# Earth Sweet Earth: The Deep Logic of the Planet

- Institution: CERN
- Department: CERN Colloquium
- Speaker: Marcia Bjornerud
- Year: 2022
- Language: English
- Subjects: Earth and environment, Philosophy
- Source: [CERN](https://videos.cern.ch/record/3011307)
- Licence: [CERN](http://copyright.web.cern.ch)
- Who can watch: Teens profiles and older (sources give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the source's own words)

As a science, geology was a late bloomer, particularly compared with physics. It's embarrassing to admit that the laws of thermodynamics and the structure of the atom were well known decades before plate tectonics – the way the solid Earth works – was figured out (in 1965). Unfortunately, the public perception of geology – and of the Earth itself -- remain stuck in the nineteenth century. The geosciences are now in fact in a golden age, with the analytical tools that allow us to glimpse Earth's hidden infrastructure. What we see dispels all the old notions about the planet – not a dull, inert, ordinary rock -- but a responsive, resilient, robust, and immensely complex biogeochemical system.

This is the talk I would like to give to Elon Musk and others who assert that we could 'terraform' Mars in a matter a few human generations, or surgically 'engineer' the climate without a torrent of unintended consequences. Such thinking reflects profound ignorance of both nature and human nature.

## Lectures

1. [Earth Sweet Earth: The Deep Logic of the Planet](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/learn/cern/3011307/7b46012afb21), 1 h 12 min (CERN's player)