《第1课-地质学基础》.docVIP

Section A EARTH IN SPACE AND TIME The Early Solar System In recent decades, scientists have been able to construct an ever-clearer picture of the origins of the solar system and, before that, of the universe itself. Most astronomers now accept some sort of Big Bang as the origin of todays universe. At that time, enormous quantities of matter were created and flung violently apart across an ever-larger volume of space. The time of the Big Bang can be estimated in several ways. Perhaps the most direct is the back-calculation of the universes expansion to its apparent beginning. Other methods dep