GEOLOGY OF EARTH | Definition information

 .Geology

Geology :is the science that deals with the composition, structure, history and evolution of the outer layers of the Earth, and the processes that shape it. Geology is an important discipline among Earth Sciences. Associated with dating methods radiochronological and meteorites studies, it was determined the age of the Earth, which is currently estimated at 4.57 billion years. It operates simultaneously applied geophysics in the exploration and / or exploitation of natural resources including oil, coal, minerals, precious and semi-precious and water. In its current usage, the term geology was used for the first time by Jean-André Deluc in 1778; it was fixed the following year by Horace Benedict de Saussure.

.Geology is the study of the Earth

.Geology, Science Earth

To attempt to answer existential or by simple intellectual curiosity questions, man has always sought to understand the planet on which he lives: his place in the universe, its structure, its dynamics, its history and that the bodies populating.

This quest was quickly dubbed a need to find the resources necessary for its survival and societal development of its species (flint energy resources).

Modern geology is a child of the Enlightenment and its uncompromising rationalism. However it is only recently that the inhabitants of Earth realized that Ge (Earth Greek), Geology, previously associated with an inert mineral, was in fact dynamic and in constant interaction with life, the hydrosphere and atmosphere.

But the most disturbing realization is that the scale of our societies and our human lives Gê is neither immutable nor inexhaustible and that human activity is now able to interfere with significantly with its operation (erosion of continental surfaces, water pollution, global warming, etc.)

As already noted many authors, the major challenge of humanity is to live 9 billion in 2050 on an Earth that today 6 billion, many are malnourished, n ' no access to drinking water or for lack of space, live in dangerous areas. The Earth Sciences are at the heart of the challenge of the future!

This issue justifies the objectives and assigned to scientists on Earth and which are

• Access to resources: water, energy, materials

• Soil protection: food, environment

• Risk management: prediction of natural hazards and development of inhabited and / or exploited areas

• The natural evolution and disruption of the climate

• Relations between Earth and health

The geologist is intended to educate the public and policymakers will face the difficulties our societies in the coming decades.

It should provide as many elements of culture and a solid foundation for critical thinking, necessary for responsible citizens to be objectively informed stakeholders of the role of geology in our future as a society, on the one hand,

Repair and geologists who tomorrow will accompany the sustainable development of human societies, on the other.

Again we can only regret the paucity, if not often the lack of structured and coherent programs of geology in colleges and high schools and limited resources allocated to universities for their teaching: how fait- we geologists can not take them on the ground?

Given the importance of what is at stake for our future, the danger of such a lack of "geological vision" is that the vacuum left by science is quickly occupied by "thinkers" whose only legitimacy is media power. The damage could compromise the principled stances which mankind of the XXI century desperately needs to secure its future

Beyond these vital issues, it is one that reports to become very foundations of our democracy. Rationality, mentioned above and secularism allowing it to fully express itself, may not be definitive gained if we do not defend them tooth and nail. The return to "know inspired" that is to say obscurantism advocated by creationists, or to try to make more modern by the advocates of "intelligent design" is no longer a distant danger, preserve an ultraconservative rearguard of the deep South of the USA.

The education of young scientific rationality is a major goal of our company. A quality education of geology in general, and paleontology in particular the fight against creationism, can only contribute forcefully to avoid damaging intellectual regression for our freedoms and humanistic values

There will be no free environment geologists

A geologist unable to ground is not a Geologist