You’re watching Science Dialogues Don’t miss out on more content from Geopop
In this new episode of Science Dialogues we had a chat with one of the pillars of the Geopop team: Stefano Gandelli. Those who have been following the channel since its inception know that the project was originally born as “Pop Geology” and Stefano was one of the very first members to join the adventure. But what drives a geologist to become an author and popularizer? We retraced its history, discovering that there is much more behind the study of rocks than we think: from the “visual” university choice to philosophical reflections on our place in the Universe.
It is often thought that scientific passion is love at first sight, but for Stefano it was almost a choice exclusion. During high school he was convinced that his path was there biologybut the impact with the laboratory was disappointing: too microscopic and abstract. Geology won because it is a science visual and tangible: instead of imagining invisible things under the microscope, we study mountains, volcanoes and the Earth in all its grandeur.
There is a myth to dispel, perhaps the fault of Jurassic Park: The geologist doesn’t spend all his time looking for T-rex. Stefano, for example, specialized in mining sector: studying where the metals and resources we use every day come from. And for video game fans, yes, the imagery of the excavation also comes from Minecraft and his famous ones diamond pickaxeseven if Stefano confesses that the real experience with the pickaxe in his hand only happened once at university and is very different from the virtual one.
It is a fascinating field because it offers a key to understanding how the world works: often, in fact, mineral resources are behind the dynamics of power and international geopolitical balances.
In addition to technique, geology teaches something fundamental on a human level: prospect. Learning to read the landscape means knowing that the mountain we look at today was once an ocean floor.
This helps us understand how short human time is compared to geological time. If we think about the history of the Earth, we were there for a moment: an awareness that helps us “downsize” and not take ourselves too seriously, reminding us that we are only passing through on this planet.
