Geologist Marcia Bjornerud and Long Now’s Executive Director Alexander Rose debate about whether going to Mars is a viable long-term sustainability plan for human survival.

When cretaceous-age rocks in the Southern US eroded over millions of years, they produced a uniquely rich, fertile soil that landowners realized was ideal for growing cash crops such as cotton. It was the soil from these rocks that slaves toiled over in the era of American slavery—and the same ground that . . .   Read More

“We need to think globally, we need to think rationally, and above all, we need to think long-term.” – Lord Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, speaking at Long Now.

Watch video of the full talk here. . .   Read More

Figure 1. Bristlecone pines on Mt. Washington, Snake Range, NV.

Wind cutting across my cheek, I marched across a grey, sharp limestone slope at treeline in the Great Basin. The tinkle of rock under shoe and a light whistle of air though bristlecone pine krummholtz were the only sounds heard in a stark, seemingly timeless. . .   Read More

A new paper by archaeologists Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo addresses one of the longstanding mysteries of the monuments of Easter Island: their location.

Four hundred of the statues, known as muai, are located miles away from where they were originally quarried, and sit on megalithic platforms, or ahu. An analysis of the locations of. . .   Read More

What makes a species invasive? What makes a species native? Ecologist and evolutionary biologist Chris Thomas on the need to think on a global, international scale when it comes to conservation. From Chris Thomas’s Long Now Seminar “Are We Initiating the Great Anthropocene Speciation Event,” which you can watch in full here.

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Earlier this month, the bristlecone pine, one of the oldest and most isolated organisms on Earth, found itself in unfamiliar territory: in the headlines. News outlets such as the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Post reported that the bristlecone pine was “in peril” and threatened by extinction due to a warming climate. The news came. . .   Read More

The New Yorker recently profiled photographer, former SALT speaker, and 02016 sponsor of the Conversations at the Interval livestream Edward Burtynsky and his quest to document a changing planet in the anthropocene age.

“What I am interested in is how to describe large-scale human systems that impress themselves upon the land,” Burtynsky told New. . .   Read More

This lecture was presented as part of The Long Now Foundation’s monthly Seminars About Long-term Thinking.

Fire Slow, Fire Fast, Fire Deep
Tuesday February 9, 02016 – San Francisco

Video is up on the Pyne Seminar page.
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Audio is up on the Pyne Seminar page, or you can subscribe to our podcast.
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Ecological wildfire. . .   Read More

On June 25 and 26, 2015, a meeting was held at the International Centre for Life in Newcastle, England, to discuss whether the extinct Great Auk–a once-common flightless pelagic bird known as “the penguin of the north”–might be a realistic candidate for bringing back to life using recent breakthroughs in genetic technology. . .   Read More