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Explorers of Deep Time

Author: Roy Plotnick

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2022-01-04

Total Pages: 483

ISBN-13: 0231551312

Paleontology is one of the most visible yet most misunderstood fields of science. Children dream of becoming paleontologists when they grow up. Museum visitors flock to exhibits on dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals. The media reports on fossil discoveries and new clues to mass extinctions. Nonetheless, misconceptions abound: paleontologists are assumed only to be interested in dinosaurs, and they are all too often imagined as bearded white men in battered cowboy hats. Roy Plotnick provides a behind-the-scenes look at paleontology as it exists today in all its complexity. He explores the field’s aims, methods, and possibilities, with an emphasis on the compelling personal stories of the scientists who have made it a career. Paleontologists study the entire history of life on Earth; they do not only use hammers and chisels to unearth fossils but are just as likely to work with cutting-edge computing technology. Plotnick presents the big questions about life’s history that drive paleontological research and shows why knowledge of Earth’s past is essential to understanding present-day environmental crises. He introduces readers to the diverse group of people of all genders, races, and international backgrounds who make up the twenty-first-century paleontology community, foregrounding their perspectives and firsthand narratives. He also frankly discusses the many challenges that face the profession, with key takeaways for aspiring scientists. Candid and comprehensive, Explorers of Deep Time is essential reading for anyone curious about the everyday work of real-life paleontologists.

Deep Time Reckoning

Author: Vincent Ialenti

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2020-09-22

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 0262539268

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A guide to long-term thinking: how to envision the far future of Earth. We live on a planet careening toward environmental collapse that will be largely brought about by our own actions. And yet we struggle to grasp the scale of the crisis, barely able to imagine the effects of climate change just ten years from now, let alone the multi-millennial timescales of Earth's past and future life span. In this book, Vincent Ialenti offers a guide for envisioning the planet's far future—to become, as he terms it, more skilled deep time reckoners. The challenge, he says, is to learn to inhabit a longer now. Ialenti takes on two overlapping crises: the Anthropocene, our current moment of human-caused environmental transformation; and the deflation of expertise—today's popular mockery and institutional erosion of expert authority. The second crisis, he argues, is worsening the effects of the first. Hearing out scientific experts who study a wider time span than a Facebook timeline is key to tackling our planet's emergency. Astrophysicists, geologists, historians, evolutionary biologists, climatologists, archaeologists, and others can teach us the art of long-termism. For a case study in long-term thinking, Ialenti turns to Finland's nuclear waste repository “Safety Case” experts. These scientists forecast far future glaciations, climate changes, earthquakes, and more, over the coming tens of thousands—or even hundreds of thousands or millions—of years. They are not pop culture “futurists” but data-driven, disciplined technical experts, using the power of patterns to construct detailed scenarios and quantitative models of the far future. This is the kind of time literacy we need if we are to survive the Anthropocene.

Life in Deep Time

Author: J. William Schopf

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2018-11-05

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 0429762887

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When Darwin wrote his Origin of Species, one of his main concerns was with the perceived shortness of the fossil record of life. Until the work of J. William Schopf and his colleagues, much of this history was thought to be unknowable. This book, through a memoire of Schopf’s personal recollections, documents astonishing discoveries revealing the first 85% of the history of life. These earliest periods of life on Earth emerge as a tale of individual and internationally collaborative exploration told by a scholar whose 60 years of research contributed to the recognition of the richness and diversity which forms the foundation of today’s biodiversity. Key Features Documents, through personal narrative, a paradigm shift is the study of the earliest life Summarizes a fossil record largely unknown until relatively recently Addresses one of Darwin's most troubling concerns about his theory of natural selection Predicts future developments in the study of first life

Deep Time

Author: David Darling

Publisher: First Edition Design Pub.

Published: 2013-05-14

Total Pages: 109

ISBN-13: 162287322X

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What would it be like to see the whole history of the universe, from the moment of creation to the farthest future? Deep Time shows us - through the eyes of a single particle that emerges from the fires of genesis then journeys across countless billions of years to glimpse the ultimate fate of the cosmos. Along the way, we watch the formation of stars and galaxies, narrowly avoid falling into a black hole, witness the birth of the sun and earth, trace the evolution of life and intelligence, and blast off into space again with our particle now part of the Voyager 2 spacecraft. Then we travel on, across immense vistas of space and time, toward the end of all things - and a strange new beginning." David Darling is the author of about 50 books, including narrative science titles Megacatastrophes!, We Are Not Alone, Gravity's Arc, Equations of Eternity, a New York Times Notable Book, and Deep Time. He is also the author of Teleportation: The Impossible Leap, Zen Physics, The Universal Book of Astronomy, The Complete Book of Spaceflight, and The Universal Book of Mathematics, as well as more than 30 children's books. His articles and reviews have appeared in Astronomy, Omni, Penthouse, New Scientist, the New York Times, and the Guardian among others. He has lectured widely, including at the Royal Institution in London. David Darling was born in Glossop, Derbyshire, England, lived in the United States for many years, and now lives in Dundee, Scotland. He earned his B.Sc. in physics from Sheffield University in 1974 and his Ph.D. in astronomy from Manchester University in 1977. David Darling is also a professional singer/songwriter and runs a major science website. Please visit the Worlds of David Darling - www.daviddarling.info Keywords - Universe, Astrophysics, Astronomy, Particle, Space, Cosmos, Evolution, David Darling, Sun, Earth, Travel

Basin and Range

Author: John McPhee

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 1982-04-01

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 0374708568

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The first of John McPhee's works in his series on geology and geologists, Basin and Range is a book of journeys through ancient terrains, always in juxtaposition with travels in the modern world—a history of vanished landscapes, enhanced by the histories of people who bring them to light. The title refers to the physiographic province of the United States that reaches from eastern Utah to eastern California, a silent world of austere beauty, of hundreds of discrete high mountain ranges that are green with junipers and often white with snow. The terrain becomes the setting for a lyrical evocation of the science of geology, with important digressions into the plate-tectonics revolution and the history of the geologic time scale.

Deep Time

Author: Gregory Benford

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2000-11-21

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 0380793466

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Combining the logical rigor with the lyrical finesse of a novelist, award-winning author Gregory Benford explores these and other fascinating questions in this provocative analysis of humanity's attempts to make its culture immortal. In "Deep Time" he confronts our growing influence on events hundreds of thousands of years into the future and explores the possible "messeges" we may transmit to our distant descendants in the language of the planet itself, from nuclear waste to global warming to the extinction of species. As we begin our incredible journey down the path of eternity, Gregory Benford masterfully calls forth some of the intriguing, astounding, undreamed-of futures which may await us in deep time.

Deep Time, Dark Times

Author: David Wood

Publisher: Fordham Univ Press

Published: 2018-12-04

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 082328137X

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The new geological epoch we call the Anthropocene is not just a scientific classification. It marks a radical transformation in the background conditions of life on Earth, one taken for granted by much of who we are and what we hope for. Never before has a species possessed both a geological-scale grasp of the history of the Earth and a sober understanding of its own likely fate. Our situation forces us to confront questions both philosophical and of real practical urgency. We need to rethink who “we” are, what agency means today, how to deal with the passions stirred by our circumstances, whether our manner of dwelling on Earth is open to change, and, ultimately, “What is to be done?” Our future, that of our species, and of all the fellow travelers on the planet depend on it. The real-world consequences of climate change bring new significance to some very traditional philosophical questions about reason, agency, responsibility, community, and man’s place in nature. The focus is shifting from imagining and promoting the “good life” to the survival of the species. Deep Time, Dark Times challenges us to reimagine ourselves as a species, taking on a geological consciousness. Drawing promiscuously on the work of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, and other contemporary French thinkers, as well as the science of climate change, David Wood reflects on the historical series of displacements and de-centerings of both the privilege of the Earth, and of the human, from Copernicus through Darwin and Freud to the declaration of the age of the Anthropocene. He argues for the need to develop a new temporal phronesis and to radically rethink who “we” are in respect to solidarity with other humans, and responsibility for the nonhuman stakeholders with which we share the planet. In these brief, lively chapters, Wood poses a range of questions centered on our individual and collective political agency. Might not human exceptionalism be reborn as a sort of hyperbolic responsibility rather than privilege?

Deep Time

Author: Henry Gee

Publisher: HarperCollins UK

Published: 2008-06

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 000729154X

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This work introduces a revolution in how we look at the history of life, and humanity's place within it. Cladistics overturns the traditional linear theories of evolution and shows the possibility of creatures far wilder than human imagination.

Deep Time. Lynn Alleva Lilley

Author: Lynn Alleva Lilley

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 9789492051424

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Photographer Lynn Alleva Lilley continues her interest in the confluence of art, science, and the natural world with ?Deep Time?. For a number of years she photographed the interplay of light and water in Delaware Bay, mostly during the summer. Seeing stray horseshoe crabs washed ashore was a familiar sight, but one day for the first time she saw one swimming on its back. Fascinated by this observation, she started exploring the world of this 450-million-year-old ?living fossil?. The result is this immersive book in which she poetically captures the beauty of our planet and the mysterious life of the horseshoe crab, pondering our place in time and evolution among life forms.