Couverture / Jaquette

Nebulous Earth follows the development of the 19th century's most popular explanation for the origin of the Solar System, Laplace's Nebular Hypothesis. This theory supposes that a flattened mass of gas extending beyond Neptune's orbit cooled and shrank, throwing off in the process successive rings that in time coalesced to form the several planets. Throughout the century, the hypothesis also played an integral role in suggesting the theory of evolution's respectability in biology. Scientists long suspected that the Earth's interior is the seat of powerful forces that shape the Earth's surface and can threaten our lives with earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. From fiery fluid to rigid solid to electromagnetic dynamo, Professor Brush recounts their theories about what actually occurs in the Earth's interior.

Table des matières

Preface; Part I. Nebular Birth and Heat Death: 1. Introduction; 2. The Founders: Laplace and Herschel; 3. Followers and critics; 4. The Nebular Hypothesis and the evolutionary worldview; 5. Thermodynamics and the cooling Earth; 6. Saturn's rings (with C. W. F. Everitt and Elizabeth Garber); 7. Revisions of the Nebular Hypothesis, 1860-85; 8. Poincare and cosmic evolution; 9. The Nebular Hypothesis in the 20th century; Part II. Inside the Earth: 1. A journey to the center of the Earth; 2. Nineteenth-century debates: Solid, liquid or gas?; 3. Discovery of the Earth's core; 4. Chemical history of the core; 5. Geomagnetic secular variation (with S. K. Banerjee); 6. Time and tide; Index.

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