Symphony in C: on the roles of carbon in the evolution of Earth, life, and the environment

11:00 a.m.
Agorà building (ex U6), Aula Magna
Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo, 1 Milan

Event in English, organised by the Department of Environmental and Earth Sciences - DISAT
 

Prof. Robert M. Hazen della Carnegie Institution for Science (Washington DC, USA) - Symphony in C: On the roles of carbon in the evolution of Earth, life, and the environment.
The story of carbon is, in a very real sense, the story of everything. Carbon is the central element of our material world: shoes and handbags, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, wooden furniture and plastic containers, glues and lubricants, and thousands of other everyday essentials are carbon-based. Almost every object you see around you has carbon atoms at its core.
Carbon is the fundamental element of life. Every molecule in your body has a carbon backbone. The air you breathe and the food you eat hold this essential element. We live on a carbon planet and we are carbon life.
And carbon is the element that lies at the heart of our uncertain, changeable environment. As humans disrupt the global carbon cycle in ways that planet Earth has never seen before, the consequences become ever more extreme and challenging to a world that must respond to changes in that critical cycle.
In these and many other ways, to know carbon is critical in knowing ourselves.

Greeting Prof. Marco Orlandi, Deputy Vice-Chancellor University of Milano-Bicocca

Introduction Prof. Andrea Zanchi, Director Department of Environmental and Earth Sciences University of Milano-Bicocca

Lectio Prof. Robert Miller Hazen, Researcher Carnegie Institution of Washington's Geophysical Laboratory

Questions from the audience with the participation of Dr. Alessandro Re as moderator