Contrary to the common belief that the Earth is simply a dense planet whose only function is a resou

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Contrary to the common belief that the Earth is simply a dense planet whose only function is a resource for its inhabitants, our planet is in fact a breathing, living organism. When we think of the Earth holistically, as one living entity of its own, instead of the sum of its parts, it takes on a new meaning. Our planet functions as a single organism that maintains dash conditions necessary for its survival. James Lovelock published in a book in 1979 providing many useful lessons about the interaction of physical, chemical, geological, and biological processes dash on Earth.
Throughout history, the concept dash of Mother Earth has been a part of human culture dash in one form or another. Everybody dash has heard of Mother Earth, but have you ever stopped to think who (or what) Mother Earth is? What is Gaia? Lovelock dash defined Gaia as "...a complex entity involving the Earth’s dash biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and soil; the totality constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet." Through Gaia, the Earth sustains a kind of homeostasis, the maintenance of relatively constant conditions. The truly startling component of the Gaia hypothesis is the idea that the Earth is a single living entity. This idea is certainly not new. James Hutton (1726-1797), the father dash of geology, once described the Earth as a kind of superorganism. And right before Lovelock, Lewis Thomas, a medical doctor and skilled writer, penned these words in his famous collection of essays, The Lives of a Cell: "Viewed from the distance of the moon, the astonishing thing about the earth, catching the breath, is that it is alive. dash The photographs show the dry, pounded surface of the moon in the foreground, dry as an old bone. "Aloft, floating free beneath the moist, gleaming, membrane of bright blue sky, is the rising earth, the only exuberant thing in this part of the cosmos. If you could look long enough, you would see the swirling of the great drifts of white cloud, dash covering and uncovering the half-hidden masses of land. "If you had been looking for a very long, geologic time, you could have seen the continents themselves in motion, drifting apart on their crustal plates, held afloat by the fire beneath. dash It has the organized, self-contained look of a live creature, full of information, marvelously skilled in handling the sun." John Nelson illustrated the “Breathing Earth,” (below) which are two animated GIFs he designed to visualize what a year’s worth of Earth’s seasonal transformations look like from outer space.
Nelson -- a data visualizer, stitched together from NASA’s website 12 cloud-free satellite dash photographs taken each month over the course of a year. Once the images were put together in a sequence, the mesmerizing animations showed what Nelson dash describes as “the annual pulse of vegetation dash and land ice.” As the climate changes, the planet comes alive. Earth appears to breathe dash when ice cover grows and melts--in and out, in and out. White frost radiates out from the top of the globe and creeps south in all directions. It travels through Siberia, Canada, and northern Europe, heading towards dash the equator located around the circle’s edge, but ends before the top of Africa. The Mediterranean Sea is the visible body of water on the top left hand side, and the Great Lakes make up a small network dash of dark blue shapes on the land mass to the right. The Earth acts as a single system - it is a coherent, self-regulated, assemblage of physical, chemical, geological, dash and biological forces that interact to maintain a unified whole balanced between the input of energy from the sun and the thermal sink of energy into space. In its most basic configuration, the Earth acts to regulate flows of energy and recycling of materials. The input of energy from the sun occurs at a constant rate and for all practical purposes is unlimited. This energy is captured by the Earth as heat or photosynthetic processes, and returned to space as long-wave radiation. On the other hand, the mass of the Earth, its material possessions, are limited (except for the occasional input of mass provided as meteors strike the planet). Thus, while energy dash flows through the Earth (sun to Earth to space), matter cycles within the Earth. The idea of the Earth acting as a single system as put forth in the Gaia hypothesis has stimulated a new awareness of the connectedness of all things on our planet and the impact that man has on global processes. No longer can we think of separate components or parts of the Earth as distinct. No longer can we think of man’s actions in one part of the planet dash as independent. dash Everything that happens on the planet - the deforestation/reforestation of trees, the increase/decrease of emissions of carbon dioxide, the removal or planting of croplands - all have an affect on our planet. The most difficult part of this idea is how to q