How the Earth Was Made

Why do scientists look at meteorites for clues on the age of the Earth? Choose more than one right answer.

• Meteorites have been floating unchanged in space since the solar system was formed.

• Because meteorites have growth rings just like trees do.

• Because meteorites are made of nickel and iron just like the center of the Earth.

• The Earth has been constantly changing since it first started to form, so there are no original rocks from the time it was born.

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The Earth started to form when dust particles

• formed a ball of melted rock.

• clumped together with static electric charges.

• froze in the solar heat of the sun.

• caused the sun to have solar allergies.

As dust particles formed rocks and those rocks started to slam together, the young Earth started to have its own _____________ field, pulling even more rocks into itself.

• radiation

• rock

• gravity

• corn

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We can tell that the Earth was once molten because the Earth now has _____________________________________.

• layers divided into a crust, a mantle, and a liquid and solid core.

• oceans and deserts.

• an atmosphere.

• life.

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The Earth is just about

• old as your teacher.

• 4.5 million years old.

• as old as the dinosaurs.

• 4.56 billion years old

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The moon was formed _____________________.

• as a rotating mass of gas and dust started to gather together.

• when a nearby asteroid was trapped by the Earth's gravity field.

• when a small planet collided with the earth right about when the crust started to form.

• by a gigantic volcanic explosion that sent a huge amount of lava into space.

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The oceans were formed early in the life of the earth. They formed about __________________________.

• 26 million years ago.

• 200,000 years ago.

• 4.3 billion years ago.

• the same time that the dinosaurs walked the Earth.

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Where did the ocean water come from?

• Volcanoes spitting out steam and poisonous gasses.

• Rain clouds.

• Rivers.

• Outer space. The water was trapped inside meteorites.

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Where did the building blocks of life come from?

• Scientists found that meteorites also contained amino acids, which are the building blocks of life.

• Pools of hot bubbly sludge.

• Lightning strikes changed mud into amino acids.

• Volcanoes modified some of the rock in the Earth so that amino acids could form.

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The atmosphere of the early Earth was poisonous to life the way we know it now. If that was the case, where did the oxygen in our atmosphere come from?

• Everyone knows oxygen comes from trees!!

• Oxygen formed as a by-product of cyanobacteria which lived 3.5 billion years ago in formations called stromatolites.

• Oxygen is a by-product of volcanic activity.

• Oxygen came from meteorites.

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