Geology

There is no answer to this as it varies very much depending on the type of soil you are talking about and the conditions on earth at the time.

In places that are very warm or very wet with fast moving waters for instance then times are quicker than places where very little happens for thousands of years at a time.

However, the process is very slow indeed and therefore, you would be looking at hundreds of years to produce an inch of soil - and 1,000 years+ to get two or more inches.

Pangaea is used to describe the state where all the land on earth was one great big landmass and therefore there was just one ocean too which was everything that surrounded that land mass.

Therefore, before Pangaea or all the land was linked you are asking whether the land was previously split before it came together. That is possible - we do not know the answer. However, we read about it and current theory suggests that yes there have been break ups and come together forming super continents before, though this hardly seems set in stone.

The three types of rocks are as follows:

1) Igneous (from volcanoes etc)

2) Sedimentary (Dead Sea creatures, time and pressure)

3) Metamorphic (other rock types compressed, squished, heated and geologically stressed in massive temperatures and pressure fairly deep in the earth)

This refers to a layer of loose surface material covering bedrock.

In which case I guess that you might be referring to things such as nuclear waste and other waste products of our recent systems for instance rubbish dumps and similar.

We have also fired some artifacts into space, for instance on spacecraft that aliens might some time come across we have given a glimpse or snapshot of our lives at a particular time in history.

One in academia for instance will spend the day doing research and writing papers and lecturing.

Others will be involved in practical work in the field, examining rocks and structures and making deductions about age and formation and so on.

A hypothesis is a postulation as to what could be the case; it is a suggestion as to something that accurately models and explains some aspect in reality.

Then the hypothesis can be tested by getting it to make a prediction, then performing the actual experiment it predicts the outcome of, and see if the outcome matches the prediction.

The more experiments in practice the hypothesis can model and explain the better it is seen to be.

It is a type of clay first used by the Chinese for making chinaware and porcelain.

The remains of trees and shrubs grew millions of years ago, when the weather was mild and moist.

Granite is a hard, igneous rock. It is made up of mica, quartz, feldspar and sometimes bits of other rocks as well. Granite is usually pink, white, or grey. It is crystalline and so shines.

Ablation is a technical term for the loss of snow and ice from a glacier. The process occurs by a combination of the two physical processes, melting, and evaporation, caused by the warming of the relevant ice on the glacier. It may be thought this would be most prevalent at the top of a glacier, however actually it occurs more at the foot - for the simple reason that temperatures tend to be higher here.

This is a type of soil, which is halfway between clay and sandy soils.

It is a fine-grained, earthy, sedimentary rock like clay, but formed in thin layers.

The rock is being subjected to intense heat and pressure at the time - this is what causes the dramatic stresses that are indeed what happens during the metamorphic process and what triggers the profound change in the chemical make up or constitution of the rocks.

This refers to the Cambrian period, a geological time, at around 570 - 510 million years ago. It is when invertebrate life first appeared.

During the period comes what is known as the Cambrian Explosion - where the fossil record suddenly seems to radiate with an array of multi-celled creatures.

The simplest way to answer this is to define each term, so you can see:

1) A canyon is a deep valley with steep sides thinks of the Grand Canyon most famously to visualize what this is.

2) A gorge is a deep ravine, which usually has a river running through it - though this does not have to be the case.

3) Finally, a valley is any depression, usually of a certain length, in the surface of the land and often contains a river.

Therefore, a canyon is a specific type of valley, with particularly steep sides. A gorge is a deep depression that will usually contain a river.

The geoid is an imaginary surface that equivalences with the average (mean) sea level around the world.

Therefore, it is not an actual or real thing like the continents themselves that form the surface of the earth, but merely a useful model that we can imagine to extend through the continents.

The overall composition of the Earth, in terms of elemental composition is as follows:

Iron 34.6%

Oxygen 29.5%

Silicon 15.2%

Magnesium 12.7%

Nickel 2.4%

Sulphur 1.9%

All others: 3.7%

The outer core is liquid and the inner is solid. Both parts are made of alloy of two metals - iron and nickel, allowing the rise of the magnetic field that the earth exhibits and is so essential in protecting our existence.

The overall composition of the Earth's crust, in terms of elemental composition is as follows:

Oxygen 46.6%

Silicon 27.7%

Aluminum 8.1%

Iron 5.0%

All other elements 12.6%