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143 - Andrew Knoll: The Origins of Life on Earth

143 - Andrew Knoll: The Origins of Life on Earth

Robinson's Podcast vor 2 Jahren

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1:54:14

Andrew Knoll is the Fisher Professor of Natural History in the
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University.
Andy’s work straddles the line between the early evolution of
life on Earth and our planet’s environmental history. He has
written numerous books on these subjects, most recently A Brief
History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters (Custom
House). In this episode, Robinson and Andy discuss when and how
life arose on earth—and, just as importantly, what and how we
know about it. Then they turn to some related topics, such as the
diversity of microbial life on Earth and how it shaped our
environment. They finish off with the possibility of life on
Mars, as Andy was part of NASA’s MER mission to Mars, which
examined the soil and geology of Mars’s surface through two
rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.

A Brief History of Earth: https://a.co/d/dLrMhVz

OUTLINE

00:00 In This Episode…

00:51 Introduction

03:23 On Walt Whitman and The Learn’d Astronomer

11:36 Big Numbers Concerning Life and the Age of the Universe

29:47 On The Earliest Life on Earth

46:29 How Did Life Begin?

58:21 How Far Back Can We Trace Humans on the Tree of Life?

01:08:42 The Diversity of Microbial Life

01:19:43 The Branching of the Tree of Life

01:24:08 How Did Microbes Shape Our Atmosphere?

01:34:48 What Does Martian Soil Tell Us About The Life That Might
Be Found There?

Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com

Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of
mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations
with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and
everyone in-between.