1.
Ecosystem
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An ecosystem is a community of living organisms in conjunction with the nonliving components of their environment, interacting as a system. These biotic and abiotic components are regarded as linked together through nutrient cycles, as ecosystems are defined by the network of interactions among organisms, and between organisms and their environment, they can be of any size but usually encompass specific, limited spaces. Energy, water, nitrogen and soil minerals are other essential components of an ecosystem. The energy that flows through ecosystems is obtained primarily from the sun and it generally enters the system through photosynthesis, a process that also captures carbon from the atmosphere. By feeding on plants and on one another, animals play an important role in the movement of matter and they also influence the quantity of plant and microbial biomass present. Ecosystems are controlled both by external and internal factors, other external factors include time and potential biota. Ecosystems are dynamic entities—invariably, they are subject to disturbances and are in the process of recovering from some past disturbance. Ecosystems in similar environments that are located in different parts of the world can have different characteristics simply because they contain different species. The introduction of species can cause substantial shifts in ecosystem function. Internal factors not only control ecosystem processes but are controlled by them and are often subject to feedback loops. Other internal factors include disturbance, succession and the types of species present, although humans exist and operate within ecosystems, their cumulative effects are large enough to influence external factors like climate. Biodiversity affects ecosystem function, as do the processes of disturbance, classifying ecosystems into ecologically homogeneous units is an important step towards effective ecosystem management, but there is no single, agreed-upon way to do this. The term ecosystem was first used in 1935 in a publication by British ecologist Arthur Tansley, Tansley devised the concept to draw attention to the importance of transfers of materials between organisms and their environment. He later refined the term, describing it as The whole system, including not only the organism-complex, but also the whole complex of physical factors forming what we call the environment. Tansley regarded ecosystems not simply as natural units, but as mental isolates, Tansley later defined the spatial extent of ecosystems using the term ecotope. G. Raymond Lindeman took these ideas one step further to suggest that the flow of energy through a lake was the driver of the ecosystem. Most mineral nutrients, on the hand, are recycled within ecosystems. Ecosystems are controlled both by external and internal factors, external factors, also called state factors, control the overall structure of an ecosystem and the way things work within it, but are not themselves influenced by the ecosystem
2.
Systems biology
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Systems biology is the computational and mathematical modeling of complex biological systems. Particularly from year 2000 onwards, the concept has been used widely in the biosciences in a variety of contexts. The Human Genome Project is an example of applied systems thinking in biology which has led to new and these typically involve metabolic networks or cell signaling networks. As a paradigm, usually defined in antithesis to the so-called reductionist paradigm, Systems biology. is about putting together rather than taking apart, integration rather than reduction. It requires that we develop ways of thinking about integration that are as rigorous as our reductionist programmes, but different. It means changing our philosophy, in the full sense of the term. Since the objective is a model of the interactions in a system, therefore, transcriptomics, metabolomics, proteomics and high-throughput techniques are used to collect quantitative data for the construction and validation of models. As the application of systems theory to molecular biology. Indeed, the focus on the dynamics of the systems is the main conceptual difference between systems biology and bioinformatics. This variety of viewpoints is illustrative of the fact that systems biology refers to a cluster of peripherally overlapping concepts rather than a single well-delineated field, however the term has widespread currency and popularity as of 2007, with chairs and institutes of systems biology proliferating worldwide. One of the theorists who can be seen as one of the precursors of systems biology is Ludwig von Bertalanffy with his general systems theory, also in 1952, Alan Turing published The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis, describing how non-uniformity could arise in an initially homogeneous biological system. In 1960, Denis Noble developed the first computer model of the heart pacemaker, the 1960s and 1970s saw the development of several approaches to study complex molecular systems, such as the metabolic control analysis and the biochemical systems theory. However the birth of genomics in the 1990s meant that large quantities of high quality data became available, while the computing power exploded. In 1997, the group of Masaru Tomita published the first quantitative model of the metabolism of a whole cell, in 2002, the National Science Foundation put forward a grand challenge for systems biology in the 21st century to build a mathematical model of the whole cell. In 2003, work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was begun on CytoSolve, since then, various research institutes dedicated to systems biology have been developed. For example, the NIGMS of NIH established a grant that is currently supporting over ten systems biology centers in the United States. As of summer 2006, due to a shortage of people in systems biology several doctoral training programs in biology have been established in many parts of the world. In that same year, the National Science Foundation put forward a challenge for systems biology in the 21st century to build a mathematical model of the whole cell. In 2012 the first whole-cell model of Mycoplasma Genitalium was achieved by the Karr Laboratory at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, the whole-cell model is able to predict viability of M. Genitalium cells in response to genetic mutations
3.
Systems ecology
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Systems ecology is an interdisciplinary field of ecology, a subset of Earth system science, that takes a holistic approach to the study of ecological systems, especially ecosystems. Systems ecology can be seen as an application of systems theory to ecology. Central to the systems approach is the idea that an ecosystem is a complex system exhibiting emergent properties. It uses and extends concepts from thermodynamics and develops other macroscopic descriptions of complex systems, Systems ecology seeks a holistic view of the interactions and transactions within and between biological and ecological systems. Systems ecologists realise that the function of any ecosystem can be influenced by human economics in fundamental ways and they have therefore taken an additional transdisciplinary step by including economics in the consideration of ecological-economic systems. In any study of a system, an essential early procedure is to draw a diagram of the system of interest. Diagrams indicate the boundaries by a solid line. Within these boundaries, series of components are isolated which have chosen to represent that portion of the world in which the systems analyst is interested. If there are no connections across the boundaries with the surrounding systems environments. Ecological work, however, deals almost exclusively with open systems, as a mode of scientific enquiry, a central feature of Systems Ecology is the general application of the principles of energetics to all systems at any scale. Perhaps the most notable proponent of this view was Howard T. Odum - sometimes considered the father of ecosystems ecology, in this approach the principles of energetics constitute ecosystem principles. Reasoning by formal analogy from one system to another enables the Systems Ecologist to see principles functioning in an analogous manner across system-scale boundaries, Odum commonly used the Energy Systems Language as a tool for making systems diagrams and flow charts. The fourth of these principles, the principle of power efficiency. The fourth principle suggests that the most evolutionarily advantageous system function occurs when the load matches the internal resistance of the system. The further the environmental load is from matching the internal resistance, therefore, the systems ecologist engages in a task of resistance and impedance matching in ecological engineering, just as the electronic engineer would do. Deep ecology is an ideology whose metaphysical underpinnings are deeply concerned with the science of ecology, the term was coined by Arne Naess, a Norwegian philosopher, Gandhian scholar, and environmental activist. Naess formulated deep ecology in 1973 at a conference in Budapest. Joanna Macy, John Seed, and others developed Naess thesis into a branch they called experiential deep ecology
4.
Holism
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Holism is the idea that systems and their properties should be viewed as wholes, not just as a collection of parts. The term Holism was coined by J C Smuts in Holism and it was Smuts opinion that Holism is a concept that represents all of the wholes in the universe, and these wholes are the real factors in the universe. Further, that Holism also denoted a theory of the universe in the vein as Materialism and Spiritualism. The derived adjective holistic has been applied to a range of fields where they incorporate the concept of holism. The field characterizes a whole as a unified and synthesised event in the system of Relativity, as such, the concept of field entails both activity and structure. Darwins theory of organic descent placed primary emphasis on the role of natural selection, the whole exhibits a discernible regulatory function as it relates to cooperation and coordination of the structure and activity of parts, and to the selection and deselection of variations. The result is a correlation of organs and functions. The activities of the parts are directed to central ends, co-operation and it is the intermingling of fields which is creative or causal in nature. This is seen in matter, where if not for its dynamic structural creative character matter could not have been the mother of the universe, with minds the regulatory function of Holism acquires consciousness and freedom, demonstrating a creative power of the most far-reaching character. Holism is not only creative but self-creative, and its structures are far more holistic than its initial structures. Holism exemplifies this idea while emphasizing the holistic character of the process. The whole completely transforms the concept of Causality, results are not directly a function of causes, the whole absorbs and integrates the cause into its own activity, results appear as the consequence of the activity of the whole. It is the edition of Holism and Evolution that provides the most recent. In philosophy, any doctrine that emphasizes the priority of a whole over its parts is holism, some suggest that such a definition owes its origins to a non-holistic view of language and places it in the reductivist camp. Alternately, a definition of holism denies the necessity of a division between the function of separate parts and the workings of the whole. It suggests that the key characteristic of a concept of holism is a sense of the fundamental truth of any particular experience. This exists in contradistinction to what is perceived as the reductivist reliance on inductive method as the key to verification of its concept of how the function within the whole. In the philosophy of mind, a state may be identified only in terms of its relations with others
5.
Systems science
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Systems science - systemology or systems theory is an interdisciplinary field that studies the nature of systems — from simple to complex — in nature, society, cognition, and science itself. Systems science covers formal sciences such as systems, cybernetics, dynamical systems theory, information theory. Concerns about Earth-scale biosphere/geosphere dynamics is an example of the nature of problems to which science seeks to contribute meaningful insights. Since the emergence of general systems research in the 1950s, systems thinking and this field is closely related to operations research. Systems design Systems design is the process of establishing and specifying the optimum system component configuration for achieving specific goal or objective, System dynamics System dynamics is an approach to understanding the behavior of complex systems over time. It offers simulation technique for modeling business and social systems, which deals with internal feedback loops, what makes using system dynamics different from other approaches to studying complex systems is the use of feedback loops and stocks and flows. Systems engineering Systems engineering is a field of engineering, that focuses on the development. Systems methodologies There are several types of Systems Methodologies, that is and it was developed in England by academics at the University of Lancaster Systems Department through a ten-year Action Research programme. Systems theories Systems theory is a field that studies complex systems in nature, society. More specifically, it is a framework by which one can analyze and/or describe any group of objects that work in concert to produce some result. Systems sciences cover formal sciences like dynamical systems theory and applications in the natural and social sciences and engineering, such as social systems theory, General systems scientists can be divided into different generations. The founders of the movement like Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Kenneth Boulding, Ralph Gerard, James Grier Miller, George J. Klir. They all came from different natural and social science disciplines and joined forces in the 1950s to establish the general systems theory paradigm, along with the organization of their efforts a first generation of systems scientists rose. Among them were other scientists like Ackoff, Ashby, Margaret Mead and Churchman and these scientists inspired and educated a second generation with more notable scientists like Ervin Laszlo and Fritjof Capra, who wrote about systems theory in the 1970s and 1980s. Others got acquainted and started studying these works in the 1980s, debora Hammond can be seen as a typical representative of these third generation of general systems scientists. The International Society for the Systems Sciences is an organisation for interdisciplinary collaboration, based on fifty years of tremendous interdisciplinary research from the scientific study of complex systems to interactive approaches in management and community development. This society was conceived in 1954 at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences by Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Kenneth Boulding, Ralph Gerard. In the field of science the International Federation for Systems Research is an international federation for global and local societies in the field of systems science
6.
Earth science
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Earth science or geoscience is a widely embraced term for the fields of science related to the planet Earth. Earth science can be considered to be a branch of planetary science, there are both reductionist and holistic approaches to Earth sciences. The Earth sciences can include the study of geology, the lithosphere, and the structure of the Earths interior, as well as the atmosphere, hydrosphere. Typically, Earth scientists use tools from geography, chronology, physics, chemistry, biology, Geology describes the rocky parts of the Earths crust and its historic development. Major subdisciplines are mineralogy and petrology, geochemistry, geomorphology, paleontology, stratigraphy, structural geology, engineering geology, geophysics and geodesy investigate the shape of the Earth, its reaction to forces and its magnetic and gravity fields. Geophysicists explore the Earths core and mantle as well as the tectonic and seismic activity of the lithosphere, geophysics is commonly used to supplement the work of geologists in developing a comprehensive understanding of crustal geology, particularly in mineral and petroleum exploration. Soil science covers the outermost layer of the Earths crust that is subject to soil formation processes, major subdisciplines include edaphology and pedology. Ecology covers the interactions between the biota, with their natural environment and this field of study differentiates the study of the Earth, from the study of other planets in the Solar System, the Earth being the only planet teeming with life. Hydrology is a study revolved around the movement, distribution, and quality of the water and involves all the components of the cycle on the earth. Sub-disciplines of hydrology include hydrometeorology, surface hydrology, hydrogeology, watershed science, forest hydrology. Glaciology covers the icy parts of the Earth, atmospheric sciences cover the gaseous parts of the Earth between the surface and the exosphere. Major subdisciplines include meteorology, climatology, atmospheric chemistry, and atmospheric physics, plate tectonics, mountain ranges, volcanoes, and earthquakes are geological phenomena that can be explained in terms of physical and chemical processes in the Earths crust. Beneath the Earths crust lies the mantle which is heated by the decay of heavy elements. The mantle is not quite solid and consists of magma which is in a state of semi-perpetual convection and this convection process causes the lithospheric plates to move, albeit slowly. The resulting process is known as plate tectonics, plate tectonics might be thought of as the process by which the Earth is resurfaced. As the result of spreading, new crust and lithosphere is created by the flow of magma from the mantle to the near surface, through fissures. Through subduction, oceanic crust and lithosphere returns to the convecting mantle, volcanoes result primarily from the melting of subducted crust material. Crust material that is forced into the asthenosphere melts, and some portion of the material becomes light enough to rise to the surface—giving birth to volcanoes
7.
Atmosphere
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An atmosphere is a layer of gases surrounding a planet or other material body, that is held in place by the gravity of that body. An atmosphere is likely to be retained if the gravity it is subject to is high. The atmosphere of Earth is mostly composed of nitrogen, oxygen, argon with carbon dioxide, the atmosphere helps protect living organisms from genetic damage by solar ultraviolet radiation, solar wind and cosmic rays. Its current composition is the product of billions of years of modification of the paleoatmosphere by living organisms. The term stellar atmosphere describes the region of a star. Stars with sufficiently low temperatures may form compound molecules in their outer atmosphere, Atmospheric pressure is the force per unit area that is applied perpendicularly to a surface by the surrounding gas. It is determined by a gravitational force in combination with the total mass of a column of gas above a location. On Earth, units of air pressure are based on the recognized standard atmosphere. It is measured with a barometer, the pressure of an atmospheric gas decreases with altitude due to the diminishing mass of gas above. The height at which the pressure from an atmosphere declines by a factor of e is called the height and is denoted by H. For such an atmosphere, the pressure declines exponentially with increasing altitude. However, atmospheres are not uniform in temperature, so the determination of the atmospheric pressure at any particular altitude is more complex. Surface gravity, the force that holds down an atmosphere, differs significantly among the planets, for example, the large gravitational force of the giant planet Jupiter is able to retain light gases such as hydrogen and helium that escape from objects with lower gravity. Thus, the distant and cold Titan, Triton, and Pluto are able to retain their atmospheres despite their relatively low gravities, rogue planets, theoretically, may also retain thick atmospheres. Since a collection of gas molecules may be moving at a range of velocities. Lighter molecules move faster than ones with the same thermal kinetic energy. It is thought that Venus and Mars may have lost much of their water when, after being photo dissociated into hydrogen and oxygen by solar ultraviolet, Earths magnetic field helps to prevent this, as, normally, the solar wind would greatly enhance the escape of hydrogen. However, over the past 3 billion years Earth may have lost gases through the polar regions due to auroral activity
8.
Hydrosphere
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The hydrosphere is the combined mass of water found on, under, and above the surface of a planet, minor planet or natural satellite. It has been estimated there are 1386 million cubic kilometers of water on Earth. This includes water in liquid and frozen forms in groundwater, oceans, lakes, saltwater accounts for 97. 5% of this amount. Fresh water accounts for only 2. 5%, of this fresh water,68. 9% is in the form of ice and permanent snow cover in the Arctic, the Antarctic, and mountain glaciers. 30. 8% is in the form of fresh groundwater, only 0. 3% of the fresh water on Earth is in easily accessible lakes, reservoirs and river systems. The total mass of the Earths hydrosphere is about 1.4 ×1018 tonnes, about 20 ×1012 tonnes of this is in Earths atmosphere. Approximately 75% of Earths surface, an area of some 361 million square kilometers, is covered by ocean, the average salinity of Earths oceans is about 35 grams of salt per kilogram of sea water. The hydrological cycle transfers water from one state or reservoir to another, reservoirs include atmospheric moisture, streams, oceans, rivers, lakes, groundwater, subterranean aquifers, polar icecaps and saturated soil. Solar energy, in the form of heat and light, most evaporation comes from the oceans and is returned to the earth as snow or rain. Sublimation refers to evaporation from snow and ice, transpiration refers to the expiration of water through the minute pores or stomata of trees. Evapotranspiration is the used by hydrologists in reference to the three processes together, transpiration, sublimation and evaporation. In his book Water, Marq de Villiers described the hydrosphere as a system in which water exists. The hydrosphere is intricate, complex, interdependent, all-pervading and stable, de Villiers claimed that, On earth, the total amount of water has almost certainly not changed since geological times, what we had then we still have. Water can be polluted, abused, and misused but it is neither created nor destroyed, there is no evidence that water vapor escapes into space. Every year the turnover of water on Earth involves 577,000 km3 of water and this is water that evaporates from the oceanic surface and from land. The same amount of falls as atmospheric precipitation,458,000 km3 on the ocean and 119,000 km3 on land. The difference between precipitation and evaporation from the surface represents the total runoff of the Earths rivers. These are the sources of fresh water to support life necessities
9.
Cryosphere
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The cryosphere is those portions of Earths surface where water is in solid form, including sea ice, lake ice, river ice, snow cover, glaciers, ice caps, ice sheets, and frozen ground. Thus, there is an overlap with the hydrosphere. Through these feedback processes, the plays a significant role in the global climate. The term deglaciation describes the retreat of cryospheric features, cryology is the study of cryospheres. Frozen water is found on the Earth’s surface primarily as cover, freshwater ice in lakes and rivers, sea ice, glaciers, ice sheets. The residence time of water in each of these cryospheric sub-systems varies widely, Snow cover and freshwater ice are essentially seasonal, and most sea ice, except for ice in the central Arctic, lasts only a few years if it is not seasonal. Most of the ice volume is in Antarctica, principally in the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. In terms of areal extent, however, Northern Hemisphere winter snow and ice extent comprise the largest area, there are several fundamental physical properties of snow and ice that modulate energy exchanges between the surface and the atmosphere. The most important properties are the reflectance, the ability to transfer heat. These physical properties, together with surface roughness, emissivity, and dielectric characteristics, have important implications for observing snow, for example, surface roughness is often the dominant factor determining the strength of radar backscatter. Physical properties such as structure, density, length, and liquid water content are important factors affecting the transfers of heat and water. The surface reflectance of incoming radiation is important for the surface energy balance. It is the ratio of reflected to incident solar radiation, commonly referred to as albedo, climatologists are primarily interested in albedo integrated over the shortwave portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, which coincides with the main solar energy input. Typically, albedo values for non-melting snow-covered surfaces are high except in the case of forests, summer and autumn are times of high-average cloudiness over the Arctic Ocean so the albedo feedback associated with the large seasonal changes in sea-ice extent is greatly reduced. Groisman et al. observed that snow cover exhibited the greatest influence on the Earth radiative balance in the period when incoming solar radiation was greatest over snow-covered areas. The thermal properties of cryospheric elements also have important climatic consequences, Snow and ice have much lower thermal diffusivities than air. Thermal diffusivity is a measure of the speed at which waves can penetrate a substance. Snow and ice are many orders of magnitude less efficient at diffusing heat than air, Snow cover insulates the ground surface, and sea ice insulates the underlying ocean, decoupling the surface-atmosphere interface with respect to both heat and moisture fluxes
10.
Biosphere
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The biosphere also known as the ecosphere, is the worldwide sum of all ecosystems. The two joined words are bio and sphere and it can also be termed as the zone of life on Earth, a closed system, and largely self-regulating. The biosphere is postulated to have evolved, beginning with a process of biopoiesis or biogenesis, more recently, in 2015, remains of biotic life were found in 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia. According to one of the researchers, If life arose relatively quickly on Earth, then it could be common in the universe. In a general sense, biospheres are any closed, self-regulating systems containing ecosystems and this includes artificial biospheres such as Biosphere 2 and BIOS-3, and potentially ones on other planets or moons. The term biosphere was coined by geologist Eduard Suess in 1875, while the concept has a geological origin, it is an indication of the effect of both Charles Darwin and Matthew F. Maury on the Earth sciences. The biospheres ecological context comes from the 1920s, preceding the 1935 introduction of the ecosystem by Sir Arthur Tansley. Vernadsky defined ecology as the science of the biosphere and it is an interdisciplinary concept for integrating astronomy, geophysics, meteorology, biogeography, evolution, geology, geochemistry, hydrology and, generally speaking, all life and Earth sciences. Geochemists define the biosphere as being the sum of living organisms. In this sense, the biosphere is but one of four components of the geochemical model. When these four component spheres are combined into one system, it is known as the Ecosphere and this term was coined during the 1960s and encompasses both biological and physical components of the planet. The Second International Conference on Closed Life Systems defined biospherics as the science and technology of analogs and models of Earths biosphere, others may include the creation of artificial non-Earth biospheres—for example, human-centered biospheres or a native Martian biosphere—as part of the topic of biospherics. Every part of the planet, from the ice caps to the equator. The actual thickness of the biosphere on earth is difficult to measure, birds typically fly at altitudes as high as 1,800 m and fish live as much as 8,372 m underwater in the Puerto Rico Trench. Herbivorous animals at these elevations depend on lichens, grasses, microorganisms, under certain test conditions, have been observed to thrive in the vacuum of outer space. The total amount of soil and subsurface bacterial carbon is estimated as 5 ×1017 g, the mass of prokaryote microorganisms—which includes bacteria and archaea, but not the nucleated eukaryote microorganisms—may be as much as 0.8 trillion tons of carbon. Barophilic marine microbes have been found at more than a depth of 10,000 m in the Mariana Trench, in fact, single-celled life forms have been found in the deepest part of the Mariana Trench, by the Challenger Deep, at depths of 11,034 m. Culturable thermophilic microbes have been extracted from cores drilled more than 5,000 m into the Earths crust in Sweden, temperature increases with increasing depth into the Earths crust
11.
Magnetosphere
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A magnetosphere is the region of space surrounding an astronomical object in which charged particles are controlled by that objects magnetic field. The magnetic field near the surface of many astronomical objects resembles that of a dipole, the field lines farther away from the surface can be significantly distorted by the flow of electrically conducting plasma emitted from a nearby star. Study of Earths magnetosphere began in 1600, when William Gilbert discovered that the field on the surface of Earth resembled that on a terrella. In the 1940s, Walter M. Elsasser proposed the model of dynamo theory, through the use of magnetometers, scientists were able to study the variations in Earths magnetic field as functions of both time and latitude and longitude. Beginning in the late 1940s, rockets were used to study cosmic rays, in 1958, Explorer 1, the first of the Explorer series of space missions, was launched to study the intensity of cosmic rays above the atmosphere and measure the fluctuations in this activity. This mission observed the existence of the Van Allen radiation belt, also in 1958, Eugene Parker proposed the idea of the solar wind. The term magnetosphere was proposed by Thomas Gold in 1959, the Explorer 12 mission led to the observation by Cahill and Amazeen in 1963 of a sudden decrease in the strength of the magnetic field near the noon meridian, later named the magnetopause. In 1983, the International Cometary Explorer observed the magnetotail, or the distant magnetic field, the distance at which a planet can withstand the solar wind pressure is called the Chapman–Ferraro distance. Mercury, Earth, Jupiter, Ganymede, Saturn, Uranus, a magnetosphere is classified as induced when R C F ≪ R P, or when the solar wind is not opposed by the objects magnetic field. In this case, the solar wind interacts with the atmosphere or ionosphere of the planet, when R C F ≈ R P, the planet itself and its magnetic field both contribute. It is possible that Mars is of this type, the bow shock forms the outermost layer of the magnetosphere, the boundary between the magnetosphere and the ambient medium. For stars, this is usually the boundary between the wind and interstellar medium, for planets, the speed of the solar wind there decreases as it approaches the magnetopause. The magnetosheath is the region of the magnetosphere between the bow shock and the magnetopause and it is formed mainly from shocked solar wind, though it contains a small amount of plasma from the magnetosphere. It is an area exhibiting high particle flux, where the direction. This is caused by the collection of solar wind gas that has effectively undergone thermalization and it acts as a cushion that transmits the pressure from the flow of the solar wind and the barrier of the magnetic field from the object. The magnetopause is the area of the magnetosphere wherein the pressure from the magnetic field is balanced with the pressure from the solar wind. It is the convergence of the solar wind from the magnetosheath with the magnetic field of the object. Because both sides of this convergence contain magnetized plasma, the interactions between them are complex, the structure of the magnetopause depends upon the Mach number and beta of the plasma, as well as the magnetic field
12.
Natural science
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Natural science is a branch of science concerned with the description, prediction, and understanding of natural phenomena, based on observational and empirical evidence. Mechanisms such as review and repeatability of findings are used to try to ensure the validity of scientific advances. Natural science can be divided into two branches, life science and physical science. Physical science is subdivided into branches, including physics, space science, chemistry and these branches of natural science may be further divided into more specialized branches. Modern natural science succeeded more classical approaches to natural philosophy, usually traced to ancient Greece, galileo, Descartes, Francis Bacon, and Newton debated the benefits of using approaches which were more mathematical and more experimental in a methodical way. Still, philosophical perspectives, conjectures, and presuppositions, often overlooked, systematic data collection, including discovery science, succeeded natural history, which emerged in the 16th century by describing and classifying plants, animals, minerals, and so on. Today, natural history suggests observational descriptions aimed at popular audiences, philosophers of science have suggested a number of criteria, including Karl Poppers controversial falsifiability criterion, to help them differentiate scientific endeavors from non-scientific ones. Validity, accuracy, and quality control, such as peer review and this field encompasses a set of disciplines that examines phenomena related to living organisms. The scale of study can range from sub-component biophysics up to complex ecologies, biology is concerned with the characteristics, classification and behaviors of organisms, as well as how species were formed and their interactions with each other and the environment. The biological fields of botany, zoology, and medicine date back to periods of civilization. However, it was not until the 19th century that became a unified science. Once scientists discovered commonalities between all living things, it was decided they were best studied as a whole, modern biology is divided into subdisciplines by the type of organism and by the scale being studied. Molecular biology is the study of the chemistry of life, while cellular biology is the examination of the cell. At a higher level, anatomy and physiology looks at the internal structures, constituting the scientific study of matter at the atomic and molecular scale, chemistry deals primarily with collections of atoms, such as gases, molecules, crystals, and metals. The composition, statistical properties, transformations and reactions of these materials are studied, chemistry also involves understanding the properties and interactions of individual atoms and molecules for use in larger-scale applications. Most chemical processes can be studied directly in a laboratory, using a series of techniques for manipulating materials, chemistry is often called the central science because of its role in connecting the other natural sciences. Early experiments in chemistry had their roots in the system of Alchemy, the science of chemistry began to develop with the work of Robert Boyle, the discoverer of gas, and Antoine Lavoisier, who developed the theory of the Conservation of mass. The success of science led to a complementary chemical industry that now plays a significant role in the world economy
13.
Social science
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Social science is a major category of academic disciplines, concerned with society and the relationships among individuals within a society. It in turn has many branches, each of which is considered a social science, the social sciences include economics, political science, human geography, demography, psychology, sociology, anthropology, archaeology, jurisprudence, history, and linguistics. The term is sometimes used to refer specifically to the field of sociology. A more detailed list of sub-disciplines within the sciences can be found at Outline of social science. Positivist social scientists use methods resembling those of the sciences as tools for understanding society. In modern academic practice, researchers are often eclectic, using multiple methodologies, the term social research has also acquired a degree of autonomy as practitioners from various disciplines share in its aims and methods. Social sciences came forth from the philosophy of the time and were influenced by the Age of Revolutions, such as the Industrial Revolution. The social sciences developed from the sciences, or the systematic knowledge-bases or prescriptive practices, the beginnings of the social sciences in the 18th century are reflected in the grand encyclopedia of Diderot, with articles from Jean-Jacques Rousseau and other pioneers. The growth of the sciences is also reflected in other specialized encyclopedias. The modern period saw social science first used as a distinct conceptual field, Social science was influenced by positivism, focusing on knowledge based on actual positive sense experience and avoiding the negative, metaphysical speculation was avoided. Auguste Comte used the term science sociale to describe the field, taken from the ideas of Charles Fourier, following this period, there were five paths of development that sprang forth in the social sciences, influenced by Comte on other fields. One route that was taken was the rise of social research, large statistical surveys were undertaken in various parts of the United States and Europe. Another route undertaken was initiated by Émile Durkheim, studying social facts, a third means developed, arising from the methodological dichotomy present, in which social phenomena were identified with and understood, this was championed by figures such as Max Weber. The fourth route taken, based in economics, was developed and furthered economic knowledge as a hard science, the last path was the correlation of knowledge and social values, the antipositivism and verstehen sociology of Max Weber firmly demanded this distinction. In this route, theory and prescription were non-overlapping formal discussions of a subject, around the start of the 20th century, Enlightenment philosophy was challenged in various quarters. The development of social science subfields became very quantitative in methodology, examples of boundary blurring include emerging disciplines like social research of medicine, sociobiology, neuropsychology, bioeconomics and the history and sociology of science. Increasingly, quantitative research and qualitative methods are being integrated in the study of action and its implications. In the first half of the 20th century, statistics became a discipline of applied mathematics
14.
Ecology
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Ecology is the scientific analysis and study of interactions among organisms and their environment. It is a field that includes biology, geography. Ecology includes the study of interactions that organisms have with other, other organisms. Ecosystems are composed of dynamically interacting parts including organisms, the communities make up. Ecosystem processes, such as production, pedogenesis, nutrient cycling. These processes are sustained by organisms with specific life history traits, biodiversity, which refers to the varieties of species, genes, and ecosystems, enhances certain ecosystem services. Ecology is not synonymous with environment, environmentalism, natural history and it is closely related to evolutionary biology, genetics, and ethology. An important focus for ecologists is to improve the understanding of how biodiversity affects ecological function, Ecology is a human science as well. For example, the Circles of Sustainability approach treats ecology as more than the environment out there and it is not treated as separate from humans. Organisms and resources compose ecosystems which, in turn, maintain biophysical feedback mechanisms that moderate processes acting on living and non-living components of the planet, the word ecology was coined in 1866 by the German scientist Ernst Haeckel. Ecological thought is derivative of established currents in philosophy, particularly from ethics and politics, ancient Greek philosophers such as Hippocrates and Aristotle laid the foundations of ecology in their studies on natural history. Modern ecology became a more rigorous science in the late 19th century. Evolutionary concepts relating to adaptation and natural selection became the cornerstones of modern ecological theory, the scope of ecology contains a wide array of interacting levels of organization spanning micro-level to a planetary scale phenomena. Ecosystems, for example, contain abiotic resources and interacting life forms, an ecosystems area can vary greatly, from tiny to vast. A single tree is of consequence to the classification of a forest ecosystem. Several generations of a population can exist over the lifespan of a single leaf. Each of those aphids, in turn, support diverse bacterial communities, biodiversity describes the diversity of life from genes to ecosystems and spans every level of biological organization. The term has several interpretations, and there are ways to index, measure, characterize
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Economics
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Economics is a social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work, consistent with this focus, textbooks often distinguish between microeconomics and macroeconomics. Microeconomics examines the behaviour of elements in the economy, including individual agents and markets, their interactions. Individual agents may include, for example, households, firms, buyers, macroeconomics analyzes the entire economy and issues affecting it, including unemployment of resources, inflation, economic growth, and the public policies that address these issues. Economic analysis can be applied throughout society, as in business, finance, health care, Economic analyses may also be applied to such diverse subjects as crime, education, the family, law, politics, religion, social institutions, war, science, and the environment. At the turn of the 21st century, the domain of economics in the social sciences has been described as economic imperialism. The ultimate goal of economics is to improve the conditions of people in their everyday life. There are a variety of definitions of economics. Some of the differences may reflect evolving views of the subject or different views among economists, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue for the publick services. Say, distinguishing the subject from its uses, defines it as the science of production, distribution. On the satirical side, Thomas Carlyle coined the dismal science as an epithet for classical economics, in this context and it enquires how he gets his income and how he uses it. Thus, it is on the one side, the study of wealth and on the other and more important side, a part of the study of man. He affirmed that previous economists have usually centred their studies on the analysis of wealth, how wealth is created, distributed, and consumed, but he said that economics can be used to study other things, such as war, that are outside its usual focus. This is because war has as the goal winning it, generates both cost and benefits, and, resources are used to attain the goal. If the war is not winnable or if the costs outweigh the benefits. Some subsequent comments criticized the definition as overly broad in failing to limit its subject matter to analysis of markets, there are other criticisms as well, such as in scarcity not accounting for the macroeconomics of high unemployment. The same source reviews a range of included in principles of economics textbooks. Among economists more generally, it argues that a particular definition presented may reflect the direction toward which the author believes economics is evolving, microeconomics examines how entities, forming a market structure, interact within a market to create a market system
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Geology
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Geology is an earth science concerned with the solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Geology can also refer generally to the study of the features of any terrestrial planet. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth by providing the evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life. Geology also plays a role in engineering and is a major academic discipline. The majority of data comes from research on solid Earth materials. These typically fall into one of two categories, rock and unconsolidated material, the majority of research in geology is associated with the study of rock, as rock provides the primary record of the majority of the geologic history of the Earth. There are three types of rock, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. The rock cycle is an important concept in geology which illustrates the relationships between three types of rock, and magma. When a rock crystallizes from melt, it is an igneous rock, the sedimentary rock can then be subsequently turned into a metamorphic rock due to heat and pressure and is then weathered, eroded, deposited, and lithified, ultimately becoming a sedimentary rock. Sedimentary rock may also be re-eroded and redeposited, and metamorphic rock may also undergo additional metamorphism, all three types of rocks may be re-melted, when this happens, a new magma is formed, from which an igneous rock may once again crystallize. Geologists also study unlithified material which typically comes from more recent deposits and these materials are superficial deposits which lie above the bedrock. Because of this, the study of material is often known as Quaternary geology. This includes the study of sediment and soils, including studies in geomorphology, sedimentology and this theory is supported by several types of observations, including seafloor spreading, and the global distribution of mountain terrain and seismicity. This coupling between rigid plates moving on the surface of the Earth and the mantle is called plate tectonics. The development of plate tectonics provided a basis for many observations of the solid Earth. Long linear regions of geologic features could be explained as plate boundaries, mid-ocean ridges, high regions on the seafloor where hydrothermal vents and volcanoes exist, were explained as divergent boundaries, where two plates move apart. Arcs of volcanoes and earthquakes were explained as convergent boundaries, where one plate subducts under another, transform boundaries, such as the San Andreas Fault system, resulted in widespread powerful earthquakes. Plate tectonics also provided a mechanism for Alfred Wegeners theory of continental drift and they also provided a driving force for crustal deformation, and a new setting for the observations of structural geology
17.
Glaciology
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Glaciology is the scientific study of glaciers, or more generally ice and natural phenomena that involve ice. Glaciology is an earth science that integrates geophysics, geology, physical geography, geomorphology, climatology, meteorology, hydrology, biology. The impact of glaciers on people includes the fields of human geography, the discoveries of water ice on the Moon, Mars, Europa and Pluto add an extraterrestrial component to the field, as in astroglaciology. Areas of study within glaciology include glacial history and the reconstruction of past glaciation, a glaciologist is a person who studies glaciers. A glacial geologist studies glacial deposits and glacial erosive features on the landscape, glaciology and glacial geology are key areas of polar research. Alpine - ice flows down the valleys of mountainous areas and forms a tongue of ice moving towards the plains below, continental - an ice sheet found today, only in high latitudes, thousands of square kilometers in area and thousands of meters thick. These tend to smooth out the landscapes, accumulation, where the formation of ice is faster than its removal. Wastage or ablation, where the sum of melting and evaporation is greater than the amount of snow added each year, ablation wastage of the glacier through sublimation, ice melting and iceberg calving. Ablation zone Area of a glacier in which the loss of ice through ablation exceeds the annual gain from precipitation. Arête an acute ridge of rock where two cirques abut, bergschrund crevasse formed near the head of a glacier, where the mass of ice has rotated, sheared and torn itself apart in the manner of a geological fault. Cirque, corrie or cwm bowl shaped depression excavated by the source of a glacier, creep adjustment to stress at a molecular level. Flow movement in a constant direction, fracture brittle failure under the stress raised when movement is too rapid to be accommodated by creep. It happens for example, as the part of a glacier moves faster than the edges. Horn spire of rock, also known as a pyramidal peak and it is an extreme case of an arête. Plucking/Quarrying where the adhesion of the ice to the rock is stronger than the cohesion of the rock, tarn a post-glacial lake in a cirque. Tunnel valley The tunnel that is formed by erosion of ice. The tunnel valley is what remains of it in the rock when the ice sheet has melted. Movement of the glacier is very slow and its velocity varies from a few centimeters per day to a few meters per day
18.
Meteorology
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Meteorology is a branch of the atmospheric sciences which includes atmospheric chemistry and atmospheric physics, with a major focus on weather forecasting. The study of meteorology dates back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did not occur until the 18th century, the 19th century saw modest progress in the field after weather observation networks were formed across broad regions. Prior attempts at prediction of weather depended on historical data, Meteorological phenomena are observable weather events that are explained by the science of meteorology. Different spatial scales are used to describe and predict weather on local, regional, Meteorology, climatology, atmospheric physics, and atmospheric chemistry are sub-disciplines of the atmospheric sciences. Meteorology and hydrology compose the interdisciplinary field of hydrometeorology, the interactions between Earths atmosphere and its oceans are part of a coupled ocean-atmosphere system. Meteorology has application in diverse fields such as the military, energy production, transport, agriculture. The word meteorology is from Greek μετέωρος metéōros lofty, high and -λογία -logia -logy, varāhamihiras classical work Brihatsamhita, written about 500 AD, provides clear evidence that a deep knowledge of atmospheric processes existed even in those times. In 350 BC, Aristotle wrote Meteorology, Aristotle is considered the founder of meteorology. One of the most impressive achievements described in the Meteorology is the description of what is now known as the hydrologic cycle and they are all called swooping bolts because they swoop down upon the Earth. Lightning is sometimes smoky, and is then called smoldering lightning, sometimes it darts quickly along, at other times, it travels in crooked lines, and is called forked lightning. When it swoops down upon some object it is called swooping lightning, the Greek scientist Theophrastus compiled a book on weather forecasting, called the Book of Signs. The work of Theophrastus remained a dominant influence in the study of weather, in 25 AD, Pomponius Mela, a geographer for the Roman Empire, formalized the climatic zone system. According to Toufic Fahd, around the 9th century, Al-Dinawari wrote the Kitab al-Nabat, ptolemy wrote on the atmospheric refraction of light in the context of astronomical observations. St. Roger Bacon was the first to calculate the size of the rainbow. He stated that a rainbow summit can not appear higher than 42 degrees above the horizon, in the late 13th century and early 14th century, Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī and Theodoric of Freiberg were the first to give the correct explanations for the primary rainbow phenomenon. Theoderic went further and also explained the secondary rainbow, in 1716, Edmund Halley suggested that aurorae are caused by magnetic effluvia moving along the Earths magnetic field lines. In 1441, King Sejongs son, Prince Munjong, invented the first standardized rain gauge and these were sent throughout the Joseon Dynasty of Korea as an official tool to assess land taxes based upon a farmers potential harvest. In 1450, Leone Battista Alberti developed a swinging-plate anemometer, and was known as the first anemometer, in 1607, Galileo Galilei constructed a thermoscope
19.
Oceanography
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Oceanography, also known as oceanology, is the study of the physical and the biological aspects of the ocean. Paleoceanography studies the history of the oceans in the geologic past, humans first acquired knowledge of the waves and currents of the seas and oceans in pre-historic times. Observations on tides were recorded by Aristotle and Strabo, early exploration of the oceans was primarily for cartography and mainly limited to its surfaces and of the animals that fishermen brought up in nets, though depth soundings by lead line were taken. Although Juan Ponce de León in 1513 first identified the Gulf Stream, Franklin measured water temperatures during several Atlantic crossings and correctly explained the Gulf Streams cause. Franklin and Timothy Folger printed the first map of the Gulf Stream in 1769-1770, information on the currents of the Pacific Ocean was gathered by explorers of the late 18th century, including James Cook and Louis Antoine de Bougainville. James Rennell wrote the first scientific textbooks on oceanography, detailing the current flows of the Atlantic, during a voyage around the Cape of Good Hope in 1777, he mapped the banks and currents at the Lagullas. He was also the first to understand the nature of the intermittent current near the Isles of Scilly, Robert FitzRoy published a four-volume report of the Beagles three voyages. In 1841–1842 Edward Forbes undertook dredging in the Aegean Sea that founded marine ecology, the first superintendent of the United States Naval Observatory, Matthew Fontaine Maury devoted his time to the study of marine meteorology, navigation, and charting prevailing winds and currents. His 1855 textbook Physical Geography of the Sea was one of the first comprehensive oceanography studies, many nations sent oceanographic observations to Maury at the Naval Observatory, where he and his colleagues evaluated the information and distributed the results worldwide. Despite all this, human knowledge of the oceans remained confined to the topmost few fathoms of the water, almost nothing was known of the ocean depths. The Royal Navys efforts to all of the worlds coastlines in the mid-19th century reinforced the vague idea that most of the ocean was very deep. As exploration ignited both popular and scientific interest in the regions and Africa, so too did the mysteries of the unexplored oceans. The seminal event in the founding of the science of oceanography was the 1872-76 Challenger expedition. As the first true oceanographic cruise, this laid the groundwork for an entire academic. In response to a recommendation from the Royal Society, The British Government announced in 1871 an expedition to explore worlds oceans, charles Wyville Thompson and Sir John Murray launched the Challenger expedition. The Challenger, leased from the Royal Navy, was modified for scientific work, under the scientific supervision of Thomson, Challenger travelled nearly 70,000 nautical miles surveying and exploring. On her journey circumnavigating the globe,492 deep sea soundings,133 bottom dredges,151 open water trawls and 263 serial water temperature observations were taken, around 4,700 new species of marine life were discovered. The result was the Report Of The Scientific Results of the Exploring Voyage of H. M. S, Murray, who supervised the publication, described the report as the greatest advance in the knowledge of our planet since the celebrated discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
20.
Paleontology
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Paleontology or palaeontology is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene Epoch. It includes the study of fossils to determine organisms evolution and interactions with each other, paleontological observations have been documented as far back as the 5th century BC. The science became established in the 18th century as a result of Georges Cuviers work on comparative anatomy, and developed rapidly in the 19th century. The term itself originates from Greek παλαιός, palaios, i. e. old, ancient, ὄν, on, i. e. being, creature and λόγος, logos, i. e. speech, thought, study. Paleontology lies on the border between biology and geology, but differs from archaeology in that it excludes the study of modern humans. It now uses techniques drawn from a range of sciences, including biochemistry, mathematics. The final quarter of the 20th century saw the development of molecular phylogenetics, molecular phylogenetics has also been used to estimate the dates when species diverged, but there is controversy about the reliability of the molecular clock on which such estimates depend. The simplest definition is the study of ancient life, paleontology is one of the historical sciences, along with archaeology, geology, astronomy, cosmology, philology and history itself. This means that it aims to describe phenomena of the past, hence it has three main elements, description of the phenomena, developing a general theory about the causes of various types of change, and applying those theories to specific facts. Sometimes the smoking gun is discovered by an accident during other research. Paleontology lies on the boundary between biology and geology since paleontology focuses on the record of past life but its source of evidence is fossils. In addition paleontology often uses techniques derived from other sciences, including biology, osteology, ecology, chemistry, techniques developed in engineering have been used to analyse how ancient organisms might have worked, for example how fast Tyrannosaurus could move and how powerful its bite was. As knowledge has increased, paleontology has developed specialised subdivisions, vertebrate paleontology concentrates on fossils of vertebrates, from the earliest fish to the immediate ancestors of modern mammals. Invertebrate paleontology deals with fossils of such as molluscs, arthropods. Paleobotany focuses on the study of plants, but traditionally includes the study of fossil algae. Palynology, the study of pollen and spores produced by plants and protists. Micropaleontology deals with all microscopic fossil organisms, regardless of the group to which they belong, one example is the development of oxygenic photosynthesis by bacteria, which hugely increased the productivity and diversity of ecosystems. This also caused the oxygenation of the atmosphere, together, these were a prerequisite for the evolution of the most complex eukaryotic cells, from which all multicellular organisms are built
21.
Sociology
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Sociology is the study of social behaviour or society, including its origins, development, organisation, networks, and institutions. It is a science that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about social order, disorder. Many sociologists aim to research that may be applied directly to social policy and welfare. Subject matter ranges from the level of individual agency and interaction to the macro level of systems. The traditional focuses of sociology include social stratification, social class, social mobility, religion, secularization, law, sexuality, the range of social scientific methods has also expanded. Social researchers draw upon a variety of qualitative and quantitative techniques, the linguistic and cultural turns of the mid-twentieth century led to increasingly interpretative, hermeneutic, and philosophic approaches towards the analysis of society. There is often a great deal of crossover between social research, market research, and other statistical fields, Sociology is distinguished from various general social studies courses, which bear little relation to sociological theory or to social-science research-methodology. The US National Science Foundation classifies sociology as a STEM field, Sociological reasoning pre-dates the foundation of the discipline. Social analysis has origins in the stock of Western knowledge and philosophy. The origin of the survey, i. e, there is evidence of early sociology in medieval Arab writings. The word sociology is derived from both Latin and Greek origins, the Latin word, socius, companion, the suffix -logy, the study of from Greek -λογία from λόγος, lógos, word, knowledge. It was first coined in 1780 by the French essayist Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès in an unpublished manuscript, Sociology was later defined independently by the French philosopher of science, Auguste Comte, in 1838. Comte used this term to describe a new way of looking at society, Comte had earlier used the term social physics, but that had subsequently been appropriated by others, most notably the Belgian statistician Adolphe Quetelet. Comte endeavoured to unify history, psychology and economics through the understanding of the social realm. Comte believed a positivist stage would mark the final era, after conjectural theological and metaphysical phases, Comte gave a powerful impetus to the development of sociology, an impetus which bore fruit in the later decades of the nineteenth century. To say this is not to claim that French sociologists such as Durkheim were devoted disciples of the high priest of positivism. To be sure, beginnings can be traced back well beyond Montesquieu, for example, Marx rejected Comtean positivism but in attempting to develop a science of society nevertheless came to be recognized as a founder of sociology as the word gained wider meaning. For Isaiah Berlin, Marx may be regarded as the father of modern sociology
22.
Outline of Earth sciences
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The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Earth science, Earth science – all-embracing term for the sciences related to the planet Earth. It is also known as geoscience, the geosciences or the Earth sciences, and is arguably a special case in planetary science, Earth science is a branch of the physical sciences which is a part of the natural sciences. It in turn has many branches, ecosphere – there are many subsystems that make up the natural environment of the Earth. Many of the subsystems are characterized as spheres, coinciding with the shape of the planet, the four spheres are the atmosphere, the biosphere, the hydrosphere and the geosphere. Thus, there is an overlap with the hydrosphere. Ecology – scientific study of the distribution and abundance of living organisms and how the distribution, Environmental chemistry – Environmental chemistry is the scientific study of the chemical and biochemical phenomena that occur in natural places. Environmental geology – Environmental geology, like hydrogeology, is a science concerned with the practical application of the principles of geology in the solving of environmental problems. Earth science, and all of its branches, are branches of physical science, history of cartography – history of the study and practice of making maps or globes. History of environmental science – history of an integrated, quantitative, history of environmental chemistry – history of the Environmental chemistry is the scientific study of the chemical and biochemical phenomena that occur in natural places. History of toxicology – history of the branch of biology, chemistry, history of geology – history of the study of the Earth, with the general exclusion of present-day life, flow within the ocean, and the atmosphere. History of planetary geology – history of the science discipline concerned with the geology of the celestial bodies such as the planets and their moons, asteroids, comets. History of glaciology – history of the study of glaciers, or more generally ice, history of hydrogeology – history of the area of geology that deals with the distribution and movement of groundwater in the soil and rocks of the Earths crust. History of mineralogy – history of the study of chemistry, crystal structure, history of meteorology – history of the interdisciplinary scientific study of the atmosphere which explains and forecasts weather events. History of topography – history of the study of shape and features of the Earth and other observable astronomical objects including planets, moons. History of volcanology – history of the study of volcanoes, lava, magma, and related geological, geophysical and geochemical phenomena
23.
Self-organization
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Self-organization, also called spontaneous order, is a process where some form of overall order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. The process is spontaneous, not needing control by any external agent and it is often triggered by random fluctuations, amplified by positive feedback. The resulting organization is decentralized, distributed over all the components of the system. As such, the organization is typically robust and able to survive or self-repair substantial perturbation, chaos theory discusses self-organization in terms of islands of predictability in a sea of chaotic unpredictability. Self-organization occurs in physical, chemical, biological, robotic. Examples can be found in crystallization, thermal convection of fluids, chemical oscillation, animal swarming, self-organization is realized in the physics of non-equilibrium processes, and in chemical reactions, where it is often described as self-assembly. The concept has proven useful in biology, from molecular to ecosystem level, cited examples of self-organizing behaviour also appear in the literature of many other disciplines, both in the natural sciences and in the social sciences such as economics or anthropology. Self-organization has also observed in mathematical systems such as cellular automata. Self-organization is not to be confused with the concept of emergence. It states that any deterministic dynamic system automatically evolves towards a state of equilibrium that can be described in terms of an attractor in a basin of surrounding states, once there, the further evolution of the system is constrained to remain in the attractor. This constraint implies a form of mutual dependency or coordination between its constituent components or subsystems, in Ashbys terms, each subsystem has adapted to the environment formed by all other subsystems. The cybernetician Heinz von Foerster formulated the principle of order from noise in 1960 and it notes that self-organization is facilitated by random perturbations that let the system explore a variety of states in its state space. This increases the chance that the system will arrive into the basin of a strong or deep attractor, the thermodynamicist Ilya Prigogine formulated a similar principle as order through fluctuations or order out of chaos. It is applied in the method of simulated annealing for problem solving, the idea that the dynamics of a system can lead to an increase in its organization has a long history. The philosopher René Descartes presents it hypothetically in the part of his 1637 Discourse on Method. He elaborated on the idea in his unpublished work The World, such a system of organs must be able to behave as if it has a mind of its own, that is, it is capable of governing itself. Sadi Carnot and Rudolf Clausius discovered the Second Law of Thermodynamics in the 19th century and it states that total entropy, sometimes understood as disorder, will always increase over time in an isolated system. This means that a system cannot spontaneously increase its order, without a relationship that decreases order elsewhere in the system
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Physical geography
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Physical geography is one of the two major sub-fields of geography. Geomorphology seeks to understand landform history and dynamics, and predict future changes through a combination of observation, physical experiment. Thus the field encompasses water in rivers, lakes, aquifers and to an extent glaciers, in which the field examines the process and dynamics involved in these bodies of water. Similar to most fields of physical geography it has sub-fields that examine the bodies of water or their interaction with other spheres e. g. limnology and ecohydrology. Glaciology is the study of glaciers and ice sheets, or more commonly the cryosphere or ice, glaciology groups the latter as continental glaciers and the former as alpine glaciers. Glaciology also has a vast array of sub-fields examining the factors and processes involved in ice sheets and glaciers e. g. snow hydrology, Biogeography is the science which deals with geographic patterns of species distribution and the processes that result in these patterns. The main stimulus for the field since its founding has been that of evolution, plate tectonics, climatology examines both the nature of micro and macro climates and the natural and anthropogenic influences on them. The field is also sub-divided largely into the climates of various regions, meteorology is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the atmosphere that focuses on weather processes and short term forecasting. Studies in the field stretch back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did not occur until the eighteenth century, meteorological phenomena are observable weather events which illuminate and are explained by the science of meteorology. Pedology is the study of soils in their natural environment and it is one of two main branches of soil science, the other being edaphology. Pedology mainly deals with pedogenesis, soil morphology, soil classification, palaeogeography is a cross-disciplinary study that examines the preserved material in the stratigraphic record to determine the distribution of the continents through geologic time. Almost all the evidence for the positions of the continents comes from geology in the form of fossils or paleomagnetism, the use of this data has resulted in evidence for continental drift, plate tectonics, and supercontinents. This, in turn, has supported palaeogeographic theories such as the Wilson cycle, coastal geography is the study of the dynamic interface between the ocean and the land, incorporating both the physical geography and the human geography of the coast. It involves an understanding of coastal weathering processes, particularly wave action, sediment movement and weathering, coastal geography, although predominantly geomorphological in its research, is not just concerned with coastal landforms, but also the causes and influences of sea level change. Oceanography is the branch of geography that studies the Earths oceans. These diverse topics reflect multiple disciplines that oceanographers blend to further knowledge of the world ocean, Quaternary science is an inter-disciplinary field of study focusing on the Quaternary period, which encompasses the last 2.6 million years. The field was founded by the German geographer Carl Troll. Landscape ecology typically deals with problems in an applied and holistic context, geomatics is the field of gathering, storing, processing, and delivering geographic information, or spatially referenced information
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Climatology
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Climatology or climate science is the study of climate, scientifically defined as weather conditions averaged over a period of time. This modern field of study is regarded as a branch of the sciences and a subfield of physical geography. Climatology now includes aspects of oceanography and biogeochemistry, Climate models are used for a variety of purposes from study of the dynamics of the weather and climate system to projections of future climate. Weather is known as the condition of the atmosphere over a period of time, while Climate has to do with the atmospheric condition over an extended to indefinite period of time. Early climate researchers include Edmund Halley, who published a map of the winds in 1686 after a voyage to the southern hemisphere. Benjamin Franklin first mapped the course of the Gulf Stream for use in sending mail from the United States to Europe, francis Galton invented the term anticyclone. Helmut Landsberg fostered the use of analysis in climatology, which led to its evolution into a physical science. Climatology is approached in various such as Paleoclimatology, which seeks to reconstruct past climates by examining records such as ice cores. Paleotempestology uses these same records to help determine hurricane frequency over millennia, the study of contemporary climates incorporates meteorological data accumulated over many years, such as records of rainfall, temperature and atmospheric composition. Knowledge of the atmosphere and its dynamics is also embodied in models, either statistical or mathematical, modeling is used for understanding past, present and potential future climates. Historical climatology is the study of climate as related to human history, Climate research is made difficult by the large scale, long time periods, and complex processes which govern climate. Climate is governed by laws which can be expressed as differential equations. These equations are coupled and nonlinear, so that solutions are obtained by using numerical methods to create global climate models. Climate is sometimes modeled as a process but this is generally accepted as an approximation to processes that are otherwise too complicated to analyze. Scientists use climate indices based on several climate patterns in their attempt to characterize, Climate indices are generally devised with the twin objectives of simplicity and completeness, and each index typically represents the status and timing of the climate factor it represents. El Niño–Southern Oscillation is a global coupled ocean-atmosphere phenomenon, the Pacific Ocean signatures, El Niño and La Niña are important temperature fluctuations in surface waters of the tropical Eastern Pacific Ocean. La Niña means the little girl and their effect on climate in the subtropics and the tropics are profound. The atmospheric signature, the Southern Oscillation reflects the monthly or seasonal fluctuations in the air pressure difference between Tahiti and Darwin, the most recent occurrence of El Niño started in September 2006 and lasted until early 2007
26.
Carleton College
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Carleton College is a private liberal arts college in the historic town of Northfield, Minnesota. The college enrolled 2,014 undergraduate students and employed 245 instructional faculty members in fall 2015, Carleton is one of few liberal arts colleges that runs on the trimester system. In its 2017 edition of national liberal arts college rankings, U. S, the schools location in Northfield places it 40 miles from the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan complex. The school was founded on October 12,1866, when the Minnesota Conference of Congregational Churches unanimously accepted a resolution to locate a college in Northfield, two Northfield businessmen, Charles Augustus Wheaton and Charles Moorehouse Goodsell, each donated 10 acres of land for the first campus. The first students enrolled at the unit of Northfield College in the fall of 1867. In 1870, the first college president, James Strong, traveled to the East Coast to raise funds for the college. On his way from visiting a potential donor, William Carleton of Charlestown, Massachusetts, impressed by Strongs survival of the accident, Carleton donated $50,000 to the fledgling institution in 1871. As a result, the Board of Trustees renamed the school in his honor, the college graduated its first college class in 1874, in which the first two graduates, James J. Dow and Myra A. Brown, married each other later that year, on September 7,1876, the James-Younger Gang, led by outlaw Jesse James, tried to rob the First National Bank of Northfield. Joseph Lee Heywood, Carletons Treasurer, was acting cashier at the bank that day and he was shot and killed for refusing to open the safe. Carleton later named a library fund after Heywood, the Heywood Society is the name for a group of donors who have named Carleton in their wills. In its early years under the presidency of James Strong, Carleton reflected the theological conservatism of its Minnesota Congregational founders, in 1903, modern religious influences were introduced by William Sallmon, a Yale Divinity School graduate, who was hired as college president. Sallmon was opposed by conservative faculty members and alumni, and left the presidency by 1908, after Sallmon left, the trustees hired Donald J. Cowling, another theologically liberal Yale Divinity School graduate, as his successor. In 1916, under Cowlings leadership, Carleton began an affiliation with the Minnesota Baptist Convention. It lasted until 1928, when the Baptists severed the relationship as a result of fundamentalist opposition to Carletons liberalism, non-denominational for a number of years, in 1964 Carleton abolished its requirement for weekly attendance at some religious or spiritual meeting. In 1927, students founded the first student-run pub in the nation, located in the basement of Evans Hall, it continues to host live music shows and other events several times each week. In 1942, Carleton purchased land in Stanton, about 10 miles east of campus, during World War II, several classes of male students went through air basic training at the college. Since being sold by the college in 1944, the Stanton Airfield has been operated for commercial use, the world premiere production of the English translation of Bertolt Brechts play, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, was performed in 1948 at Carletons Nourse Little Theater
27.
Age of the Earth
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The age of the Earth is 4.54 ±0.05 billion years. This dating is based on evidence from radiometric age-dating of meteorite material and is consistent with the ages of the oldest-known terrestrial. Following the development of radiometric age-dating in the early 20th century, the oldest such minerals analyzed to date—small crystals of zircon from the Jack Hills of Western Australia—are at least 4.404 billion years old. Comparing the mass and luminosity of the Sun to those of other stars and it is hypothesised that the accretion of Earth began soon after the formation of the calcium-aluminium-rich inclusions and the meteorites. It is also difficult to determine the age of the oldest rocks on Earth, exposed at the surface. Studies of strata, the layering of rocks and earth, gave naturalists an appreciation that Earth may have been many changes during its existence. These layers often contained fossilized remains of creatures, leading some to interpret a progression of organisms from layer to layer. Nicolas Steno in the 17th century was one of the first naturalists to appreciate the connection between fossil remains and strata and his observations led him to formulate important stratigraphic concepts. In the 1790s, William Smith hypothesized that if two layers of rock at widely differing locations contained similar fossils, then it was plausible that the layers were the same age. William Smiths nephew and student, John Phillips, later calculated by means that Earth was about 96 million years old. In the mid-18th century, the naturalist Mikhail Lomonosov suggested that Earth had been created separately from, and several hundred years before. In 1779 the Comte du Buffon tried to obtain a value for the age of Earth using an experiment, He created a globe that resembled Earth in composition. This led him to estimate that Earth was about 75,000 years old, other naturalists used these hypotheses to construct a history of Earth, though their timelines were inexact as they did not know how long it took to lay down stratigraphic layers. This was a challenge to the view, which saw the history of Earth as static. Many naturalists were influenced by Lyell to become uniformitarians who believed that changes were constant, in 1862, the physicist William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin published calculations that fixed the age of Earth at between 20 million and 400 million years. He assumed that Earth had formed as a completely molten object, geologists such as Charles Lyell had trouble accepting such a short age for Earth. For biologists, even 100 million years seemed much too short to be plausible, in Darwins theory of evolution, the process of random heritable variation with cumulative selection requires great durations of time. In a lecture in 1869, Darwins great advocate, Thomas H. Huxley, attacked Thomsons calculations and their values were consistent with Thomsons calculations
28.
Mountain formation
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Mountain formation refers to the geological processes that underlie the formation of mountains. These processes are associated with movements of the Earths crust. Folding, faulting, volcanic activity, igneous intrusion and metamorphism can all be parts of the process of mountain building. The formation of mountains is not necessarily related to the structures found on it. There are three types of mountains, volcanic, fold, and block. A more detailed classification useful on a local scale predates plate tectonics, movements of tectonic plates create volcanoes along the plate boundaries, which erupt and form mountains. A volcanic arc system is a series of volcanoes that form near a subduction zone where the crust of an oceanic plate melts. Most volcanoes occur in a band encircling the Pacific Ocean, the most important types of volcanic mountain are composite cones or stratovolcanoes and shield volcanoes. A shield volcano has a gently sloping cone due to the low viscosity of the emitted material, mauna Loa is the classic example, with a slope of 4°-6°. The composite volcano or stratovolcano has a steeply rising cone, due to the higher viscosity of the emitted material. Besides the examples already mentioned are Mount Shasta, Mount Hood, when plates collide or undergo subduction, the plates tend to buckle and fold, forming mountains. Most of the major mountain ranges are associated with thrusting and folding or orogenesis. Examples are the Jura and the Zagros mountains, when a fault block is raised or tilted, block mountains can result. Higher blocks are called horsts and troughs are called grabens, a spreading apart of the surface causes tensional forces. When the tensional forces are enough to cause a plate to split apart. Hotspots are supplied by a source in the Earths mantle called a mantle plume. Although originally attributed to a melting of subducted oceanic crust, recent evidence belies this connection, the mechanism for plume formation remains a research topic. Several movements of the earths crust that lead to mountains are associated with faults, early bent plate models predicting fractures and fault movements have evolved into todays kinematic and flexural models
29.
Origin of water on Earth
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The origin of water on Earth, or the reason that there is clearly more liquid water on Earth than on the other rocky planets of the Solar System, is not completely understood. There exist numerous more or less mutually compatible hypotheses as to how water may have accumulated on Earths surface over the past 4.5 billion years in sufficient quantity to form oceans. Comets, trans-Neptunian objects or water-rich meteoroids from the reaches of the asteroid belt colliding with Earth may have brought water to the worlds oceans. Large enough Planetesimals were heated by the decay of aluminium isotope and this could cause water to rise to the surface. What is however unclear is whether these comets are representative of those from the Kuiper Belt, the water in carbon-rich chondrites point to a similar D/H ratio as oceanic water. Nevertheless, mechanisms have been proposed to suggest that the D/H-ratio of oceanic water may have increased significantly throughout Earths history, such a proposal is consistent with the possibility that a significant amount of the water on Earth was already present during the planets early evolution. Recent measurements of the composition of Moon rocks suggest that Earth was born with its water already present. Investigating lunar samples carried to Earth by the Apollo 15 and 17 missions found a ratio that matched the isotopic ratio in carbonaceous chondrites. The ratio is similar to that found in water on Earth. The findings suggest a common source of water for both objects and this supports a theory that Jupiter temporarily migrated into the inner Solar System, destabilizing the orbits of water-rich carbonaceous chondrites. As a result, some of the bodies could have fallen inwards and become part of the raw material for making Earth, the discovery of water vapor out-gassing from Ceres provides related information on water-ice content of the asteroid belt. Gradual leakage of stored in hydrate minerals of Earths rocks could have formed a portion of its water. Water may also have come from volcanism, water vapor in the atmosphere that originated in volcanic eruptions may have condensed to form rain, a sizeable quantity of water would have been in the material that formed Earth. Water molecules would have escaped Earths gravity more easily when it was less massive during its formation, part of the young planet is theorized to have been disrupted by the impact which created the Moon, which should have caused melting of one or two large areas. Present composition does not match complete melting and it is hard to melt, however, a fair fraction of material should have been vaporized by this impact, creating a rock-vapor atmosphere around the young planet. The rock-vapor would have condensed within two years, leaving behind hot volatiles which probably resulted in a heavy carbon dioxide atmosphere with hydrogen. Liquid water oceans existed despite the temperature of 230°C because of the atmospheric pressure of the heavy CO2 atmosphere. As cooling continued, subduction and dissolving in ocean water removed most CO2 from the atmosphere but levels oscillated wildly as new surface and mantle cycles appeared
30.
History of geology
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The history of geology is concerned with the development of the natural science of geology. Geology is the study of the origin, history. Some of the first geological thoughts were about the origin of the Earth, ancient Greece developed some primary geological concepts concerning the origin of the Earth. Additionally, in the 4th century BC Aristotle made critical observations of the rate of geological change. He observed the composition of the land and formulated a theory where the Earth changes at a slow rate, Aristotle developed one of the first evidentially based concepts connected to the geological realm regarding the rate at which the Earth physically changes. However, it was his successor at the Lyceum, the philosopher Theophrastus and he described many minerals and ores both from local mines such as those at Laurium near Athens, and further afield. He also quite naturally discussed types of marble and building materials like limestones, much later in the Roman period, Pliny the Elder produced a very extensive discussion of many more minerals and metals then widely used for practical ends. He was among the first to identify the origin of amber as a fossilized resin from trees by the observation of insects trapped within some pieces. He also laid the basis of crystallography by recognising the octahedral habit of diamond, in medieval China, one of the most intriguing naturalists was Shen Kuo, a polymath personality who dabbled in many fields of study in his age. In terms of geology, Shen Kuo is one of the first naturalists to have formulated a theory of geomorphology. This was based on his observations of sedimentary uplift, soil erosion, deposition of silt and it was not until the 17th century that geology made great strides in its development. At this time, geology became its own entity in the world of natural science and it was discovered by the Christian world that different translations of the Bible contained different versions of the biblical text. The one entity that remained consistent through all of the interpretations was that the Deluge had formed the world’s geology, to prove the Bible’s authenticity, individuals felt the need to demonstrate with scientific evidence that the Great Flood had in fact occurred. With this enhanced desire for data came an increase in observations of the Earth’s composition, whiston used Christian reasoning to “prove” that the Great Flood had occurred and that the flood had formed the rock strata of the Earth. The Earth’s strata can be defined as horizontal layers of rock having approximately the same composition throughout, an important pioneer in the science was Nicolas Steno. Steno was trained in the texts on science, however. Importantly, he questioned the idea that grew in the ground. His investigations and his subsequent conclusions on these topics have led scholars to consider him one of the founders of modern stratigraphy, from this increased interest in the nature of the Earth and its origin, came a heightened attention to minerals and other components of the Earth’s crust
31.
Structure of the Earth
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The interior structure of the Earth is layered in spherical shells, like an onion. These layers can be defined by their chemical and their rheological properties, Earth has an outer silicate solid crust, a highly viscous mantle, a liquid outer core that is much less viscous than the mantle, and a solid inner core. The force exerted by Earths gravity can be used to calculate its mass, astronomers can also calculate Earths mass by observing the motion of orbiting satellites. Earth’s average density can be determined through gravitometric experiments, which have historically involved pendulums, the mass of Earth is about 6×1024 kg. The structure of Earth can be defined in two ways, by properties such as rheology, or chemically. Mechanically, it can be divided into lithosphere, asthenosphere, mesospheric mantle, outer core, chemically, Earth can be divided into the crust, upper mantle, lower mantle, outer core, and inner core. The core does not allow shear waves to pass through it, the changes in seismic velocity between different layers causes refraction owing to Snells law, like light bending as it passes through a prism. Likewise, reflections are caused by an increase in seismic velocity and are similar to light reflecting from a mirror. The crust ranges from 5–70 kilometres in depth and is the outermost layer, the thin parts are the oceanic crust, which underlie the ocean basins and are composed of dense iron magnesium silicate igneous rocks, like basalt. The thicker crust is continental crust, which is dense and composed of sodium potassium aluminium silicate rocks. The rocks of the crust fall into two major categories – sial and sima and it is estimated that sima starts about 11 km below the Conrad discontinuity. The uppermost mantle together with the crust constitutes the lithosphere, the crust-mantle boundary occurs as two physically different events. First, there is a discontinuity in the velocity, which is most commonly known as the Mohorovičić discontinuity or Moho. The cause of the Moho is thought to be a change in composition from rocks containing plagioclase feldspar to rocks that contain no feldspars. Earths mantle extends to a depth of 2,890 km, the mantle is divided into upper and lower mantle. The upper and lower mantle are separated by the transition zone, the lowest part of the mantle next to the core-mantle boundary is known as the D″ layer. The pressure at the bottom of the mantle is ≈140 GPa, the mantle is composed of silicate rocks that are rich in iron and magnesium relative to the overlying crust. Although solid, the temperatures within the mantle cause the silicate material to be sufficiently ductile that it can flow on very long timescales
32.
Formation and evolution of the Solar System
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The formation of the Solar System began 4.6 billion years ago with the gravitational collapse of a small part of a giant molecular cloud. This model, known as the hypothesis, was first developed in the 18th century by Emanuel Swedenborg, Immanuel Kant. Its subsequent development has interwoven a variety of disciplines including astronomy, physics, geology. Since the dawn of the age in the 1950s and the discovery of extrasolar planets in the 1990s. The Solar System has evolved considerably since its initial formation, many moons have formed from circling discs of gas and dust around their parent planets, while other moons are thought to have formed independently and later been captured by their planets. Still others, such as Earths Moon, may be the result of giant collisions, collisions between bodies have occurred continually up to the present day and have been central to the evolution of the Solar System. The positions of the planets often shifted due to gravitational interactions and this planetary migration is now thought to have been responsible for much of the Solar Systems early evolution. In the far distant future, the gravity of passing stars will gradually reduce the Suns retinue of planets, some planets will be destroyed, others ejected into interstellar space. Ultimately, over the course of tens of billions of years, the first step toward a theory of Solar System formation and evolution was the general acceptance of heliocentrism, which placed the Sun at the centre of the system and the Earth in orbit around it. This concept had developed for millennia, but was not widely accepted until the end of the 17th century, the first recorded use of the term Solar System dates from 1704. The most significant criticism of the hypothesis was its apparent inability to explain the Suns relative lack of momentum when compared to the planets. However, since the early 1980s studies of stars have shown them to be surrounded by cool discs of dust and gas, exactly as the nebular hypothesis predicts. Understanding of how the Sun is expected to continue to evolve required an understanding of the source of its power, in 1935, Eddington went further and suggested that other elements also might form within stars. Fred Hoyle elaborated on this premise by arguing that evolved stars called red giants created many elements heavier than hydrogen, when a red giant finally casts off its outer layers, these elements would then be recycled to form other star systems. The nebular hypothesis says that the Solar System formed from the collapse of a fragment of a giant molecular cloud. The cloud was about 20 parsec across, while the fragments were roughly 1 parsec across, the further collapse of the fragments led to the formation of dense cores 0. 01–0.1 pc in size. One of these fragments formed what became the Solar System. The remaining 2% of the mass consisted of elements that were created by nucleosynthesis in earlier generations of stars
33.
Alexander von Humboldt
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Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt was a Prussian geographer, naturalist, explorer, and influential proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher. Humboldts quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography, Humboldts advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement laid the foundation for modern geomagnetic and meteorological monitoring. Between 1799 and 1804, Humboldt travelled extensively in Latin America and his description of the journey was written up and published in an enormous set of volumes over 21 years. Humboldt was one of the first people to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean were once joined and this important work also motivated a holistic perception of the universe as one interacting entity. Alexander von Humboldt was born in Berlin in Prussia on 14 September 1769 and he was baptized as a baby in the Lutheran faith, with the Duke of Brunswick serving as godfather. At age 42, Alexander Georg was rewarded for his services in the Seven Years War with the post of Royal Chamberlain and he profited from the contract to lease state lotteries and tobacco sales. He first married the daughter of Prussian General Adjutant Schweder, in 1766, Alexander Georg married Maria Elisabeth Colomb, a well-educated woman and widow of Baron Hollwede, with whom she had a son. Alexander Georg and Maria Elisabeth had three children, a daughter, who died young, and then two sons, Wilhelm and Alexander and her first-born son, Wilhelms and Alexanders half-brother, was something of a neer do well, not often mentioned in the family history. Alexander Georg died in 1779, leaving the brothers Humboldt in the care of their emotionally distant mother, Humboldts mother expected them to become civil servants of the Prussian state. The money Baron Holwede left to Alexanders mother became, after her death, instrumental in funding Alexanders explorations, due to his youthful penchant for collecting and labeling plants, shells and insects, Alexander received the playful title of the little apothecary. On April 25,1789, he matriculated at Göttingen, then known for the lectures of C. G. Heyne and his brother Wilhelm was already a student at Göttingen, but they did not interact much since their intellectual interests were quite different. His vast and varied interests were by this time fully developed, at Göttingen he met Georg Forster, a naturalist who had been with Captain James Cook on his second voyage. Humboldt traveled with Forster in Europe, the two traveled to England, Humboldts first sea voyage, The Netherlands, and France. In England, he met Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society, the scientific friendship between Banks and Humboldt lasted until Bankss death in 1820, and the two shared botanical specimens for study. Banks also mobilized his scientific contacts in later years to aid Humboldts work, Humboldts scientific excursion up the Rhine resulted in his 1790 treatise Mineralogische Beobachtungen über einige Basalte am Rhein. Humboldts passion for travel was of long standing, Humboldts talents were devoted to the purpose of preparing himself as a scientific explorer. During this period, his brother Wilhelm married, but Alexander did not attend the nuptials, Humboldt graduated from the Freiberg School of Mines in 1792 and was appointed to a Prussian government position in the Department of Mines as an inspector in Bayreuth and the Fichtel mountains
34.
Vladimir Vernadsky
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His ideas of noosphere were an important contribution to Russian cosmism. In 1943 he was awarded the Stalin Prize, Vernadsky was born in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, on 12 March 1863 in family of the native Kiev residents Russian-Ukrainian economist Ivan Vernadsky and music instructor Hanna Konstantynovych. According to family legend, his father was a descendent of Zaporozhian Cossacks and he had been a professor of political economy in Kiev before moving to Saint Petersburg. His mother was a Russian noblewoman of Ukrainian Cossack descent, Vernadsky graduated from Saint Petersburg State University in 1885. I believe there is hidden here still more to discover when one considers the complexity of chemical elements, while trying to find a topic for his doctorate, he first went to Naples to study under crystallographer Arcangelo Scacchi, who was senile by that time. Scacchis condition led Vernadsky to go to Germany to study under Paul Groth, Vernadsky learned to use Groths modern equipment, who had developed a machine to study the optical, thermal, elastic, magnetic and electrical properties of crystals. He also gained access to the lab of Leonhard Sohncke. He served as professor and later as rector of Moscow University. After the February revolution of 1917, he served on commissions of agriculture and education of the provisional government. Vernadsky first popularized the concept of the noosphere and deepened the idea of the biosphere to the meaning largely recognized by todays scientific community, the word biosphere was invented by Austrian geologist Eduard Suess, whom Vernadsky met in 1911. In Vernadskys theory of the Earths development, the noosphere is the stage in the earths development, after the geosphere. Just as the emergence of life transformed the geosphere, the emergence of human cognition will fundamentally transform the biosphere. In this theory, the principles of life and cognition are essential features of the Earths evolution, and must have been implicit in the earth all along. Vernadskys visionary pronouncements were not widely accepted in the West, however, he was one of the first scientists to recognize that the oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide in the Earths atmosphere result from biological processes. During the 1920s he published works arguing that living organisms could reshape the planets as surely as any physical force, Vernadsky was an important pioneer of the scientific bases for the environmental sciences. Vernadsky was a member of the Russian and Soviet Academies of Sciences since 1912 and was a founder and first president of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kiev and he was a founder of the National Library of Ukrainian State and worked closely with the Tavrida University in Crimea. During the Russian Civil War, he hosted gatherings of the intellectuals who later founded the émigré Eurasianism movement. He died, however, before a project was pursued
35.
James Lovelock
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James Ephraim Lovelock CH CBE FRS is an independent scientist, environmentalist and futurist who lives in Devon, England. He is best known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis, which postulates that the Earth functions as a self-regulating system, James Lovelock was born in Letchworth Garden City in Hertfordshire, England, to working class parents who were strong believers in education. Nell, his mother, started work at 13 in a pickle factory and his father, Tom, had served six months hard labour for poaching in his teens and was illiterate until attending technical college. The family moved to London, where Lovelocks dislike of authority made him, by his own account, Lovelock could not afford to go to university after school, something which he believes helped prevent him becoming over-specialised and aided the development of Gaia theory. Lovelock worked at a Quaker farm before a recommendation from his professor led to him taking up a Medical Research Council post, working on ways of shielding soldiers from burns. Lovelock refused to use the shaved and anaesthetised rabbits that were used as burn victims, and exposed his own skin to heat radiation instead and his student status enabled temporary deferment of military service during the Second World War, but he registered as a conscientious objector. He later abandoned this position in the light of Nazi atrocities, and tried to enlist in the armed forces, in 1948 Lovelock received a PhD degree in medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. In the United States, he has conducted research at Yale, Baylor College of Medicine, a lifelong inventor, Lovelock has created and developed many scientific instruments, some of which were designed for NASA in its program of planetary exploration. It was while working as a consultant for NASA that Lovelock developed the Gaia Hypothesis and he also claims to have invented the microwave oven. In early 1961, Lovelock was engaged by NASA to develop instruments for the analysis of extraterrestrial atmospheres. During work on a precursor of this program, Lovelock became interested in the composition of the Martian atmosphere, reasoning that many life forms on Mars would be obliged to make use of it. However, the atmosphere was found to be in a condition close to its chemical equilibrium, with very little oxygen, methane, or hydrogen. To Lovelock, the stark contrast between the Martian atmosphere and chemically dynamic mixture of that of the Earths biosphere was strongly indicative of the absence of life on the planet, however, when they were finally launched to Mars, the Viking probes still searched for extant life there. Lovelock invented the electron capture detector, which assisted in discoveries about the persistence of CFCs. Lovelock was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1974 and he served as the president of the Marine Biological Association from 1986 to 1990, and has been an Honorary Visiting Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford since 1994. H. Heineken Prize for the Environment and the Royal Geographical Society Discovery Lifetime award, in 2006 he received the Wollaston Medal, the Geological Societys highest Award, whose previous recipients include Charles Darwin. He became a Commander of the Order of the British Empire CBE in 1990, and he is a patron of population concern charity Population Matters. On 8 May 2012, he appeared on the Radio Four series The Life Scientific, on the program, he mentioned how his ideas had been received by various people, including Jonathan Porritt
36.
Feedback
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Feedback occurs when outputs of a system are routed back as inputs as part of a chain of cause-and-effect that forms a circuit or loop. The system can then be said to feed back into itself and this makes reasoning based upon cause and effect tricky, and it is necessary to analyze the system as a whole. This action of feeding back of the signal output to input gave rise to the use of the term feedback as a distinct word by 1920. Over the years there has been dispute as to the best definition of feedback. According to Ashby, mathematicians and theorists interested in the principles of feedback mechanisms prefer the definition of circularity of action, for those with more practical aims, feedback should be a deliberate effect via some more tangible connection. Object to the definition, pointing out that this would force them to say that feedback was present in the ordinary pendulum. Between its position and its momentum—a feedback that, from the point of view, is somewhat mystical. He emphasizes that the information by itself is not feedback unless translated into action, there are two types of feedback, positive feedback and negative feedback. As an example of feedback, the diagram might represent a cruise control system in a car, for example. The controlled system is the car, its input includes the combined torque from the engine, the cars speed is measured by a speedometer. The error signal is the departure of the speed as measured by the speedometer from the target speed and this measured error is interpreted by the controller to adjust the accelerator, commanding the fuel flow to the engine. The resulting change in torque, the feedback, combines with the torque exerted by the changing road grade to reduce the error in speed. The terms positive and negative were first applied to prior to WWII. The idea of positive feedback was already current in the 1920s with the introduction of the regenerative circuit, harold Stephen Blacks classic 1934 paper first details the use of negative feedback in electronic amplifiers. According to Black, Positive feed-back increases the gain of the amplifier, according to Mindell confusion in the terms arose shortly after this. In contrast, Nyquist and Bode, when built on Black’s work. Black had trouble convincing others of the utility of his invention in part because confusion existed over basic matters of definition, the terms positive and negative feedback are defined in different ways within different disciplines. The altering of the gap between reference and actual values of a parameter, based on whether the gap is widening or narrowing
37.
Gaia hypothesis
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The hypothesis was formulated by the chemist James Lovelock and co-developed by the microbiologist Lynn Margulis in the 1970s. Even so, the Gaia hypothesis continues to attract criticism, and today some scientists consider it to be only weakly supported by, or at odds with, in 2006, the Geological Society of London awarded Lovelock the Wollaston Medal in part for his work on the Gaia hypothesis. Gaian hypotheses suggest that organisms co-evolve with their environment, that is, they influence their environment. This is not the work of an individual but a collective of Russian scientific research that was combined into this peer reviewed publication and it states the coevolution of life and the environment through “micro–forces” and biogeochemical processes. An example is how the activity of bacteria during Precambrian times have completely modified the Earth atmosphere to turn it aerobic. Less accepted versions of the claim that changes in the biosphere are brought about through the coordination of living organisms. In some versions of Gaia philosophy, all lifeforms are considered part of one single living planetary being called Gaia, in this view, the atmosphere, the seas and the terrestrial crust would be results of interventions carried out by Gaia through the coevolving diversity of living organisms. The Gaia hypothesis posits that the Earth is a complex system involving the biosphere, the atmosphere, the hydrospheres. The hypothesis contends that this system as a whole, called Gaia, Gaia evolves through a cybernetic feedback system operated unconsciously by the biota, leading to broad stabilization of the conditions of habitability in a full homeostasis. Many processes in the Earths surface essential for the conditions of life depend on the interaction of living forms, especially microorganisms and this, he suggests tended to screen out ultraviolet until the formation of the ozone screen, maintaining a degree of homeostasis. These epochs are evidence against the ability of the pre Phanerozoic biosphere to fully self-regulate, processing of the greenhouse gas CO2, explained below, plays a critical role in the maintenance of the Earth temperature within the limits of habitability. The CLAW hypothesis, inspired by the Gaia hypothesis, proposes a feedback loop that operates between ocean ecosystems and the Earths climate, Lovelock has stated that this could bring an extremely accelerated global warming, but he has since stated the effects will likely occur more slowly. The model demonstrates that beneficial feedback mechanisms can emerge in this toy world containing only self-interested organisms rather than through classic group selection mechanisms, Daisyworld examines the energy budget of a planet populated by two different types of plants, black daisies and white daisies. The colour of the influences the albedo of the planet such that black daisies absorb light and warm the planet, while white daisies reflect light. As the model runs the output of the sun increases, meaning that the temperature of an uninhabited gray planet will steadily rise. In contrast, on Daisyworld competition between the leads to a shifting balance of daisy populations that tends to favour a planetary temperature close to the optimum for daisy growth. It has been suggested that the results were predictable because Lovelock, ocean salinity has been constant at about 3. 5% for a very long time. Salinity stability in oceanic environments is important as most cells require a rather constant salinity, the constant ocean salinity was a long-standing mystery, because no process counterbalancing the salt influx from rivers was known
38.
Lynn Margulis
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Lynn Margulis was an American evolutionary theorist, science author, educator, and popularizer, and was the primary modern proponent for the significance of symbiosis in evolution. Historian Jan Sapp has said that Lynn Marguliss name is as synonymous with symbiosis as Charles Darwins is with evolution. Throughout her career, Margulis work could arouse intense objection, and her paper, On the Origin of Mitosing Cells. Margulis was elected a member of the US National Academy of Sciences in 1983, President Bill Clinton presented her the National Medal of Science in 1999. The Linnean Society of London awarded her the Darwin-Wallace Medal in 2008, called Sciences Unruly Earth Mother, a vindicated heretic, or a scientific rebel, Margulis was a strong critic of neo-Darwinism. Her position sparked lifelong debate with leading neo-Darwinian biologists, including Richard Dawkins, many of her major works, particularly those intended for a general readership, were collaboratively written with her son Dorion Sagan. Lynn Margulis was born in Chicago, to a Jewish, Zionist family and her parents were Morris Alexander and Leona Wise Alexander. She was the eldest of four daughters and her father was an attorney who also ran a company that made road paints. Her mother operated a travel agency and she entered the Hyde Park Academy High School in 1952, describing herself as a bad student who frequently had to stand in the corner. She joined the University of Wisconsin to study biology under Hans Ris and Walter Plaut, her supervisor and she then pursued research at the University of California, Berkeley, under the zoologist Max Alfert. Before she could complete her dissertation, she was offered research associateship and it was while working there that she obtained her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1965. Her thesis was An Unusual Pattern of Thymidine Incorporation in Euglena, in 1966 she moved to Boston University, where she taught biology for twenty-two years. She was initially an Adjunct Assistant Professor, and appointed to Assistant Professor in 1967 and she was promoted to Associate Professor in 1971, to full Professor in 1977, and to University Professor in 1986. In 1988 she was appointed Distinguished Professor of Botany at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and she was Distinguished Professor of Biology in 1993. In 1997 she transferred to the Department of Geosciences at Amherst to become Distinguished Professor of Geosciences with great delight, Margulis married astronomer Carl Sagan in 1957 soon after she got her bachelors degree. Sagan was then a student in physics at the University of Chicago. Their marriage ended in 1964, just before she completed her PhD and they had two sons, Dorion Sagan, who later became a popular science writer and her collaborator, and Jeremy Sagan, software developer and founder of Sagan Technology. In 1967, she married Thomas N. Margulis, a crystallographer and they had a son Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma, New York City criminal defense lawyer, and a daughter Jennifer Margulis, teacher and author
39.
Computer
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A computer is a device that can be instructed to carry out an arbitrary set of arithmetic or logical operations automatically. The ability of computers to follow a sequence of operations, called a program, such computers are used as control systems for a very wide variety of industrial and consumer devices. The Internet is run on computers and it millions of other computers. Since ancient times, simple manual devices like the abacus aided people in doing calculations, early in the Industrial Revolution, some mechanical devices were built to automate long tedious tasks, such as guiding patterns for looms. More sophisticated electrical machines did specialized analog calculations in the early 20th century, the first digital electronic calculating machines were developed during World War II. The speed, power, and versatility of computers has increased continuously and dramatically since then, conventionally, a modern computer consists of at least one processing element, typically a central processing unit, and some form of memory. The processing element carries out arithmetic and logical operations, and a sequencing, peripheral devices include input devices, output devices, and input/output devices that perform both functions. Peripheral devices allow information to be retrieved from an external source and this usage of the term referred to a person who carried out calculations or computations. The word continued with the same meaning until the middle of the 20th century, from the end of the 19th century the word began to take on its more familiar meaning, a machine that carries out computations. The Online Etymology Dictionary gives the first attested use of computer in the 1640s, one who calculates, the Online Etymology Dictionary states that the use of the term to mean calculating machine is from 1897. The Online Etymology Dictionary indicates that the use of the term. 1945 under this name, theoretical from 1937, as Turing machine, devices have been used to aid computation for thousands of years, mostly using one-to-one correspondence with fingers. The earliest counting device was probably a form of tally stick, later record keeping aids throughout the Fertile Crescent included calculi which represented counts of items, probably livestock or grains, sealed in hollow unbaked clay containers. The use of counting rods is one example, the abacus was initially used for arithmetic tasks. The Roman abacus was developed from used in Babylonia as early as 2400 BC. Since then, many forms of reckoning boards or tables have been invented. In a medieval European counting house, a checkered cloth would be placed on a table, the Antikythera mechanism is believed to be the earliest mechanical analog computer, according to Derek J. de Solla Price. It was designed to calculate astronomical positions and it was discovered in 1901 in the Antikythera wreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, between Kythera and Crete, and has been dated to circa 100 BC
40.
Climate model
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Climate models use quantitative methods to simulate the interactions of the important drivers of climate, including atmosphere, oceans, land surface and ice. They are used for a variety of purposes from study of the dynamics of the system to projections of future climate. Any imbalance results in a change in temperature, box models can treat flows across and within ocean basins. Other types of modelling can be interlinked, such as land use, box models are simplified versions of complex systems, reducing them to boxes linked by fluxes. The boxes are assumed to be mixed homogeneously, within a given box, the concentration of any chemical species is therefore uniform. However, the abundance of a species within a box may vary as a function of time due to the input to the box or due to the production, consumption or decay of this species within the box. More complex box models are usually solved using numerical techniques, box models are used extensively to model environmental systems or ecosystems and in studies of ocean circulation and the carbon cycle.3. This is because the equation represents the effective radiative temperature of the Earth. The use of effective emissivity and albedo account for the greenhouse effect and this very simple model is quite instructive, and the only model that could fit on a page. For example, it determines the effect on average earth temperature of changes in solar constant or change of albedo or effective earth emissivity. The average emissivity of the earth is estimated from available data. The emissivities of terrestrial surfaces are all in the range of 0.96 to 0.99, clouds, however, which cover about half of the earth’s surface, have an average emissivity of about 0.5 and an average cloud temperature of about 258 K. Taking all this properly into account results in an effective earth emissivity of about 0.64 and this simple model readily determines the effect of changes in solar output or change of earth albedo or effective earth emissivity on average earth temperature. It says nothing, however about what might cause these things to change, zero-dimensional models do not address the temperature distribution on the earth or the factors that move energy about the earth. The zero-dimensional model above, using the constant and given average earth temperature. But added parameters are needed to determine local emissivity and albedo, effect of ice-albedo feedback on global sensitivity in a one-dimensional radiative-convective climate model. The zero-dimensional model may be expanded to consider the energy transported horizontally in the atmosphere and this kind of model may well be zonally averaged. Models of intermediate complexity bridge the gap, one example is the Climber-3 model
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Numerical weather prediction
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Numerical weather prediction uses mathematical models of the atmosphere and oceans to predict the weather based on current weather conditions. Though first attempted in the 1920s, it was not until the advent of computer simulation in the 1950s that numerical weather predictions produced realistic results. Manipulating the vast datasets and performing the calculations necessary to modern numerical weather prediction requires some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. Even with the power of supercomputers, the forecast skill of numerical weather models extends to only about six days. Factors affecting the accuracy of numerical predictions include the density and quality of observations used as input to the forecasts, post-processing techniques such as model output statistics have been developed to improve the handling of errors in numerical predictions. A more fundamental problem lies in the nature of the partial differential equations that govern the atmosphere. It is impossible to solve these equations exactly, and small errors grow with time, present understanding is that this chaotic behavior limits accurate forecasts to about 14 days even with perfectly accurate input data and a flawless model. This approach analyzes multiple forecasts created with an individual forecast model or multiple models and it was not until the advent of the computer and computer simulations that computation time was reduced to less than the forecast period itself. The ENIAC was used to create the first weather forecasts via computer in 1950, in 1954, Carl-Gustav Rossbys group at the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute used the same model to produce the first operational forecast. Operational numerical weather prediction in the United States began in 1955 under the Joint Numerical Weather Prediction Unit, in 1956, Norman Phillips developed a mathematical model which could realistically depict monthly and seasonal patterns in the troposphere, this became the first successful climate model. Following Phillips work, several groups working to create general circulation models. The first general circulation model that combined both oceanic and atmospheric processes was developed in the late 1960s at the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. As computers have more powerful, the size of the initial data sets has increased. These newer models include more physical processes in the simplifications of the equations of motion in numerical simulations of the atmosphere, in 1966, West Germany and the United States began producing operational forecasts based on primitive-equation models, followed by the United Kingdom in 1972 and Australia in 1977. The development of limited area models facilitated advances in forecasting the tracks of tropical cyclones as well as air quality in the 1970s and 1980s, by the early 1980s models began to include the interactions of soil and vegetation with the atmosphere, which led to more realistic forecasts. The output of forecast models based on atmospheric dynamics is unable to resolve some details of the weather near the Earths surface. As such, a relationship between the output of a numerical weather model and the ensuing conditions at the ground was developed in the 1970s and 1980s. The process of entering data into the model to generate initial conditions is called initialization
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Weather
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Weather is the state of the atmosphere, to the degree that it is hot or cold, wet or dry, calm or stormy, clear or cloudy. Most weather phenomena occur in the lowest level of the atmosphere, Weather refers to day-to-day temperature and precipitation activity, whereas climate is the term for the averaging of atmospheric conditions over longer periods of time. When used without qualification, weather is understood to mean the weather of Earth. Weather is driven by air pressure, temperature and moisture differences between one place and another and these differences can occur due to the suns angle at any particular spot, which varies with latitude. The strong temperature contrast between polar and tropical air gives rise to the largest scale atmospheric circulations, the Hadley Cell, the Ferrel Cell, the Polar Cell, Weather systems in the mid-latitudes, such as extratropical cyclones, are caused by instabilities of the jet stream flow. Because the Earths axis is tilted relative to its orbital plane, on Earths surface, temperatures usually range ±40 °C annually. Over thousands of years, changes in Earths orbit can affect the amount and distribution of energy received by the Earth, thus influencing long-term climate. Surface temperature differences in turn cause pressure differences, higher altitudes are cooler than lower altitudes as most atmospheric heating is due to contact with the Earths surface while radiative losses to space are mostly constant. Weather forecasting is the application of science and technology to predict the state of the atmosphere for a future time and a given location. The Earths weather system is a system, as a result. Human attempts to control the weather have occurred throughout history, and there is evidence that human activities such as agriculture, studying how the weather works on other planets has been helpful in understanding how weather works on Earth. A famous landmark in the Solar System, Jupiters Great Red Spot, is a storm known to have existed for at least 300 years. However, weather is not limited to planetary bodies, a stars corona is constantly being lost to space, creating what is essentially a very thin atmosphere throughout the Solar System. The movement of mass ejected from the Sun is known as the solar wind, on Earth, the common weather phenomena include wind, cloud, rain, snow, fog and dust storms. Less common events include natural disasters such as tornadoes, hurricanes, typhoons, almost all familiar weather phenomena occur in the troposphere. Weather does occur in the stratosphere and can affect weather lower down in the troposphere, Weather occurs primarily due to air pressure, temperature and moisture differences between one place to another. These differences can occur due to the sun angle at any particular spot, in other words, the farther from the tropics one lies, the lower the sun angle is, which causes those locations to be cooler due the spread of the sunlight over a greater surface. The strong temperature contrast between polar and tropical air gives rise to the large scale atmospheric circulation cells and the jet stream, Weather systems in the mid-latitudes, such as extratropical cyclones, are caused by instabilities of the jet stream flow
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Climate
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Climate is the statistics of weather, usually over a 30-year interval. Climate differs from weather, in that weather only describes the conditions of these variables in a given region. A regions climate is generated by the system, which has five components, atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, lithosphere. The climate of a location is affected by its latitude, terrain, climates can be classified according to the average and the typical ranges of different variables, most commonly temperature and precipitation. The most commonly used classification scheme was the Köppen climate classification, the Bergeron and Spatial Synoptic Classification systems focus on the origin of air masses that define the climate of a region. Paleoclimatology is the study of ancient climates, Climate models are mathematical models of past, present and future climates. Climate change may occur long and short timescales from a variety of factors. For example, a 3°C change in mean annual temperature corresponds to a shift in isotherms of approximately 300–400 km in latitude or 500 m in elevation, therefore, species are expected to move upwards in elevation or towards the poles in latitude in response to shifting climate zones. Climate is commonly defined as the weather averaged over a long period, the standard averaging period is 30 years, but other periods may be used depending on the purpose. Climate also includes statistics other than the average, such as the magnitudes of day-to-day or year-to-year variations, the classical period is 30 years, as defined by the World Meteorological Organization. These quantities are most often surface variables such as temperature, precipitation, Climate in a wider sense is the state, including a statistical description, of the climate system. The World Meteorological Organization describes climate normals as reference points used by climatologists to compare current climatological trends to that of the past or what is considered normal, a Normal is defined as the arithmetic average of a climate element over a 30-year period. A30 year period is used, as it is enough to filter out any interannual variation or anomalies. The WMO originated from the International Meteorological Organization which set up a commission for climatology in 1929. At its 1934 Wiesbaden meeting the commission designated the thirty-year period from 1901 to 1930 as the reference time frame for climatological standard normals. In 1982 the WMO agreed to update climate normals, and in these were completed on the basis of climate data from 1 January 1961 to 31 December 1990. The difference between climate and weather is usefully summarized by the popular phrase Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get. Over historical time spans there are a number of nearly constant variables that determine climate, including latitude, altitude, proportion of land to water and these change only over periods of millions of years due to processes such as plate tectonics
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NASA
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President Dwight D. Eisenhower established NASA in 1958 with a distinctly civilian orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29,1958, disestablishing NASAs predecessor, the new agency became operational on October 1,1958. Since that time, most US space exploration efforts have led by NASA, including the Apollo Moon landing missions, the Skylab space station. Currently, NASA is supporting the International Space Station and is overseeing the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, the agency is also responsible for the Launch Services Program which provides oversight of launch operations and countdown management for unmanned NASA launches. NASA shares data with various national and international such as from the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite. Since 2011, NASA has been criticized for low cost efficiency, from 1946, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics had been experimenting with rocket planes such as the supersonic Bell X-1. In the early 1950s, there was challenge to launch a satellite for the International Geophysical Year. An effort for this was the American Project Vanguard, after the Soviet launch of the worlds first artificial satellite on October 4,1957, the attention of the United States turned toward its own fledgling space efforts. This led to an agreement that a new federal agency based on NACA was needed to conduct all non-military activity in space. The Advanced Research Projects Agency was created in February 1958 to develop technology for military application. On July 29,1958, Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, a NASA seal was approved by President Eisenhower in 1959. Elements of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency and the United States Naval Research Laboratory were incorporated into NASA, earlier research efforts within the US Air Force and many of ARPAs early space programs were also transferred to NASA. In December 1958, NASA gained control of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA has conducted many manned and unmanned spaceflight programs throughout its history. Some missions include both manned and unmanned aspects, such as the Galileo probe, which was deployed by astronauts in Earth orbit before being sent unmanned to Jupiter, the experimental rocket-powered aircraft programs started by NACA were extended by NASA as support for manned spaceflight. This was followed by a space capsule program, and in turn by a two-man capsule program. This goal was met in 1969 by the Apollo program, however, reduction of the perceived threat and changing political priorities almost immediately caused the termination of most of these plans. NASA turned its attention to an Apollo-derived temporary space laboratory, to date, NASA has launched a total of 166 manned space missions on rockets, and thirteen X-15 rocket flights above the USAF definition of spaceflight altitude,260,000 feet. The X-15 was an NACA experimental rocket-powered hypersonic research aircraft, developed in conjunction with the US Air Force, the design featured a slender fuselage with fairings along the side containing fuel and early computerized control systems
. PMID 23297237. Retrieved 7 September 2015.
