Global Evolution: The First Five Billion Years

The National Academy of Sciences says that it is the role of science to provide plausible natural explanations of natural phenomena. The ultimate question for Earth System History is: How did a giant cloud of cold dilute gas and dust evolve into astronauts in a spacecraft orbiting a planet orbiting a star? The short answer is when energy flows, complexity grows.

The fact is that the solid Earth, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere have undergone nearly five billion years of physical, chemical, and/or biological evolution because of the flows of energy and/or matter into and/or out of these systems, a process that I call global evolution. Each section addresses the structures, functions, composition, interactions and flows of energy and matter, and origin and evolution of a complex natural system.

Solar System Sun Solid Earth	Hydrosphere Atmosphere Geobiosphere		Molecules and Cells Organisms and Ecosystems Astronauts
Global Evolution Timelines		Earth Systems Data Base