In this article, we are going to learn about what is geology and how it relates to each and every one of us.
What is geology
Geology is the science that pursues an understanding of the planet Earth which is where we live. This does not just focus on rocks but on all the processes that happen on earth including erosion, earthquakes, volcanoes, rivers, oceans, landslides and so much more.
We’re just going to kind of scratch the surface of all these major processes. How does geology impact you?
So geologic natural disasters adversely impact humans and since. The population of Earth is constantly growing more and more people are impacted.
We’ll talk about how volcanoes and volcanic eruptions impact us. This is going to be the aftermath of the tsunami that was so devastating and we’ll talk about the impacts that landslides and mass wasting events have on us.
So there are really two big broad categories of geology. There’s physical geology, that’s mostly what we’re going to be focusing on.
The geology has to do with the solid earth and that is the coolest and best part of the earth. Scientists are trying to figure out patterns cycles and the details of the world around us so that we can feel like we’re in control.
We work to build civilizations and try to make things nice and clean and safe we use pretty rocks to build things, smudgy dirty rocks to stay warm, fast, and soft muddy rocks to make other things.
But there are volcanoes that occasionally destroy everything. Earthquakes destroy everything and landslides that destroy everything and this is why we can’t have nice things. People demand safety.
They demand a hero to save them from the crazy things that the earth throws at us. That hero is a geologist. Geologists actually study what is the geosphere.
They don’t really study the things in the sky. The atmosphere is not the geosphere. We let our atmospheric scientist buddies handle things like weather, air, current circulation, and greenhouse gases.
The really cool thing about geology is that you can be a geologist on other planets too. Because they all have geology. Even if they don’t, all have geologists and biologists who work together all the time on things like paleontology, soil, and science.
But really geology is impactful on life and vice versa. But the biosphere isn’t geology. It’s just a little too squishy. Geologists definitely study minerals.
The cryosphere is held a little separate from what most people would call geology because water is such a special thing but the cryosphere is still part of geology.
We’ve got rocks, mountains, glaciers, erosion all kinds of geological stuff. Now imagine an erupting volcano. As said before geology is about solid things. The lava is not solid.
Well, it looks like it’s flowing. So that’s a point for the lava being in a liquid. So if we took a super close look at that lava though we can see a ton of tiny little crystals floating around in there.
Magma and lava which behave very much like a liquid at times are not 100% liquid. In fact, it’s actually a vicious semi-solid mineral mush.
You could say that it’s molten plastic rock but the bottom line is that we can definitely classify logs of magma as part of the solid earth. Because we’ve got all those little solid junkies in there.
Most of our planet is just plain old geology. We live on a rocky planet that has a two-part. Iron-nickel core.
The inner core is under so much pressure that even though the temperature is so ridiculously high, the gravity of the planet compresses it into a solid.
The pressure lets up a little bit for the outer core which is a liquid because it is so ridiculously hot. Then there’s the mantle which is high-density superheated rock material.
Let’s get a fuller picture of how our solid earthworks. So we’re going to need to take a look at the liquid gas and squishy parts or physics of that vital envelope of gases that keep our planet habitable.
Geology also impacts the atmosphere. When volcanoes erupt they send ash and all kinds of chemicals that are part of the interior of our planet up into the air and this can have a big impact on greenhouse gases and the chemistry of rain.
For example, now water is in every part of the cycle of rocks and has an impact on the geosphere. Glaciers carve huge u-shaped valleys into the bedrock.
Rivers can carve steep-sided v-shaped valleys into the mountains. They run down oceans tirelessly beat down the coasts of continents and slowly break them down. If you add water to a certain mineral it might change into another mineral.
Other minerals only form from the evaporation of mineral-rich waters. This may be a rocky planet but it’s also a blue planet. It’s a water planet. Oceans cover two-thirds of the lithosphere.
The mineral content, specifically the salts determines the density and behaviors. The kinds of mineral loads in lakes and rivers determine what can live around them.
Plate tectonics form new oceans. Plates pull away and destroy current oceans by lifting them slowly above sea level.
Everything is so interconnected and this is also true of interactions between life and nature and there are several entire branches of geology dedicated to those.
Geobiologists study all kinds of things including the kinds of minerals that can harbor or kill viruses. All the way back to prehistoric times, you may not even think about it but we use rocks and minerals every day.
Your computer is made up of silica micas and all kinds of minerals and metals and somehow we put all of these minerals and rocks together into this strange-looking rock that shows you videos to teach you about rocks.
So basically geology is the study of solid earth. Geologists study the gases, liquids, and rocks that come from volcanoes. Hydrogeologists study the chemists or chemistry and physics of groundwater.
Fluvial geomorphologists study how rivers interact with topography. The science of geology is a rich field that touches on so many disciplines. Physics, biology, chemistry, statistics, and mathematics all these sciences come together in how we study the natural world.
Read: What is geology?
But the second big area is going to be historical geography. That’s where we’re going to try to understand the origin of the earth and its development throughout time.
As fossils gyms earthquakes and volcanoes and so that was more than you know 2,300 years ago. Again, talking about the history of geology we’re going to talk about catastrophism.
So this earth was only about a few thousand years old, created about four thousand four BC. Those are what we kind of talked about earlier.
So volcanic eruptions, flooding, tsunamis, landslides, those types of catastrophes. This is where we introduced the principle of uniformity. This is fundamental when we’re talking about geology.
The acceptance of this means that there’s an acceptance of a very long history of the earth. We are primarily focusing on geology and the theories that have been presented by scientists over time.
I’m not here to challenge anyone’s beliefs but we’re here simply to talk about geology as a science. Just to kind of get an idea, the first one is using relative dating and the geologic time scale.
So this is saying that you know we’re talking about something that happened first, second and third. So if I were to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich first I’d have to get the bread.
Second, put peanut butter down. Third, put jelly down and then put my other piece of bread. So that was my relative order of dating.
Read: What are Minerals and Crystals?
Second is the principles of relative age dating. We’re going to be using the law of superposition and the principle of fossils. This is just a very basic idea of the geologic time scale.
Science assumes that the natural world is one that it’s consistent and that it’s predictable. So scientists will collect facts through observation and measurements.
Now for scientific methods, we’ve all talked about this; it’s been ingrained in us since we were little. This is just going to be a very small overview of scientific methods including gathering facts through different observations and formulating hypotheses and theories.
If I were to approach a subject such as you know why gold forms in one location and not in another, I might go through steps A, B, C and D. now if my colleague whoever it is approaches the same subject matter instead of going through ABCD and E they might do A, D, F, and G so we never have to follow a fixed path.
Scientists take very different paths and most of the time we reach the same goals. Development of observation and experiments to test hypotheses or models. Then you’re going to re-examine that hypothesis or either based on that you’re going to accept it, modify it or reject it.