Geology+and+Space

=Geology and Space= You may think that rocks are rocks were rocks and will be nothing more than rocks forever more, but once they were floating pillars of dust. A lot more interesting, huh? The 7th grade [|Amigos School] had the pleasure of meeting and having a conversation with a professional geologist from [|MIT], Mr. Blackburn. This Wiki is mainly about the concepts that Mr. Blackburn brought to our classroom.

Formation of Planets
Those wonderful pillars of dust, that I mentioned earlier, eventually formed planets, little by little. We’ll start with a rather large spec of dust. As its gravitational pull sucked other particles close to it, it got heavier. With its augmented weight, the speed that it pulled other particles augmented, too. Lo and behold, a planet is formed. But how did that space dust get there?

The Sun
Well, the sun, in its glorious formation deposited these pillars of dust, which formed planets. Some of the clouds contained more than just dust—there were rocks, too. The planets closer to the sun are mostly made of rock. The larger ones (Saturn, Jupiter) are made of gas.

Rocks of our Planet
Pillars of dust, sun’s formation—that is how the rocks on our Earth came to be. Now they have taken up the rock cycle. The oldest rock still existing on the Earth is 4.03 billion years old. What? That’s not even as old as the planet! The earliest rocks were subducted beneath the crust and were melted. Eventually they entered a magma chamber and erupted as new rocks, so the oldest, oldest rocks are sitting among us, going unnoticed.

Earth’s Structure
The Earth’s structure is mostly made up of rock and molten metals. There are two different types of Crust; continental crust, made of granite and that is above land, and oceanic crust, which is made out of basalt and is located at the bottom of the ocean (obviously.) We turn then to the Mantle, which is made up of magma and molten metals, containing olivine and lots of iron. The core of he Earth is made of densely compressed metals, like iron and nickel. We will never really know exactly what is in the core, because we have not been able to each it yet.

Density
Density is essentially this: when particles are closer together, they are cooler and denser. Density also depends on the volume of the object (amount of particles, etc.) The densest samples of rocks that will ever be found will come from the core of the Earth.

Magnetic Fields
Planets with dense particles and dense inner cores, like the Earth, have magnetic fields. For example, Jupiter has a liquid outer core and a solid inner core, thus it has a magnetic field.

Our Solar System
The solar system, our very home, is about 4.06 billion years old. The meteorites that come to Earth are from eruptions on other planets; Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, you name it. There are eight planets in our solar system, and there would have been nine, if it weren’t a mysterious eruption. The Asteroid Belt is actually a planet that as hit by a large meteorite, and is now in pieces. Scientists have found pieces of crust, mantle, and core among the debris. The distance between planets is not random. There is a specific spacing between planets based on the size. So the next time you look at any ordinary old rock, think about what stories it would tell. You might end up meeting the oldest rock in the world.

Information from Terrance Blackburn at MIT

By Liam