Geology is Destiny

Big Picture Science

Science, Technology

4.5 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 15 January 2018

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

ENCORE The record of the rocks is not just the history of Earth; it’s your history too. Geologists can learn about events going back billions of years that influenced – and even made possible – our present-day existence and shaped our society. If the last Ice Age had been a bit warmer, the rivers and lakes of the Midwest would have been much farther north and the U.S. might still be a small country of 13 states. If some Mediterranean islands hadn’t twisted a bit, no roads would have led to Rome. Geology is big history, and the story is on-going. Human activity is changing the planet too, and has introduced its own geologic era, the Anthropocene. Will Earthlings of a hundred million years from now dig up our plastic refuse and study it the way we study dinosaur bones? Plus, the dodo had the bad luck to inhabit a small island and couldn’t adapt to human predators. But guess what? It wasn’t as dumb as you think. Guests: Walter Alvarez – Professor of Geology, University of California, Berkeley, and author of A Most Improbable Journey: A Big History of Our Planet and Ourselves David Grinspoon – Senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, and author of Earth in Human Hands: Shaping Our Planet’s Future Eugenia Gold – Instructor, Department of Anatomical Sciences, Stony Brook University Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:32.3	Get ready to geek out. The Wired Science Podcast explores all the
0:36.8	latest and greatest in science, everything from strange diseases and
0:40.6	biological breakthroughs to interesting tech and mysteries in outer space.
0:45.0	Listen to Wired Science today wherever you get your podcasts.
0:49.0	That's Wired Science wherever you get your podcasts. Forget the meaning of life, what's the reason for it?
1:05.0	Well, we can give you one answer by going old school and nothing is older than the rocks.
1:10.0	The exposed sedimentary layers in the Grand Canyon are as much as 1.8 billion years old,
1:16.0	and there are rocks in Greenland that are twice as ancient.
1:18.0	And since rocks record the past, we turned to geology to help us explain how we got from there to here and I'm
1:25.6	here and I'm Seth Shostak. I'm Molly Bentley. Welcome to Big Picture Science
1:29.6	produced at the SETI Institute where researchers investigate the nature and origin of life.
1:34.0	A big picture science we step back to get the wide angle view on science and technology, and in this
1:38.8	episode we rock on with geology.
	...

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