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ERTH-S-EVOLTION
Approximately 4.54 billion years ago, a Mars-sized body slammed into the newly formed Earth, partially liquifying the surface and ejecting molten debris into space.
This ejecta remained as a ring around our planet for a few months, before coalescing and forming the Moon.
Residual gases were still swirling slowly around the Sun, causing streams and waves in space.
Elephantine Jupiter got caught up in these currents and started moving inward toward the Sun.
The movement of this giant, with its powerful gravity wreaking havoc as it danced around, dislodged asteroids and sent them flying inwards into the planets.
In the next few million years, the Earth and other terrestrial planets went through a period of constant battering by asteroids and other smaller bodies.
This period in the solar system’s history is called the Late Heavy Bombardment.
Fortunately, Saturn soon started pulling Jupiter back, toward where it is today, even as the Solar wind stripped away all of the residual gas in the solar system into interstellar space.
At this point, Earth was still cooling from the formation of the Moon, and the period of bombardment kept it agitated and volcanically active.
At some point, asteroids or comets containing water ice slammed into the Earth, thereby bringing a lot of water vapor to the Earth.
Once the Earth cooled, this vapour condensed and fell as rain on the planet.
Volcanic activity still continued and even under the newly forming oceans, super-volcanoes persisted.
Lava constantly flowed on the surface for nearly 700 million years.
Rocks hold records of all kinds of transitions that they have undergone.
They record their own formation and grow over millions of years, keeping evidence of life and planet activity within.
The field of geology that studies and dates rock layers is called Stratigraphy.
This helps scientists figure out the age of a lot of geological processes, and has enabled them to put together a geological time scale for our Earth.
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