Great courses (DVD)

Course number 1740

Lectures by professor Robert M. Hazen, George Mason University

disc 1: Mineralogy and a new view of Earth -- Origin and evolution of the early universe -- Origins of the elements: nucleosynthesis -- Ur-minerals, first crystals in the cosmos -- Presolar dust grains: chemistry begins -- Coming to grips with Deep Time -- disc 2: Birth of the Solar System -- Early Solar System: terrestrial planets -- Hints from the gas giants -- Meteorites: the oldest objects you can hold -- Mineral evolution, go! chondrite meteorites -- Meteorite types and planetesimals -- disc 3: Achondrites and geochemical affinities -- Accretion and differentiation of Earth -- How did the moon form? -- Big thwack! -- The "Big Six" elements of early Earth -- Black Earth: peridotite to Basalt -- disc 4: Origins of the oceans -- Blue Earth and the water cycle -- Earth and Mars versus Mercury and the moon -- Gray Earth: clays and the rise of Granite -- Earth's mineralogy takes off: pegmatites -- Moving continents and the rock cycle -- disc 5: Plate tectonics changes everything -- Geochemistry to biochemistry: raw materials -- Biomolecules: select, concentrate, assemble -- Why reproduction? world enough time -- Eons, eras, and strategies of early life -- Red Earth: the great oxidation event -- disc 6: Earliest microbial and molecular fossils? -- Microbial mats and which minerals can form -- Earth's greatest mineral explosion -- Boring billion? cratons and continents -- Supercontinent cycle -- Feedback loops and tipping points -- disc 7: Snowball Earth and hothouse Earth -- Second great oxidation event -- Deep carbon: deep life, fuels, and methane -- Biominerals and early animals -- Between Rodinia and Pangaea: plants on land -- Life speeds up: oxygen and climate swings -- disc 8: From the "Great dying" to dinosaurs -- Impact! from dinosaurs to mammals -- Humans and the anthropocene epoch -- Next 5 billion years -- Nearer future -- Coevolution of geosphere and biosphere