Flashcards: Geophysics

The age of the Earth is 4.

Radiohalos or pleochroic halos are microscopic, spherical shells of discolouration within minerals such as biotite that occur in granite and other igneous rocks.

Continental drift is the movement of the Earth's continents relative to each other, thus appearing to "drift" across the ocean bed.

The mantle is a layer inside a terrestrial planet and some other rocky planetary bodies.

A hodograph is a diagram that gives a vectorial visual representation of the movement of a body or a fluid.

Earth's energy budget is an accounting of how much energy enters the Earth's climate system from the Sun, how much energy is lost to space and accounts for the remainder as stored on the Earth and its atmosphere.

Tectonophysics, a branch of geophysics, is the study of the physical processes that underlie tectonic deformation.

A magnetosphere is the region of space surrounding an astronomical object in which charged particles are controlled by that object's magnetic field.

A telluric current (from Latin tellūs, "earth"), or Earth current, is an electric current which moves underground or through the sea.

The International Geophysical Year (IGY; French: Année géophysique internationale) was an international scientific project that lasted from July 1, 1957, to December 31, 1958.

Exploration geophysics is an applied branch of geophysics, which uses physical methods (such as seismic, gravitational, magnetic, electrical and electromagnetic) at the surface of the Earth to measure the physical properties of the subsurface, along with the anomalies in those properties.

Near-surface geophysics is the use of geophysical methods to investigate small-scale features in the shallow (tens of meters) subsurface.

Multidimensional seismic data processing forms a major component of seismic profiling, a technique used in geophysical exploration.

Isotope geochemistry is an aspect of geology based upon study of the natural variations in the relative abundances of isotopes of various elements.