sphero-, spher-, -sphere-

1. A cloudy envelope surrounding a planet or other heavenly body.
2. An envelop or atmosphere of cloud surrounding the earth or any clestial body.

The water mist gathers into a vaporous envelope, constituting a true atmosphere or nephelosphere.

An atmospheric environment which neither oxidizes nor reduces materials that are contained within it.

The atmospheric shell from the earth's surface upward in which the atmospheric constituents are, for the most part, electrically neutral.

1. The sum of human intellectual activities.
2. That part of the biosphere altered or influenced by the activities of mankind.
3. Portions of the biosphere that are under the influence of mankind; also known as anthroposphere.
4. In cybernetics, a term modelled after biosphere signifying:

a. The space occupied by the totality of information and human knowledge collectively available to man.

b. The processes operating in this space, e.g., combinatorial mating, classification, reproduction, simplification, and selective decay.

5. A theoretical stage of evolutionary development, associated with consciousness, the mind, and personal relationships.

The noosphere can be seen as the "sphere of human thought" being derived from the Greek νους (nous) meaning "mind" in the style of "biosphere". In the original theory of Vernadsky, the noosphere is the third in a succession of phases of development of the Earth, after the geosphere (inanimate matter) and the biosphere (biological life).

Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky (1863-1945) was a Russian, Ukrainian mineralogist and geochemist whose ideas of noosphere were an important contribution to the Russian cosmism. He was a founding father of several new disciplines, including geochemistry, biogeochemistry, and radiogeology.

Just as the emergence of life fundamentally transformed the geosphere, the emergence of human cognition fundamentally transformed the biosphere. In contrast to the conceptions of the Gaia, (Gaea, meaning "earth" or "land") theorists, or the promoters of cyberspace. They hypothesized that the living matter of the planet functioned like a single organism and named this self-regulating living system after the Greek goddess Gaia.

Vernadsky's noosphere is not something that is just now coming into being, or will emerge in the future; it arrived with the birth of the first cognitive human being, and is manifested throughout the geosphere and biosphere in the form of human intervention, which principally takes the form of physical economic development of the planet.

Noosphere is also sometimes used to refer to a transhuman consciousness emerging from the interactions of human minds. This is the view proposed by the Christian mystic and theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (French Jesuit priest trained as a paleontologist and a philosopher; 1881-1955), who added that the noosphere is evolving towards an ever greater integration, culminating in the Omega Point—which he saw as the ultimate goal of history.

An irrational dread of certain smells: People who suffer from chronic migraines can have olfactophobia believing that it can be prompted by particular odors.

Jim's mother developed osphresiophobia when her son didn't bathe or shower for two weeks and had a very offensive and unpleasant stench!

The ciliated six-hooked larva of the tapeworm contained within the external embryonic envelope and armed with six hooks; it may be found in feces.

1. An unfertilized female reproductive cell in algae and fungi.
2. A large non-motile female gamete or egg cell, formed in an oogonium and ready for fertilization.

Oogonium is a female reproductive structure in certain thallophytes (algae, fungi, and lichens), usually a rounded cell or sac containing one or more oospheres.

1. The lithosphere; The oxysphere can be described as the solid, outer layer of the earth, consisting of the crust and upper mantle.
2. The geosphere: The combination of the earth’s lithosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere makes up the oxysphere.

1. A region in the upper atmosphere, about 6–30 miles (10–50 kilometers) high, with significant concentrations of ozone, formed by the effect of solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation on oxygen and also present in trace quantities elsewhere in earth's atmosphere.
2. The layer of the upper atmosphere, from 15 to 50 kilometers (10 to 30 miles) above the earth's surface, where most atmospheric ozone collects, absorbing harmful ultraviolet radiation from the sun.

In the 1980's it was realized that industrial pollutants such as CFC's were damaging the ozone layer and that holes had appeared in it, especially over the Antarctic.

CFC refers to a gas containing carbon, hydrogen, chlorine, and fluorine; some forms of which are said to damage the ozone layer in the earth's atmosphere.

That shell or upper layer of the earth in which soil-forming processes occur: A pedosphere is that component of the biosphere comprising the soil and soil organisms.
2.

In archaeology, the name for any spherical man-made object of any size that is composed of stone: These petrospheres are primarily prehistoric artistic objects which may have been created and/or selected, but altered in some way to perform their specific functions, including carving and painting.

1. The outermost visible layer, or surface, of the sun.

The layer of the sun that corresponds to the solar surface viewed in white light or the region from which light escapes from the sun into space.

2. The intensely bright gaseous outer layer of a star, especially the sun.

Sunspots and faculae are both features of the photosphere. The faculae are groups of small shining spots on the surface of the sun which are brighter than the other parts of the photosphere.

1. The surface of a leaf considered as a habitat; especially, for microorganisms.
2. The three-dimensional micro-environment surrounding a leaf.

A circular star map drawn for a given latitude, having a rotating mask that shows which constellations are visible at any time and date in the year.

Hemichordata that are only known as planktonic larva: Plantospheroidea are very simple and underdeveloped worm-like animals that are in the form of transparent ciliated spheres.