| Meeting report: RAS Discussion Meeting |
|
|
|
|
On the 9th of December over 50 people gathered for the Royal Astronomical Society Specialist Discussion meeting. The topic for the day's meeting was Is the Earth Special? Is our world a typical product of planetary formation processes, or does it exhibit an un-usual combination of properties that were necessary preconditions for the emergence of life? And what's the strongest influence: Gaia or Goldilocks? Does a complex biosphere self-‐support environmental stability or does this confuse cause and effect? This interdisciplinary meeting intended to shed light on this question from many different directions: Cosmology (How big is the Universe?), Geophysics (Is the Earth's magnetic field unusually strong?), Biogeochemistry (does the silicate weathering cycle guarantee climate stability?), Biology (what are the environmental limits on a complex biosphere?), Early life (what are the conditions necessary for life to emerge?) and Celestial Mechanics (how do volatiles get to terrestrial planets?). Click to view the abstract book for this meeting.
A report on the meeting will be published imminently in Astronomy & Geophysics.
|
| Last Updated on Friday, 10 February 2012 11:36 |



