Gresham College Lectures Earth – Our Planetary Life Support System - Professor Helen Czerski
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Sep 23, 2025 
Professor Helen Czerski, an oceanographer and Associate Professor at UCL, explores the intricate dynamics of Earth as a life support system. She discusses how energy flows from the Sun and the importance of recycling Earth's finite atoms. Her insights on breaking waves and bubbles reveal their crucial role in ocean processes. Czerski also emphasizes the significance of seeing humans as integrated components of Earth's systems while highlighting the two unbreakable rules of our planet: the necessity of energy flow and atom recycling.
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A Matter-And-Energy Framing
- Viewing Earth as matter plus energy reveals simple governing constraints.
- Splitting systems this way helps find universal patterns that explain complexity.
Bubbles Under Breaking Waves
- Helen describes lab and ship videos of bubbles breaking under waves to show tiny fast physics at work.
- Those microscopic events repeat billions of times and shape the ocean surface we observe.
Tiny Creatures Build Our Concrete
- She tells how coccolithophores build tiny calcium plates that, when accumulated over geologic time, form chalk like the White Cliffs of Dover.
- Those biological deposits supply the calcium we later use to make cement and concrete.
