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Uncovering Earth's past and future
Organised in collaboration with:
WEDNESDAY 16th MAY 2018
DOORS OPEN 6.30PM, EVENT 7PM-10PM
LES HALLES SAINT GERY
Place Saint-Gery 1, 1000 Bruxelles
LANGUAGE: EN
Let's face it: we thought we had an honest relationship with Earth, but it is keeping secrets from us. For one, it just won't tell us exactly how much its oceans intend to rise in the coming years. Then, it is rather discreet about its past and future climate conditions. We get it, Planet Earth, you are older and you like to do your own things, but we feel these are things we should know... Hopefully, scientists are working hard to uncover Earth's past in order to better understand its future. For this third and last night of the festival, join us to learn about sea rise and Earth's climatic past with two top researchers from the ULB !
Professor Frank PATTYN
Université Libre de Bruxelles
1# Sea rise on the run?
Today more than 200 million people in the world live in low lying coastal areas that also host many of the world's megacities and significant infrastructures. Yet, sea-level is on the rise and accelerating, and poses a serious threat to coastal societies through an increased risk of flooding. Future sea level turns critically on the evolution of the large ice-sheets in Antarctica and Greenland, together potentially accounting for more than 70 m of global sea-level rise. What makes these ice sheets unstable? Can and will they reach tipping points and over what time scales is this possible?
Dr. Sandra ARNDT
Université Libre de Bruxelles
2# A Cretaceous crime scene investigation: How marine sediments help us uncover Earth's secrets
Buried deep within the sediments at the bottom of the ocean – up to a kilometer below the seafloor – there are black, organic-rich layers that formed 100 million years ago, during the Cretaceous, when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth. At that time, massive releases of greenhouse gases turned the Earth into a hothouse and converted the oceans into an anoxic, sometimes even sulfidic soup. How does Earth recover from being put into such an extreme state? Can the dark, deeply buried, organic-rich layers- so-called black shales help us uncover these secrets? And what kind of scientific tools do we need to rewind the sedimentary record?