Speaker: Robert M. Hazen, Earth and Planets Laboratory, Carnegie Institution for Science
Stars, planets, minerals, and living organisms can become increasingly diverse and complex over vast spans of time. Yet no existing law of nature fully describes or predicts how these complex systems evolve. In this talk, Robert Hazen will introduce a proposed new natural law that applies to nonliving, living, and symbolic systems. The law suggests that evolution is not limited to biology but occurs throughout the universe. It is based on the idea that systems made up of many interacting parts can gradually develop new ways of functioning.
Hazen describes this process as a possible “second arrow of time,” working alongside the familiar tendency toward greater disorder described by thermodynamics. Join us to learn how researchers are testing this idea by studying the evolution of minerals, soil microbes, tumors, languages, and AI.
Advance registration is recommended.
Free event parking is available with registration. Register by November 2 to receive parking registration instructions.
Robert M. Hazen, a staff scientist at Carnegie Science’s Earth and Planets Laboratory in Washington, D.C., and a Robinson professor of Earth sciences, emeritus, at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, received degrees in geology from MIT and Harvard. Author of more than 550 articles and books on science, history, and music, Hazen has been a recipient of numerous awards, including the 2025 AGI Legendary Geoscientist Medal, the 2024 Mineralogical Society Hallimond Award, the 2021 IMA Medal of Excellence, the 2016 Roebling Medal of the Mineralogical Society of America, and the 2012 Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award. A foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, he is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the Geological Society of America (GSA), the Mineralogical Society of America (MSA), the Geochemical Society, and other societies. His book The Story of Earth (Viking-Penguin) was a finalist for the Royal Society and Phi Beta Kappa science book competitions. The biomineral “hazenite,” as well as a Miocene fossil dolphin and a fossil hermit crab, were named in honor of Robert and Margaret Hazen. Since 2008, Hazen and his colleagues have explored “mineral evolution” and “mineral informatics”—new approaches that harness large and growing mineral data resources to understand the co-evolution of the geosphere and biosphere. He is co-author of Time’s Second Arrow: Evolution, Order, and a New Law of Nature, and is now completing a 12-part Evolutionary System of Mineralogy, which employs an informatics perspective to classify minerals in the context of their ages and paragenetic modes.