On one of the loop hikes I was planning to do, I went around a corner and there was a bison. But aside from that, it also has a really great landscape of hills and fields and hiking trails. That has one of the largest cave networks in the United States. I was able to go to a few other parks, like Wind Cave which is in the southwest corner of South Dakota. The abrupt changes of the landscape you see out there are really amazing. Then right around the bend, there will be grasslands and mountains and fields and deer. It's one of the few places in the United States where you can still see lava fields and cinder cones and this volcanic landscape. But that let me go to some of these much less frequently visited parks, like Craters of the Moon. I had been to Yellowstone before so I skipped that one on this trip. I went to a few national parks and got to see some really amazing geology and geomorphology. Greg Fournier: I had a chance to do some driving around out west a few weeks ago. What were some of the impressive and exciting things you saw out there? Saw some incredible sights out west, including one called Craters of the Moon. I'm told you just came back from a geological road trip. It's really interesting to think about that. I've heard kids, they'll look at some old book and say, "Wow, this book must be 10,000 years old." Not really understanding what the actual history of human time is, never mind the history of microbial time. It's something that, even when you study this for 20 years, it's hard to wrap your head around just how much time we're talking about. Greg Fournier: Yes, I think that's exactly right. When you come upon things that are completely different from your day-to-day experience and you see no evidence of immediate human touch, you have that wonder of, "Wow, I'm seeing something that someone who maybe lived 100 years ago or 1,000 years ago has seen and no one's seen it since." When you think about evolutionary time, it's even more abstract, right? It's something that's happened eons ago and you're picking up the fingerprints of it. As a kid you don't have a sense of the long, long history of time. Sally Kornbluth: Yes, I can imagine that. In a field that's old as evolutionary biology, it's exciting to be able to bring a new perspective and still be part of that kind of tradition. You can reconstruct the histories of these large data sets and you can discover something that no one else has really put together before. The work we do - looking at the evolution of microbes and genes and genomes over billions of years - is not only new as a discipline, but it's also still a place where you can really explore. I think I've always been drawn to that kind of exploration. It's a bit different than the adventures you can have when there's already a trail, where there's already a mountain peak, where there's already a list of things you're supposed to see. In a way, you always want to get back to that feeling. That leads you to genuine exploration experiences. Greg Fournier: I think when you have the opportunity to really explore in the natural world, especially a place that doesn't have trails or a guide, that when you are 10 or 12 years old, as far as you know, you're the first person to ever discover it. How did that interest lead you to become a geobiologist? I understand that it was these early discoveries that helped fuel your interest in the evolution of life itself. Sally Kornbluth: I heard that as a child growing up in rural Connecticut, you liked to wander in the woods with your friends and would come upon signs of life - human life from years earlier, barbed wire embedded deep within a tree, crumbling stone foundations. Greg Fournier: Thank you for inviting me. He and his team study microbial evolution to further our understanding of the evolution of life on Earth. Greg's work centers on the microbial world. Today, my guest is Greg Fournier, associate professor of geobiology. Their passion and brilliance, their boundless curiosity, offer a wonderful glimpse of the future of MIT. Like their colleagues in every field here, they are pushing the boundaries of knowledge. In my first few months at MIT, I've been particularly inspired by talking with members of our faculty who recently earned tenure. Sally Kornbluth: Hello, I'm Sally Kornbluth, president of MIT, and I'm thrilled to welcome you to this MIT community podcast, Curiosity Unbounded.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |