h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Basic Formation of the earth! - A48448722
Author: Who no's ? ........... Not me!! - U13844585

what do ya think??

Interesting stuff.

But why did you start at that point? Could you put in something about how the Earth started? I'd be interested to know.

ok.....*gets back to work*

How's it looking now??

I think that's good. It would be easier to read if you would put in headings at appropriate places. Just put the headings on a line on their own with a blank line before and after them.

The way you've written it now, it sounds as if the Pangea (or is it Pangaea? I think so, because "pan" means "the whole of" and "Gaia" or "Gaea" is the world.) was the first continent. In fact that was just the last time that all the continents clumped together, and there were other times before that. The continents have been going through a cycle of clumping together and splitting apart for biillions of years.

You talk about tectonic plates without explaining where they come from. Do you know? If so, you could put a few sentences on that into it as well.

Good work!

As Gnomon said, 'But why did you start at that point?'


It would be better if you started of by saying s'thing like:

The Earth is one of 8 planets that make up the solar system.







It would be clear to say, 'initiated the Earth's rotation' or 'caused the Earth to rotate.
That planet that impacted the Earth has a name, which I'm afraid I can't recall at present

Names of planets and continents/countries should begin with a capital letter, i.e Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Greenland...

I think the Entry would benefit from having the paragraphs from Genesis inserted at appropriate places (It would be too lengthy to include it all at the start)

There are some typos/spelling errors. You could run it through a spell-checker now but, IMO it would be better to get the content right first

e.g. consiquently > consequently; lost alot of there energy > their weaker; techtonic > tectonic.....

with this. It will be a valuable addition to the Guide when finished

I think that might be done!

ok maybe its not

>>That planet that impacted the Earth has a name<<

i know, i cant remember at the moment either

Gnomon and BigAl

hows that? any other faults you've found?

dont take the mick to much, i am only a Beginner!

The planet that is s'posed to have impacted the Earth was Theia.

A

cheers!!

hello who knows

my name is rupert and i work for the funday time. i was soi fascinated by your article it made front page of the march/april issue.


keep up the good word

Nobody is going to take the mick. We're looking for infomative pieces here and this certainly has a lot of information, and well told. Don't worry about the spelling - a sub-editor can sort that out later.

Some suggestions:

1. An introduction

You could paraphrase this or use it directly:

Today the Earth is one of eight planets, and its surface is a relatively peaceful place. But underneath the surface, the Earth is still a raging inferno, a reminder of the powerful forces which created the Earth in the first place. So how did the Earth form and what were the steps in its formation?

2. I think it still needs some mention of the fact that the surface of the molten Earth solidified to make a crust, but that almost immediately the crust cracked into a number of separate sections called 'tectonic plates' which were and are pushed around by currents in the underlying magma.

3. You say the moon was "5 - 10 closer" than today. Do you mean five to 10 times as close? Or is it 5% - 10% closer?

Keep up the good work!

G

i used your intro directly gnomon!

Just a reminder for a future subbie to credit Gnomon as an additional researcher

No, that won't be necessary.

Hi there
A piece on this subject would be a welcome addition to the EG. But I think that this needs a bit more work yet, more to clarify the information than anything.

It is a difficult subject and from what I know, I don’t think that anything is as cut and dried as some of this piece implies. At random, a couple of the things that you mention, that are not necessarily wrong, but I think could be explained better, are:

>>Our solar system began as a huge dust cloud which was the shape of a disc, slowly the centre of the disc started to collapse in on itself.<<

You haven’t addressed why this occurs. How and why did the disc form? To me this seems fundamental to this piece.

>>The planet hit the earth on a steep angle and that initiated the Earth’s rotation,<<

I don’t think that the impact had anything to do with starting Earth’s rotation. That was probably more to do with the process of accretion. The collision may have had a lot to do with Earth’s axial inclination though.

>>the left over mass was still in the shape of a disc, which the solar wind effected greatly, the solar wind was strong enough to force all the gas in the disc to the far reaches of our solar system but not strong enough to move the rock and metal particles.<<

Not all the gas surely? Both Venus and Earth have gaseous atmospheres for instance. If the solar wind was the cause of the gas being pushed out to the further reaches, why is the solar system the exception? The vast majority of extra-solar planets found so far are gas giants orbiting very close in to their sun. Surely it has more to do with the temperatures at which the elements can condense?


>>There are rocks in Greenland dating back to 3,500 million years old that have been worn to a round shape similar to rocks you find on any beach, which has proven the theory.<<

I don’t see that the wear on old rocks proves that water has been around for billions of years at all. Although the water ‘has' been there for billions of years, the rocks are not proof of it. Erosion can take place over only a few thousand years from wind alone. The rocks are only proof that the Earth has been around X billion years.

>>At the time that the oceans first formed there was no land in sight;<<
How would that be? By definition there would be land everywhere as the oceans were forming, only for it to cover it up as the water formed

>>the Earth was covered in a shallow light green ocean that was packed with iron.<<

I think you need to support that. Why would that be, when differentiation would have caused most of the iron in Earth’s body to have ‘sunk’ to form its core.

I'd like to see this in the EG, but like I said, some of it needs to be more clearly defined.
All the best with it

Deke

Researcher "Who no's" indicated to me elsewhere that he's lost his job and his internet connection, so he may not be able to get back to this.

Oooh, that would be a pity! Shall we have it returned to Entry awaiting his/her return?