Life's Rocky Start

Today on Far Future Horizons we return to the topic of Biogenesis with another exciting episode of the acclaimed PBS documentary series NOVA where we take a look at Life’s Rocky Start.

Four and a half billion years ago, the young Earth was a hellish place, a seething chaos of meteorite impacts, volcanoes belching noxious gases, and lightning flashing through a thin, torrid atmosphere.

Goethite (California) from the collections of the Mineralogical & Geological Museum at Harvard University.

Then, in a process that has puzzled scientists for decades, life emerged. But how?

Life's Rocky Start: Six Geological Ages

NOVA joins mineralogist Robert Hazen as he journeys around the globe. From an ancient Moroccan market to the Australian Outback, he advances a startling and counterintuitive idea—that the rocks beneath our feet were not only essential to jump-starting life, but that microbial life helped give birth to hundreds of minerals we know and depend on today.

Calcite (Cumbria, England) from the collections of the Mineralogical & Geological Museum at Harvard University.

It's a theory of the co-evolution of Earth and life that is reshaping the grand-narrative of our planet’s story.

This episode of NOVA can be purchased directly from PBS Home Video.

PBS NOVA ~  Life's Rocky Start
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