Lecture Season
2006
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| LECTURE INFORMATION |
Gaia's Cells: Towards a Science of Environmental Evolution
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Cosmonauts and astronauts are awed by the "blue marble," the face of the living Earth from space. The Gaia hypothesis, a product of the lively imagination of British atmospheric chemist James E. Lovelock and the international space program, states that the atmospheric temperature and reactive chemical composition of the biota, that is the estimated 30 million species of flora, fauna and microbiota depend ultimately on solar and geothermal energy. The Gaia hypothesis, generative of new ideas that lead to experiments, observations and calculations, is unequivocally science. Since we are all dependent on solar energy I suggest that sun worship or homage to volcanic gods are more justifiable than worship of the vengeful anthropocentric Judeo-Christian God. We people, newly arrived Homo sapiens, are dispensable components of our Gaian Earth. During the last 3500 million years the Earth?s atmosphere and surface have deviated from those of Mars and Venus, its neighboring planets. The excursion of the Earth away from a solar system inner-planetary-norm, is best understood as the planetary response to the evolution of life. Gaia science, made palatable to academics by calling it Earth System Science is an exciting new integrative research initiative of Astrobiology.
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23/
03/2006 
Michael DeGroote Centre for Learning & Discovery (MDCL) Rm 1305 8pm Campus Map Parking Info |
| SPEAKER BACKGROUND |
Lynn Margulis is Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1983, received from William J. Clinton the Presidential Medal of Science in 1999. The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., announced in 1998 that it will permanently archive her papers. She was a faculty mentor at Boston University for 22 years.
Website: http://www.geo.umass.edu/faculty/margulis/
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