Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- PART ONE THE ASTRONOMICAL PLANET: EARTH'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS
- PART TWO THE MEASURABLE PLANET: TOOLS TO DISCERN THE HISTORY OF EARTH AND THE PLANETS
- PART THREE THE HISTORICAL PLANET: EARTH AND SOLAR SYSTEM THROUGH TIME
- 10 Formation of the Solar System
- 11 The Hadean Earth
- 12 The Archean Eon and the Origin of Life: I. Properties of and Sites for Life
- 13 The Archean Eon and the Origin of Life: II. Mechanisms
- 14 The First Greenhouse Crisis: The Faint Early Sun
- 15 Climate Histories of Mars and Venus, and the Habitability of Planets
- 16 Earth in Transition: From the Archean to the Proterozoic
- 17 The Oxygen Revolution
- 18 The Phanerozoic: Flowering and Extinction of Complex Life
- 19 Climate Change Across the Phanerozoic
- 20 Toward the Age of Humankind
- PART FOUR THE ONCE AND FUTURE PLANET
- Index
- Plate section
10 - Formation of the Solar System
from PART THREE - THE HISTORICAL PLANET: EARTH AND SOLAR SYSTEM THROUGH TIME
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- PART ONE THE ASTRONOMICAL PLANET: EARTH'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS
- PART TWO THE MEASURABLE PLANET: TOOLS TO DISCERN THE HISTORY OF EARTH AND THE PLANETS
- PART THREE THE HISTORICAL PLANET: EARTH AND SOLAR SYSTEM THROUGH TIME
- 10 Formation of the Solar System
- 11 The Hadean Earth
- 12 The Archean Eon and the Origin of Life: I. Properties of and Sites for Life
- 13 The Archean Eon and the Origin of Life: II. Mechanisms
- 14 The First Greenhouse Crisis: The Faint Early Sun
- 15 Climate Histories of Mars and Venus, and the Habitability of Planets
- 16 Earth in Transition: From the Archean to the Proterozoic
- 17 The Oxygen Revolution
- 18 The Phanerozoic: Flowering and Extinction of Complex Life
- 19 Climate Change Across the Phanerozoic
- 20 Toward the Age of Humankind
- PART FOUR THE ONCE AND FUTURE PLANET
- Index
- Plate section
Summary
INTRODUCTION
Having dealt with some of the tools and key concepts to which we will return as we develop the history of Earth and the other planets, we are ready now to consider that history. Five centuries after the beginning of the European Renaissance, humanity's explorations of Earth and the cosmos have exposed an intriguing, perhaps profound, paradox. Earth and the other planets of the solar system seem to be explainable as manifestations of common physical processes that have operated over very small and very large scales, to produce a range of cosmic phenomena. In this sense we are neither special nor particularly important in the grand scheme of things.
On the other hand, in our own solar system, we now understand Earth as the one planet with a uniquely stable climate, equable for liquid water over the billions of years required to bring forth intelligent life. Although Mars may have come close to this state at one time, no other planet seems to have the combination of characteristics needed to sustain life. Other solar systems may be common and life may flourish elsewhere, but it is also possible, with what we know today, that we are a rare or even unique speck in the cosmos. We will know more over the decades to come, but for now we seek to understand how this planet came to be, and how physical processes have operated to make it habitable for billions of years.
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- EarthEvolution of a Habitable World, pp. 101 - 114Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998