In 2021, the Geological Society of London hosted a series of fascinating public lectures about the geology of the planets and moons in our solar system and beyond. You can watch them all on YouTube.
The links to the videos are on the Year of Space webpage. So far, I’ve seen the ones about Mercury, Venus, Mars, the Moon, and Titan.
I’m not a geologist, so I didn’t understand everything. But I largely found the speakers to be very accessible and easy to follow. They all made good use of photographs and graphics, which helped me during the more complicated parts.
I’ve learnt that geologists, meteorologists, and other scientists use their knowledge of Earth’s natural processes to understand what’s happening on other planets and moons. Although the materials in each place differ, they can sometimes behave in similar ways. For example, in response to wind.
These aren’t the only space geology public lectures on the Society’s YouTube channel. I’ve watched several other interesting talks, including:
I particularly enjoyed the video about Curiosity on Mars. It is several years out of date, but it’s still brimming with interesting facts about how Mars was once more like Earth.
The Curiosity rover has been exploring an area that was a lake for millions of years. I don’t think I had really appreciated that water ran freely on the Martian surface for such a very long period of time.
The clouds of Venus talk examined evidence for a theory about microbes living in the planet’s atmosphere. Again, the video is quite old, and I don’t know where current thinking is on the subject. I learnt a lot from it, anyway.
Our solar system is full of strange, harsh, and inhospitable places. It’s also colourful, diverse, and full of mystery. I hope humankind continues to explore it for centuries to come.
