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Building a Habitable Planet: A Brief History of the Earth

Public and global health

Oxford Lifelong Learning
Oxford Lifelong Learning

This panoramic course synthesises the latest findings from physics, astronomy, chemistry, geology, and biology to narrate Earth's story, from the formation of chemical elements in stars, to the evolution of a habitable climate on Earth, to the origin of life and humankind, and to today’s environmental challenges on a societal and global scale.

  • Date (DD-MM-YYYY)

    17-04-2026 to 26-06-2026

  • Cost

    £360.00

  • Education type

    Virtual

  • CPD subtype

    Scheduled

Description

What factors lead to a habitable planet?

We live on Earth, the only known habitable planet in our solar system, and we have yet to detect life elsewhere in the Universe. How the Earth developed its unique habitability has been at the frontier of Earth science research and now space exploration as we investigate our own solar system and planetary systems around other stars with the latest probes and telescopes.

  • Natural systems and Earth history
  • The Big Bang to the formation of our solar system: producing the building blocks of Life
  • Understanding geological time
  • The early development of the Earth and its neighbourhood.
  • Plate tectonics and chemical cycles
  • The origins and evolution of life
  • Planetary evolution and mass extinctions.
  • Earth’s treasure chest
  • Global warming and cooling
  • Human civilization and its future

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