How do avalanches alter the earth?
536136
I have never hear of an avalanche directly altering the earth. \n\nHowever, if the avalanch occurs in an area where they are reltaively uncommon and is large, it is likely that the mass of snow will uproot many or most trees in its path. As a result of this deforestation, come spring, the hillside will experience a lot of erosion. Obviously, that will change the geometry of the hillside in question.
510562
forest fire, usually started by lightning, is one especially during the dry seasons. on the rainy seasons, there is a threat of avalanche if the trees are not numerous enough to hold the massive downpour from eroding the soil on the steeper sides of the mountain. earth quakes may also cause avalanches in addition to massive downpours.
51388
The Van Allen belts have very little to do with the earth's core as the other answer suggested. They are believed to be created by the eath's magnetic field interacting with charged particles known as solar wind.  To the extent that we believe the earth's core responsible for creating the earth's magnetic field, I guess the earth's core has some relevance. \n\nAs the solar winds encounter the earth's magnetic field, the radiation becomes trapped within the field. They are repelled from areas of stronger magnetic field where field lines converge. \n\nTwo alternative hypotheses have been proposed. Possibly the Van Allen Belts are lefor over from the aurora, and another argument is that they are the result of volcanic activity of the earth. \n\nSome scientists beleive that they may have a beneficial effect on the planet providing some protection from solar wind, and that weakening them would harm both electronics and living organisms.  there has been a proposal to reduce the charge of the belts, which are a hazard to satellites.
509539
Climate & erosion can effect mountain formation & evolution.\n\nFormation\nThe climate will determine the types of rocks that exist before & during the formation of a mountain. Chemical & mechanical weathering changes pre-existing rocks. The actual orogeny will determine the final outcome of the rocks as they are usually metamorphosed during this time. Depending on the final type of rock formed, rates of erosion may increase or decrease. Some rocks are more resistant to erosion than other such as silicon dioxide.\n\nEvolution\nAs the mountains form, climate plays a role in the erosional process. Wetter climates tend to have more erosion by water. In drier climates wind will determine the amount of erosion. Climate determines how fast or slowly rocks will erode.\n\nAs mountains erode, they will readjust in height in a process called isostatic adjustment. Mountains have "roots" that reach deep in the earth. The earth's crust is much thicker here versus other parts of the continental crust.\n\nWhen you take the weight off by erosion, the mountain rises slightly therefore will not change in height. This is much like stacking several wooden blocks in a pail of water. When you take one block off the rest will rise in response.\n\nHowever, time & rates of erosion will determine the ultimate fate of a mountain. At some point, the mountain will eventually rise to it's capacity. When it has reached this limit, it is possible for the mountain to erode to the surface.
1035178
If I'm not mistaken, we've tested a number of 20-megaton nukes before, and the fact that you're able to ask this question means that we've survived that first test. :-)  \n\nAs for how big of a nuke it would take to blow up Earth, a couple of issues you'll have to deal with first is what to do about all of the debris that will settle after the nuke goes off, because as it floats back down because of gravity, then gravity itself will hold down all of the matter upon Earth. As to what it would take to cause the most damage, I've gotten to thinking since the 2004 tsunami that if a well-placed nuke was right on major fault lines either in the ocean or possibly on land (like maybe on the New Madrid fault), the tectonic action resulting from the force of the nuclear blast would be much more destructive than the bomb itself, because the shifting of tectonic plates would then cause damage at a much greater radius from ground zero in the resulting earthquake than would just blast waves in an atmospheric explosion.\n\nMaybe that doesn't answer your question, but it's the best I can figure as I am neither a physicist nor a geologist. :-)
837311
Dams and levees change the course of rivers.  Farmig, forestry, and suburban development lead to erosion.  Mining can change the forms of mountains.
944219
Error and Deposition by Gravity\n\nGravity is the force of attraction that exists between all objects. Because Earth has great mass, other objects are attracted to Earth. This makes gravity a force of erosion and deposition. Gravity causes loose materials to move down a slope. When gravity alone causes materials to move downslope, this type of erosion is called mass movement. \n\nA slump is a mass movement that happens when loose materials of rock layers slip down a slope. In a slump, strong rock or sediment lies over weaker materials. \n\nCreep gets its name from the way sediments slowly inch their way down a hill. \n\n"Falling Rock" sign warn of another type of mass movement called a rockslide. Rockslides happen when large blocks of rock break loose from a steep slope and start tumbling. As they fall, these rocks crash into other rocks and knock them loose. \n\nMudflows usually occur in relatively dry areas where weathering accumulates thick layers of dry sediments. When heavy rains fall in these areas, water mixes with sediments and forms a thick pasty substance. Gravity causes this mass to slide downhill\n\nGlaciers\n\nGlaciers are agents of erosion. When snow doesn’t melt, it begins piling up. The weight of the snow becomes great enough to compress its bottom layers into ice. The ice on the bottom partially melts and becomes putty-like. The whole mass begins to slide on this putty-like layer, and it moves downhill. \n\nContinental glaciers are huge masses of ice and when snow  once covered up to 28 percent of Earth they were called ice ages. Today glaciers cover only 10 percent of Earth, mostly near the poles in Antarctica and Greenland. \n\nValley glaciers occur even in high mountains where the average temperature is low enough to prevent snow from melting during the summer. \n\nGlacial Erosion\n\nAs they move over land, glaciers are like bulldozers, pushing loose materials out of their path. Eroded sediments get pushed in front of a glacier, carried underneath it and piled up along its sides. When glacial ice melts, water flows into cracks in rock, refreezes in these cracks, expands and fractures the rock into pieces. These rock pieces are then lifted out by the glacial ice sheet. This process, called plucking, results in boulders, gravel and sand being added to the bottom and sides of a glacier. As a glacier movers forward, plucked rock fragments and sand at its base scrape the soil and bedrock, eroding even more material than ice alone could. When bedrock is gouged deeply by dragged rock fragments, these marks called grooves, are deep, long, parallel scars on rock. Less-deep marks are called striations.\n\nGlacial Depostion\n\nWhen glaciers begin to melt, they no longer have enough energy to carry much sediment. The sediment drops or is deposited on the land. This mixture of different sized sediments is called till. When melting of a glacier exceeds snow accumulation, the glacier retreats or starts to melt. Material deposited by the melting water from a glacier is called outwash.\n\nWind\n\nWind erosion occurs when wind picks up loose material and transports it to other places. Wind erodes Earth’s surface by deflation and abrasion. When wind erodes by deflation, it blows across loose sediment, removing small particles such as clay, silt, and sand, leaving coarse material behind. When these windblown sediments strike rock, they erode by abrasion.\n\nSand storms occur when wind-blown sand grains form a low cloud, just above the ground. Dust storms occur when wind carried dry soil over hundreds of miles. \n\nTo reduce wind erosion, windbreaks are planted to catch blowing soil. Along many steep slopes, seacoasts and deserts, people plant vegetation to hold the soil with plant roots. Sediments blow by soil eventually deposited and develop into either a loess or a dune. Fine-grained sediments of soil deposited on hilltops and in valleys are loess. Sand mounded in front of an obstacle, such as a rock, produces
418581
The earth is taken as the reference point of measuring potentials and the potential given to earth is 0(after all only potential differences make sense) . The earth has such an enormous radius, that its capacitance\nC=4*pi*e*R is very very large and hence the change in potential of the "sphere" is negligibly small as\n change in potential = charge added/capacitance of earth\nThus the earth remains "neutral"(zero potential assigned initially doesn't change) even after lightenings.
420125
obviously the effects will be huge, depending on the number of atomic bombs that is used at the worst case scenario the spin of the earth will change because the atomic bombs release so much energy. so earth could fall out of its orbit. 2 things could happen either  an Ice age or everything is going to be melted!\nin this case i don't think anyone would survive, not even president Bush
139833
I suspect you're referring to the "China syndrome," where a nuclear meltdown could supposedly bore all the way through the earth to the opposite side. This cannot happen. Any meltdown will only bore through the ground until it hits the water table, at which time it will be discharged back into the atmosphere with the steam. Even if there were no water table, the fissile material would stop when it reached the earth's core, since it cannot fight upward against gravity.\n\nThe accident at Chernoybl, if I remember correctly, never even reached the water table. It was controlled by the containment facility.
126429
A broad answer is that all life will either adapt to these changes to survive or face death and/or extinction.\n\nThe earth has always changed and will continue to change. Many of these changes can be caused (and stopped) by man..for example reducing pollution that could be contributing to global warming. Most changes, however, are due to forces outside our control or contribution. \n\nClimate changes aren't necessarily under our control or prevention. There is a complication. The Earth's orbit is very close to being a perfect circle, but not quite. It is somewhat elliptical, which means that the distance between the Earth and the Sun varies over the course of the year. This effect is too weak to cause the seasons, but it might have some influence over their severity.\n\nThere is another important cycle that has the potential to affect the Earth's climate; it is a 41,000-year variation in obliquity, the tilt of the Earth's axis. The obliquity varies by only a few degrees back and forth, and the current value of 23.4° is near the middle of the range. However, in respect to climates on the earth, the obliquity variation has the potential to have a fairly direct effect on seasonal extremes. After all, it is the obliquity that causes our seasons in the first place - if the Earth's axis were perpendicular to its orbital plane, there would be no seasons at all.\n\nAnother factor is our moon. Our moon has a huge influence on our life here on earth on many levels, yet it is slowly moving away from us. It also is a factor of keeping the tilt of the earth's axis from taking bigger variations than it does now. As it moves farther away, the "wobble" will likely become much larger and the changes in climate on a much larger and more frequent time frame.\n\nWhen one takes into account the possibility of asteroid impacts, the immediate and long-term effects caused by plate tectonics, and many MANY more changes in our earth that are beyond human control, we see that human-influenced global warming is only a small piece of a very large changing earth puzzle. (I mention this not to say that global warming isn't a very important topic to teach, but to stress that the other causes of climate changes should be taught as well. Most school-aged children tend to think if we simply address the burning of fossil fuels there will be no climate changes on earth.)\n\nThe changes I have mentioned here are earth/space science topics. Many other changes occur on earth that are usually covered in life science classes. Hope this at least gives you some ideas to explore and research further.
341724
By erosion and quakes and volcanic activity and plate tectonics. that is the natural thing that change it. The unnatural things are construction like the Piramids and the California Aquaduct and power plants and buildings. And the distruction of the rain forests and exploration of the ocians. And so much more. The surface is in constant flux and always changing.
749074
The mountains rose, the valleys sank down, to the place which you had assigned to them. Psalm 104:8\n\nThe waters are still there, during the end of the Flood, the topography of the land changed. There are marine fossils on the peaks of mountains like Everest, indicating they were underwater at one time. In addition, if you were to flatten the Earth out, it would be covered in water to a depth of 1.7 miles.\n\nYou assume that the Earth looked the way it does now, but remember, even local floods destroy the topography of the land, we're talking about a global Flood whose purpose was to destroy the Earth. As I said above, the topography of the land changed, from the floodwaters themselves and when God changed it by raising and lowering the mountains and valleys. An earthquake isn't unreasonable, given God's purposes for the Flood, though I won't say that for certain.
914838
I'm not an expert, but just rationally thinking about this would be similar to a pot of boiling water. If something is on top of the convection wave, it is moved away from the centre of the convection current (the hottest part).\n\nLikewise, as the the convection wave moves up and outward and back down to the point of origin, the earth's plates "float" with this motion and because the plates are solid, they have to go someplace when and where they impact. The plate that contains the heavier, or more mass, subducts under the "lighter" plate.\n\nOccasionally, the thin part of a plate will slide over a "hot spot" where the magma "boils" through the plate and forms a volcano - and the rest - - -
48717
From Wikipedia.org:\n\n" Fifty-seven people were killed and 250 homes, 47 bridges, 15 miles (24 km) of railways and 185 miles (300 km) of highway were destroyed. The eruption caused a massive debris avalanche, reducing its summit from 9,677 feet (2,950 m) to 8,364 feet (2,550 m) in elevation and replacing it with a mile-wide (1.5 km-wide) horseshoe-shaped crater (see geology section or 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens for more detail). The debris avalanche from the 1980 eruption was up to 0.7 cubic miles (2.3 km3) in volume, making it the largest in recorded history. However, the scale of it still pales in comparison to far larger debris avalanches that have occurred in the geological past elsewhere on Earth."
703439
the core of the planet is said to be liquid under pressure, hence volcanoes.  the earth isn't hit with enough meteors etc to much influence the mass of the planet, but as the sea-floor dictates, can change in size.  an example is the two of the main plates, I believe in the area of the pacific rim.  these two plates are moving apart, at times exposing the hot core which pushes its mass into the cracks and cementing the 'spread' of the two plates. \nif the other plates of the planet move likewise, then yes, the world could increase in volume, and give rise to a bigger earth, in lieu of magma escaping from our depths, or by areas of the earth becoming less in depth to the core, like an icecube in a glass of water. \nsci fi of years gone by have mentioned the core in relation to volcanoes.  the implication was that the volcano activity was putting extreme pressure on our core, which if not filled by natural forces, would create a partly filled container under pressure.  the natural result was thought at the time was that the earth would explode or implode.
181335
============================================================\nMagnetic Shield \n\nEarth's geodynamo creates a magnetic field that shields most of the habited parts of our planet from charged particles that come mostly from the sun. The field deflects the speeding particles toward Earth's Poles. \n\nWithout our planet's magnetic field, Earth would be subjected to more cosmic radiation. The increase could knock out power grids, scramble the communications systems on spacecraft, temporarily widen atmospheric ozone holes, and generate more aurora activity. \n\nA number of Earth's creatures, including some birds, turtles, and bees, rely on Earth's magnetic field to navigate. The field is in constant flux, scientists say. But even without it, life on Earth will continue, researchers say. \n\n"There are small fluctuations, which lead to nothing, and large ones, which we know from the geologic record are associated with reversals," said Peter Olson, a geophysicist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. \n============================================================\n\nMore at the following link: