John M. Eiler: "Journeying to the Earth's Past in the Isotope Time Machine"

Earth Science is a form of history with the basic goals of reconstructing and understanding the unique events and life forms of our planet's past, many of which are beyond our experience of the modern world. This talk will explore how the study of isotopes in rocks and fossils lets us peer into the past and quantitatively reconstruct geological and biological evolution. Isotope geoscience began with the pioneers of the Manhattan project; recent innovations allow us to reconstruct ice ages hundreds of millions of years in the past and measure the body temperatures of dinosaurs.

John Eiler is the Robert P. Sharp Professor of Geology and Professor of Geochemistry at Caltech.