(ËvÉr bÉl) adj. 1. of or consisting of words: verbal ability. 2. spoken rather than written; oral: verbal communication. 3. concerned with words only, rather than with the ideas, facts, or realities expressed: a purely verbal distinction. 4. corresponding word for word; verbatim: a verbal translation.
Life is the process that resolves these disequilibria.. The water world theory suggests that the warm, alkaline hydrothermal vents maintained an unbalanced state with respect to the surrounding ancient, acidic ocean - one that could have created two chemical imbalances. The first was a proton gradient, where hydrogen ions were concentrated more on the outside of the vent's chimneys.
In 1910, a young German scientist named Alfred Wegener (vay guh nur) became curious about the relationship of the continents. He hypothesized that Earthâs continents had moved! Wegenerâs hypothesis was that all the continents were once joined together in a single landmass and have since drifted apart. Wegenerâs idea that the continents slowly moved over Earthâs surface became known as continental drift.