• Question: How do you think the earth and its atmosphere were created?

    Asked by cornfielddicks to Ben, Ezzy, Clare, Mario, Sam on 12 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by gilronanneall.
    • Photo: Elizabeth Pearson

      Elizabeth Pearson answered on 12 Mar 2012:


      No ones really sure of the exact details but before even the sun was around there was a much bigger star that burned for a few million years to make all the elements we see on earth. This then went nova and threw all the elements out into the universe. There was enough hydrogen left to make another, smaller star, that was the sun. All the other elements started clumping together (the exact how of that is the bit that we don’t know) and forming balls of stuff. These clumps started attracting other clumps because of gravity, and eventually you ended up with a big ball of stuff that will be the earth one day.

      The gravity was so great that there’s a lot of pressure at the centre of the lump and the elements began to fuse together and form all the compounds that we have on earth and ended up with lava. There was about a billion or so years of huge volcanoes and so on as the earth was still young and hot. These volcanoes through out lots of gas, mostly sulpher and carbon dioxide, that couldn’t escape the earth’s gravity, so you get an atmosphere. Over time the earth cooled to the point where you get liquid water that soaked up a lot of the nasty stuff in the atmosphere and eventually we got to the atmosphere we have today.

      We’re pretty sure that’s the big picture but the it’s how we get from one stage to another that people are still trying to work out.

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