The Origin and Evolution of Earth [repost]

The story of Earth is an epic filled with crises, catastrophes, and remarkable, repeated change. Earth traces its origin to simple atoms that were created in the big bang, transformed into heavy elements in stellar explosions, and 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.

Most amazing of all, the evidence for every step in this intricate process is all around us—in the thousands of minerals in rocks above and below ground. Consider these intriguing clues:

Diamond: Created under extreme pressure, diamond may very well be the first mineral formed in the universe. Together with a dozen other minerals, it helped seed the solar nebula with dust that became the planets.
Great Oxidation Event: Earth’s iron deposits are a relic of the earliest photosynthetic life, which introduced large amounts of oxygen into the atmosphere, promoting the oxidation of rocks and the production of metal-rich minerals.
Plate tectonics: Many distinctive minerals are associated with plate tectonics, the ceaseless motion of Earth’s crustal plates for more than 3 billion years. This process has had a profound impact on climate, the atmosphere, the oceans, and the development of life.
Cambrian explosion: Changes over billions of years led to altered mineral chemistry in the oceans that made animal shells, bones, and teeth possible. Life exploited these structures in a burst of evolution 540 million years ago called the Cambrian explosion.

Minerals are fundamental to the story of Earth in many ways. Not only are we living beings nourished by minerals, but minerals provide the resources and energy that are crucial to modern civilization. Beyond that, the evolution of minerals has played a central role all across the surface of the planet and throughout its interior. Minerals turn out to be much more than beautiful crystals; they provide outstanding clues to our origins and they are major players in a drama of unimaginable scope.

The Origin and Evolution of Earth: From the Big Bang to the Future of Human Existence lets you experience firsthand the thrill of piecing together the epic story of Earth in an enlightening new perspective. In 48 half-hour lectures available in both video and audio formats, you follow events from the big bang to the formation of Earth to the many twists and turns in our planet’s evolution. You discover how a young universe populated with only a few elements became a cosmos of infinite variety characterized by life—thanks to minerals. Your professor is the noted scientist who pioneered the study of mineral evolution, Professor Robert M. Hazen of George Mason University and the Carnegie Institution’s Geophysical Laboratory.

A prominent field geologist, laboratory mineralogist, collector, popular author, and award-winning teacher, Professor Hazen is also a nationally recognized advocate for science education and the perfect guide for an in-depth investigation of breakthrough scientific concepts. In a course suitable for scientists and nonscientists alike, he recounts Earth’s story through 10 stages of mineral evolution. Each stage resculpted our planet’s surface, introducing new planetary processes and phenomena. By stage 6, life was an integral part of this process, and you learn that life is ultimately responsible for almost two-thirds of the mineral species on Earth—thousands of unique crystals that could only exist on a living world.

Lectures
1 Mineralogy and a New View of Earth
2 Origin and Evolution of the Early Universe
3 Origins of the Elements—Nucleosynthesis
4 Ur-Minerals, First Crystals in the Cosmos
5 Presolar Dust Grains—Chemistry Begins
6 Coming to Grips with Deep Time
7 The Birth of the Solar System
8 The Early Solar System—Terrestrial Planets
9 Hints from the Gas Giants and Their Moons
10 Meteorites—The Oldest Objects You Can Hold
11 Mineral Evolution, Go! Chondrite Meteorites
12 Meteorite Types and Planetesimals
13 Achondrites and Geochemical Affinities
14 The Accretion and Differentiation of Earth
15 How Did the Moon Form?
16 The Big Thwack!
17 The “Big Six” Elements of Early Earth
18 The Black Earth—Peridotite to Basalt
19 Origins of the Oceans
20 Blue Earth and the Water Cycle
21 Earth and Mars versus Mercury and the Moon
22 Gray Earth—Clays and the Rise of Granite
23 Earth’s Mineralogy Takes Off—Pegmatites
24 Moving Continents and the Rock Cycle
25 Plate Tectonics Changes Everything
26 Geochemistry to Biochemistry—Raw Materials
27 Biomolecules—Select, Concentrate, Assemble
28 Why Reproduction? World Enough and Time
29 Eons, Eras, and Strategies of Early Life
30 Red Earth—The Great Oxidation Event
31 Earliest Microbial and Molecular Fossils?
32 Microbial Mats and Which Minerals Can Form
33 Earth's Greatest Mineral Explosion
34 The Boring Billion? Cratons and Continents
35 The Supercontinent Cycle
36 Feedback Loops and Tipping Points
37 Snowball Earth and Hothouse Earth
38 The Second Great Oxidation Event
39 Deep Carbon—Deep Life, Fuels, and Methane
40 Biominerals and Early Animals
41 Between Rodinia and Pangaea—Plants on Land
42 Life Speeds Up—Oxygen and Climate Swings
43 From the “Great Dying" to Dinosaurs
44 Impact! From Dinosaurs to Mammals
45 Humans and the Anthropocene Epoch
46 The Next 5 Billion Years
47 The Nearer Future
48 Coevolution of Geosphere and Biosphere

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