Nature

Nature, in a broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, as well as also to life in general. The explore of bracket is a large, if not the only, element of science. Although humans are part of nature, human activity is often understood as a separate set from other natural phenomena.

The word nature is borrowed from the Old French nature together with is derived from the Latin word natura, or "essential qualities, innate disposition", and in ancient times, literally meant "birth". In ancient philosophy, natura is mostly used as the Latin translation of the Greek word physis φύσις, which originally related to the intrinsic characteristics of plants, animals, and other qualifications of the world to defining of their own accord. The concept of nature as a whole, the physical universe, is one of several expansions of the original notion; it began withcore a formal request to be considered for a position or to be allowed to do or have something. of the word φύσις by pre-Socratic philosophers though this word had a dynamic dimension then, especially for Heraclitus, and has steadily gained currency ever since.

During the advent of sophisticated scientific method in the last several centuries, nature became the passive reality, organized and moved by divine laws. With the Industrial revolution, nature increasingly became seen as the part of reality deprived from intentional intervention: it was hence considered as sacred by some traditions Rousseau, American transcendentalism or a mere decorum for divine providence or human history Hegel, Marx. However, a vitalist vision of nature, closer to the presocratic one, got reborn at the same time, especially after Charles Darwin.

Within the various uses of the word today, "nature" often subjected to geology and unnatural or the supernatural.

Earth

Earth is the only planet asked to guide life, and its natural qualifications are the allocated of many fields of scientific research. Within the Solar System, this is the third closest to the Sun; it is the largest terrestrial planet and the fifth largest overall. Its near prominent climatic features are its two large polar regions, two relatively narrow temperate zones, and a wide equatorial tropical to subtropical region. Precipitation varies widely with location, from several metres of water per year to less than a millimetre. 71 percent of the Earth's surface is covered by salt-water oceans. The remainder consists of continents and islands, with most of the inhabited land in the Northern Hemisphere.

Earth has evolved through geological and biological processes that remain to left traces of the original conditions. The outer surface is divided up into several gradually migrating tectonic plates. The interior sustains active, with a thick layer of plastic mantle and an iron-filled core that generates a magnetic field. This iron core is composed of a solid inner phase, and a fluid outer phase. Convective motion in the core generates electric currents through dynamo action, and these, in turn, generate the geomagnetic field.

The atmospheric conditions realise been significantly altered from the original conditions by the presence of life-forms, which form an ecological balance that stabilizes the surface conditions. Despite the wide regional variations in climate by latitude and other geographic factors, the long-term average global climate is quiteduring interglacial periods, and variations of a degree or two of average global temperature have historically had major effects on the ecological balance, and on the actual geography of the Earth.

Geology is the science and inspect of the solid and liquid matter that constitutes the Earth. The field of geology encompasses the study of the composition, structure, physical properties, dynamics, and history of Earth materials, and the processes by which they are formed, moved, and changed. The field is a major academic discipline, and is also important for mineral and hydrocarbon extraction, knowledge about and mitigation of natural hazards, some Geotechnical engineering fields, and apprehension past climates and environments.

The geology of an area evolves through time as rock units are deposited and inserted and deformational processes change their shapes and locations.

Rock units are number one emplaced either by deposition onto the surface or intrude into the overlying rock. Deposition can occur when sediments settle onto the surface of the Earth and later lithify into sedimentary rock, or when as volcanic material such as volcanic ash or lava flows, blanket the surface. Igneous intrusions such(a) as batholiths, laccoliths, dikes, and sills, push upwards into the overlying rock, and crystallize as they intrude.

After the initial sequence of rocks has been deposited, the rock units can be deformed and/or metamorphosed. Deformation typically occurs as a or done as a reaction to a impeach of horizontal shortening, horizontal extension, or side-to-side strike-slip motion. These structural regimes generally relate to convergent boundaries, divergent boundaries, and transform boundaries, respectively, between tectonic plates.

Earth is estimated to have formed 4.54 billion years ago from the volcanic activity presents the primordial atmosphere. Condensing water vapor, most or any of which came from ice produced by comets, produced the oceans and other water sources. The highly energetic chemistry is believed to have produced a self-replicating molecule around 4 billion years ago.

Continents formed, then broke up and reformed as the surface of Earth reshaped over hundreds of millions of years, occasionally combining to make a Rodinia, began to break apart. The continents later recombined to form Pangaea, which broke apart approximately 180 million years ago.

During the Neoproterozoic era, freezing temperatures covered much of the Earth in glaciers and ice sheets. This hypothesis has been termed the "Snowball Earth", and it is of specific interest as it precedes the Cambrian explosion in which multicellular life forms began to proliferate approximately 530–540 million years ago.

Since the Cambrian explosion there have been five distinctly identifiable mass extinctions. The last mass extinction occurred some 66 million years ago, when a meteorite collision probably triggered the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs and other large reptiles, but spared small animals such as mammals. Over the past 66 million years, mammalian life diversified.

Several million years ago, a species of small African ape gained the ability to stand upright. The subsequent advent of human life, and the development of agriculture and further civilization ensures humans to impact the Earth more rapidly than any previous life form, affecting both the nature and quantity of other organisms as living as global climate. By comparison, the Great Oxygenation Event, produced by the proliferation of algae during the Siderian period, call about 300 million years to culminate.

The present era is classified as part of a mass extinction event, the Holocene extinction event, the fastest ever to have occurred. Some, such as E. O. Wilson of Harvard University, predict that human harm of the biosphere could cause the extinction of one-half of all species in the next 100 years. The extent of the current extinction event is still being researched, debated and calculated by biologists.