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Geology

Earth is a layered, slow-cooking heat engine, and the stones at our feet are its receipts. This atlas traces the science of rocks, time, and the moving...

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Earth is a layered, slow-cooking heat engine, and the stones at our feet are its receipts. This atlas traces the science of rocks, time, and the moving plates beneath us. Key sections include: Geology The reading of stones; Onion of the interior.; The moving crust.; How rocks become rocks.; The geologic column.; How we tell rock ages.; 5,800 known minerals.; Who read the rocks.; The science itself.; The earth moves..

Key sections

  • 01Geology The reading of stones
  • 02Onion of the interior.
  • 03The moving crust.
  • 04How rocks become rocks.
  • 05The geologic column.
  • 06How we tell rock ages.
  • 075,800 known minerals.
  • 08Who read the rocks.
  • 09The science itself.
  • 10The earth moves.
  • 11Quantitative geology.
  • 12The human geological force.
  • 13What's active now.
  • 14Still unresolved.
  • 15Watch & read.

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Slide outline
  1. 01Geology The reading of stones
  2. 02Onion of the interior.
  3. 03The moving crust.
  4. 04How rocks become rocks.
  5. 05The geologic column.
  6. 06How we tell rock ages.
  7. 075,800 known minerals.
  8. 08Who read the rocks.
  9. 09The science itself.
  10. 10The earth moves.
  11. 11Quantitative geology.
  12. 12The human geological force.
  13. 13What's active now.
  14. 14Still unresolved.
  15. 15Watch & read.
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Slide 01

Onion of the interior.

  • PLATE 01 / 16 — INSIDE EARTH
  • Earth's interior is known mostly through seismic waves. P-waves (compressional) travel through everything; S-waves (shear) cannot pass through liquids. A near-total S-wave shadow at 103°–142° from a quake locates the molten outer core.
  • Crust0–35 km · oceanic basaltic, continental granitic
  • Lithosphere~100 km · rigid; fragmented into plates
  • Asthenosphere100–410 km · plastic; allows plate motion
  • Mantle410–2,890 km · mostly silicate solid
  • Outer core2,890–5,150 km · molten Fe/Ni · generates B-field
  • Inner core5,150–6,371 km · solid Fe/Ni · ~5,400 K
Slide 02

The moving crust.

  • PLATE 02 / 16 — PLATE TECTONICS
  • Wegener (1912) noted the puzzle-piece fit of the Atlantic coasts. Hess (1962): the seafloor spreads. Vine, Matthews, Morley (1963): magnetic stripes record reversals. Wilson (1965): transform faults complete the picture.
  • Today: ~15 major + several dozen minor plates, moving 1–10 cm/yr. Three boundary types — divergent, convergent, transform — generate most of Earth's geological activity.
  • Three Boundary Types
Slide 03

How rocks become rocks.

  • PLATE 03 / 16 — ROCK CYCLE
  • Igneouscooled magma — basalt, granite
  • Sedimentaryaccumulated grains — sandstone, limestone, shale
  • Metamorphictransformed by heat & pressure — gneiss, schist, marble
  • A given mineral grain may visit each compartment several times across hundreds of millions of years. Zircons from Western Australia preserve ages back to 4.4 Ga — older than the oldest known rock.
Slide 04

The geologic column.

  • PLATE 04 / 16 — DEEP TIME
  • 0 – 2.6 Ma
  • Quaternary
  • Pleistocene ice ages; Holocene farming.
  • 2.6 – 66 Ma
  • Cenozoic
  • Mammals diversify; grasses; primates; us.
  • 66 – 252 Ma
  • Mesozoic
  • Dinosaurs; Pangea breaks up; flowering plants.
  • 252 – 541 Ma
  • Paleozoic
  • Cambrian explosion; first land plants; tetrapods.
  • 541 Ma – 2.5 Ga
  • Proterozoic
  • Eukaryotes; oxygenation; Snowball Earth episodes.
  • 2.5 – 4.0 Ga
  • Archean
  • Earliest stable cratons; chemoautotrophs; cyanobacteria.
  • 4.0 – 4.54 Ga
  • Hadean
  • Magma ocean; bombardment; Moon-forming impact.
Slide 05

How we tell rock ages.

  • PLATE 05 / 16 — DATING
  • Two strategies: relative (this is older than that) and absolute (this is 2.45 Gyr old).
  • Relative dating uses superposition (Steno's law), original horizontality, cross-cutting relationships, and inclusions. Reliable for sequence; silent on years.
  • Absolute dating uses radioactive decay. Different isotopes for different timescales:
  • U-Pb10⁵ – 10⁹ yr (zircons)
  • Ar-Ar10⁵ – 10⁹ yr (volcanic)
  • K-Ar10⁵ – 10⁹ yr (igneous)
  • Rb-Sr10⁷ – 10⁹ yr
  • ¹⁴Cup to ~50,000 yr
  • OSLup to ~500,000 yr (sediments)
  • Decay law
  • N(t) = N0 e−λt
Slide 06

PLATE VI

  • Sedimentary layers expose ~2 Gyr of deposition. Each band tells of a sea, a desert, a delta.
Slide 07

5,800 known minerals.

  • PLATE 07 / 16 — MINERALS
  • Quartz
  • SiO2. Trigonal. Hardness 7. Most abundant in the continental crust.
  • Feldspar
  • (K,Na,Ca)AlSi3O8. ~60% of crust by volume.
  • Olivine
  • (Mg,Fe)2SiO4. Mantle's main mineral; gem peridot.
  • Pyroxene
  • Single-chain silicate; augite, diopside, jadeite.
  • Mica
  • Sheet silicate; biotite, muscovite. Perfect cleavage in one plane.
  • Calcite
  • CaCO3. Limestone, marble. Rhombohedral cleavage.
  • Halite
  • NaCl. Cubic. Evaporite mineral. Sets seasoning.
  • Diamond
  • C in cubic close-packing. Hardness 10. Forms ≥150 km depth.
Slide 08

Who read the rocks.

  • PLATE 08 / 16 — KEY FIGURES
  • James Hutton
  • 1726–97. Deep time. "No vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end."
  • Mary Anning
  • 1799–1847. Lyme Regis fossils; ichthyosaur, plesiosaur, pterosaur.
  • Charles Lyell
  • 1797–1875. Uniformitarianism in Principles of Geology.
  • Alfred Wegener
  • 1880–1930. Continental drift, 1912; vindicated decades later.
  • Inge Lehmann
  • 1888–1993. Discovered the solid inner core via P-wave shadows, 1936.
  • Marie Tharp
  • 1920–2006. Mapped the global mid-ocean ridge system.
  • Harry Hess
  • 1906–69. Seafloor spreading, 1962. Trinity-launched the plate revolution.
  • Walter Alvarez
  • b. 1940. Ir anomaly; K-Pg impact hypothesis.
Slide 09

The science itself.

  • PLATE 09 / 16 — TIMELINE OF GEOLOGY
  • 1669Niels Steno states stratigraphic principles.
  • 1788Hutton sees Siccar Point's angular unconformity.
  • 1815William Smith publishes the first geological map of England.
  • 1830Lyell's Principles — uniformitarianism.
  • 1841John Phillips coins Paleozoic, Mesozoic, Cenozoic.
  • 1912Wegener proposes continental drift.
  • 1936Lehmann's inner-core discovery.
  • 1962Hess's seafloor spreading paper.
  • 1968Plate tectonics synthesized — Le Pichon, Morgan, McKenzie.
  • 1980Alvarez et al. propose K-Pg impact.
  • 2000Crutzen popularizes "Anthropocene".
  • 2024Anthropocene formally rejected as epoch by ICS — but accepted as event.
Slide 10

The earth moves.

  • PLATE 10 / 16 — HAZARDS
  • Earthquakes
  • Mw = ⅔ log(M0) − 6.07. Largest recorded: Valdivia, Chile 1960, Mw 9.5. ~500,000 detectable per year.
  • Volcanoes
  • VEI 0–8. Tambora 1815 (VEI 7) caused "year without a summer." Yellowstone (VEI 8) last erupted 640 ka.
  • Tsunamis
  • Sumatra 2004: ~230,000 dead. Tōhoku 2011: ~20,000. Speed in deep ocean ~700 km/h.
  • Landslides
  • Rainfall, seismic shaking, slope angle, lithology. Vajont, Italy, 1963: 2,000+ dead.
  • Sinkholes / Karst
  • Dissolution of limestone/dolomite. Florida, Yucatán, China.
  • Impacts
  • Tunguska 1908, Chelyabinsk 2013. K-Pg impactor: ~10 km Chicxulub bolide, 66 Ma.
Slide 11

Quantitative geology.

  • PLATE 11 / 16 — KEY RELATIONS
  • Geothermal Gradient
  • dT/dz ≈ 25 °C/km
  • Surface average. ~15 °C/km in stable cratons; up to ~50 °C/km at ridges.
  • Gutenberg–Richter
  • log N = a − bM
  • Seismicity scales as power law. b ≈ 1: each unit of M reduces frequency tenfold.
  • Stokes for Settling
  • v = (g Δρ d2) / 18η
  • Grain settling speed in fluid. Sets sorting in sedimentary deposits.
Slide 12

Slide 12

  • PLATE 12 / 16 — PULL QUOTE
  • "The result, therefore, of our present enquiry is, that we find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end."— James Hutton, Theory of the Earth, 1788
Slide 13

The human geological force.

  • PLATE 13 / 16 — ANTHROPOCENE
  • Crutzen and Stoermer popularized "Anthropocene" in 2000. Twenty-three years later, after extensive debate over a candidate Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP), the International Commission on Stratigraphy declined to ratify it as a formal epoch. It survives as a recognized "event."
  • Either way the signal is unambiguous: ¹⁴C from atomic-bomb testing, plutonium isotopes, plastics, fly ash, novel radionuclides, ratios of nitrogen and phosphorus in soils. Future stratigraphers — if any — will read this layer cleanly.
  • Concrete~500 Gt cumulative; ~2× biomass
  • Plastic~9 Gt produced 1950–2017
  • N fertilizerdoubled global N cycle
  • CO₂424 ppm — highest in > 3 Myr
  • Sediment fluxhalved by dams
  • Extinctions~100–1,000× background rate
Slide 14

What's active now.

  • PLATE 14 / 16 — FRONTIER
  • Critical minerals
  • Li, Co, Ni, Cu, REEs for the energy transition. Mapping deposits and recycling closed-loop.
  • Mantle tomography
  • Whole-mantle plumes (Iceland, Yellowstone) increasingly visualized. Subducted slabs traced to CMB.
  • InSAR & GNSS
  • mm-precision crustal deformation across plate boundaries; transient slow-slip events.
  • Snowball Earth
  • Cryogenian glaciations; what triggered onset and termination?
  • Geoengineering
  • Enhanced rock weathering as CDR; basalt CO₂ mineralization (CarbFix).
  • Mars geology
  • Perseverance, InSight, Tianwen-1: regolith, seismicity, ancient hydrology.
Slide 15

Still unresolved.

  • PLATE 15 / 16 — OPEN QUESTIONS
  • Q.01What initiated plate tectonics on Earth, and when?
  • Q.02Why does Venus have no plate tectonics, despite similar mass and composition?
  • Q.03How do supercontinents assemble and disperse on a ~500 Myr cycle?
  • Q.04How predictable are great earthquakes on a decadal scale?
  • Q.05What sets the lifespan of mantle plumes?
  • Q.06How much water does Earth's mantle hold? (Wadsleyite, ringwoodite estimates: ~1–3 oceans worth.)
Slide 16

Watch & read.

  • PLATE 16 / 16 — GO DEEPER
  • PBS Eons & MinuteEarth
  • Plus the BBC's "Earth Story" with Aubrey Manning (1998) on YouTube — still the best long-form survey.
  • Watch ↗
  • References
  • MarshakEarth: Portrait of a Planet
  • StanleyEarth System History
  • McPheeAnnals of the Former World
  • BjornerudTimefulness (2018)
  • USGSNational Geologic Map Database
  • ICSInternational Chronostratigraphic Chart
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