All posts tagged: geology

34. After we’ve gone

Published by podmeister

What would a race of space-travelling aliens 100 million years in the future make of the Earth? “One can imagine that they’ll be sufficiently scientifically curious to look on the world as extraordinary – because the Earth is extraordinary by comparison with all the other planets. “And then to investigate its future present, as it were, and try to work out how this future present arose and how it survived for so long. And to do that they’ll have to play the particular kind of history game that we call geology… they’ll have to become fossil detectives…” My guest this week is Jan Zalasiewicz, who is a senior lecturer in the department of geology at the University of Leicester. The first ever edition of Podularity featured a geology title, Ted Nield‘s Supercontinent, so it’s fitting that we return to that subject as the programme approaches its second birthday. In his new book, The Earth after Us, Jan decided to conduct a thought experiment on a grand scale – what would happen if you imagined applying …

1. Lost Continents, Deep Space… and Lasagne

Published by podmeister

“The four-dimensional complexities of our happy little planet – “earth’s immeasurable surprise” – are made elegantly accessible by Ted Nield in this truly exceptional book. At least until the next major discovery it deserves to become the standard work, ideal for students of the subject, and hugely enjoyable to those for whom the world remains an unfathomable enigma.” Simon Winchester Ten billion years in the life of our planet. That’s the subject of this first Podularity podcast. And all in a little over 17 minutes… Alert readers may already object that it’s impossible to cover 10 billion years, as the Earth is only six billion years old. (If you are objecting that the Earth is a great deal younger than that, then this podcast is probably not going to appeal to you.) However,Ted Nield’s new book, Supercontinent, looks not only deep into the past by examining the geological record, but also peers into the planet’s far-distant future. The book tells the story of the planet by tracing what Nield calls ‘the grandest cycle in all …