Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 18, 2026

Laboratory Drop Towers for the Experimental Simulation of Dust-aggregate Collisions in the Early Solar System
Published on: June 5, 2014
A neoproterozoic snowball earth
1P. F. Hoffman, G. P. Halverson, D. P. Schrag, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. A. J. Kaufman, Department of Geology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.
Abstract:
Negative carbon isotope anomalies in carbonate rocks bracketing Neoproterozoic glacial deposits in Namibia, combined with estimates of thermal subsidence history, suggest that biological productivity in the surface ocean collapsed for millions of years. This collapse can be explained by a global glaciation (that is, a snowball Earth), which ended abruptly when subaerial volcanic outgassing raised atmospheric carbon dioxide to about 350 times the modern level. The rapid termination would have resulted in a warming of the snowball Earth to extreme greenhouse conditions. The transfer of atmospheric carbon dioxide to the ocean would result in the rapid precipitation of calcium carbonate in warm surface waters, producing the cap carbonate rocks observed globally.
Related Concept Videos
Gravity between Spherical Bodies
This assumption can be proved easily by showing that the expression for gravitational potential energy between a hollow sphere of mass (M) and a point mass (m) is the same as it would be for a pair of extended...
Acceleration due to Gravity on Earth
The acceleration of an object close to the Earth, because of the Earth's gravitational pull, is called the acceleration due to gravity. It is always directed...
Circular Orbits and Critical Velocity for Satellites
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) first suggested that the Earth and all other planets orbit the Sun in...
Acceleration due to Gravity on Earth
Transition Zone
Geoid and Ellipsoid

