CERN Colloquium

Earth Sweet Earth: The Deep Logic of the Planet

by Prof. Marcia Bjornerud (Lawrence University, Appleton, Wisconsin, USA )

Europe/Zurich
video only (CERN)

video only

CERN

Description

As a science, geology was a late bloomer, particularly compared with physics.  It’s embarrassing to admit that the laws of thermodynamics and the structure of the atom were well known decades before plate tectonics – the way the solid Earth works – was figured out (in 1965).  Unfortunately, the public perception of geology – and of the Earth itself -- remain stuck in the nineteenth century.  The geosciences are now in fact in a golden age, with the analytical tools that allow us to glimpse Earth’s hidden infrastructure.  What we see dispels all the old notions about the planet – not a dull, inert, ordinary rock --  but a responsive, resilient, robust, and immensely complex biogeochemical system.  

This is the talk I would like to give to Elon Musk and others who assert that we could ‘terraform’ Mars in a matter a few human generations, or surgically ‘engineer’ the climate without a torrent of unintended consequences.  Such thinking reflects profound ignorance of both nature and human nature.

Organised by

Monica Pepe-Altarelli and Alexander Zhiboedov