DUST AND TIME: WHAT WE DON'T KNOW ABOUT THE EARTH (SCIENCE AND COSMOS)

We have mapped the surface of Mars with greater precision than the floor of our own oceans. We predict the weather on Jupiter but cannot say when the next earthquake will strike. We speak of the planet’s future with the confidence of prophets—yet we do not know where the water came from, why heavy elements sit in the crust instead of sinking to the core, or how the first living cell assembled itself from dust.Dust and Time is a sweeping, unflinching exploration of the vast territories of geological ignorance that modern science has papered over with confident models and apocalyptic headlines. From the mythology of Yellowstone’s supervolcano to the failed resource-depletion prophecies of the 1970s, from the enigma of kimberlite diamonds to the uncharted depths beneath Siberia and the Amazon, Boris Kriger dismantles the comfortable illusion that we understand the Earth beneath our feet.This is not a book against science—it is a book for science at its most honest. Drawing on the author’s doctoral research into the structural laws of complex systems, Kriger argues that the greatest danger lies not in what we do not know, but in pretending that we do. When hypotheses harden into dogmas and uncertainty is traded for drama, both knowledge and society pay the price.Written with philosophical depth and a dry wit that recalls Vonnegut and Adams, Dust and Time invites readers to see the planet not as a resource to exploit or a patient to save, but as a mystery so vast that humility becomes the only rational response—and, paradoxically, the beginning of real understanding.Keywords: geology, uncertainty, prediction, climate, natural resources, philosophy of science, Earth Read more