Timeline of Earth Science 121

Timeline of Earth Science

DAT E EVENT

2296 B.C.E. The Chinese record the earliest comet sighting.

2000 B.C.E. Chinese discover magnetic attraction.
600–350 Greek philosophers develop a geocentric cosmology that places
B.C.E. a perfectly spherical Earth at the center of a spherical universe
in which the other planets, the Moon, and
the Sun all orbit Earth.
334 B.C.E. Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) produces his
Meteorologica, the first work on the
atmospheric sciences. It includes his
studies on comets, shooting stars, and
rainbows. Most of the meteorology is
incorrect, but it remains the accepted
information about weather until the fif-
teenth century.
330 B.C.E. Greek geographer and explorer Pytheas (c. 350–c. 300 B.C.E.) pro-
poses that tides are caused by the Moon. His observation of the
spring tides occurring during a new or full Moon led him to con-
clude that the position of the Moon was connected to the height
of the tides.
240 B.C.E. Greek astronomer Eratosthenes of Cyrene (c. 275–c. 195 B.C.E.)
becomes the first person to accurately measure the circumference
of Earth.
A.D. 132 The Chinese astronomer royal, Zhang Heng (78–139), invents the
world’s first seismograph.The seismograph consisted of a case with
eight bronze dragons’ heads around the top. Each dragon held a
bronze ball in its mouth.When an earthquake hit, the ball sitting
in the opposite direction from the source of the earthquake would
fall into the mouth of a bronze toad at the bottom of the case,
making a loud ring. Chinese officials thus knew in which direc-
tion to go to find the area affected by the earthquake.
140 Greek astronomer Claudius Ptolemy (c. 90–c. 170) defines the
universe mathematically. Ptolemy uses the data that had been
collected since the time of the Babylonians to create a mathe-
matical model that accounts for the positions of the planets and
predicts their future positions.
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1517 Italian physician and scholar Girolamo Fracastoro (1478–1553)

describes the remains of ancient organisms that we now call fos-
sils. At about this same time, Italian inventor and artist Leonardo
da Vinci (1452–1519) concludes that fossils are the remains of
animals that had once been alive. By 1546, Georgius Agricola
(1494–1555) of Saxony (now part of Germany) has applied the
term fossil to any nonliving thing dug up from the ground in his
book On the Nature of Fossils.
1543 Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus publishes his book, The
Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres, which proposes a heliocentric
view of the solar system.
1608 Dutch spectacle-maker Hans Lippershey
(1570–1619) is the first person to apply
for a patent on a telescope. Exactly who
invented the telescope is still unknown.
Italian astronomer and physicist Galileo
Galilei (1564–1642), who is often given
the credit for being the telescope’s inven-
tor, did not invent it. However, he did
improve the design.
1609 German astronomer and physicist Johannes Kepler proposes the
first of his laws of planetary motion: Planets have an elliptical
orbit around the Sun.
1611 Galileo and several others discover sunspots.
1643 Evangelista Torricelli (1608–1647), an Italian mathematician and
student of Galileo, creates the first mercury barometer.
1703 The first modern seismograph is invented by French scientist
Abbé Paul Gabriel de Hautefeuille (1647–1724).
1801 Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi (1746–1826) becomes the
first person to discover an asteroid, Ceres.
1804 French chemist J.L. Gay-Lussac (1778–1850) and physicist Jean Biot
(1774–1862) make the first manned balloon exploration of the
atmosphere.They take meteorological measurements up to a height
of 3 miles (4.8 kilometers). Gay-Lussac makes a second flight alone
to a height of 4.2 miles (6.7 kilometers) and determines that the
composition of air does not change with height.
1837 Swiss-born U.S. naturalist and glaciologist Jean Louis Agassiz
(1807–1873) proposes that ice had covered much of Earth in the
past during what he called ice ages.
 Timeline of Earth Science 123

1840s U.S. Navy lieutenant and oceanographer Matthew Fontaine

Maury (1806–1873) begins the first organized collection of
information about the ocean’s winds and currents. Maury creates
pilot charts that shorten the time it takes for ships to cross the
oceans.
1856 American meteorologist William Ferrell (1817–1891) proposes
that the general circulation of the atmosphere can be divided up
into six separate circulation cells (three for each hemisphere).
Ferrell’s idea explains the presence of the trade winds in the band
between the equator and 30 degrees latitude and the generally
west-to-east movement of storms in the mid-latitudes, between
30 and 60 degrees.
1904 Norwegian meteorologist Vilhelm Firman Bjerknes (1862–1951)
sets out his ideas for a mathematical basis for meteorology.
1906 British seismologist Richard Dixon Oldham (1858–1936) dis-
covers that the compressional waves of earthquakes arrive on the
opposite side of Earth later than expected when compared with
the arrival times at other points on the surface. From this infor-
mation, he correctly deduces that Earth’s core has to be much
denser than the mantle, since the waves travel more slowly
through denser material.
1907 American radiochemist Bertram Boltwood (1870–1927), who
played an important role in advancing the understanding of the
radioactive decay of uranium, first uses uranium to date rocks.
1912 German meteorologist and geophysicist Alfred Wegener
(1880–1930) proposes his theory of continental drift.
1920 Vilhelm Bjerknes, his son Jacob (1897–1975), and others develop
their theory of polar fronts. They successfully show that the
atmosphere is divided into distinct air masses. Frontal analysis is
slowly introduced and adopted worldwide.
1927 Belgian priest and astronomer Georges
Lemaître (1894–1966) proposes the big
bang theory of the universe. Evidence
to support it comes in 1929 from U.S.
astronomer and galaxy specialist Edwin
Powell Hubble (1889–1953). Hubble
observes that the galaxies are moving
apart, thereby supporting the theory of
an expanding universe.
124 Timeline of Earth Science

1935 American seismologist Charles Richter (1900–1985) develops his

scale of earthquake strength. Richter’s scale is based on the maxi-
mum height of the mark made by the pen on an earthquake seis-
mograph.
1946 Vincent J. Schaefer (1891–1993) at General Electric discovers that
dry ice causes supercooled water to turn to snow. This leads to a
rush to develop weather modification techniques for clearing fog,
increasing rainfall, and preventing damage from hail.
1950 U.S. astronomer Fred Lawrence Whipple (1906– ) proposes that
comets are composed of ice, dust, dry ice, methane, and ammonia.
This becomes known as the “dirty snowball” theory of comets.
Dutch astronomer Jan Oort (1900–1992) proposes that comets
originate in a sphere that contains the ingredients to create them.
This comet “nursery” is now known as the Oort Cloud.
1954–1955 The first operational weather maps created by numerical weather
prediction techniques on a computer are produced at the Swedish
Meteorological and Hydrographic Institute in Stockholm,
Sweden, and at the Joint Numerical Weather Prediction Unit in
Suitland, Maryland.
1957 The Soviet Union launches the first spacecraft and artificial
satellite, called Sputnik, and thus begins the space age.
1957–1958 The International Geophysical Year
(IGY) is launched in July 1957 as an
eighteen-month period devoted to
observing geophysical phenomena
and taking measurements of Earth
and the atmosphere. Sixty-seven
nations share information and work
together on the project.
1962 American Harry Hammond Hess (1906–1969) proposes seafloor
spreading as the mechanism that explains the presence of the mid-
ocean ridges. Within a few years, the theory of plate tectonics
would become the fundamental theory underlying all geology.
1965 Astrophysicist Arno Penzias (1933– ) and physicist Robert
Wilson (1936– ) discover the radio waves left over from the big
bang.This discovery provides additional evidence supporting the
idea of a steadily expanding universe.
1969 American astronauts Neil A. Armstrong (1930– ) and Edwin
“Buzz” Aldrin (1930– ) become the first humans to land on the
Moon.
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1974 Mario J. Molina (1943– ) and F. Sherwood Rowland (1927– )

warn of the threat of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) to the stratos-
pheric ozone layer.Within four years, the United States bans the
presence of CFCs in aerosol cans.
1975 The United States launches the first Geostationary Operational
Environmental Satellite (GOES). The United States has two
GOES satellites that send back images of the United States and
adjacent ocean waters to aid meteorologists.
1980 U.S. physicist Luis Walter Alvarez (1911–1988) and his son, geol-
ogist Walter Alvarez (1940– ), propose that Earth was hit by a
comet or asteroid some 65 million years ago, which had led to
the extinction of the dinosaurs.
1990 The first optical telescope in space, the Hubble Space Telescope,
is placed into orbit.The Hubble can see farther into the universe
and beam back images that are clearer than ever before possible.
1992 Studies of ice cores from Greenland show that it is possible for
the climate to change very suddenly, perhaps in as little as one to
two years.This is a significantly different view of climate change,
which had been seen as a very slow process.
1994 Fragments of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 strike the planet
Jupiter.This is the first time that astronomers are able to predict
that a comet would strike another planet and to watch the colli-
sion.
1997 Negotiations are completed on the Kyoto Protocol, which com-
mits industrialized countries to reducing emissions of green-
house gases. The United States, citing inconclusive evidence on
the accuracy of global warming predictions, declines to sign the
treaty.
2000 Ice cores from a Himalayan glacier confirm that the decade from
1990 to 1999 was the warmest in the last 1,000 years.
2001 Scientists suggest that Pluto is not a planet but a large piece of
ice from the Kuiper Belt, a location of many comets. Other sci-
entists disagree and remain convinced that Pluto is the solar sys-
tem’s ninth planet.
2003 A team of astronomers discovers a planet about twice as big as
Jupiter that is orbiting a star in the constellation Puppis. The
astronomers call this proof of the existence of another solar sys-
tem in the universe.