Title from container. Lecturer: Professor Robert M. Hazen. The length of each lecture is: ca. 30 min. The entire program consists of 48 lectures.
Contents:
Mineralogy and a new view of Earth -- Origin and evolution of the early universe -- Origins of the elements: nucleosynthesis -- Ur-minerals, first crystals in the cosmos -- Presolar dust grains: chemistry begins -- Coming to grips with deep time -- The birth of the solar system -- The early solar system: terrestrial planets -- Hints from the gas giants and their moons -- Meteorites: the oldest objects you can hold -- Mineral evolution: go chondrite meteorites -- Meteorite types and planetesimals -- Achondrites and geochemical affinities -- The accretion and differentiation of Earth -- How did the moon form? -- The big thwack -- The "big six" elements of early Earth -- The Black Earth: peridotite to basalt -- Origins of the oceans -- Blue Earth and the water cycle -- Earth and Mars versus Mercury and the moon -- Gray Earth: clays and the rise of granite -- Earth's mineralogy takes off: pegmatites -- Moving continents and the rock cycle -- Plate tectonics changes everything -- Geochemistry to biochemistry: raw materials -- Biomolecules: select, concentrate, assemble -- Why reproductions? world enough and time -- Eons, eras, and strategies of early life -- Red Earth: the great oxidation event -- Earliest microbial and molecular fossils? -- Microbial mats and which minerals can form -- Earth's greatest mineral explosion -- The boring billion? cratons and continents -- The supercontinent cycle -- Feedback loops and tipping points -- Snowball Earth and hothouse Earth -- The second great oxidation event -- Deep carbon: deep life, fuels, and methane -- Biominerals and early animals -- Between Rodinia and Pangaea: plants on land -- Life speeds up: oxygen and climate swings -- From the "Great dying" to dinosaurs -- Impact: from dinosaurs to mammals -- Humans and the antropocene epoch -- The next 5 billion years -- The nearer future -- Coevolution of geosphere and biosphere.
Summary:
Examines Earth's origin from simple atoms that were created in the big bang, transformed into heavy elements in stellar explosions, then forged into a planet inside the nebula that gave birth to the solar system. Like many other planets, Earth went through phases of melting, volcanism, and bombardment by asteroids. But only on Earth did events lead to a flourishing biosphere--life. And once life was established, it drove the evolution of our planet in startling new directions.
Series:
The great courses. Science & mathematics. Earth science The great courses
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.