles and webs that bind prey and predator, flower and bee, leaf and flame, and the physical infrastructure that life creates—the rich soils, webs of roots and fungi, reefs, and ocean sediments—typically persist or, if they are demolished, regenerate in some form. Networks of species that happen to help sustain the system as a whole will be favored, whereas those that undermine the system to the point of collapse will ultimately eliminate themselves, even if they profit in the short term. The most resilient ecosystems—those best able to adapt to challenges and crises—will survive the longest. Perhaps this phenomenon of persistence extends to the planet as a whole—not an intention to persist but a tendency; not an imperative but an inclination. Whether cell or cetacean, prairie or planet, living systems find ways to endure. This article has been adapted from Ferris Jabr’s new book, Becoming Earth .  When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic. Scientific breakthroughs: 2024 emerging trends to watch December 28, 2023 Across disciplines and industries, scientific discoveries happen every day, so how can you stay ahead of emerging trends in a thriving landscape? At CAS, we have a unique view of recent scientific breakthroughs, the historical discoveries they were built upon, and the expertise to navigate the opportunities ahead. In 2023, we identified the top scientific breakthroughs , and 2024 has even more to offer. New trends to watch include the accelerated expansion of green chemistry, the clinical validation of CRISPR, the rise of biomaterials, and the renewed progress in treating the undruggable, from cancer to neurodegenerative diseases. To hear what the experts from Lawrence Liverpool National Lab and Oak Ridge National Lab are saying on this topic, join us for a free webinar on January 25 from 10:00 to 11:30 a.m. EDT for a panel discussion on the trends to watch in 2024. The ascension of AI in R&D While the future of AI has always been forward-looking, the AI revolution in chemistry and drug discovery has yet to be fully realized. While there have been some high-profile set-backs , several breakthroughs should be watched closely as the field continues to evolve. Generative AI is making an impact in drug discovery , machine learning is being used more in environmental research , and large language models like ChatGPT are being tested in healthcare applications and clinical settings. Many scientists are keeping an eye on AlphaFold, DeepMind’s protein structure prediction software that revolutionized how proteins are understood. DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs have recently announced how their latest model shows improved accuracy, can generate predictions for almost all molecules in the Protein Data Bank, and expand coverage to ligands, nucleic acids, and posttranslational modifications . Therapeutic antibody discovery driven by AI is also gaining popularity , and platforms such as the RubrYc Therapeutics antibody discovery engine will help advance research in this area. Though many look at AI development with excitement, concerns over accurate and accessible training data , fairness and bias , lack of regulatory oversight , impact on academia, scholarly research and publishing , hallucinations in large language models , and even concerns over infodemic threats to public health are being discussed. However, continuous improvement is inevitable with AI, so expect to see many new developments and innovations throughout 2024. ‘Greener’ green chemistry Green chemistry is a rapidly evolving field that is constantly seeking innovative ways to minimize the environmental impact of chemical processes. Here are several emerging trends that are seeing significant breakthroughs:
Rise of biomaterials New materials for biomedical applications could revolutionize many healthcare segments in 2024. One example is bioelectronic materials, which form interfaces between electronic devices and the human body, such as the brain-computer interface system being developed by Neuralink. This system, which uses a network of biocompatible electrodes implanted directly in the brain, was given FDA approval to begin human trials in 2023.
To the moon and beyond The global Artemis program is a NASA-led international space exploration program that aims to land the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon by 2025 as part of the long-term goal of establishing a sustainable human presence on the Moon. Additionally, the NASA mission called Europa Clipper, scheduled for a 2024 launch, will orbit around Jupiter and fly by Europa , one of Jupiter’s moons, to study the presence of water and its habitability. China’s mission, Chang’e 6 , plans to bring samples from the moon back to Earth for further studies. The Martian Moons Exploration (MMX) mission by Japan’s JAXA plans to bring back samples from Phobos, one of the Mars moons. Boeing is also expected to do a test flight of its reusable space capsule Starliner , which can take people to low-earth orbit. The R&D impact of Artemis extends to more fields than just aerospace engineering, though:
The CRISPR pay-off After years of research, setbacks, and minimal progress, the first formal evidence of CRISPR as a therapeutic platform technology in the clinic was realized. Intellia Therapeutics received FDA clearance to initiate a pivotal phase 3 trial of a new drug for the treatment of hATTR, and using the same Cas9 mRNA, got a new medicine treating a different disease, angioedema. This was achieved by only changing 20 nucleotides of the guide RNA, suggesting that CRISPR can be used as a therapeutic platform technology in the clinic. The second great moment for CRISPR drug development technology came when Vertex and CRISPR Therapeutics announced the authorization of the first CRISPR/Cas9 gene-edited therapy, CASGEVY™, by the United Kingdom MHRA, for the treatment of sickle cell disease and transfusion-dependent beta-thalassemia. This was the first approval of a CRISPR-based therapy for human use and is a landmark moment in realizing the potential of CRISPR to improve human health. In addition to its remarkable genome editing capability, the CRISPR-Cas system has proven to be effective in many applications, including early cancer diagnosis . CRISPR-based genome and transcriptome engineering and CRISPR-Cas12a and CRISPR-Cas13a appear to have the necessary characteristics to be robust detection tools for cancer therapy and diagnostics. CRISPR-Cas-based biosensing system gives rise to a new era for precise diagnoses of early-stage cancers. MIT engineers have also designed a new nanoparticle DNA-encoded nanosensor for urinary biomarkers that could enable early cancer diagnoses with a simple urine test. The sensors, which can detect cancerous proteins, could also distinguish the type of tumor or how it responds to treatment. Ending cancer The immuno-oncology field has seen tremendous growth in the last few years. Approved products such as cytokines, vaccines, tumor-directed monoclonal antibodies, and immune checkpoint blockers continue to grow in market size. Novel therapies like TAC01-HER2 are currently undergoing clinical trials. This unique therapy uses autologous T cells, which have been genetically engineered to incorporate T cell Antigen Coupler (TAC) receptors that recognize human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) presence on tumor cells to remove them. This could be a promising therapy for metastatic, HER2-positive solid tumors. Another promising strategy aims to use the CAR-T cells against solid tumors in conjunction with a vaccine that boosts immune response. Immune boosting helps the body create more host T cells that can target other tumor antigens that CAR-T cells cannot kill. Another notable trend is the development of improved and effective personalized therapies. For instance, a recently developed personalized RNA neoantigen vaccine, based on uridine mRNA–lipoplex nanoparticles, was found effective against pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). Major challenges in immuno-oncology are therapy resistance, lack of predictable biomarkers, and tumor heterogenicity. As a result, devising novel treatment strategies could be a future research focus. Decarbonizing energy Multiple well-funded efforts are underway to decarbonize energy production by replacing fossil fuel-based energy sources with sources that generate no (or much less) CO2 in 2024. One of these efforts is to incorporate large-scale energy storage devices into the existing power grid. These are an important part of enabling the use of renewable sources since they provide additional supply and demand for electricity to complement renewable sources. Several types of grid-scale storage that vary in the amount of energy they can store and how quickly they can discharge it into the grid are under development. Some are physical (flywheels, pumped hydro, and compressed air) and some are chemical (traditional batteries, flow batteries , supercapacitors, and hydrogen ), but all are the subject of active chemistry and materials development research. The U.S. government is encouraging development in this area through tax credits as part of the Inflation Reduction Act and a $7 billion program to establish regional hydrogen hubs. Meanwhile, nuclear power will continue to be an active R&D area in 2024. In nuclear fission, multiple companies are developing small modular reactors (SMRs) for use in electricity production and chemical manufacturing, including hydrogen. The development of nuclear fusion reactors involves fundamental research in physics and materials science. One major challenge is finding a material that can be used for the wall of the reactor facing the fusion plasma; so far, candidate materials have included high-entropy alloys and even molten metals . Neurodegenerative diseases Neurodegenerative diseases are a major public health concern, being a leading cause of death and disability worldwide. While there is currently no cure for any neurodegenerative disease, new scientific discoveries and understandings of these pathways may be the key to helping patient outcomes.
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Subscribe to the OSS Weekly Newsletter!The blood microbiome is probably not real. 
Up until recently, if bacteria were detected in your blood you would be in a world of trouble. Blood was long considered to be sterile, meaning free of viable microorganisms like bacteria. When disease-causing bacteria spread to the blood, they can cause a life-threatening septic shock. But the use of DNA sequencing technology has allowed researchers to more easily detect something that had been reported as early as the late 1960s: bacteria can be found in the blood and not cause disease. As we begin to map out and understand the complex microbial ecosystem that lives in our gut and elsewhere in the body, we contemplate an important question: is there such a thing as a blood microbiome? Detecting a fingerprint in the bloodOur large intestine is not sterile; it is teeming with bacteria. But there are parts of the body that were long thought to be devoid of microorganisms. The brain. Bones. A variety of internal fluids, like our synovial fluid and peritoneal fluid. And, importantly, the blood. Blood is made up of a liquid called plasma filled with red blood cells, whose main function is to carry oxygen to our cells. It also transports white blood cells, important to monitor for and fight off infections, as well as platelets, involved in clotting. In the 1960s, a team of Italian researchers published multiple papers describing “mycoplasm-like forms”—meaning shapes that look like a particular type of bacteria that often contaminate cells cultured in the lab—in the blood of healthy people. This finding was confirmed in 1977 by a different team, which reported that four out of the 60 blood samples they had drawn from healthy volunteers showed bacteria growing in them. These types of tests, however, were rudimentary compared to what we have access to now. In the 2000s, they were mostly supplanted by DNA testing. While we can sequence the entire DNA of any bacteria found in the blood, the technique most often used is 16S rRNA gene sequencing. I have always admired physicists’ penchant for quirky names: gluons, neutrinos, and charm quarks. Molecular biologists, by comparison, tend to be more sober. Yes, we have genes like Sonic hedgehog and proteins called scramblases; usually, though, we have to contend with the dryness of “16S rRNA.” You see, RNA is a molecule with many uses. Messenger RNA (or mRNA) acts as a disposable copy of a gene, a template for the production of a specific protein. Transfer RNA (or tRNA) actually brings the building blocks of a protein to where they are being assembled. And ribosomal RNA (or rRNA) is the main component of the giant protein factories in our cells known as ribosomes. One of its subunits is made up of, among others, a particular string of RNA known as the 16S rRNA. The cool thing about the gene that codes for this 16S rRNA molecule is that it is very old and it mutates at a slow rate. By reading its precise sequence, scientists can tell which species it belongs to. Most of the studies of the putative blood microbiome use this technique to tell which species of bacteria are present in the blood being tested. The limitation of this test, however, is that dead bacteria have DNA too. The fact that DNA from the 16S rRNA gene of a precise bacterial species was detected in someone’s blood does not mean these bacteria were alive. For there to be a microbiome in the blood, these microorganisms need to live. Which brings us to another important point of discussion. In order for scientists to agree that a blood microbiome exists, they first need to decide on the definition of a microbiome, and this is still a point of contention. In 2020, while companies were more than happy to sell hyped-up services testing your gut microbiome and claiming to interpret what it meant for your health, actual experts in the field met to agree on just what the word meant. “We are lacking,” they wrote , “a clear commonly agreed definition of the term ‘microbiome’.” For example, do viruses qualify? A microbiome implies life but viruses live on the edge, pun intended: they have the genetic blueprint for life yet they cannot reproduce on their own. These experts proposed that the word “microbiome” should refer to the sum of two things: the microbiota, meaning the living microorganisms themselves, and their theatre of activity. It’s like saying that the Earth is not simply the life forms it houses, but also all of their individual components, and the traces they leave behind, and the environmental conditions in which they thrive or die. The microbiome is made up of bacteria and other microorganisms, yes, but also their proteins, lipids, sugars, and DNA and RNA molecules, as well as the signalling molecules and toxins that get exchanged within their theatre. (This is where viruses were sorted, by the way: not as part of the living microbiota but as belonging to the theatre of activity of the microbiome.) The microbiome is a community, and this community has a distinct habitat. So, what does the evidence say? Is our blood truly host to a thriving community of microorganisms or is something else going on? Transient and sporadicInitial studies of the alleged blood microbiome were small . The amounts of bacteria that were being reported based on DNA sequencing were tiny. If this microbiome existed, it seemed sparse, more “asteroid field in real life” than “asteroid field in the movies.” An issue looming over this early research is that of contamination. If bacteria are detected in a blood sample, were they really in the blood… or did they contaminate supplies along the way? When blood is drawn, the skin, which has its own microbiome, is punctured. The area is usually swabbed with alcohol to kill bacteria, and the supplies used should be sterile, but suffice to say that from the blood draw to the DNA extraction to the DNA amplification to the sequencing of this DNA, bacteria can be introduced into the system. In fact, it is such common knowledge that certain bacteria are found inside of the laboratory kits used by scientists that this ecosystem has its own name: the kitome. One way to rule out these contaminants is to simultaneously run negative controls alongside samples every step of the way, to make sure that these negative controls are indeed free of bacteria. But early papers rarely reported when controls were used. Last year, results from what purports to be the largest study ever into the question of whether the blood microbiome exists were published in Nature Microbiology . A total of 9,770 healthy individuals were tested. The conclusion? Yes, some bacteria could be found in their blood, but the evidence contradicted the claim of an ecosystem. In 84% of the samples tested, no bacteria were detected. In most of the other samples, only one species was found. In an ecosystem, you would expect to see species appearing together repeatedly, but this was not the case here. And the species they found most often in their samples were known to contaminate these types of laboratory experiments. So, what were the few bacteria found in the blood and not recognized as contaminants doing there in the first place if they were not part of a healthy microbiome? The authors lean toward an alternative explanation that had been floated for many years: these bacteria are transient. They end up in the blood from other parts of the body, either because of some minor leak or through their active transportation into the blood by agents such as dendritic cells. Like pedestrians wandering off onto the highway, these bacteria do not normally live in the blood but they can be seen there when we look at the right moment. Putting the diagnostic cart before the horseThis blood microbiome story could end here and simply be an interesting example of scientific research homing in on a curious finding, testing a hypothesis, and ultimately refuting it (or at the very least providing strong evidence against it). But given the incentives of modern research and the social-media spotlight cast on the academic literature, there are two slightly worrying angles here that merit discussion. Scientists are more and more incentivized to find practical applications for their research. It’s not enough, for example, to study bacteria that survive at incredibly high temperatures; we must be assured that the DNA replication enzyme these bacteria possess will one day be used in laboratories all over the world to conduct research, identify criminals, and test samples for the presence of a pandemic-causing coronavirus. In researching this topic, I came across many papers claiming the existence of “blood microbiome signatures” for certain diseases that are not known to be infectious. We are thus not talking about infections leaking in the blood and causing sepsis. I saw reports of signatures for cardiovascular disease , liver disease , heart attacks , even for gastrointestinal disease in dogs . The idea is that these signatures could soon be turned into (profitable) diagnostic tests. The problem, of course, is that these studies are based on the hypothesis that a blood microbiome is real; that its equilibrium can be affected by disease; and that these changes can be reliably detected and interpreted. But if the blood microbiome is imaginary, we are just chasing ghosts. This is not unlike the time that scientists were publishing signatures of microRNAs in the blood for every possible cancer. When I looked at the published literature in grad school, I realized that the multiple signatures reported for a single cancer barely overlapped . They were just chance findings. Compare enough variables in a small sample set and you will find what appears to be an association. My second concern is that the transitory leakage of bacteria into the blood, as evidenced by the recent Nature Microbiology paper, will be used as confirmation of a pseudoscientific entity: leaky gut syndrome. At the end of their paper, the researchers hypothesize that these bacteria end up in the blood because the integrity of certain barriers in the body are compromised during disease or during periods of stress. The “net” in our gut gets a bit porous, and some of our colon’s bacteria end up in circulation, though they are not causing disease as far as we can tell. A form of leaky gut is known to exist in certain intestinal diseases , likely to be a consequence and not a cause. But leaky gut syndrome, favoured by non-evidence-based practitioners, does not appear to be real, yet many websites portray it as the one true cause of all diseases, a real epidemic. Nuanced scientific findings have a history of being stolen, distorted, and toyed with by fake doctors to give credence to their pet theories. Though I have yet to see examples of it, I suspect work done on this hypothesized blood microbiome will similarly get weaponized. You have been warned. Take-home message: - Our blood was long considered to be sterile, meaning free of viable microbes, unless a dangerous infection leaked into it, causing sepsis - Studies have provided evidence for the presence of bacteria in the blood of some healthy humans, leading to the hypothesis that, much like in our gut, our blood is host to a microbiome - The largest study ever done on the topic provided strong evidence against this hypothesis. It seems that when non-disease-causing bacteria find themselves in our blood, it is temporary and occasional @CrackedScience What to read nextThe story linking nutrition and health has unexpected twists 28 jun 2024.  A Taste of Bitter Melon 28 Jun 2024 Your Appendix May Not Be Useless After All 21 Jun 2024 On the Trail of Chemtrail Nonsense 21 Jun 2024 Facial Creams and Lotions Offer Hope in a Jar 14 Jun 2024 Protect Yourself Against Sunscreen Myths 14 Jun 2024 Department and University InformationOffice for science and society. 
Advertisement Supported by Two Killer Asteroids Are Flying by Earth, and You May Be Able to See OneThe smaller of the pair was spotted only this month and could be visible with binoculars as it passes by our planet within the distance to the moon.  By Robin George Andrews Robin George Andrews recently wrote for The Times about a comet fragment exploding over Spain and Portugal. This week, two asteroids — one big enough to destroy a city, and the other so large it could end civilization — are set to fly near our planet. Don’t panic. Both have a zero percent chance of impacting Earth. And, depending on where you are in the world, you may even be able to see one of them. The bigger of the pair, (415029) 2011 UL21, will travel at a distance more than 17 times farther away than the moon on Thursday at 4:14 p.m. Eastern time. It is a whopping 7,600 feet long, but it will be too far to spot easily without a strong telescope. However, two days later, the smaller space rock, named 2024 MK will get considerably nearer to humanity. On Saturday, at 9:46 a.m. Eastern time, it will zip by Earth at 75 percent of the distance to the moon. If you have a decent backyard telescope or perhaps even with some good binoculars , and your skies are cloud-free, you could see the 400- to 850-foot rock as a speck of light zipping across the starry sky ahead of the sun coming up. “The object will be moving fast, so you have to have some skills to spot it,” said Juan Luis Cano , a member of the Planetary Defense Office at the European Space Agency. Stargazers in the United States, particularly those farther to the southwest, may catch the asteroid flitting past the planet. Those atop Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano will be well positioned to see it as the asteroid zooms by before sunrise. However, people in South America may have the easiest viewing experience, said Andrew Rivkin , a planetary astronomer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. We are having trouble retrieving the article content. Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in . Want all of The Times? Subscribe . | ||||||||||||||||
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Earth sciences, the fields of study concerned with the solid Earth, its waters, and the air that envelops it. Included are the geologic, hydrologic, and atmospheric sciences. The broad aim of the Earth sciences is to understand the present features and past evolution of Earth and to use this knowledge, where appropriate, for the benefit of humankind. . Thus, the basic concerns of the Earth ...
Earth Science is the study of the Earth and its neighbors in space. It is an exciting science with many interesting and practical applications. Some Earth scientists use their knowledge of the Earth to locate and develop energy and mineral resources. Others study the impact of human activity on Earth's environment, and design methods to protect ...
500 Words Essay On Earth. The earth is the planet that we live on and it is the fifth-largest planet. It is positioned in third place from the Sun. This essay on earth will help you learn all about it in detail. Our earth is the only planet that can sustain humans and other living species. The vital substances such as air, water, and land make ...
Earth science is inextricably connected to astronomy, which is the study of outer space, since the behavior of the sun and moon influences conditions on Earth and there are many space hazards that ...
"Earth science" is a broad term that encompasses four main branches of study, each of which is further broken down into more specialized fields. Geology.
Earth Science deals with any and all aspects of the Earth. Our Earth has molten lava, icy mountain peaks, steep canyons and towering waterfalls. Earth scientists study the atmosphere high above us as well as the planet's core far beneath us. Earth scientists study parts of the Earth as big as continents and as small as the tiniest atom.
Earth science is the study of the Earth's structure, properties, processes, and four and a half billion years of biotic evolution. Understanding these phenomena is essential to maintenance of life on the planet. The expanding world population demands more resources; faces increasing losses from natural hazards; and releases more pollutants to ...
Earth Science is the study of our planet. This includes everything from the ground we walk on to the air we breathe. It looks at how the Earth was made, how it changes, and how it might look in the future. Earth Science helps us understand the world around us so we can take care of it better.
Earth science is mainly divided into four fields: Geology; Astronomy; Oceanography; Meteorology; Geology. Geology is the study of different materials, structures, and crust of Earth.It also ...
Earth, our home planet, is a world unlike any other. The third planet from the sun, Earth is the only place in the known universe confirmed to host life. With a radius of 3,959 miles, Earth is the ...
Earth science reconstructs the history of the earth through an exploration of natural interactions in the environment. This is the only discipline that provides a 4D representation of data. For example, geologists' topological maps show not only the length, width, and height of an area, but also changes to that area over time. ... Papers that ...
Earth, third planet from the Sun and the fifth largest planet in the solar system in terms of size and mass. Its single most outstanding feature is that its near-surface environments are the only places in the universe known to harbor life. Learn more about development and composition of Earth in this article.
Harvard experts are using everything from science to religion to gain a deeper awareness of the world around us. Correcting ocean warming information. New research corrects decades of sea surface temperature data, solving a long-standing mystery about global climate change. Detecting earthquakes. Researchers created an algorithm that can ...
Earth science is the "exploration and the interconnections between the land, ocean, atmosphere, and life of our planet.". These include matters, rocks and minerals, energy and other materials such as the continental drift, plate tectonics, water and erosion, which "continuously shape, influence, and sustain the Earth and its inhabitants.".
Essay on Earth: Check Samples for 100, 300 Words. Essay on Earth: Earth, our cherished celestial abode, is a marvel of the cosmos. It teems with life, boasts breathtaking landscapes, and endures the test of time. In this blog, we embark on a journey to explore the myriad facets of our planet, from its geological mysteries to the pressing ...
noun. an opening in the Earth's crust, through which lava, ash, and gases erupt, and also the cone built by eruptions. Our planet began as part of a cloud of dust and gas. It has evolved into our home, which has an abundance of rocky landscapes, an atmosphere that supports life, and oceans filled with mysteries.
When we emphasize Earth science education, everyone benefits. Our lives and civilization depend upon how we understand and manage our planet—Earth processes affect us all. Weather patterns influence the availability of water resources and the potential for forest fires; Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, and floods can kill large ...
Explore the intersection of Earth science and environmental issues with one of these unique Earth and environmental science topics. All our topics should be perfect for 2023: Climate change: Understanding the global warming phenomenon. Renewable energy: Harnessing sustainable power sources for the future.
Conclusion. Earth is a beautiful planet, full of wonders and mysteries that inspire and excite us. Its awe-inspiring natural landmarks remind us of the planet's immense power and beauty, while the incredible diversity of its inhabitants reveals the complexity and richness of life on earth.
What Is Earth Science? Essay. Shamsun Nahar Professor Baca ENGL 1301 19 November 2016 Earth Science What is earth science? Earth science is the "exploration and the interconnections between the land, ocean, atmosphere, and life of our planet." These include matters, rocks and minerals, energy and other materials such as the continental drift, plate tectonics, water and erosion, which ...
Modern global warming is the result of an increase in magnitude of the so-called greenhouse effect, a warming of Earth's surface and lower atmosphere caused by the presence of water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxides, and other greenhouse gases. In 2014 the IPCC first reported that concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and ...
Essays on Earth Science. Essay examples. Essay topics. 22 essay samples found. Sort & filter. 1 Importance of Science in Everyday Life . 2 pages / 812 words . Science, the systematic study of the natural world, plays a vital role in our everyday lives. From the moment we wake up in the morning to the time we go to bed at night, we are ...
Knowledge of earth science can be used to understand and address these challenges. Write an essay that describes an example of how understanding a specific earth science concept can help address a challenge currently faced around the world. The essay must be in English and contain no more than 300 words. Longer essays will be rejected unread ...
Earth is a "living planet." Here's why that's important : Short Wave About ten years ago, science writer Ferris Jabr started contemplating Earth as a living planet rather than a planet with life ...
Truly making Earth the centre of our solar system is going to take more than just fudging the maths. The sun is so much more massive than our puny planet that it is nearly impossible to force the ...
Since 1998, NASA's Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO) has been the entity that fulfills this technology testing and development function within NASA's Earth Science Division. March 15, 2023, marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of ESTO. As with many organizations, the quarter-century milestone is a natural time to reflect on the past and look toward the future.
In Earth's youth, there were many sources of intense heat and plenty of sparks—lightning, volcanoes, rockfalls—but hardly any free oxygen or dry and combustible matter.
Earth science: The Artemis program will provide a unique opportunity to study the Moon and its environment. This will lead to new insights into the Earth's history, geology, and climate. Materials science: The extreme space environment will require new materials that are lightweight, durable, and radiation resistant. This will have applications ...
Up until recently, if bacteria were detected in your blood you would be in a world of trouble. Blood was long considered to be sterile, meaning free of viable microorganisms like bacteria. When disease-causing bacteria spread to the blood, they can cause a life-threatening septic shock. But the use of DNA sequencing technology has allowed researchers to more easily detect something that had ...
A visualization of the orbit of (415029) 2011 UL21, a near-Earth object that completes 11 revolutions around the sun in almost the exact same amount of time in which Earth completes 34 revolutions ...