SIM-EARTH: Simulating the evolution of Earth's environment

地球表面的温度以及大气和海洋中的氧气量在我们这个星球的历史上发生了巨大的变化，但对于是什么推动了这些变化，人们并没有达成共识。我们不了解使我们的星球适合复杂生命的基本过程的相对重要性，这正在削弱我们理解我们自己的进化、绘制我们星球的未来以及预测哪种类型的行星可能总体上支持复杂生命的能力。缺乏了解的一个关键原因是我们无法在现实的计算机模型中模拟地球表面条件的演变，因为涉及的时间尺度高达数十亿年。做到这一点的计算需求太高了。SIM-Earth将使用我最近制作的一种新的计算技术的原型，将数十亿年来的板块构造、物理气候和全球生物地球化学循环结合在一起，首次创建一个行星表面环境的3D和时间演变模型。这个模型最终将使我们能够整合所有可能控制地球环境的假设过程，并使我们能够在局部和全球范围内使用严格的模型数据比较来确定哪些过程是最重要的。这一结果将帮助我们理解地球的基本特性导致了温带和高氧环境，这使得智能生命的进化成为可能。这个项目将为我们提供一套关于地球过去重要时期的全新见解，将告诉我们如何最好地为人类保护我们的世界，并将有助于决定我们应该在银河系的其他地方寻找智能生命。

The temperature of Earth's surface and the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere and oceans has changed dramatically over our planet's history, but there is no consensus on what has driven these changes. We do not understand the relative importance of the fundamental processes that have made our planet suitable for complex life, and this is impairing our ability to understand our own evolution, to map our planet's future, and to make predictions about what type of planets might support complex life in general. A key reason for this lack of understanding is our inability to simulate the evolution of Earth's surface conditions in a realistic computer model because of the extreme billion-year timescales involved. The computational demand to do this is just far too high.SIM-EARTH will use a new computational technique that I have recently prototyped to couple plate tectonics, physical climate and global biogeochemical cycles over billions of years, creating for the first time a 3D and time-evolving model of a planetary surface environment. This model will finally allow us to integrate all of the hypothesised processes that might control Earth's environment, and opens up the ability to use rigorous model-data comparison at local and global scales to identify which processes are the most important. The outcome will help us understand what underlying properties of our planet have led to the temperate and high-oxygen environment which has allowed for the evolution of intelligent life.This project will provide a set of completely new insights into important periods of Earth's past, will inform us about how to best preserve our world for humans, and will help decide where we should look for intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy.