Geology Earth Science

Scientists have long attempted to understand Earth’s past, and in service to that effort, they have divided the world’s history into eons, eras, periods, epochs, and ages. For example, the current eon is called the Phanerozoic Eon, which means “visible life”. This is the eon in which multicellular life has evolved and thrived. Before this, life was microscopic (single cells).

Tim Flannery’s first major book since The Weather Makers charts the history of life on our planet. Here on Earth, which draws its points of departure from Darwin and Wallace, Lovelock and Dawkins, is an extraordinary exploration of evolution and sustainability. Our success as a species has had disastrous effects on many of the Earth’s ecosystems and could lead to our downfall. But equally, Flannery argues, we are now equipped as never before to explore our true relationship with the planet on which our biological, economic and cultural futures depend.

This Introduction audiobook explores emerging geological research and explains how new advances in the understanding of plate tectonics, seismology, and satellite imagery have enabled us to begin to see the Earth as it actually is: dynamic and ever-changing.

Sixty-six million years ago, an object the size of a city descended from space to crash into Earth, creating a devastating cataclysm that killed off the dinosaurs, along with three-quarters of the other species on the planet. What was its origin? In Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs, Lisa Randall proposes it was a comet that was dislodged from its orbit as the solar system passed through a disk of dark matter embedded in the Milky Way. In a sense it might have been dark matter that killed the dinosaurs.

２０１１年の東日本大震災によって、日本列島は地震や火山噴火が頻発する「大地変動の時代」に入った。これから日本列島は大変な局面を迎える。

If you listen, can you hear the stones speak? The question seems absurd. After all, rocks are lifeless, inert, and silent. In The Whispers of Rock earth scientist Anjana Khatwa asks us to think again, and listen to their stories. Boldly alternating between modern science and ancient wisdom, Khatwa takes us on an exhilarating journey through deep time, from origins of the green pounamu that courses down New Zealand rivers to the wonder of the bluestone megaliths of Stonehenge, from the tuff-hewn churches of Lalibela, Ethiopia, to Manhattan’s bedrock of schist.

In the second adventure of the Fossil Woman series, Henrietta Ballantine has her future all figured out. With her Ph.D. in hand, she's ready to embark on explorations and digs alongside her new husband, geologist Frank Bailey. However, she quickly discovers that marriage comes with unexpected compromises. When Frank’s company sends him to the remote town of Mammoth, North Dakota, Henrietta’s carefully constructed future begins to shatter.

Il 27 dicembre 1831 un brigantino inglese, la Beagle, salpa da Devonport, al comando del capitano Fitz Roy, con a bordo Charles Darwin, a quell'epoca ventiduenne. Scopo della spedizione era completare il rilevamento della Patagonia e della Terra del Fuoco, ispezionare le coste del Cile, del Perù e di alcune isole del Pacifico ed eseguire una serie di misure di longitudine attorno al mondo.

Ob Landwirtschaft, Handel, Verkehr oder Urbanisierung: Seit es uns Menschen gibt, haben wir die Erde geprägt und verändert. Insbesondere seit der Industrialisierung hinterlassen wir einen unverwechselbaren und größtenteils unwiderruflichen Fingerabdruck auf der Erde. Inzwischen ist dieser Abdruck so stark, dass Wissenschaft, Politik und Gesellschaft diskutieren, ob sich die vom Menschen verursachten Veränderungen in geologischer Form niederschlagen und so langfristig sind, dass wir bereits in einem neuen Erdzeitalter leben – dem Anthropozän.

Every minute, several huge “snowballs” break up as they approach the Earth and deposit a large cloud of water vapor in Earth’s upper atmosphere. That’s the startling finding that world-renowned physicist Louis A. Frank came to after studying the images from the Dynamics Explorer 1 spacecraft. His conclusion, based on data acquired at the limits of detection, created a storm of controversy among scientists. This is the story that was told in The Big Splash, published in 1990. But, the story does not end there.

You've heard of Pangea, the single landmass that broke apart some 175 million years ago to give us our current continents, but what about its predecessors, Rodinia or Columbia? These "supercontinents" from Earth's past provide evidence that land repeatedly joins and separates. While scientists debate what that next supercontinent will look like—and what to name it—they all agree: one is coming.

Aluminum is the most abundant metal in the earth’s crust. It is also ubiquitous in the modern world, from aircraft to soda cans. A dizzying number of consumer and industrial products employ aluminum, typically alloyed, because of its availability, versatility, and malleability. Today, how efficiently we use—and reuse—aluminum is vital to addressing key environmental challenges and understanding humanity’s fraught relationship with the earth.

In this captivating book from one of the most influential geochemists in the field, Tamsin Mather takes us along on her globe-spanning excursions from Nicaragua to Hawaii, Santorini to Ethiopia and beyond. With warmth and lyricism, she explores the cultural roles volcanoes play throughout history, and the growing and evolving science behind their formation and eruptions.

Over the past few years, devastating tsunamis off the coast of the Indian Ocean have killed hundreds of thousands of people. Even more alarmingly, scientists predict that these tsunamis, as well as a series of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, will be striking with even greater frequency and may eventually threaten Hawaii, California, and Oregon.

The lives of millions will be changed after it breaks, and yet so few people understand it, or even realize it runs through their backyard. Dvorak reveals the San Andreas Fault's fascinating history - and its volatile future. It is a prominent geological feature that is almost impossible to see unless you know where to look. Hundreds of thousands of people drive across it every day. The San Andreas Fault is everywhere - and primed for a colossal quake. For decades scientists have warned that such a sudden shifting of the Earth's crust is inevitable.

В этой аудиокниге речь пойдет о том, как люди открывали свою родную планету, с неимоверными усилиями, мужеством и риском для жизни преодолевая морские просторы, дремучие леса, заснеженные полярные и опаленные солнцем тропические пустыни.

Spannende Fakten und Ansichten über unsere Erdgeschichte! Viele Fakten und Szenarien aus dem erdgeschichtlichen und geophysikalischen Bereich sind weitestgehend unbekannt. Existierende Thesen hinterfragend, stellt der Autor fest, dass die Galápagos-Inseln nur wenige Millionen Jahre alt sind und nicht aus der Dinosaurier-Ära stammen, ganz hingegen Charles Darwins Vermutung. Die Lebensräume der Dinosaurier sind ebenfalls deutlich breiter gefächert als früher vermutet und selbst ob die Kontinentalverschiebung so stattgefunden hat, wie wir sie uns vorstellen, wird in Frage gestellt.

Mars, the red planet, is ingrained in our culture, from David Bowie's extra-terrestrial spiders to Captain Scarlet to War of the Worlds. It has inspired hundreds of authors, scientists and science-fiction writers - but why? What is it about this particular planet that makes it so intriguing? Ancient mythologies defined Mars as a violent harbinger of war, star-gazers puzzled over its peculiar motion, and astrologers defined human personalities by its position and bizarre dance through the sky.

This pathbreaking book explores how life can begin, taking us from cosmic clouds of stardust, to volcanoes on Earth, to the modern chemistry laboratory. Seeking to understand life's connection to the stars, David Deamer introduces astrobiology, a new scientific discipline that studies the origin and evolution of life on Earth and relates it to the birth and death of stars, planet formation, interfaces between minerals, water, and atmosphere, and the physics and chemistry of carbon compounds.

Antarctica, the ice kingdom hosting the South Pole, looms large in the human imagination. The secrets of this vast frozen desert have long tempted explorers, but its brutal climate and glacial shores notoriously resist human intrusion. Land of Wondrous Cold tells a gripping story of the pioneering 19th-century voyages, when British, French, and American commanders raced to penetrate Antarctica’s glacial rim for unknown lands beyond. These intrepid Victorian explorers laid the foundation for our current understanding of Terra Australis Incognita.