Fascinating day out in London last week, attending two separate events: the opening of MAGIC at Imperial College, and to hear a lecture delivered by Richard Dawkins at the Natural History Museum. The former was to celebrate the commissioning of a new suite of mass spectrometers and associated clean laboratories. The scientists who get to work the MAGIC (MAss spectrometry and isotope Geochemistry at Imperial College) are interested in using high-precision isotope ratio measurements to investigate all kinds of phenomena in the natural world, such as ocean circulation, environmental pollution, and the origin of planets. This is state-of-the-art stuff involving the application of specialised preparation techniques, the separation and purification of chemical species and the measurement of vanishing small quantities of materials to excruciating levels of precision. Utterly amazing.
One of the potential applications is in the area of dating particular events in geological history. So, for instance, as Alex Halliday demonstrated in one of the talks, we are able to chart the early evolution of the Solar System from its inception, and recognise events that took place only a million years apart. Don’t forget this is in a body that is about 4.6 billion years old; so, in principle, scientists are able to distinguish things that took place at 4.600 and 4.599 billion years before present. Actually it’s all even better than this – our reference point for “the start” (which is taken as the origin of refractory minerals in certain meteorites) is dated to 4,567,110,000 +/- 160,000 years ago. As you might imagine, there is considerable debate about the details! Interestingly the Moon can be dated to have formed at least 45 million years after the Solar System formed, and maybe even 100 million years after “the start”; 70 million years after that there were rocks (i.e. a crust of some sort) and water on the surface of the Earth. Perhaps it’s time to start thinking that the event which formed the Moon (a giant impact of a “Mars-sized” body with Earth) also lead to the conditions that ultimately allowed the formation of life.
After the cutting of a cake in the shape of a mass spectrometer (who says scientists don’t have fun?) it was time for a swift glass or two of wine (accompanied by an inordinate quantity of nibbles made from smoked salmon) before a dash to a reception at the Natural History Museum where there was, er, more wine and smoked salmon. Dawkins delivered the Open University Annual Lecture to an audience of enthusiasts rather than detractors. So this was full-on Darwinism, documenting the historical development of ideas that ultimately placed the significance of Homo sapiens into context (this was an opportunity to think more about the last few million years of Earth’s history as opposed to the first few). Actually his talk was not all about Darwin-ism; rather it considered the role of other players working in the field at the same time as Darwin, namely Edward Blyth, Patrick Matthew and, of course, Alfred Russel Wallace. Indeed, Jim Moore noted, during a subsequent panel discussion that the phrase “Darwin’s dangerous idea” is a bit of a misnomer since there were a number of people working in the area of evolution and natural selection. What Darwin did, which the others didn’t, was to write a best-seller (note to self).
The question and answer session for the Dawkin’s lecture was an absolute delight. A very erudite affair involving eloquent speakers (both audience and panellists), all handled in a very gentlemanly manner (you know what I mean) – one was taken back momentarily to Victorian England. Such a contrast somehow with the brashness of the modern day cosmochemists and their desire to use devices made from the shiniest of steel to torture rocks into giving up their secrets. And yet, of course, the evidence of rocks being billions of years old, and humans evolving from apes, are both anathema to some.
