Peter Coveney is featuring in a US television show called “Life’s Rocky Start”. The 50 minute programme is airing on Wednesday 13th January at 9pm EST across the USA on PBS NOVA. The program will be streaming on the PBS website after the broadcast, a vimeo link will be made available for international viewers, and also on the NOVA website you can find additional materials, video, and information on getting DVDs. Peter Coveney features in segments filmed in the department.
“Four and a half billion years ago, the young Earth was a hellish place—a seething chaos of meteorite impacts, volcanoes belching noxious gases, and lightning flashing through a thin, torrid atmosphere. Then, in a process that has puzzled scientists for decades, life emerged. But how? NOVA joins mineralogist Robert Hazen as he journeys around the globe. From an ancient Moroccan market to the Australian Outback, he advances a startling and counterintuitive idea—that the rocks beneath our feet were not only essential to jump-starting life, but that microbial life helped give birth to hundreds of minerals we know and depend on today. It’s a theory of the co-evolution of Earth and life that is reshaping the grand-narrative of our planet’s story.”
More information can be found on the PBS Nova website.