Origins: Order vs Chaos | David Bercovici

Although our existence on a habitable planet can largely be taken for granted, how Earth arrived at this state of “habitability” is far from obvious. How the planets even formed is still not well understood. Once a terrestrial planet is created, its evolution is controlled by how it slowly cools, which drives its internal motion by convection. On Earth, convection led to plate tectonics, which in turn led to the formation of continents and ocean basins and set the geological carbon cycle that keeps our oceans liquid and makes our atmosphere and climate habitable.

David Bercovici is the Frederick William Beinecke Professor of Geophysics at Yale. He received his Ph.D. in geophysics and space physics from UCLA and did a postdoctoral fellowship at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Sponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities.