Geochemistry is I believe one of the most vastly under-appreciated areas of scientific research. With modern techniques available for measuring extremely tiny quantities of rock and mineral material to extremely high precision, details are emerging about how Planet Earth formed which were never known before.
I am just reading about a new study which examined 2.8 billion year old volcanic rocks from Russia called komatiites. The isotopic signal of the element tungsten in this rock is distinctive from other Earth rocks and the researchers believe that this rock comes from the very earliest period of Earth’s formation, possibly within only 10-20 million years of the formation of the Solar System itself.
It had previously been believed, the article explains, that the earliest rocks of Earth would have eventually mixed with other rocks which Earth acquired through ongoing impacts with ever larger bodies, as its mass increased substantially from the earliest times. But this latest finding implies that a portion of the earliest rock did not get mixed in with later-acquired rock, but remained distinct.
From the article:
“This difference in isotopic composition requires that the early Earth formed and separated into its current metallic core, silicate mantle, and perhaps crust, well within the first 60 million years after the beginning of our 4.57-billion-year-old Solar System,” says Touboul.
“In itself this is not new,” he says, “but what is new and surprising is that a portion of the growing Earth developed the unusual chemical characteristics that could lead to the enrichment in 182-tungsten; that this portion survived the cataclysmic impact that created our moon; and that it remained distinct from the rest of the mantle until internal heat melted the mantle and transported some of this material to the surface 2.8 billion years ago, allowing us to sample it today.”
Source: Building Blocks of Early Earth Survived Collision that Created Moon
If I was president I would have guys like this come to places like under the dome at San Francisco Center and give lectures on this stuff. How can people not be fascinated by it? I would also have people from diverse fields like geochemistry, cosmology, astrophysics, paleobotany, evolutionary biology, etc. come together for symposiums and produce a book series which characterizes the Universe from the Big Bang, through the development of Earth and the evolution of life, to the stages of human history leading to the present. It could even start out (or end might be more appropriate) with speculation on cyclic cosmology or what was before the Big Bang, continue through the evolution of life, going through human development and culture. I would then also make a video series based on the book.
In fact I might make one or several episodes just devoted to geochemistry and the people who do isotopic analysis, have extensive interviews with them, survey the equipment and techniques that get used for analysis, and get into detail about how and where they locate samples.
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