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The John Batchelor Show

CLUES OF ORIGINS: 1/4: Impact: How Rocks from Space Led to Life, Culture, and Donkey Kong Hardcover – by Greg Brennecka (Author)

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

Society & Culture, Arts, News, Books

4.52.8K Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2024

⏱️ 12 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

CLUES OF ORIGINS: 1/4: Impact: How Rocks from Space Led to Life, Culture, and Donkey Kong Hardcover – by Greg Brennecka (Author)

https://www.amazon.com/Impact-Rocks-Space-Culture-Donkey/dp/0063078929/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Impact argues that Earth would be a lifeless, inhospitable piece of rock without being fortuitously assaulted with meteorites throughout the history of the planet. These bombardments transformed Earth’s early atmosphere and delivered the complex organic molecules that allowed life to develop on our planet. While meteorites have provided the raw materials for life to thrive, they have radically devastated life as well, most famously killing off the dinosaurs and paving the way for humans to evolve to where we are today.

As noted meteoriticist Greg Brennecka explains, meteorites did not just set us on the path to becoming human, they helped direct the development of human culture. Meteorites have influenced humanity since the start of civilization. Over the centuries, meteorite falls and other cosmic cinema have started (and stopped) wars, terrified millions, and inspired religions throughout the world.

1929 MILANO

Transcript

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0:00.0

This is on the

0:04.3

This is CBS Eye on the World. Here's John Bachelor

0:10.3

Asterides, meteors, comets, the material we swim through on the planet Earth in our solar

0:18.4

system.

0:19.4

I welcome Greg Brennike.

0:22.4

Greg is the author of the new book Impact how rocks from space led to life culture in

0:27.3

Donkey Kong. He is a cosmo chemist and a staff scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

0:37.0

Right now, however, he's going to travel with me to Normandy France, the year is 1803, the same year Thomas Jefferson acquired the

0:46.0

Louisiana purchase and we're going to witness the documentation by a young French scientist named Jean-Baptiste Bio of rocks it fell

0:58.7

from heaven because until this moment there was doubt where asteroids and meteors and comets came from.

1:07.0

Greg a very good evening to you congratulations. What was Biawa's mission when he traveled to Normandy and how did he fulfill the mission so that we can date your work in meteors from that moment?

1:20.0

Good evening to you.

1:21.0

Yes, good evening. Thanks a lot for having me.

1:24.1

Bio's mission was actually quite simple.

1:26.8

It was figure out what happened.

1:28.6

And there was a ton of witnesses for this event.

1:32.2

It was a big meteor shower with a lot of

1:34.8

stones that were recovered and that was very confusing and kind of the powers

1:39.7

of be wanted to find out exactly what happened so he was sent to investigate and that was his

1:44.3

charge and he did a fantastic job of it and it turned the course of history at least for

1:49.3

meteoritics and our understanding of where rocks falling from a sky come from?

1:53.2

The detail I enjoy is that he charted where the pieces fell.

...

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